So many progressive liberals invoke the concept of “social justice” when they discuss political and policy narratives about a variety of issues including everything from race and income inequality to welfare and immigration. I have recently heard an argument from a former BSU professor that included “social justice” as one of the foundations for invoking Diversity Equality, Queer and Inclusion (DEQI) rights. A few things need to be stated up front about what social justice is and is not.
First of all, SOCIAL JUSTICE was originally and never has been otherwise, a uniquely Western Philosophical idea. Its roots can be uniquely traced to the ancient Hebrew texts. Even the more ancient civilizations that inhabited the Fertile Crescent from 4000—2000 B. C. developed codes and laws. The Sumerians, the Akkadians, then the Amorites. Hammurabi the Great Amorite King then subdued the Babylonians and established his legal and administrative code. The history of ancient Egypt followed a similar path. In all these ancient cultures the rulers were the gods, they were worshipped in life and death. There words and edicts were unquestioned. It was from their very human minds, that the laws and moral codes evolved in their societies.
The Judeo-Christian tradition is much different, and the difference is critical. The ancient Hebrews worshipped one God. That God was worshiped and honored by all classes of people. That God looked after all the people—all the Tribes of Isreal who followed His Commandments. That God also was the God of each individual. The rules for life that we find in the Old Testament of our Christian Bible or the Hebrew Bible or Tanakh (Miqra) that comprises the Torah and the Ketuvim, are very different, from the administrative legal edicts of the other ancient cultures. Our Ten Commandments and much of what we read in the books like Deuteronomy and Leviticus are laws given by God for man and men, not a law given by a man-God, for his subjects.
The Old Testament, The New Testament, and the teachings of the church Fathers throughout the ages including reformation protestant teachings, have all contributed to the religious, moral and ethical, and legal formulations of “social justice”. The political left has coopted the term, without adopting the moral underpinnings of the concepts of social justice. “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you”, or “what you do to the least of my brethren you do unto me,” all help set a moral standard for a secular legal standard. If you want to read about slavery, or incest and rape, or adultery or abortion, read the Old and New Testament. The Book of Philemon is all about Onesies a slave.
Beginning in the Middle Ages, through the reformation, and then into The Age of Enlightenment the moral underpinnings of our society, of our institutions, of our governments were all grounded in an understanding of where our people came from through the ages, of the sacrifices they made, and what they believed in.
If you ask an American or European legal scholar or political philosopher where the modern-day social justice movement came from, they will tell you from secular sources. Hear is an example of such gobbledygook:
“Social justice is a normative concept centered on the notion of fairness and the principles of equality, equity, rights and participation. It focuses on the principle of participation given its centrality to a number of tools that are conducive to the implementation of a social justice agenda. Tools covered include: (a) social policy and social protection and taxation systems; (b) inclusive economic growth; (c) participatory spatial planning; (d) socially responsible corporate behavior; and (e) communitarian ethics and civic engagement. “
Try putting that on a bumper sticker!
“Communitarian ethics and civic engagement”?! My head is spinning
Just as the Enlightenment stood on the shoulders of the Reformation, and the Reformation stood on the shoulders of The Church Fathers—Think Aquinas and Augustine, modern day Christian Social Justice philosophy sits primarily on the shoulders of two men—neither of them lawyers. Pope Leo XIII who wrote Rerum Novarum, and Abraham Kuyper a Protestant social reformer and Evangelical minister and politician. Both wrote about the connection of the moral code to the law and only then does the law have a connection to social justice.
Today as the moral underpinnings of society are being tested, it is helpful to think of the words of Pope Leo XIII:
“When society is perishing, the wholesome advice to give to those who would retore it is to call it to the principles from which it sprang”
These men both wrote at the end of the nineteenth century. During the previous 100 years societies across Europe and the entire Western World had been transformed from agrarian rural constructs to an urbanized industrial model. Though the average standard of living had increased tenfold—the rich were getting richer, and the poor were getting poorer. Karl Marx had written his Manifesto forty years earlier and the move toward totalitarian socialism was gaining ground. Revolutions had raged across the European and American continent—only one country and society marched forward believing government and laws to be sacred results of God’s design and “Providential Will”. Only one of the governments with all its institutions still stands, the others have devolved many times over into secularized societies that today are searching for their own moral underpinnings and in most cases have failed to acknowledge the chaos created by communal humanistic ideas.
Pope Pius informs us that that the Christian vision of the human person does not make distinctions based on class or social or economic constructs. There is a foundation of dignity and formal equality that should be recognized and that must be respected within the context of diversity of dispositions of talents gifts and abilities. For Leo, the key issue to the solutions of the problems of society laid in the ideas that were precisely and accurately expressed in our own great Declaration of Independence. In fact, he argues that the essential “right of personhood” is the bases for the right of property. The connection between work and labor, and through work one can acquire capital and property and be able to improve one’s own life, is exactly what Locke. Rousseau, and Jefferson incorporated into their writings. In fact, 40 years earlier, Abraham Lincoln spoke in a similar fashion in his famous speech before the Wisconsin State Fair:
“ Let us hope, rather, that by the best cultivation of the physical world, beneath and around us; and the intellectual and moral world within us, we shall secure an individual, social, and political prosperity and happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward, and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.”
In that speech Mr. Lincoln made the connection between “labor” (work) and “capital (property). The dignity of the individual lies in the fact that we were all created in God’s image. In that way we are all equal. But just as importantly we are all given different talents and are called on to work. Those different talents economically manifest themselves in a division of labor and specialization that improves the lot of the individual and all of society.
A Black Lives Matters sign in your front yard, virtue signaling one’s “sin” of “white privilege”, or marching for an exclusive symbol on a gay rights flag has nothing to do with a Christian-Biblical Social Justice that speaks to the deeper issues of the heart and the dignity of man. Creating divisions and factions over “faux rights” grounded in humanistic constructs only offers an avenue towards self-destruction for those who seek to divide us.
WE are all made in God’s Image, and we are all each uniquely different. We should all be celebrated for our commonalities and for our diversities.
Communitarian Ethics?! I can’t get over that one!
