Building the Good Life for All: Transforming Income Inequality in Our Communities by L. Shannon Jung (review)

In Building the Good Life for All (BGLA), L. Shannon Jung invites Christians in the U.S. to consider income inequality as a problem that requires their response. Jung vividly depicts the reality that “close to 50 percent of the people in the United States are struggling hard to get by” (3). Further, he argues that the reality of economic insecurity affects everyone. Not only will most people be ALICE (Asset-Limited, Income-Constrained, Employed) at some point in their lives; ALICE’s vulnerability is also “universally destructive,” affecting society “economically, spiritually, and politically” (14–15). Jung endeavors to equip U.S. Christians to respond by reframing flourishing in communal, holistic terms (chap. 2), exploring strategies to address income inequality (chaps. 3–6), and offering exercises to help them get started (chap. 7).

The strategies Jung explores include relief (which receives a critical evaluation); self-help, or enhancing people’s ability to improve their situation; cultural formation, which includes any effort to tilt public life in favor of the poor (including political movements, building social capital, and corporate policies); and advocacy and governmental action, which Jung helpfully frames as “our achievement as voters, taxpayers, and citizen activists” towards improving social well-being (91).

BGLA seems ideal for mainline, middle-class, perhaps predominantly white congregations who find the political climate baffling. To them, Jung offers a perspective that vividly describes the economic vulnerability of many U.S. Americans, and a range of non-conflictual responses. Jung is determined to reach “the whole population” with his proposal: explicitly rejecting “soaking the rich” (15), he insists that anyone can be ALICE (10–12, 20). All, therefore, should participate in “transforming income inequality.”

BGLA is an informative, quick read. Its strength lies in the directness of its language, abundance of concrete stories, and judicious use of statistics. Jung clearly portrays the current crisis, cogently arguing for public responses. As well, Jung’s studied political inclusivity might commend his book to more conservative readers.

It is this attempt at inclusivity, however, that constitutes the book’s most worrying weakness. Seeking to avoid alienating readers, Jung tells a story without culprits, making invisible the structures and interests that originate and perpetuate economic inequality. Absent a race or power critique, Jung renders incomprehensible persistent poverty and exclusion, as well as the need for disruptive strategies of resistance. For example, the strategy of “cultural formation,” under which Non-Violent Direct Action might fall, does not explicitly mention it, and also includes “pro-social business policy” (5).

Jung’s attempt at inclusivity falls short in a second way: While the working poor are the topic of conversation, BGLA is clearly not written for them or in conversation with them. Jung’s principal aim is to enlist those who believe they can afford to ignore ALICE’s plight, and he does so in terms that appeal to those segments of the U.S. population. While a laudable aim in itself, BGLA’s explicit attempt at non-perspectival universality obscures the voices of the poor, and undermines the mutuality for which Jung calls (32).

Finally, while BLGA claims a “Christian vision” (4), its proposal is abstracted from any account of sin (structural or personal), God’s action in history, or Jesus—all crucial to many Christian approaches to injustice. Coupled with Jung’s easy toggling between “traditional American values” and Laudato Si, one wonders whether Jung’s attempt to appeal to broad swaths of the electorate has led him to a conflation of U.S. political optimism and Christian theology (14–15).

In sum, BGLA’s portrayal of economic vulnerability delivers a powerful blow to the US myth that work delivers security, and it can introduce some Christian communities to the need to struggle for economic justice. Its attempted broadness, however, risks distorting the nature of that struggle. One hopes that the readers whom Jung inspires to action will heed his...