Social Justice and the Religion

Today I am tackling the last of a series of questions that were posed to me by one of my readers.  First, I want to express my appreciation for those questions.  They certainly have provided me with some very interesting material for me to write about.  More importantly they have made me engage with some rather difficult and challenging issues such as the Trinity.  Here are the questions which have been exploring in the past weeks:

Can you explain to me your grounding belief in the Trinity? I can’t explain internally the need for formal religion and rules and commitment. 

I agree that when you drill down to the bottom of all... be good treat people as you want to be treated...  try to correct wrongs when you can etc. 

Does it come down to blind faith? What drives you to continue?  Do you ever feel that your energy would better placed in just straight up social justice?

As I noted, today I am engaging with the last question, “Do you ever feel that your energy would better placed in just straight up social justice?”  My initial response to this was that these are not mutually exclusive positions.  There have been great traditions of people who engage in social justice from both religious and non-religious perspectives. You can bring a religious perspective and base your social action in religious  principles and practices.  You can also come to social action from a secular perspective.   Currently we have people such as Elizabeth May, the leader of the Green Party of Canada and ecologist and journalist Dr. David Suzuki who do not bring an openly religious component to their work.  I am not aware if their perspectives have perhaps been influenced by religious beliefs or practices but they are not the basis of their public positions.

In the modern era you have the great tradition of the Social Gospel in Canada which informed and motivated many of the leaders of the early modern movement for social justice.  It is the tradition I was raised in as my father was a United Church minister who was grounded in the Social Gospel and process theology.  This certainly informed both my political understanding and my theology.  However, I have, of course, gone a somewhat different but not entirely incompatible path since my beginnings.     

The Social Gospel Movement in Canada had leaders such as J.S. Woodsworth the founder of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) political party which was the precursor of the New Democratic Party of Canada (NDP).  Woodsworth was a Methodist minister who preached the social gospel.  This was followed by such notables as T.C. Douglas the father of universal health care in Canada.  Douglas was a Baptist minister and deeply influenced by the Social Gospel tradition.  Douglas was the first leader of the NDP which was formed out of the socialist CCF.  Also of note was Stanley Knowles, a leader in the NDP, who was a United Church of Canada minister was who was also greatly influenced by the Social Gospel movement. 

This is just a few of the examples that could be cited. They were prime examples of people who attempted and in some cases were successful in bringing social programs to Canada based on their understanding of the Christian Gospel, which is the Good News of Jesus Christ.  Going a bit further back in history you have people such as William Wilberforce, who was instrumental in the elimination of slavery in England.  Although not an ordained minister Wilberforce was greatly influenced by his Christian beliefs, “his political views were informed by his faith and by his desire to promote Christianity and Christian ethics in private and public life.” 

Given this, I believe that the question arises, is their any difference in coming to social action from a religious versus a non-religious perspective or influence? I have given this a great deal of thought over the years due to my early influences and I believe that the challenge of social justice is to base your action on being for something rather than against it.  If you are against what you see as the evils of the world you may be successful in defeating the enemy but the question that arises is, what do you replace it with.  The alternative is guiding you needs to be what you are for?  The foundation of the Christian is (or should be) Jesus Christ who commanded us to love our enemies.  We need therefore to base our actions on love and not hate.  There is no guarantee that Christians will do this.  There are perhaps endless examples of Christians doing very unchristian things.  However, at least we have the example and the hope of Jesus Christ to be our guide and our guard against the hatred which seems to easy for people to embrace. 

I recently came across a quote by Thomas Merton which addresses this:

What is the relation of [contemplation] to action? Simply this. He [or she] who attempts to act and do things for others or for the world without deepening his own self-understanding, freedom, integrity and capacity to love will not have anything to give others. He will communicate to them nothing but the contagion of his own obsessions, his aggressiveness, his ego-centered ambitions, his delusions about ends and means, his doctrinaire prejudices and ideas. There is nothing more tragic in the modern world than the misuse of power and action. . . . —Thomas Merton [1]

As difficult and seemingly impossible it is to follow the commandment to love our enemies it is what we need to guide us on our journey.