What the Heck is 'Social Justice'?

Thank you for providing clear definitions of charity and social justice. So many people are eager to participate in one, while ignoring the other. To live faithfully we are responsible for both.

Charity and social justice go hand in hand, and they transcend politically partisan issues.

For the good of the whole society individuals must be willing to make sacrifices. Greed and stinginess related to material wealth have no place in our hearts if we hope to fulfill the Kingdom.

Why are the worldy slang words "the Heck" used in the title of this blog entry?

No wonder "Christians" today are using words that are even very vulgar in origin. And.. they merely use them because everybody else use them.

Jesus had issues with tax collectors who took money and put some of it in their pockets. But, he didn't have a problem with eating meals with them in their homes or with them becoming his disciples.

Every time I see the "redistribution" argument being thrown about I envision a very large sandbox with a large contingent of children having a fit about having to share the toys yelling "Mine" while they clutch the toys to their breasts...I would hope that at some point in time having healthy friends to play with may come to be as valued as getting to keep all the toys.

Social Justice is not achieved by wealth redistrubution and government managed economics.

And sometimes I am reminded of my children when each had plenty of toys however one always wanted what the other had,or was to lazy to walk in the play room and get their own.No disrespect intended just another way of lookin at it based on my experience as a father.

Mihs: "If the people want to change the law so that more citizens have equal opportunities (e.g. access to education, health care, and housing) they have the right to enact such reforms -- as long those reforms don't violate the Constitution."

That's the debate, though, isn't it? Do such reforms violate the Constitution? It depends on how you read it. Libertarians insist that the only honest way to read the Constitution is through original intent, that is, find out what the writesr of the document meant by what they wrote in the Constitution. That is simply good hermeneutics, and good hermeneutics is nothing but honesty. Others want the Constitution to be a "living" document, by which they mean that judges can make it mean whatever they want it to mean. In other words, they can find the right to murder unborn children in it.

If we take an honest approach to interpreting the Constitution, then we would find access to education, health care, and housing provided by the state violate it.

I also think the founders of this nation would be shocked and highly insulted to hear that by not providing access to education, health care, and housing they weren't providing equal opportunity for everyone. Their understanding of rights and opportunity meant that by protecting the right to life, liberty and property they were providing equal opportunity for everyone.

And they would be shocked to hear Americans say that "access to education, health care, and housing" was providing equal opportunity. In their thinking, that would be a very inappropriate use of the word "opportunity." For them, equal opportunity meant 1) the state treats everyone equally and 2) opportunity meant that no one restricted you rights to pursue your goals. For the state to take wealth from one group of citizens through taxation and give it to another group would have nothing to do with opportunity at all; it would be the state violating its requirement to treat all citizens equally and it would be enriching one group at the expense of another.

mihs: "however many of those same people support the use of law to impose one particular moral conception that holds that all individuals have liberty interests and rights and that it is wrong to violate these rights by causing "harm" to others (some believe taxation is harmful)"

Conservatives want to impose their religious values on the rest of society and that's why I'm not a conservative. Conservatives tend to by hypocritical.

Taxation is harm. Taxation means that individuals have less of their own money to spend and businesses have less to invest in creating new jobs. But the cost/benefit ratio is possitive as long as the state sticks to its proper role of providing police, courts and defense. It turns negative when the state starts redistributing wealth.

I don't think it's fair to speak of "overlords", and it's also not fair to imply that Sojourners is not pro-life. Mr. Wallis and Sojourners have repeatedly spoken about being pro-life, which encompasses and requires so much beyond and aside from that one element of the repeal of Roe V Wade.

You must have missed all those discussions here - I've taken part in several :). Just because you haven't read them doesn't mean they haven't taken place :).

"my bet is a lot of women would be more careful about their sexual behavior before marriage. I've seen a lot of women put themselves in that situation, simply because there are fewer consequences than there used to be, when it comes to having babies out of wedlock"

Your view of the poor is uninformed, and to be frank, heartless. Well did the prophets say of this generation "You draw near to me with your lips but are far from me in your hearts. The poor don't need your condescending pity masquarading as charity. They need the love of Christ and someone in their corner to help them fight for justice. If you don't want to join them, feel free to continue to advocate for their opressors, just don't patronize them while continuing to judge them.

thank you!

fundamentalist wrote:
3) The obsession with college degrees has led to diploma inflation. You almost need a BS degree to sweep streets. If we keep going as we are, everyone will need a PhD degree to sweep streets. 4) There is a lot of evidence that education is a result of greater wealth, not a cause.

I agree that there is an issue with diploma inflation. A reasonable check on such is to make admission standards relatively high. Now, as for whether education causes or is the result of wealth, let's take a labor example. It has long been the case that skilled labor paid more than unskilled labor, with more and more unskilled labor being taken up by machines or outsourced. So, if someone has the work ethic and capability to be a skilled laborer, this person would have a rational reason for choosing such. In terms of inflation, well being trained in different things opens various doors of innovation and such - growing the pie, if you will. One cannot realistically have an innovative idea in say medical care, without having trained in that area.

Such a situation (concentration of wealth in a few hands) only develops in dictatorships or highly socialist countries. Free markets reduce the concentration of wealth.

Your claim goes against conventional wisdom. HOW do free markets reduce the concentration of wealth? I have the impression that they tend to create more wealth, but also tend to concentrate it.

NgChen: "A system for facilitating commerce through commerce infrastructure (bridges and roads) is also highly beneficial toward growth."

Actually, it's not. We have too many roads to nowhere because decisions on infrastructure are highly political and used to reward campaign contributors. We have too much infrastructure in some places and not enough in others.

Road decisions sometimes are political, but corruption exists at a non-zero level everywhere, under every system. I'll give a concrete example of roads facilitating development. In my hometown, a river runs through it. The north is developed. Bridges across the river were built, leading to development on the south side. Without these bridges, no one would want to live on that bank. And before someone argues that people desiring to live on the south side can build their own bridge, consider the "free rider" problem such would entail.

Mantors...

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This post was mentioned on Twitter by sojourners: My Catholic tradition considers social justice as a central element of faith http://su.pr/4E1StQ...

deleted, posted on wrong page....

Considering this is the Catholic understanding, how would you classify the Church's action on right to life issues, if not "social justice" in defense of governmental shift to the right?

I think you're complaining in the wrong place :).

the point being: scripture can be interpreted in many ways. We read scripture to enforce our own ideologies. Our ideologies are our own constructions of knowledge as sinful human beings. Therefore, we can argue forever about what the Bible does and doesn't say. In the end, God has the final word, not us. I'm pretty sure Jesus wouldn't see extending healthcare to 32 million people as immoral...I think Jesus valued human life over money. but thats just me.

My comment was directed more at economic policy because that's what I hear coming from Wallis et al; can't think of much that I've read on this site that touches on the life issue, but thanks for pointing out that there is more than one dimension to "social justice". Are the sojo.net overlords listening?

Ever heard of Tony Campolo? :D

Do you really think that this is a model for the capitalist system in our country? Do you think the poor do nothing to contribute to the wealth of the rich? Examine the Wal-Mart model and then come back and expound.

True and the reverse is also true without the wealth to finance and the labor to produce do you think we would be sitting here on our computers,many in our own homes blogging? Its similiar to the Kingdom all have gifts but not all have the same gift.Thanks to Walmarts most of my rx meds are 10$ for 3 mos supply.(thats before healthcare reform may go up now).

The article exemplifies the problem with the term "social justice." The article does nothing to clarify the term. It reminds me of the Popes latest encyclical. We debated it a lot on the acton.org blog. Socialists and libertarians both found ample support for their positions in the encyclical, which was frustrating for both sides. The Church position is too vague to be of any practical value.

Some may not have noticed, but the article became almost silly when it added "social" to charity and sin. (Is there any kind of charity or sin that is not social?) There is social charity and social justice; how about social baseball, social mechanics, social farming, social biking? When you simply add "social" to everything, it obfuscates instead of clarifies. Drop "social" and everything becomes much clearer. Instead of social justice, what the article talks about is plain justice. As the article says: "Justice is the moral code that guides a fair and equitable society. When an individual acts on behalf of justice, he or she stands up for what is right."

How can anyone be against justice? That would be insane! But what do you mean by justice? Progressives say that it means equal opportunity, which thy define as education, healthcare and housing, but many of us would argue that is not opportunity, but simple wealth redistribution. Equal opportunity means to most people that you can exercise your God-given rights; The progressive definition of opportunity means that everyone has equal resources, or wealth.

The article says "justice is furthering the common good." But what do you mean by the common good? Again, the term is so vague as to be of no practical value. What is the common good to you may not be so for me. For progressives, the common good is that everyone has relatively equal resources. For libertarians the common good is that God-given rights are respected.

"The "common good comprises the sum total of social conditions which allow people, either as groups or as individuals, to reach their fulfillment more fully and more easily," according to Pope Paul VI."

Oh that is much clearer! Not! What are social conditions? They are anything and everything that make up life. Nothing is excluded. Only the dead are not part of social conditions. Why not just say life? So if any condition whatsoever in life prevents people from easily and fully attaining their fulfillment (whatever that is), then it violates the common good, which violates justice.

So what does it mean for people to "reach their fulfillment"? Who knows? Every individual has a different idea of what that means. If someone wants to be a concert pianist and will only be fulfilled if he achieves that goal, then according to the Pope any condition in life whatsoever that keeps him from reaching that goal "easily" and "fully" violates justice and we are required to rectify that lapse in justice. So not only must we give him the opportunity to learn piano, we must make it easy for him to do so and we must make certain that he achieves that goal fully, without failure, or we, the rest of the individuals in society, are guilty of injustice.

Is that what God meant by "justice" in the Bible? It seems to me that even a casual reading of the Bible shows that God had a much, much more limited concept of justice.

Pastor Jeff: "Do you really think that this is a model for the capitalist system in our country?"

In the first place, we are not a capitalist country. We have a mixed economy that is two parts socialism and one part capitalism. Don't confuse the current system in the US with capitalism.

Pastor Jeff: "Do you think the poor do nothing to contribute to the wealth of the rich?"

Yes, according to the science of economics. Only Marxism positions the wealthy and the poor as opponents fighting over a bone. And Marxism is not economics; it's envy and coveting.

The problem with your question is the assumption that trade is zero sum: the poor person who exchanges money for goods becomes poorer from the transaction the the seller becomes richer. It's the ancient confusion that attributes wealth to money alone. But the Church determined centuries ago that any freely engaged in transaction is just, meaning there is equality of exchange.

But the science of economics goes one step further. It assumes that people are rational in that they won't intentionally harm themselves. So in commerce, people won't exchange something of value for something of lesser value. In addition, they won't exchange something of value for something of equal value, otherwise why trade if the trade doesn't make you better off? People only engage in trade when the get something worth more to them than what they are trading. In economics, they call it subjective value, a concept that revolutionized economics in the late 19th century, but which socialists refuse to learn.

In subjective value, nothing has an objective value. Everything has a different value to different people depending on preferences and use. No one can assert that the intrinsic value of a diamond is $10,000. All we can say is that at this point in time the majority of people who are interested in buying and selling diamonds value that particular diamond at $10,000.

So when poor person goes to WalMart to buy clothing, is the poor person poorer for having done so? No, he is richer, otherwise why trade money (representing his labor) for the clothing? He valued the clothing more than he valued the labor he expended to get the money to buy the clothing. Is WalMart richer? Of course! The company valued the clothing less than it valued the money. So trade with WalMart enriches the poor and WalMart at the same time. Instead of zero-sum (medieval math) we have positive sum, or win-win in the marketplace.

In addition, WalMart has helped the poor enormously by reducing their costs so that they can sell clothing and food to the poor at lower prices that what the poor would have to pay at other stores. That makes the labor of poor go farther in terms of buying more goods.

I was referring to what I had seen & read from Wallis et al, which is very nearly a repetition of the DNC talking points when it comes to economics. Those are the topics that draw my ire, so perhaps I've missed out. Most of the time my visits here are driven by the topics of the Sojomail newsletters and the email pleas for support. I *don't recall* ever seeing a headline on them mentioning articles on abortion, which is not to say there weren't any, but it seems that economic issues are emphasized more heavily than other topics.

As for the overlords, merely a teasing reference to those who manage the site, set the tone and drive the content. Maybe if the content on the site and in the newsletters didn't appear to be so much regurgitation of DNC talking points there would be less polarization in these discussions.

Dear libertarian/anarchist brothers and sisters in Christ,

I would like to assure you that I believe I fully understand that you believe that social justice equals socialism, that all taxation is robbery, that "redistribution of wealth" should only proceed in an upward direction, that the government has no place making social policy, that government is evil and repressive by nature, that Christians have no business using the tool of government, that the poor and the sick should rely on the goodwill and resources of individual Christians to have their needs met, that God has limited doing his will in this world to individual efforts, that you have your own definitions and world view, and that nothing is going to budge you from those.

Really - I think I get it!

And, I disagree with almost all of it.

So, if you have nothing else to contribute, can you please go somewhere else? Honestly - I believe I've received your message! I would really like to be able to have a discussion about the articles and postings here without said discussion being constantly overrun and dominated by enthusiastic libertarian/anarchist messengers.

Yes, I know - free speech - and I'm all for free speech, engaging in dialogue, and consideration of other points of view. But I am also for common courtesy, and I believe your postings violate common courtesy by dominating nearly every thread - repeatedly - with your own "message."

That's why I want to assure you that I've heard and understand your message. I respect your right to hold your beliefs. But I believe it's gotten to the point where you are attempting to impose your beliefs on me, here.

This site is supposed to be a place where progressive Christians can share and discuss, but I believe the libertarian/anarchist voices are drowning out free discussion. I don't believe you listen to or consider other points of view. I experience you simply re-casting all other points of view in the light of your own. And, frequently, my experience is you don't even own your beliefs as beliefs and opinions - you pronounce them as universally accepted fact.

Don't libertarians believe in not imposing individual will, morals, ethics, and world view on any other individual?

Perhaps you could practice that belief a bit more...

I'd sure appreciate it, thanks.

It's a progressive Christian organization. You were expecting perhaps an enthusiastic embrace of the RNC, instead?