For the past few years, my wife and I have enjoyed getting to know a husband and wife from Cuba studying music students here at Baylor. Growing up amid persecution and poverty, they still developed a strong passion for the Lord and a calling to live that out through their music. They also are admittedly surprised at the ignorance of soft-hearted Western students they see on television or meet in person when it comes to economic life under communism.
During a dinner together with us, they shared about some Christian friends of theirs back home. Both were dentists, but they decided to give up dentistry to become a taxi driver (the husband) and a street vendor (the wife). Why? First, because the corrupt health system resulted in constant pressure to lie, cheat, and perform poorly. Second, they could make more money to support their families in these other jobs.
Of course, my own experience living in former communist countries and studying communist countries has made me aware of these problems both with communism and even softer forms of authoritarian socialism (sometimes mistakenly labeled “democratic”). Thus, it always surprises me to find uninformed Christian students and faculty who develop a deep care for the poor based on the Bible’s extensive teaching on the subject, but who then support economic approaches that actually produce more poverty (for the level of such sentiments in the U.S., see here, here, and here). I realize they want to support what sounds kind-hearted, moral, and helpful in theory, but they do not spend any time actually studying or learning about the results in reality. If they did, they would realize that caring for the poor requires that you support economic freedom. The two go together.
The Importance of Economic Structures
I remember as a graduate student I attended a mentoring conference sponsored by Evangelicals for Social Action. During the conference, I sat next to a man who had just come home from spending his life invested in development work in the then optimistically named “developing world.” I asked him some questions about the work, hoping to hear some redemptive stories about what they had accomplished. Instead, I was surprised to hear more discouragement than anything else. He concluded that much of their work was undermined by the political and economic structures within a country. Indeed, I have seen even the small efforts, such as well-intentioned child sponsorship programs, shut down and devastated by these larger issues. I have talked to Christians in other parts of the world who would love to start a business to support their families, but the system simply makes it impossible.
Once you start learning more about and traveling around the world, you realize how important those structures are. It also helps to talk to people who grew up under all kinds of different systems. Christians should recognize and study what economic systems help the poor the most. After all, it is an empirical question with an empirical answer.
The Growth of Economic Freedom and the Decline of Extreme Poverty
You would not know it based on some doomsayers, but we have made tremendous progress in helping move the destitute poor around the world out of extreme poverty. This is true whether one looks largely at economic poverty (or see here) or whether one looks at broader measures of human flourishing.
This decline in extreme poverty over the past four decades in particular has been driven by the expansion of economic freedom (of which there are various measures[1]). Today, we have enough experience with country-to-country comparisons to understand how greater economic freedom helps the poor (and society as a whole) more than economic systems with less freedom. Here, for example, is the recent annual report on economic freedom from the Fraser Institute, a think tank based in Canada (the report was compiled by American, Canadian, and English economists).
The findings are not at all surprising to anyone with a passing familiarity with economic freedom and the economic success or failure of various nations. For example, the recent success stories of Panama ($20,564 per capita) Chile ($20,240 per capita) and the Dominican Republic ($12,406 per capita) score high (27th, 26th, and 47th, respectively), but Venezuela, formerly one of the wealthiest countries in Latin America but now a socialist basket case despite its extensive oil reserves, is ranked 165th and has a GDP per capita of $4,140).
The report notes the following:
- The standard of living in the most economically free nations is far higher than in the least free. In comparing the economically freest 25 percent of countries with the least free, we find:
- Average incomes are 6.2 times greater;
- The bottom 10% of incomes are 7.8 times greater;
- People tend to work seven fewer hours each week;
- People live about 17 years longer;
- Far fewer children die in infancy;
- People are more satisfied with their lives;
- Governments are less corrupt; and
- Environments are cleaner.
The evidence is substantial and increasing: if you care about the poor, you should support greater degrees of economic freedom (with the appropriate rule of law to curb fallen government control of businesses, fallen businesses, and fallen business people).
Unfortunately, I also see posters on X who make claims about the problems with the degree of freedom found in the American economic system and how it exacerbates poverty. The problem is that such claims are not true. As one recent Wall Street Journal article about a widely shared American Enterprise Institute (AEI) study noted, “In 2024, about 19% of American families were considered ‘poor or near poor,’ according to the AEI report, down from about 30% in 1979.” Christians should rejoice in this development and hope other countries follow this lead.
For instance, Argentina’s leader, Javier Milei, has sought to change his country’s horrible record on economic freedom over the past few years. The results have been encouraging when it comes to the percentage of the poor. The national poverty rate fell from 52.9% in the first half of 2024 to 28.2% in the second half of 2025. Of course, things could go south in Argentina in a moment. As economists will tell you, Argentina remains an economic outlier on many fronts. Nonetheless, Christians should acknowledge the role that expanding economic freedom (again with appropriate limits for the fallenness of economic actors) plays in helping people out of poverty. Unfortunately, they have not always done so.
Political Disappointment with Evangelical Leaders on the Left regarding Authoritarian Socialists and Economic Freedom
I had the privilege of getting to know both Ron Sider, a former professor at Eastern University and founder of Evangelicals for Social Action, and Vernon Grounds, former President of Denver Seminary. Vernon, in particular, was gracious enough to allow me to join a small book group of Denver Seminary professors at a time when I needed that kind of intellectual fellowship. Both men loved the Lord, did incredible work for the Kingdom, and cared deeply about the poor.
Yet, I will never understand how they allowed their political sympathies to lead them to a hopeful assessment of Nicaragua’s President Daniel Ortega during a 1982 visit to Nicaragua. At the time, Sider naively wrote in the Theological Students Fellowship Bulletin, “That the present government favors socialism is clear and public, but so do the British Labor Party and the West German Social Democrats. Socialism is not the same as Marxism-Leninism.” He then bragged about all the Catholic followers of liberation theology in the government. Sider also downplayed concerns about the demise of religious freedom based on his interview with Daniel Ortega.
In our interview with Daniel Ortega, leader of the government, I said many American Christians were afraid, because of the history of other revolutions, that religious liberty would eventually be restricted. I asked why he thought the Nicaraguan revolution would be different from many other modern revolutions. In a lengthy reply, he said that if the Nicaraguan revolution had occurred at the time of the Cuban revolution, something similar might have happened. At that time, the church was a willing tool of the Somoza dictatorship. But a strong Catholic movement of concern for social justice subsequently emerged, and large numbers of Catholics (and some Protestants) participated over many years in the overthrow of Somoza.
History has demonstrated that those “many American Christians” were right and Sider’s optimism about Ortega was misguided. A little over four decades later, here is what the 2026 International Religious Freedom Report has to say about Nicaragua:
The Nicaraguan regime continues to enforce a total crackdown on religious organizations. The government wrongfully detains worshipers, arbitrarily dissolves religious organizations and seizes their property, and expels religious leaders from the country. Clergy and lay leaders are imprisoned for their religious activity or religious freedom advocacy, have died in custody, and the government has escalated its use of transnational repression against Nicaraguan religious leaders and worshippers abroad.
Just this week, Ortega canceled elections in Nicaragua. The evangelical political left’s dalliance with authoritarian socialists, in the name of helping the poor, has been shown over the last century to have been a disaster for religious freedom and helping the poor. To this day, Nicaragua has the second lowest GDP per capita in the Western Hemisphere at $3559 (only ahead of Haiti) with the third highest rate of income inequality.
Grounds and Sider were hopeful but also historically naïve (which is sad since Sider was a historian). They wanted to believe that this time “democratic socialism” and the reduction of economic freedom in Nicaragua would have different results. In the past century, it has never had different results. It took the lifting of strict restrictions in “communist” countries such as China (although still ranked 108th in economic freedom) and Vietnam (still 104th) to bring perhaps 800 million out of poverty.
Evangelicals should always remember that political mistakes and a lack of foresight occur not only among the people in the pews and megachurch pastors but also among respected academic leaders. I find this especially true with regard to determining what economic structures and policies are best for helping the poor. To paraphrase the Who, we should get on our knees and pray that we won’t be fooled again.
[1] For a couple of such measures see https://economicfreedom.heritage.org/pages/all-country-scores and https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/economic-freedom-world-2025-annual-report
