Lecturers Dr. Gustafson and Dr. Bouchard were greeted with a room overflowing with enthusiastic students, teachers, and staff members alike on Jan 25, in Joseph Hall 005. The packed classroom of Anselmians had gathered to discuss the topic of poverty in an event hosted by the Gregory J. Grappone Humanities Institute. The Institute was founded in 2018 to re-emphasize the humanities at Saint Anselm College.

After Dr. Bouchard gave formal introductions and presented the topic of the day as debating whether, as Jesus says in Matthew 26:11, that “the poor will always be with us,” Dr. Gustafson dove right into the discussion. With an attentive audience at her beck and call, Dr. Gustafson spearheaded the discussion by first exploring poverty from an scholarly point of view. Academically, Dr. Gustafson explained, studying poverty can help scholars understand the economic impact of things like inequality, homelessness, and hunger.

But, for Gustafson,  there was another, often overlooked perspective on poverty that she hoped to address on that chilly Friday; that of their faith.

As a practicing Catholic, Gustafson said she wanted to explore poverty not just academically, but as a Christian. As a practicing Catholic, Gustafson said she encountered a problem with this exploration rather quickly: she “didn’t know her Bible.” So, she began to read it.

The story presented in Matthew 26, in which a woman douses Jesus with expensive perfume (and where the verse “the poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have Me” comes from), caught her attention. This statement befuddled Gustafson, and so she did the first thing any inquisitive person does when finding something they don’t understand: she Googled it.  

After wafting through a fair share of search results, she discovered that the collective opinions surrounding the verse boiled down to four schools of thought. They either took the statement literally (i.e. the poor will just always be there), took the verse as a call for private citizens to care for the poor (and not the government), believed Jesus was trying to re-focus the discussion back onto Him, or believed alms (or, in modern parlance, handouts) were the best cure for poverty.

To Gustafson, all of these explanations shared one thing in common; they were convenient and self-serving, something Jesus’ teachings were anything but. Keeping this in mind, Gustafson explained that different faith traditions also have different takes on the problem of poverty. For an ancient Hebrew audience, to follow the Commandments of God meant that poverty would not be present in society. For Catholics, the humanity of the poor should be emphasized while the structures that enable poverty should be attacked. Recent remarks by Pope Francis, in which he faulted unregulated markets for causing so much harm, seem to emphasize this point.

Shifting briefly from faith topics to American politics, Gustafson framed the discussion of poverty in the context of Martin Luther King Day by bringing up some of King’s remarks on poverty. Gustafson quoted a speech Dr. King gave shortly before his assassination, in which he challenged America to “rid” itself from the “octopus”-like tendrils of poverty. To him, those who lived lives in poverty saw life as “a corridor with no exit signs,” and that America needed to do more to help the poor.

Before opening up the floor for discussion, Gustafson laid out a few facts for the rapt audience to consider. She first said that humanity could comfortably feed and clothe all on Earth right now, stating “that’s a fact.” She then explained that, aside from poverty having various non-material dimensions, that being poor did not preclude someone from being happy. She then turned the floor over to an eager audience.

Student photographer Emmanuel Akinlosotu was the first to speak, stating that he would love to use his gift for photography not for excess wealth, but simply to “please the Lord” and quoted Matthew 5:3 (“blessed are the poor in spirit”). Another student commented on the Bible verse Akinlosotu presented, stating that (particularly in America) people often struggle with the distinction between material and spiritual poverty.

Professor Malita, of the Computer Science department, asked whether or not humanity was either getting materially poorer or better off as a whole. Professor Cleven of the Politics department responded that extreme poverty (living under a dollar a day) in large countries like China and India is decreasing rapidly. He also stated that, according to a Nobel-Prize winning Indian economist, freedom of choice is key to helping individuals recover from poverty. In addressing Matthew 26 directly, Cleven brought up the fact that Jesus could have been mentioning Himself as a kind of “special case” that the disciples should pay closer attention to.

In discussing if and how poverty can be solved, student Kati Menice argued that humanity would “always be poor” in some way or another, simply because we as humans always want more and thus we always won’t have enough of something in some area of our lives.

Dr. Bouchard elaborated on Menice’s comments, stating that “there are many kinds of poor, and many kinds of breadbaskets.”

Jesus’ giving of wine to the wedding, Bouchard stated, was an example of how Jesus continually sought to solve our poverty in such a manner that we may be able to solve the poverty of others.

Staff from Campus Ministry, along with students like Sarah El Khoury (who grew up in Lebanon, where the gap between rich and poor is vast), commented that although it is easy for us to say that seeking money or wealth leads one astray from God, those living their lives “on the streets” might see things differently. To them, dogged pursuit of money (which to us might seem corrupting) is the only way to escape the clutches of poverty.

Audience members also reminded one another that the condition of poverty was not so unreachable, despite what we may think. Professor Perrone of the History department brought up the example of a recently graduated Dartmouth alumni who was now homeless, highlighting how quickly we can go from filling breadbaskets to needing ours filled.

The wide breath of the hour-long discussion, ranging from conversations of environmental justice to the responsibility of institutions in solving poverty, concluded with the remark that there are many different kinds of poverty. Some are victims of a bad culture, others are simply poor, but ultimately teaching others about the importance of solving poverty is important.

Discussions on a wide variety of topics that are hosted by the Grappone Institute usually take place on Fridays during the early afternoon.