(RNS1-FEB19) John Gehring is senior writer for the Washington-based Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good. For use with RNS-GEHRING-COLUMN, transmitted Feb. 19, 2009. Religion News Service photo courtesy John Gehring.

(UNDATED) Not long ago, those who demonized government and preached the gospel of free-market fundamentalism with evangelical zeal had few worries. The titans of corporate America were glorified on the cover of Fortune, “trickle down” economics justified obscene disparities of wealth and a bullish Wall Street even gave working stiffs a piece of the action.

Things however, can fall apart.

Decades of deregulation, crass decisions at the highest levels of business and government, and a consumer culture that celebrates materialism are catching up with reality:

— One in 10 Americans — nearly 28 million — now depends on food stamps.

— Catholic Charities USA reports that 62 percent of its agencies have seen an increase in middle-class clients.

— The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities predicts that the ranks of the poor, now at 36 million, could increase by as many as 10 million if the unemployment rate hits 9 percent.

The financial crisis is also a moral crisis that requires a profound shift in values. Our nation’s diverse religious communities have a proud tradition of speaking prophetically about economic justice, and the need to temper the cruel vagaries of the market with collective responsibility to care for our neighbors.

Catholic teaching, in particular, has a long history that warns against putting profit before human dignity. Amid another global economic collapse in 1931, Pope Pius XI affirmed a positive role for government and the obligation to pay workers a living wage. At a recent meeting with Italian labor unions, Pope Benedict XVI stressed that finding solutions to the global financial crisis requires “a new synthesis between the common good and the market, between capital and labor.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt, a blue blood Episcopalian, drew heavily from Catholic social tradition in shaping the New Deal. FDR was influenced by Monsignor John Ryan, a populist Catholic priest from Minnesota who developed the U.S. Catholic bishops’ 1919 Program of Social Reconstruction, which called for at the time radical reforms: minimum wages, public housing for workers and labor participation in management decisions.

Disgraced Wall Street baron Bernard Madoff and the banking executives dragged before Congress would not want to meet the Hebrew prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah, who thundered against powerful kings enjoying lavish lifestyles while so many suffered around them.

And those who trumpet a holy trinity of tax cuts, unfettered markets and a savage brand of corporate capitalism serve narrow ideologies that are hard to square with the teachings of Jesus, who preached “good news to the poor” and kicked the money changers out of the Temple.

While the American ethos of “rugged individualism” and self-reliance often chafes against Judeo-Christian notions of solidarity with the poor, the scope of the economic crisis offers an historic opportunity to rebuild our economy to serve all Americans, not simply the privileged few.

The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. recognized that the next frontier of the civil rights movement required bearing witness to the scourge of poverty plaguing the richest nation in the world. His “Poor People’s Campaign” galvanized a multiracial coalition united in the belief that the true moral measure of society is found in how the least among us are treated. His unfinished legacy will be the focus of the Mobilization to End Poverty in April in Washington; President Obama, who campaigned on the pledge to cut poverty in half within a decade, has been invited to speak.

The late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis remarked more than 60 years ago that we can have democracy or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but not both. His prescient warning remains a sobering truth today. The income gap between rich and poor has reached Depression-era levels. Nearly 40 percent of U.S children grow up in poverty. These are moral and political failures unworthy of a nation dedicated to equal opportunity.

Our country has always been strongest when we are united by a sense of common purpose and a commitment to shared prosperity. If the American dream is more than an empty slogan, a faith-inspired social movement must once again awaken the conscience of the nation by challenging political and business leaders to put the values of human dignity and solidarity back at the center of our economic agenda.

(John Gehring is a senior writer for Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good)