Confronting Poverty and Stigmatization: An Eastern Orthodox

Perspective
incommunion.org/2006/03/18/confronting-poverty-and-stigmatization/

adminincom

John D. Jones [1]

Department of Philosophy, Marquette University

Would you see His altar also?This altar is composed of the very members of Christ, and the body of
the Lord becomes an altar. This altar is more venerable even than the one which we now use. For it
is but a stone by nature; but become holy because it receives Christs Body: but that altar is holy
because it is itself Christs Body.[which] you may see lying everywhere, in the alleys and in the
market places, and you may sacrifice upon it anytimeWhen then you see a poor believer, believe
that you are beholding an altar. When you see this one as a beggar, do not only refrain from insulting
him, but actually give him honor, and if you witness someone else insulting him, stop him; prevent it.
[2]
[Vagrants are the] vast heap of social refuse the mere human street sweepings the great living
mixen that is destined, as soon as spring returns, to be strewn far and near over the land, and serve
as manure for the future crime crop of the country.[3]
The problem of poverty has been, and is today, defined primarily in terms of the moral values of
work. Those who fail to support themselves or their families through workwithout a socially
approved excuse at a socially approved jobare defined as deviant.Moral degradation of the poor
is used as a negative symbol to reinforce the work ethic. [4]

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In developing a Christian, and in particular an Orthodox Christian, engagement with or response to poverty, one
might expect to begin with poverty in its ordinary sense as an economic category.[5] Naturally, one would try to
clarify what is meant by poverty: no small task given conflicting conceptual models of poverty such as inequality,
absolute deprivation, relative deprivation, lack of money, etc. Moreover, to complicate matters, some notions of
economic poverty can be analogically extended to other forms of deprivation so that we can talk about social or
political poverty.[6] One would, of course, consider the teachings of Christ, Holy Scripture, and the Fathers
concerning poverty and, hence, one would be lead to the broader issue of our relations to wealth among ourselves
and with reference to God. In so doing, we would expand the notion of poverty to characterize both our general
ontological dependence upon God and our nature as corrupted by sin. One would also develop a variety of spiritual
or religious conceptions of poverty poverty of spirit, renunciation of possessions, etc. that bear more or less
analogous notions to everyday conceptions of poverty. Moreover, one would at some point have to deal with a
fundamental Christian ambivalence toward everyday life: an engagement with everyday life in which poverty is an
evil and an ascetic renunciation of this life in which poverty is a good.[7]
In the Orthodox Christian faith, all such concerns are ordered toward our participation in the life of the Trinity, that is,
the transfiguration and deification of human life both now and in the next life. To be sure, this transfiguration and
deification is utterly dependent on Gods grace; but it also requires our cooperation (synergy) grounded in a
recognition of all humans as icons of Christ.[8] Accordingly, we are led to consider the special manner in which
Christ is present in the poor. So St. Maria Skobtsova told her collaborators that all their charitable activities should
be guided by the conviction that the human person is Gods image and likeness, the temple of the Holy Spirit, the
incorruptible icon of God.'[9] This insistence on what is often called the dignity of the poor is important given the
widespread human tendency to denigrate and stigmatize the poor. Joel Handler has shown quite decisively how
American public policy toward the poor is driven by the invidious distinction between the reputable and
disreputable poor.[10] A cross-cultural study of poverty by Deepa Narayan showed widespread complaints by the
poor concerning the humiliation, shame and denigration to which they are subjected, even by those who ostensibly
acted to help them.[11]
It is this matter the stigmatization of poverty and stigmatization in general that I want to make a starting point for
considering an Orthodox Christian engagement with poverty. The stigmatization of poverty is closely connected with
the psycho-social dynamics of stigmatization in general.[12] While stigmatization itself is not necessarily associated
with poverty in its social/economic sense, it constitutes its own form of poverty since, as we shall see, those who are
stigmatized are imputed to be impoverished, that is, fundamentally defective, as persons. The stigmatization of
economically poor people as such exacerbates and intensifies the suffering to which they are subjected. The
stigmatization of economically poor people on account of conditions conceptually unrelated to poverty such as
mental illness, AIDS, addiction, or physical disability likewise intensify and exacerbate their suffering as poor.
Conversely, protest against the unjust evil that stigmatization imposes on people who might not be not poor also,
and for the same reasons, entails protest against the stigmatization of the poor.
Stigmatization raises a host of existential and spiritual issues not just about the poor but about those who stigmatize
them. Although not labeled as such, the discussion of this stigma is central to St. Gregory (Nazianzus) the
Theologians Oration 14, On the Love of the Poor.[13] It also plays a central role in St. Gregory of Nyssas sermon,
On the Saying, Whoever Has Done It to One of These Has Done It to Me.'[14]
The oration On the Love of the Poor begins with a review of various Christian virtues and concludes that of all the
virtues,

following Paul and Christ himself, we must regard charity (agap) as the first and greatest of the
Commandments, since it is the sum of the Law and the prophets; and its most vital (kratiston) part I
find is love of the poor (philoptchia), along with compassion and sympathy for our fellow man. (sec. 5)
[15]

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St. Gregory then delineates various forms of poverty (ptcheia) with leprosy specified as its most extreme form. In
delineating the suffering that accompanies these various forms of poverty, he notes the worst is experienced by the
lepers, a condition such that most people cannot stand to be near them, or even to look at them, but avoid them,
are nauseated by them, and regard them as abominations so to speak. This is heavier for them to bear than their
ailment when they perceive that they are hated because of their misfortune (sec. 9). The poverty to which the
lepers are subjected is not simply economic. It is constituted by a radical disaffiliation and marginalization from their
social world that is grounded in their denigration and stigmatization.[16]
A particularly vivid passage from John Steinbecks Grapes of Wrath illustrates the underlying logic of stigmatization.
What follows is the conversation between two gas station attendants who have just sold fuel to the Joads after their
entry into California:

Jesus, what a hard looking outfit! Them Okies? Theyre all hard-lookin. Jesus, Id hate to start out
in a jalopy like that. Well, you and me got sense. Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no
feeling. They aint human. A human being wouldnt live like they do. A human being couldnt stand it to
be so dirty and miserable. They aint a hell of a lot better than gorillas.[17]

In brief, the Okies for these two attendants, like lepers for those who stigmatize them, are more like animals than
humans. This formulation constitutes the core of stigmatization: to see this, one need only consider the language
and visceral reactions of racists, xenophobes, and misogynists among others.
Stigmatization, it should be noted, is not simply a matter of stereotyping. The latter essentially consists of hasty
generalizations about the members of a group. Stereotypes need not be negative and typically they are not
accompanied by the hostile, visceral rejection that is connected with stigmatization. Nor is stigmatization a matter of
marking.'[18] In this latter case, we take note of a condition such as blindness, tuberculoses, or poverty, which we
judge may be an obstacle in some determinate situation. We do this when we make special accommodations for a
blind person to participate in some activity, to provide appropriate quarantine for someone with tuberculosis, etc. We
legitimately engage in marking as a part of our daily activities. We may not always be correct in marking individuals
we may mistakenly make unneeded accommodations for a blind person but we certainly do not denigrate
people simply in marking them.
Stigmatization is qualitatively different from both stereotyping and marking':

It is the dramatic essence of the stigmatizing process that a label marking the deviant status is
applied and this marking process typically has devastating consequences for emotions, thought, and
behavior. Many words have been applied to the resulting status of the deviant person. He or she is
flawed, blemished, discredited, spoiled or stigmatized. In the classic case, the mark or sign of
deviance imitates a drastic inference process that engulfs impressions of the deviant target person
and sets up barriers to interaction and intimacy.[19]

Stigmatization arises when people are so overwhelmed by encountering certain conditions, that they are repelled
by those who are subjected to those conditions.[20] An acquaintance of mine who could not bear to be near people
in wheelchairs betrayed his underlying anxiety by remarking, Id rather be dead than confined to a wheelchair. We
stigmatize various conditions because they fundamentally imperil us. We take them to be death-dealing.[21] We
believe that to be subjected to these conditions would irrevocably ruin our lives and strip them of significance. To be
subjected to them would involve being subjected to a living death': for those who stigmatize lepers or the poor, it
would be better to be dead than to be a leper or poor. When stigmatized, then, people are defined or reified in terms

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of imputed death-dealing conditions. As dirty physically, morally, existentially and symbolically the stigmatized
provoke reactions of fear, disgust and loathing from those who stigmatize them.[22] The stigmatized then become
experienced as fundamentally dangerous and deviant, and thus to be rejected and marginalized. From the
standpoint of those engaged in stigmatization, the stigmatized cease to be fully human but, in the extreme, rather
more like animals than people and, thus, to be banished, or quarantined and controlled. Whether or not
stigmatized people are economically poor,[23] they are imputed to be poor that is, fundamentally defective as
persons. When socially legitimated, stigmatization often results in banishment or ghettoization of those who are
stigmatized. Stigmatization, then, does not consist simply in disliking people, not wanting to be around them, or even
in morally censuring them for their actions. Stigmatization amounts to a kind of hatred of others[24] that effectively
seeks to dehumanize and marginalize them.
The issue for those who stigmatize others is not other people, it is themselves or more precisely their embodied
condition as free human beings. Jean Paul Sartre gives a remarkable analysis of this in his essay on anti-Semitism:

We are now in a position to understand the anti-Semite. He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews,
to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberty, of his instincts, of his
responsibilitiesof everything except the Jews.In espousing anti-Semitism, he does not simply
adopt an opinion, he chooses himself as a person.The Jew only serves him as a pretext,
elsewhere his counterpart will make use of the Negro, or the man of yellow skin. The existence of the
Jew merely permits the anti-Semite to stifle his anxieties at their inceptionAnti-Semitism, in short is
fear of the human condition. The anti-Semite is a man who wishes to be a pitiless stone, a furious
torment, a devastating thunderbolt anything except a man.[25]

Let me return to St. Gregorys oration since he, indirectly at least, provides a clue to what is at issue in confronting
leprosy. First (sec. 10), there is his graphic description of the plight of lepers and the manner in which people flee
from them:

There lies before our eyes a dreadful and pathetic sight; one that no one would believe who has not
seen it: human beings alive yet dead, disfigured in almost every part of their bodies, barely
recognizable for who they once were or where they came frommutilated, stripped of their
possessions, their families, their friends, their very bodieseven the most kind and considerate
person shows no feeling for them. And on this account alone we have lost sight of the fact that we are
flesh and compassed in a lowly body, and we are so derelict in our obligation to look after our fellow
man that we actually believe that avoiding these people assures the safety of our own bodies.[26]

Prior to this, however, St. Gregory had detoured into an apparent digression about his own ambivalence toward his
own body. The entire text in context is quite long, but I want to present the salient parts. In sec. 4, St. Gregory
completes his enumeration of various virtues in this way:

beautiful is contemplation (theoria), as likewise beautiful is activity (praxis); the one conducts our
mind upward to what is akin to it, the other because it welcomes Christ and serves (therapeuousa)
him, and confirms the power of love through good works.

After noting the primacy of charity and of love for the poor among the virtues and also that Of all things, nothing so
serves (therapeuetai) God as mercy because no other thing is more proper to God (sec. 5), he then continues (sec.

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6):

We must, then, open our hearts to all the poor and to all those who are in distress from whatever
cause, for the commandment enjoins us to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who
weep (Rom 12:15)particularly to those wasted with the sacred disease[27] that devours their flesh
and bones and marrow clear through as threatened to some[28] and betrayed by this wretched,
vile, and faithless body.

He immediately follows this with a digression, which continues through sec. 7, about his relation to his body:

How I came to be joined to it, I do not know; nor how I am the image of God and concocted of clay at
the same time, this bodythat I both cherish as a fellow-servant and evade as my enemyIf I
struggle to suppress it, I lose the helper I need to achieve my noble aims, knowing as I do why I was
created and that it is through my actions (praxen) that I am to ascend to God(sec. 7) I show it
consideration as a co-worker but I do not know how to suppress its insurgency nor how I can help
falling away from God when [it] drags me down.

He then concludes (sec. 8):

But now, though confronted with the suffering of others, I have been dwelling on the infirmity of my
own flesh. We must, my brothers, as I started to say, care for (therapeuteon) it as being our kinsman
and fellow-servant. For, even if I have denounced it as my enemy for the distress it causes, still, I
also embrace it as a friend because of him who joined us together.

Why does St. Gregory exhort himself and others to care for (therapeuteon) the body? If it is suppressed or wasted
away, we each lose the co-worker we need to perform acts of mercy by which we serve (therapeuousa) God,
confirm the power of love through good works, and ascend to God. But more generally, if the body wastes away,
we are cutoff from activity (praxis) in the world. The assaults on the body in leprosy, poverty and other like
afflictions thereby threatens our very freedom to engage in the world in meaningful ways. So, we actually believe
that avoiding these people assures the safety of our own bodies but not just our bodies, rather, our very existence
in the world.
Confronted by the suffering, disfigurement, impotence, and rejection suffered by lepers and the poorest of the poor
(ptchoi) generally real threats and assaults on human beings to be sure and overwhelmed by these conditions,
those who stigmatize these people are overwhelmed in anxiety by their own vulnerability to this condition as
something death-dealing that will radically strip life of its meaning a living death.'[29] To deflect their anxiety and to
assure their own safety, they interpret those actually subjected to these conditions as deserving their fate through
some fundamental defect as humans, that is, they are taken to be accursed and abandoned by God. What drives
this sort of stigmatization, theologically expressed, is at bottom an anxiety about ones own possible abandonment
by God.
What lurks unthematized in the hearts of those who are engulfed by the conditions, and thus the people, they
stigmatize is a truncated version of Ps. 21 (LXX):
subjected to these conditions, one will be abandoned by God My God, my God (v.1) you shall indeed forsake
me;

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in the face of exhausting suffering since I [will be] poured out like water, and scattered [will be] all my bones; my
heart [will] become like wax, melting in the midst of my bowels (v. 16);
denigration and rejection As for me, I [will become] a worm, and not a man: a reproach of men, and the outcast of
the people (v. 6);
yet bereft of the possibility of transfiguration and resurrection. For it is promised that the Lord will not set as naught
nor abhor the supplication of the poor but the poor shall eat and be satisfied (vv. 24, 26).
Certainly, those who stigmatize the poor fail to see them in the image and likeness, and more concretely, as an icon
of Christ. As icons of Christ, we cannot find Christ in others or ourselves apart from or in spite of our embodiment,
but only as embodied and, thus, in the midst of suffering, pain and denigration. But since, to follow Sartre, those who
stigmatize the poor or anyone else are not fundamentally afraid of them, but anxiety ridden about themselves, such
people do not just fail to see others as icons of Christ, they fail to see themselves as icons of Christ. After all, Christ
became poor for our sakes: that is, took on all of our weaknesses, infirmities and suffering actual and possible in
order to sanctify, heal and restore us to life. Yet insofar as stigmatization is grounded in an anxiety over
abandonment by God, then in stigmatizing others we effectively repudiate Christs promise that he will be with us
always (Matt. 28:30) both in respect to ourselves as vulnerable to the conditions we stigmatize and, thus, in respect
to those who are actually subjected to those conditions. In stigmatizing others, then, we effectively circumscribe
Gods healing power both for ourselves since we would rather be dead than subjected to these conditions and
for those who are stigmatized, since they are imputed to be more like animals than humans and to be accursed of
God.
Note also that individuals can stigmatize themselves particularly in response to stigmatization imposed by others.
Howard Bahr offered this poignant description of the effects of denigration on those who lived in and were
acculturated to Skid Row:

The defectiveness of the skid row man stems from his occupying several stigmatized statuses at
once.To begin with there is a physical, visible basis for antipathy toward the skid row man. He is
defective physically: the scarred face, the toothless mouth, the missing limbs, the strange actions of
the psychotic or mental incompetent.Then there are the stigmatizing aspects of his character: the
past of drunkenness, arrests and prison and the long periods of institutional living. Over everything
else is the imputed alcoholism, the addiction which makes him a man out of control, perhaps not a
man at all.
His defectiveness and powerlessness combine with his other negative characteristics real or
imagined and predefine him to involvement in a vicious cycle of negative encounters which serve to
bind him to skid row, lower his self-esteem and make a social fact out of what was at first social
definitionthat he is hopeless and unsalvageable.[30]

Self-stigmatization is essentially masochistic in character: viewing themselves as worthless and hopeless, people
who stigmatize themselves affirm their worthlessness by seeking out punishment abuse, humiliation and
situations of self-defeat that confirms their worthlessness. The patient suffering of evil for Christs sake as well as
the recognition of our own wretchedness before God in prayer and confession are, of course, a central part of
Orthodox spirituality. But both, grounded in the springtime of Great Lent, must take place in light of our faith and
hope in the Resurrection: that is, our capacity to be deified and to participate in a whole and complete manner in the
life of the Trinity. Neither patient suffering for Christ nor the recognition of our own wretchedness in repentance serve
to legitimate self-stigmatization or its patient endurance but, as grounded in faith and hope, essentially protest
against it. Surely, the protests that SS. Gregory and Gregory of Nyssa repeatedly lodge against the denigration of
the poor[31] extends to those, who in stigmatizing themselves, view themselves as unsalvageable by God.[32] As

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Fr. Boris Bobrinskoy wrote about Job:

The merciless friends of Job consoled him with this logic: You suffer; you are punished because you
have sinned against God; repent before God. With all his being, Job refused to surrender to such
exhortations and did not admit his guilt. He appealed to God, in the certainty of seeing the Redeemer
with the eyes of his flesh. God sided with himJobs refusal of unjust suffering still resonates in all
human sufferings.[33]

It must be noted that charitable actions towards the poor do not necessarily counter, and may even mask,
stigmatization. For, apart from the lived recognition of the other as an icon of Christ, what is given in aid to the poor
is negated if we continue to exclude the poor from our world. As St. Gregory of Nyssa writes:

Let no one say that some place far away from our life is perfectly sufficient and send them off to some
frontier, supplying them with food. For a plan of this sort displays neither mercy nor sympathy but is
designed, in the guise of goodwill, to banish these people utterly from our life. Are we not willing to
shelter pigs and dogs under our roof? Will we disparage our own kind and race as baser than the
animals? Let these things not be no, my brothers! Resolve that this inhumanity will not triumph.[34]

This inhumanity is not simply a matter of some individuals stigmatizing others. Patterns of stigmatization are often
socially sanctioned; stigmas form the ideological basis for the oppressive and marginalizing social structures that
are instituted to exclude stigmatized groups from full social life. St. Gregory gives a powerful description of this
marginalization in sec. 12 of On the Love of the Poor.

They are driven away from cities, they are driven away from homes, from the market place, from
public gatherings, from the streets, from festivities, from drinking parties, evenfrom water itself.
They wander about night and day, helpless, naked, homeless, exposing their sores for all to seeTo
them a kind benefactor is not someone who has supplied their need but anyone who has not cruelly
sent them away.[35]

The marginalization, here, is obviously not due just to the inhuman actions that some individuals perpetrate on
others; it indicates the failure of a community to establish structures and policies that provide even minimal
recognition, mercy and justice to people. So too, as noted earlier, various scholars have argued that the American
welfare system arises out of and often seeks to maintain the invidious distinction between the reputable (or
deserving) poor and the disreputable (or undeserving poor). That is not too surprising since the denigration of the
poor has been a feature of our economy since the origins of capitalism: when society became construed as a
collection of independent, atomized individuals all pursuing their private interests and ordering their relations with
each other by means of formal, explicit contracts, paupers became viewed as useless, shameless drones in the
context of the new values of individualism and self-reliance.[36]
An Christian, an Orthodox Christian, response to denigration and stigmatization remains fundamentally incomplete if
it fails to identify, to protest against, and to seek to root out the forms of denigration and stigmatization that lurk inside
and drive social policies. As Fr. Boris Bobrinksoy wrote,

There is, in the ultimate reality of things, no nonspiritual life that is closed off to the Holy SpiritThe

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world that is called profane is in reality a profaned world and man is responsible for that. We have
expelled God from this world: we do it every day. We chase him from public life by a Machiavellian
form of separation between our private lives pious and good and the domains of politics,
commerce, science, technology, love, culture and work, where everything is allowed. All these
domains of human work depend upon the creative work of man, seized, modeled, and inspired by the
Spirit of God.[37]

Susan Holman notes that litourgiai in the ancient pre-Christian world referred to public service performed by private
citizens at their own expense.[38] The poor, whether intentionally or not, were excluded from these liturgies. St.
John Chrysostom, and the Cappadocian fathers, brought the poor and marginalized into these liturgies and
extended the sacred liturgy into the alleys and market places. In this way, they engaged the Divine Liturgy with the
civic liturgies of public life.[39] It is in this context that St. John Chrysostom identifies the poor as an Altar the Body
and Blood of Christ. It is particularly important to note that while he makes this identification for the sake of
encouraging charitable action toward the poor, the identification also has a powerful legitimating function. The poor
become the liturgical image for these most holy elements in all of Christian worship: the altar and body of Christ.[40]
As Christs Altar, the poor are not to be despised but honored; conversely, if implicitly, those who despise the poor,
thereby despise Christ.
Because the source of the anxiety that underlies stigmatization often remains unthematized and, thus, likely denied
by those who engage in it, it is a particularly difficult hardness of heart to expose and challenge. Indeed, some of
the responses designed to motivate charity toward the poor are likely to misfire in their practical efficacy. First, one
might appeal to the dignity of the poor: that we all share a common humanity.[41] But so far as this appeal is made
simply to reason, it misfires since, even though true, what drives stigmatization is not mistaken reasoning but
profound anxiety. One need simply consider the many racists in our society who were unmoved by appeals to the
self-evident truth that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
rights because they cheerfully subscribed to this truth and yet held tenaciously to their racism.[42]
Second, one can appeal to Christs command that we are to give to the least of our brethren. Yet as St. Gregory of
Nyssa observed, providing assistance to people in a way that banishes them from our presence still allows the
inhumanity of the denigration to persist. Third, one can strengthen the appeal to charity through the analysis and
condemnation of greed and miserliness. But it is not clear, e.g., that the gas station attendants in the Grapes of
Wrath are either greedy or miserly. Certainly, the denigration of the poor and lepers has not been confined to those
who are either greedy or misers.
In the end, the most powerful negation of stigmatization is our direct engagement with those who are stigmatized[43]
in which we discover and respond to life Christ in the person of the poor rather than death. Indeed, St. John
Chrysostoms identification of the poor as the Altar of Christ urges and, for him, requires us to enter into that
engagement. For we do not partake of the mysteries of the Eucharist at a distance; we must come forward and
make physical contact with them.[44] So, too often in the profaned world in which we live, it is there in the alleys
marginalized social worlds that we find the Altar of Christ in the poor and are bid to render hospitality.

Thus ought we ever to exercise hospitality by our own personal exertions, that we may be sanctified,
and our hands be blessed. And if you give to the poor, disdain not yourself to give it, for it is not to the
poor that it is given, but to Christ; and who is so wretched, as to disdain to stretch out his own hand to
Christ? This is hospitality, this is truly to do it for Gods sake.[45]

Dr. John D. Jones

Professor, Department of Philosophy

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Marquette University
P.O Box 1881
Milwaukee, WI 53201-1881
(414) 288-5938
(414) 288-3010 (FAX)
Web page: http://academic.mu.edu/phil/jonesj/

Footnotes
1 A version of this paper was read at the Society for Orthodox Philosophy in America, Holy Archangels Monastery,
Kendalia, Texas, February 24-26, 2006. This is the first part of a more comprehensive treatment of an Orthodox
response to Poverty. The notes, designed for the conference presentation, are still a bit more sparse than if they
were composed for publication.
2 St. John Chrysostom, Homily 20,3 on 2 Corinthians 10:15.
3 From Henry Mayhew, London Labor and the London Poor, about vagrants in 19th c. England. Quoted in Gertrude
Himmelfarb, The Idea of Poverty:, England in the Early Industrial Age (New York: Vintage Books, 1983): 340.
4 Joel F.Handler and Yeheskel Hasenfeld, The Moral Construction of Poverty: Welfare Reform in America (Newbury
Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1991): 17-18.
5 One could suggest that in fact the starting point for Orthodox Christians would be the teachings of the Church. But
even if we begin here, we have to have some idea of what is meant by poverty and, in the case, of everyday
poverty, that takes us outside the realm of religious discourse per se into other types of discourse.
6 See, St. Gregory the Theologian, On the Love of the Poor, sec. 6 (Oratio 14 (=De pauperum amore) PG 35:857909) for multiples sense of ptchoi. See, Susan Holman, The Hungry are Dying (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001): 5 for the distinction between ptchos and pens. The former connotes more extreme poverty and social
disaffiliation; the latter, less extreme poverty with greater social affiliation.
7 While this ambivalence is ultimately central to understanding this matter, dealing with it is well beyond the scope of
the present paper. However, Verna Harrison, Poverty, Social Involvement, and the Life in Christ according to Saint
Gregory the Theologian, Greek Orthodox Theological Review 39.2(1994): 162 makes the following observation that
should be borne in mind in connection with our reading below of the Oration On the Love the Poor: For the
Theologian, there is an inner spiritual connection between asceticism and charity. Philoptchia [love of the poor] can
mean compassion for the needy, but it can also mean a love for poverty which leads one to renounce ones own
possessions. In both cases, one is drawn toward the condition of poverty because Christ is present and manifest in
it. (See sec. 19 of this Oration.).
8 And of the Trinity? One finds Orthodox thinkers such as Archbishop Kallistos (Ware), Sr. Nonna (Harrison) and
Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) who seek to understanding human community in light of the communion (koinonia) of
the Trinity. On the other hand, there are others, who resist this sort of interpretation., e.g., Fr. John Behr and
Metropolitan Hierotheos (Vlachos). This matter is exceptionally complex in part because it is very difficult to relate
modern concepts of the person to the patristic use of person with reference to the hypostases of the Trinity. An
inquiry into this matter is well beyond the scope of the paper. For some literature see, John Zizioulas, Being as
Communion (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press, 1985); The Church as Communion, St. Vladimirs Theological Quarterly
38.1(1994):3-16; John Behr, The Trinitarian Being of the Church, SVTQ 48.1(2003):67-88; Nonna Harrison,

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Human Community as an Image of the Holy Trinity, SVTQ 46.4(2002):347-64 (qv. ftns. 17-18 for relevant articles
by Archbishop Kallistos), and Hierotheos Vlachos, The Person in the Orthodox Tradition, selections on-line at
http://www.pelagia.org/htm/b23.en.the_person_in_the_orthodox_tradition.00.htm (see, Chapter IV.7).
9 Verna Harrison, Poverty in the Orthodox Tradition, SVTQ 34.1(1990):15.
10 See ftn. 3 above. For two excellent histories of social welfare policy in America see Michael B. Katz, The
Undeserving Poor :From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989) and In the
Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
11 Deepa Naraya, Raj Patel, et. al., Can Anyone Hear Us? Voices from 47 Countries (Poverty Group, PREM, World
Bank, 1999): 54-56, 76-78. This volume is part of a three part series, Voices of the Poor. All of the material from
these volumes can be viewed on-line at: http://www1.worldbank.org/prem/poverty/voices/reports.htm.
12 There is an immense literature on stigmatization. Perhaps the best and most comprehensive treatment, in my
view, is Edward. Jones, Amerigo Farinia, et. al., Social Stigma: The Psychology of Marked Relationships (San
Francisco: WW Freeman and Co., 1984). This book has an extensive bibliography.
13 I am using the translation, slightly modified, by Martha Vinson in St. Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Orations
(Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2003): 39-71. I shall refer simply to the sections of the
Oration in referencing it. All references to St. Gregory in this paper are to this oration. For the purposes of this paper,
I will simply refer to St. Gregory the Theologian as St. Gregory in contrast to St. Gregory of Nyssa.
14 In illud: Quatenus uni ex his fecistis mihi fecistis (or, De pauperibus amandis 2) in Gregorii Nysseni Opera
(Leiden, E.J. Brill, 1967-): 9,1:111-27 (PG 46.471-90). I will follow the translation by Holman in The Hungry are
Dying (pp. 199-206). I will cite this sermon by column number in PG 46 and page number in Holman, e.g., PG
472(HD p. 199). All references to St. Gregory of Nyssa in this paper are to this sermon.
15 Verna Harrison, Poverty, Social Involvement, and the Life in Christ according to Saint Gregory the Theologian,
Greek Orthodox Theological Review 39.2(1994): 151-164 , esp, 155ff., gives a fine discussion of this Oration in light
of the theme of philoptchia as well as its connection with Oration 19.
16 As to the universality of the stigmatization of leprosy see Liora Navon, Beggars, Metaphors, and Stigma: A
Missing Link in the Social History of Leprosy, Social History of Medicine 11(1998): 89-105. Based upon a study of
leprosy in Thailand, she noted that there was an ambivalent reaction toward leprosy among the Thai people. The
most hostile reaction was directed towards beggars who had the disease (pp. 96-7), but evidently there were lepers
that were cared for by family members, largely out of public view, as well as individuals with milder forms of the
disease that were not denigrated or excluded from society (p. 84). She argues that the extremely negative portraits
of lepers and the concomitant accounts of hostility towards them were focused on beggars with the disease and,
thus, led to exaggerated accounts of leprosy as universally stigmatized in Thailand. She also notes (p. 89) that only
about 30% of the untreated cases of leprosy develop the sorts of severe effects like those portrayed, e.g., by SS.
Gregory or Gregory of Nyssa. The article raises some interesting questions about the empirical legitimacy of using
leprosy per se as a universal metaphor for denigration. Whether her investigations in Thailand have cross-cultural
validity is an open question but it does, as she notes, highlight the need to better understand the sources, severity,
and persistency of leprosy stigma (p. 92). Cf. Holman, p. 158. Of course, the condemnations of the treatment of
lepers by both Gregories does not depend whether all lepers in their society were universally denigrated although, it
should be noted, they never cite examples of lepers with relatively mild forms of the disease who were viewed less
harshly.
17 Grapes of Wrath (New York: Penguin Books, 1977): 301.
18 For the distinction between stigmatization and marking and an excellent general discussion of stigmatization as a
response to impression engulfment see E. Jones, Social Stigma, pp. :4-8.

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19 E. Jones, Social Stigma, p.4-6.

20 It should be clear, I hope, that those who stigmatize others represents an social-existential type and that I am
providing a phenomenological description of that type. No inference is made, or should be drawn, about whether
this type applies to specific individuals or groups. Such application is obviously an empirical matter.
21 See especially, E. Jones, pp, 82-89 for this and for the symbolic nature of the peril.
22 See, e.g., Frantz Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1967):109-117 as well as Stig
Hornshj-Mller, On Der Ewige Jude at http://www.holocaust-history.org/der-ewige-jude/. Der Ewige Jude was an
infamous Nazi propaganda file that depicts the Jews of Poland as corrupt, filthy, lazy, ugly, and perverse: they are
an alien people which have taken over the world through their control of banking and commerce, yet which still live
like animals. The film generated shouts of disgust and loathing by Hitler and the Nazis who first viewed it.
23 So, the stigmatized historically have included those who are blind, physically disabled, severe stammerers,
members of ethic out-groups (Jones, Social Stigma, p. 5). Of course, the bases for stigmatizations vary from culture
to culture; so too, people may not be stigmatized by everyone in a particular social group.
24 See St. Gregorys remark, quoted above, that being hated for their misfortune is what is hardest to bear for
lepers.
25 Anti-Semite and Jew, Trans. George Becker (New York: Schocken Books, 1948):53-54.
26 See, St. Gregory of Nyssa, PG 477-476(HD pp. 201-202) for even a more horrific portrait of lepers which, it must
be acknowledged, comes very close to the kind of language that might be used by those who stigmatize them: e.g.,
they have none of the appearances of a man, nor those of a beast and rather than men, theirs is a lamentable
wreckage. It is only St. Gregory of Nyssas constant stress on the full humanity of lepers as images of God that
prevents these portraits from legitimating denigration of them. In addition to a natural loathing for such conditions,
which St. Gregory of Nyssa acknowledges (PG 488(HD p. 205), one might expect the avoidance of lepers to be
justified because of fear of contagion. There is scholarly debate about whether leprosy is contagious and, if so, to
what degree. But both St. Gregory (sec. 27) and St. Gregory of Nyssa (PG 484-488(HD p. 205) thought the fear of
contagion misplaced; neither thought it justified the denigration and avoidance of lepers. See also, Holman, pp. 15660.
27 Sacred disease was usually reserved for epilepsy. Holman, p. 161, notes that St. Gregory applied it to leprosy
in order to evoke the biblical image of the sacred beggar, Lazarus.
28 See Ps. 38.3 (LXX 37.4) and 102.3-5 (LXX 104.4-6) as well as Numb. 12.10 where God afflicts Miriam with
leprosy. St. Gregory, it should be noted, explicitly distances himself from the idea that every affliction is from God as
a form of punishment (secs. 30-31).
29 It should be noted, though, that the threat can also take the form of an imputed daemonic presence which an
embodied condition is imputed to convey. White racists are not likely threatened by blacks because they fear
becoming black. They are threatened by an imputed daemonic, irrational presence that the bodies of blacks is taken
to represent and which racists can avoid only by a marginalization of blacks that is justified by dehumanizing them. A
similar analysis would apply to misogynists.
30 Howard M. Bahr, Skid Row: An Introduction to Disaffiliation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973): 120-21
and 15 respectively.
31 See St. Gregory, secs. 10, 14, and 15 and St. Gregory of Nyssa, PG 473-476 (HD p. 201), 476(HD p. 203),
480(HD p. 203).

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32 Rollo May relates an account of his therapeutic work with a young woman who had been prostituted by her
parents, but who was unable to feel any anger toward them. The womans response was essentially masochistic in
character. Seeing herself as nothing but a servant in which she had no rights against others, she became
indentured a priori. May was unable to lodge her from this self-degradation until he expressed, in a spontaneous
and uncalculated manner, his own anger about what had been done to her (Power and Innocence: A Search for the
Sources of Violence (New York: Norton Publishing Co., 1972): 85-6.
33 Compassion of the Father, Trans. Anthony Gythiel (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimirs Seminary Press, 2003): 53.
34 St. Gregory of Nyssa, PG 480(HD p. 203).
35 To be sure, St. Gregory of Nyssa points to a minimal level of community among the lepers (PG 477(HD 202)) but
this hardly constitutes what would be regarded as a social world or an ensemble of institutional and other structures
that allows for meaningful engagement in the world. Indeed, the existential death imputed by stigmatization carries
with it a social death a loss of social world imposed by marginalizing social actions and structures. See the
reference to Bahr above.
36 F. Allan Hanson, How Poverty Lost Its Meaning, The Cato Journal 17(1997)2 on-line at
http://www.cato.org/pubs/journal/cj17n2-5.html. This sort of view persists in the welfare-state in more modern
notions of the culture of poverty and the underclass.
37 Bobrinskoy, p. 28.
38 Holman, The Hungry are Dying, p. 21
39 Ibid., pp. 60-62.
40 Ibid., p. 62.
41 See, e.g., On the Love of the Poor sec. 14. See also Harrison, Poverty, Social Involvement p, 158 for a
discussion of the various senses of the unity of human nature in this section. See also, St. Gregory of Nyssa, PG
480(HD p. 203).
42 See, Fanon, Black Skins, White Masks, p. 119-20 for a variation on this theme.
43 As to how efficacious direct contact may be for reducing stigma see, e.g., Gregory M. Herek and John P.
Capitanio, AIDS Stigma and Contact With Persons With AIDS: Effects of Direct and Vicarious Contact, Journal of
Applied Social Psychology 27.1(1997): 1-36 for a nuanced discussion of this matter in relation to AIDS patients. The
authors also note that A large body of empirical research has shown that contact can indeed reduce prejudice when
it is sustained and intimate between individuals of equal status who share important goals and are supported by the
institution within which it occurs (p. 2).
44 So, Holman, pp. 161-62, notes that for SS. John Chrysostom, Gregory, and Gregory of Nyssa lepers once set
apart for their pollution, become a symbol of all that is set apart for God the ill beggars lying on the ground are
holy coins that bear the countenance of our SaviourThey ought to be touched physically without repulsion.
45 St. John Chrysostom, Homily 14 on 1 Timothy 5:9. The context makes clear that alms are given to Christ as
found in the poor, not Christ instead of the poor. (PG 62, 573).
Copyright 2006 by the author; all rights reserved
Placed on the web site of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship March 2006.
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