Awakening the American Dream

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STORM LAKE, Iowa — Was it all just an American dream?

That was the provocative title Dr. Gordon Govens and Jim Koon gave their week-long course at Synod School, which concluded last Friday. Govens is Associate Professor of Criminal Justice and History at Stillman College, where he directs the college’s faith-based and social justice initiatives. Koon was a career banker before becoming Director of Financial Services for the Synod of Lakes and Prairies, which puts on Synod School at Buena Vista University each summer.

Koon noted the increase in the racial wealth gap was slowed during the nation’s civil rights movement, then started taking off again during the 1990s. “Since 2000, you have had continued growth among the top 10% of [U.S.] households,” he said. “What is the American Dream? Is it still alive? I believe this country has tremendous potential that we need to wake up.”

The two teachers have seen their friendship blossom over the past year, spending time via Zoom honing the material for their Synod School class. “If we say racial wealth gap, some people will stop listening,” Govens said. “If we address wealth gap issues, we can address others.”

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“You will hear a lot of apocalyptic language over the next four days,” Govens said on the first day of class. “If we don’t address this wealth gap, it’ll be the end of American exceptionalism. Hopefully we’ll make disciples of everyone [in the class].”

In 2022, 10% of U.S. families owned 74% of the nation’s wealth. The bottom 50% owned 2% of the wealth. “Some will have most,” Koon said, “but all should have some.”

The two quoted James Truslow Adams’ 1931 book, “The Epic of America,” as one take on the American Dream: “That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement … it is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

The American Dream’s five pillars, the two explained, are democracy, rights, liberty, opportunity and equality. Examples include owning a home, raising a family, starting a business, immigrant success, meritocracy, freedom of religion and upward social mobility. Then they asked a question the class chewed on for the rest of the week: Can we achieve the American Dream without capitalism? Without democracy?

“Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands,” Abigail Adams wrote in a March 1776 letter to her husband, John. “Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.”

Govens said democracy “is supposed to act as the system that places guardrails around capitalism to promote mutuality, which is necessary for the survival of both democracy and capitalism.”

“Capitalism needs guardrails to ensure the greater good is being looked after,” Koon said, adding it was the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who taught that “all life is interrelated. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

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The American Dream “was thriving so long as America showed a commitment to mutuality and inclusivity, which generated a cycle of reinvestment,” Koon said. The 1960s was the peak in modern business investment, and productivity improvement and household wealth has never been as high as they were then, he pointed out.

Not surprisingly, major legislation at the time — the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1958 among them — furthered inclusivity. The 1970s was a time of retrenchment, the 1980s scarcity, the 1990s deregulation, and the 2000s saw further redistribution of wealth.

The two teachers concluded the class with a discussion on what the church can do to help more Americans achieve the American Dream, however it’s conceived.

“This country has done well and has never used all its talent and diversity of thought,” Koon said. “That remains a potential we have over most every other nation. If we can see these things we’ve talked about, where we’re going and what we need to do, our investment in a better environment for all of us will go a long way.”

During Synod School in 2023, Koon was among the presenters speaking on Restorative Actions, a grassroots voluntary initiative born in the Synod of Lakes and Prairies for churches, individuals, mid councils and agencies of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), among others, to take a leadership stance in opposition to racism and racial privilege by providing “a credible witness for justice by surrendering ill-gotten gains toward the establishment of just relationships with Afro-Americans and Indigenous communities.” Read a report from last year’s Synod School presentation here.