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Social Justice in the Christian Life



When James wrote, “faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:14) he set in motion a never-ending argument between salvation by grace through faith and works-based salvation.  Of course, James’ admonition to care for the naked and starved does not contradict sola fide or sola gratia, but this has not prevented generations of more progressively-minded Christians from emphasizing works over a biblical understanding of salvation.

Most notably was a movement known as the social gospel.  Coinciding with the progressive era of the late 1800s and early 1900s, the social gospel went beyond the idea of individual salvation and focused instead on the salvation, so-to-speak, of society.  Seemingly more important than placing faith in Jesus Christ as one’s savior were the scours of poverty, drunkenness, abominable working conditions, and so forth.  Instead of fighting these societal stains as a part of pointing towards Jesus, the elimination of them became the goal itself.  That is, better working conditions, fairer wages, and cleaner living saved society, and there was no higher objective.

Influential over this period and the onset of progressive Christianity was German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher.  He emphasized feelings over doctrine, and diminished Jesus from Son of God, to great religious person.  D. Jeffrey Bingham in his Pocket History of The Church, describes Schleiermacher as setting up a pattern for liberalism’s later proponents.  Bingham writes, “Liberalism was usually reductive; that is, it tried to reduce the essence of Christianity to a least-common denominator that anyone in the modern world could accept.”

Gladden
Preachers like Washington Gladden and Charles Monroe Sheldon, as well as theologian Walter Rauschenbusch, were also influential during this era.  In Recollections, Gladden wrote, “I am fain to believe that the time is drawing near when the Christian Church will be able to discern and declare the simple truth that religion is nothing but Friendship, friendship with God and with all people.”  Written towards the end of his life, Gladden, a Christian preacher, professed the chief end of religion to be friendship.  This, of course, sells Jesus short.

As a part of the neo-orthodoxy movement, Karl Barth, and later Reinhold Niebuhr, sharply criticized the social gospel.  They took issue with a so-called Christianity that seemed to believe sin bubbled up from societal woes rather from the hearts of men.  In The Kingdom of God in America, Niebuhr summarized this version of Christianity as, “A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”  Essentially, to preach a social gospel was to preach God planned no punishment of evil, all will enter heaven, and Jesus suffered and died for no real purpose.

Hand in hand with the social gospel, is, of course, social justice.  The term “social justice” originates from Catholicism.  Coined by Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio in 1840, the concept was originally not much different than other branches of justice, such as “commutative justice” or “criminal justice.”  Thomas Patrick Burke explains the term “social justice” initially “did not imply any particular content philosophy, or view of the world.  There could be, and was, a conservative conception of social justice, a liberal conception of it, and a socialist conception of it, all equally entitled to call themselves ‘social justice.’”  This hardly sounds consistent with modern reaction to the term which tends to be divisive.

“Social justice” found its way into more common use upon its inclusion in the encyclical Quadragesimoanno of Pope Pius XI in 1931.  This encyclical itself was written on the fortieth anniversary of Rerum novarum, a letter Pope Leo XIII wrote rejecting both socialism and unfettered capitalism, as well as defending private property.  Rejecting both socialism and unfettered capitalism?  No wonder today’s understanding of social justice is so complex and elicits visceral reactions.

In his book Social Justice Isn’t What You Think, co-authored with Michael Novak, Paul Adams writes of two common polar-opposite perspective of social justice.  “From one perspective, developed by Friedrich Hayek in the most compelling critique of the term to date, social justice is a mirage.  It is meaningless, ideological, incoherent, vacuous, a cliché.  The term should be avoided, abandoned and allowed to die a natural death or else killed off in a few paragraphs, but it does not merit a book-length critique.”  Conversely, the other perspective sees social justice as “a term that can be used as an all-purpose justification for any progressive-sounding government program or newly discovered or invented right.”  It seems as though, whatever it is, social justice has drifted from a Catholic teaching to a political weapon.  A weapon to either rally the troops against government intervention, or to rally the troops to force government intervention.

Herein lies what some would call the beauty of social justice, and others would call the danger: It remains both vague rhetoric used to justify liberal action and a conservative boogeyman to march against said action.  Jonah Goldberg writes in The Tyranny of Cliches, “The fundamental problem with social justice is that there are no limiting principles to it.  It is an open-ended license for the forces of goodness to do what they think is right forever.”  He continues, “It is an empowering principle for the high moral ground in all political debates.  There are no boundaries, no internal checks, no definitional roadblocks.”  Without a common and universal definition, social justice becomes whatever someone wants it to become.  In a society already at odds with complex and critical thinking, the term becomes a Rorschach test allowing the subject to see what they want.

It is the lack of definitional roadblocks that create havoc for bible believing Christians looking to engage in a secular society.  Consider Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, and Shane Claiborne, founder of The Simple Way and advocate for The Red Letter Christian movement.  Their theologies often mix like oil and water, but both can legitimately call on Christians to fight for social justice without running afoul of those theologies.

Writing earlier this year for Southern Equip, Moore points out the fallen state of man as all-encompassing.  He says, “the Bible shows us, from the beginning, that the scope of the curse is holistic in its destruction – personal, cosmic, social, vocational (Gen 3-11) and that the gospel is holistic in its restoration – personal, cosmic, social, vocational (Rev 21-22).”  This view of sin and restoration has allowed Moore to urge Christians both to care for refugees as a social justice issue, as well as rail against abortion as a social justice issue.  This is also why Moore was invited to The Justice Conference (a yearly gathering progressively-minded Christians) in 2016 and also subsequently derided for his speech at The Justice Conference in 2016.  The Gospel does not just compel us to act and speak out on "liberal" issues, but also "conservative" ones.

In some respects, Claiborne is not much different.  On the anniversary of Roe v. Wade, he wrote, “We lament the death of each child lost to abortion.  We pray for each parent who has chosen to terminate a pregnancy.  And we commit to become a people who welcome life in a culture of death.”  These words could have easily come from Moore as they came from Claiborne, despite abortion typically being more known as a conservative issue.  Frankly, the mission of the organization Moore represents (ERLC) and of the organization Claiborne represents (Red Letter Christians) both address the societal roles of Christians and it’s easy to start seeing the grey area as to what social justice really is.

The diverging point is if you ask someone from the ERLC what their view of scripture is, they would take the whole thing as the word of God.  For Red Letter Christians, it’s in the name.  They  emphasize the words of Jesus as more important than the rest of the Bible.  And because Jesus seemingly talks about caring for the widows and orphans more than things such as Law, salvation, etc., they are able to justify a social justice-themed gospel.  Of course what’s missing from such a justification are those red words of Jesus that quote from the law, those red words talking about Jesus’ identity as God, and those red words claiming to be the exclusive path for salvation.  Even if one was to focus on just the words of Jesus, there is far more to do than tend to the poor’s physical needs.

However, it’s not always this complicated to see how social justice derail authentic gospel preaching.  After Republicans passed massive tax reform late in 2017, progressive Christians denounced any actual or perceived damage it would do to the poor.  Responding to a conservative commentator noting scripture’s emphasis on individual rather than collective responsibility to those in need, progressive Christian writer Rachel Held Evans made counter claims of society’s responsibility.  Misunderstanding the text, Held Evans tweeted:

Unfortunately for Held Evans, this was simply awful hermeneutics.  Verse 32 says He will gather “all the nations,” yes.  Yet, within that same sentence, God then separates the “people from one another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats.”  Grammatically, this indicates everyone from all nations will be gathered together, and individuals will then be judged.  God says, “To those on his right” and then “to those on his left.”  While there is no denying God can judge nations, this specific passage is about judging individuals on their destiny to heaven or hell.  This is a simple case study of progressive Christians reading social justice into text.

Held Evans’ mistake was going too far.  She is clearly correct on scripture’s call on society’s role in caring for the poor.  The specific society we read of, though, is that of the church.  Admonishing the church to better care for the poor is biblically accurate.  Using the text to disparage a sovereign government’s tax code is not biblically accurate.  This portrays one Christian view of social justice: Jesus said we should do something, so we should have our government make everyone do that something.  Another view seems more appropriate: Jesus said we should do something, so we (the body of Christ) should do that something.

Which brings us back to James.  A superficial reading of James 2:14 might lead one to believe works are key to salvation.  That’s simply false.  Instead, works are a sign of a genuine faith, and that genuine faith is key to salvation.  James and Paul should not be pitted against each other, let alone James and Jesus.  While Paul writes to the Romans, “For we hold that one is justified by faith apart from works of the law,” (3:28), he also writes to the Galatians, “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision means anything, but faith working through love” (5:6).  Paul is not contradicting himself or James.  Faith saves.  What kind of faith?  An active and alive faith.  That is, a faith that works through love.  A faith that compels one to good works.  Jesus himself said that you will know a Christian by his fruit (Matthew 7:16).  Now, we do not exchange a basket of fruit with God in order to purchase salvation.  Salvation was already purchased by Jesus on the cross.   We present this basket of fruit as an example of how our life changed by following Jesus.  The fruit is evidence of something, not the something itself.

This is why in any discussion of social justice, understanding context will be imperative.  That context will impact how we embrace or distance ourselves from the term.  If social justice is simply taking care of one’s neighbors, then Christians must do everything in their power to promote it as part of the Christian life.  If social justice is an amalgam of liberal policy ideas conflating Christian and church responsibility with government intervention, then we need to beware.  No matter how social justice is defined, the Christian’s job remains the same: Love God, and love others.  Loving others includes a lot of works, but the greatest way to love another person is to tell them about Jesus and individual salvation.
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