I found a most interesting article on Michael Moore's website. It concerns a law professor who has researched religious texts (particularly the Bible as used by Protestant Christians) and taxes. Her main point is that most states in the U.S.A. have regressive, unjust, and immoral tax structures. She also makes a point of naming which states are the worst, which is the best even if not perfect (Minnesota), and on what basis she makes these comparisons. I will link to it below the fold.
Why do I care? When I was a young teenager, and very involved as a layperson in my home church, I got interested in all of the New Testament references to "the Law and the Prophets." I therefore made it my business to read the entire Old Testament. Admittedly, I skipped over a lot of lists such as in Numbers, and really never understood Ezekiel. But Exodus, Leviticus, and Deuteronomy were fascinating. (Of the prophets, Amos was the most interesting on the social justice front.) In these ancient texts I found product liability lawsuits; instructions on hygiene and public health; and ideas about mercy toward the poor.
What I discovered was that the God of the Old Testament had certain very pronounced tendencies in regards to social justice. And that this Old Testament God, described by Joseph Campbell as having "many rules and no mercy," was in fact quite on the side of the underdog. Meat animals were to be slaughtered humanely; "do not muzzle the ox that treads the grain;" don't harvest your fields all the way into the corners, and don't pick up what you drop when you carry away the harvest, but leave it for the poor and the stranger to take freely. The second harvest of the grapes goes to the poor, and that is not trespassing or theft, but the LAW. Although there is no historical evidence that it was ever carried out, you can't get more social justice than the Year of Jubilee--a way of canceling debts, restoring real property to each family, so that there is no perpetual rich getting richer and poor getting poorer, but rather a "do-over" in the financial world once every fifty years. Sabbath years and the Year of Jubilee are in the 25th chapter of Leviticus.
My progressive leanings, especially my sense of what economic justice really is, dates from my reading of the Old Testament Law and the New Testament sayings of Jesus. The Pauline epistle to Philemon (which you can read in just a few minutes) was also an influence. Although many Kossacks are hostile to religion in general, and Christianity in particular, you may find in some of these ancient texts excellent starting points when talking to fundamentalists.
Oh, and here is the article about Susan Pace Hamill of the Univ. of Alabama School of Law. Enjoy!