Lessons in the art of survey manipulation

I am going to try a new tack on this blog I often read comments and articles that I would like to comment on but really practically no one reads the comments sections so I thought I would use them as short blog articles.

So here is the first one from Spectrum a comment writer says:

"conservative Christians are the only ones who read the bible seriously"
That's funny because the only data based study I've ever seen on the subject suggests that liberals are far more likely to read their bible. The thing is many regressive Christians are very good at memorizing a verse here and a verse their to support their pre-established suppositions, where as most progressives actually read and understand."

Here is a section from the likely source of the above thinking. An article from Christianity Today, Survey: Frequent Bible Reading Can Turn You LiberalWhat a surprising survey says about how reading the Bible frequently can turn you liberal (in some ways):  

 Frequent Bible reading has some predictable effects on the reader. It increases opposition to abortion     as    well as homosexual marriage and unions. It boosts a belief that science helps reveal God's glory. It diminishes hopes that science will eventually solve humanity's problems. But unlike some other religious practices, reading the Bible more often has some liberalizing effects—or at least makes the reader more prone to agree with liberals on certain issues. This is true even when accounting for factors such as political beliefs, education level, income level, gender, race, and religious measures (like which religious tradition one affiliates with, and one's views of biblical literalism).

In 2007, the Baylor Religion Survey asked Americans how often they read the Bible on their own. (It was a five-point scale in this study, ranging from "never" to "several times a week.") It also asked whether the federal government should expand its authority to fight terrorism—a reference to the Patriot Act. For each increased level of Bible-reading frequency, support for the Patriot Act decreased by about 13 percent.

Frequent Bible reading also influences views on criminal justice. As might be expected, respondents who were more politically liberal were prone to disagree with the statement, "The government should punish criminals more harshly." Unexpectedly (at least given the conservative stereotype), the more frequently people read the Bible, the more they too are prone to disagree with the statement. This is not an anomalous finding: Support for abolishing the death penalty increased by about 45 percent for each increase on the five-point scale measuring Bible-reading frequency.

Reading the Bible affects attitudes toward science as well. If you just ask people about biblical literalism, you don't find statistically significant differences in views of whether science and religion are compatible. But the more someone reads the Bible, the more likely he or she is to believe science and religion are compatible. (For each increase on the five-point scale, the odds that they see religion and science as incompatible decrease by 22 percent.)

Some of the most interesting findings relate to moral attitudes. "How important is it," the survey asked, "to actively seek social and economic justice in order to be a good person?" Again, as would be expected, those with more liberal political leanings were more likely to say it's very or somewhat important. And those who read the Bible more often were more likely to agree. Indeed, they were almost 35 percent more likely to agree at each point on Baylor's five-point scale. That may be bad news for Glenn Beck, who last year told believers to leave their churches if they hear "social justice" language being used. Likewise, contrary to liberal media stereotypes, those who are most engaged in their faith (by directly and frequently reading its source material) are those who are most supportive of social and economic justice. A reading, politically conservative literalist is only slightly less supportive than a non-reading, politically liberal non-literalist.

Now just so you don't get the idea that there is not a liberal agenda in Christianity Today consider the last part about Glenn Beck. Beck was specific about what "Social Justice" he was referring too. See: Glenn Beck: What is Social Justice?

"What is that? It seems like such an innocuous phrase. It paints a picture of fairness — many churches use the term as a substitute for "outreach to the poor." Who could possibly be against that? Well, if you’ve read the news lately: I am. In fact, I even learned from TIME magazine recently that I hate Jesus.

I’m just full of hate and I want to stop justice!

I’m glad to see Time suddenly cares about God… or am I? The other "news" from The New York Times was that I recommended leaving church if those churches help the poor. And I would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn’t for those pesky, meddling "journalists"!

I’m not sure why I would expect the media to start searching for the truth now, when they’ve never let it get in the way before. The truth is this: The term "social justice" has been completely perverted and hijacked by progressives. It doesn’t mean simply "help the poor" to them. It does to some people, but not to radical progressives.

And now, just for The New York Times and everyone else who thinks I hate poor people — I know your attention span is about 20 or 30 seconds, but try and pay attention — we’ll set the record straight for you here on social justice. The kind I am talking about vs. the kind that they are talking about.

Ready?

Here’s my definition of social justice: Forced redistribution of wealth with a hostility toward individual property rights, under the guise of charity and/or justice.

On my radio program, I said if your church is promoting Jeremiah Wright-type "social or economic justice," you should run from it or at least get educated on what progressives mean by this.

You might wonder if the summary from Christianity Today's writer is applicable. In particular since the summary of the poll does not mention the correlations that the writer does namely: In 2007, the Baylor Religion Survey asked Americans how often they read the Bible on their own. (It was a five-point scale in this study, ranging from "never" to "several times a week.") It also asked whether the federal government should expand its authority to fight terrorism—a reference to the Patriot Act. For each increased level of Bible-reading frequency, support for the Patriot Act decreased by about 13 percent.

The survey codebook is found here.

56) Q16. Outside of attending religious services, about how often do you read the Bible, Koran, Torah, or other sacred book? (SACREDBK)

	TOTAL	%
0) Never	444	27.3
1) Less than once a year	232	14.3
2) Once or twice a year	180	11.1
3) Several times a year	164	10.1
4) Once a month	49	3
5) 2-3 times a month	98	6
6) About weekly	92	5.7
7) Weekly	115	7.1
8) Several times a week or more often	254	15.6
Missing	20
TOTAL	1628	100.0

172) Q37h. To what extent do you agree or disagree that the federal government should expand its authority to fight terrorism? (FIGHTTER)

	TOTAL	%
1) Strongly disagree	141	8.8
2) Disagree	388	24.3
3) Agree	555	34.7
4) Strongly agree	395	24.7
8) Undecided	121	7.6
Missing	48
TOTAL	1600	100.0

If you look at the analyze section of question 172 You actually see that there is no statistics related to Bible reading. It correlates Age, Education, Gender, Religion, Region and Church attendance.

It is interesting to see how one article with really questionable correlations can affect those that want to believe something.

Reza Aslan and the lack of critical media

For the past couple of years I have become fascinated how people are influenced by the media. It is such a powerful force and is so ever present in our society. It is a constant buzzing in our ears yet we seldom swat at the offensive nature of much of what it produces. I am going to relay an example that to me is very telling of the sheep like attitude the media produces in people.

In the Sept. 13 2013 issue of Entertainment Weekly in the winners and losers section we read this:

Winners:

→ ZEALOT, BY REZA ASLAN When Fox News correspondent Lauren Green and scholar-writer Aslan jousted during a train wreck of an interview, Aslan clearly came out ahead. The televised scuffle pushed Zealot, a biagroaphy of Jesus Christ, to the top of the charts. Page 19

This view is how by a lot of media outlets. Just google Reza Aslan and Lauren Green. You can see the interview and see loads of liberal media sites bashing her and Fox News.

What you do see in this interview which the liberal media sites don't tell you is that Reza Aslan was lying about his credititials. He made a very big thing about his qualifications

As FirstThings

In fact, it is Aslan who immediately turns the interview into a cage match by reacting very defensively to Green’s first question. And here is where the misrepresentations begin. For roughly the first half of the interview Aslan dominates the exchange with assertions about himself that seem intended to delay the substance of the discussion:

I am a scholar of religions with four degrees including one in the New Testament . . . I am an expert with a Ph.D. in the history of religions . . . I am a professor of religions, including the New Testament–that’s what I do for a living, actually . . . To be clear, I want to emphasize one more time, I am a historian, I am a Ph.D. in the history of religions.

Later he complains that they are “debating the right of the scholar to write” the book rather than discussing the book. But the conversation took that turn thanks to Aslan, not Green! By the final minute he is saying of himself (and who really talks this way!?) that “I’m actually quite a prominent Muslim thinker in the United States.”
Aslan does have four degrees, as Joe Carter has noted: a 1995 B.A. in religion from Santa Clara University, where he was Phi Beta Kappa and wrote his senior thesis on “The Messianic Secret in the Gospel of Mark”; a 1999 Master of Theological Studies from Harvard; a 2002 Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from the University of Iowa; and a 2009 Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara.

None of these degrees is in history, so Aslan’s repeated claims that he has “a Ph.D. in the history of religions” and that he is “a historian” are false.  Nor is “professor of religions” what he does “for a living.” He is an associate professor in the Creative Writing program at the University of California, Riverside, where his terminal MFA in fiction from Iowa is his relevant academic credential. It appears he has taught some courses on Islam in the past, and he may do so now, moonlighting from his creative writing duties at Riverside. Aslan has been a busy popular writer, and he is certainly a tireless self-promoter, but he is nowhere known in the academic world as a scholar of the history of religion. And a scholarly historian of early Christianity? Nope.

Any thinking media person should have become interested enough to question the Aslan's creditionals and after this interview came out and even after people like Glenn Beck (see Glenn Beck's expose here) pointed out Aslans' false creditionals you would think that that should have some relevance or at least mention...but not in the liberal media...it has no relevance.

Aslan has a Wikipedia site as well and notice this example of how the Wikipedia can be gently nudged.

Aslan holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in religions from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies degree from Harvard Divinity School, and a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, where he was named the Truman Capote Fellow in Fiction. Aslan also received a Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology, focusing in the history of religion, from the University of California, Santa Barbara.[7][8][9] His dissertation was titled "Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework".[10]

So it looks like Under the Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology there is a focus in history of religion. However you look at the UC at Santa Barbara Sociology Graduate degree program you see that there is no such focus. What they have are:

The department offers rigorous training in theory and a variety of sociological methodologies. Additionally, sociology graduate students specialize in one of the following research areas: Conversation Analysis; Culture; Global Studies; Feminist Studies; Justice, Law and Inequality; Race, Ethnicity, and Nation; and Social Movements, Revolutions & Social Change. UCSB’s sociology graduate students have gone on to top jobs at other universities as well as into numerous research, policy, and activist professions.

They do have a Department of Religious Studies however, but it is not the Sociology Department. What it does appear is that Aslan is in fact an activist, see the Glenn Beck video for more on that.

When you actually realize just how much of a free pass is given to certain kinds of thought in the media you can begin to see how their goals and their activism are being implemented into society. If you reject their goals and their view of reality there are abundant other forms of media out there to attack and criticize and distort the facts to make their opposition out to be something horrible. Racist, sexist, homophobes, Islamophobe or the ever popular fear monger. The facts seem to take an distant second place to the goals of the activist.

How nice it would be if the journalist asked the hard questions or actually took the time to investigate the credentials of the people they talk to. Lauren Green may not have known that Aslan did not have the credentials he claimed but because she questioned him we have him on record lying about them. And that should carry some weight

Aslan's book gets to the top of the book list even though it has nothing really new As the Christian Post writes:

"Aslan has offered nothing new under the sun when it comes to offering a critique of the historical Jesus," William Lane Craig, a philosopher of religion and a Christian apologist, has said. "In fact, he is attempting to revert scholarship back to the early 1900s by echoing Albert Schweitzer's book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus. Like Schweitzer, Aslan claims that Jesus is historically unknowable and we can never get back to the real Jesus."

American Conservative writer and Baylor University professor Alan Jacobs argues that Aslan's work follows closely along the lines of Biblical scholar John Dominic Cross's 1994 title Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography.

"Aslan makes no new discoveries, and makes no arguments that haven't already been made — in some cases very long ago," writes Jacobs, suggesting that this is partly the case because "Reza Aslan is not a New Testament scholar."

It is interesting to note in regard to lying about credentials just how another member of the media was treated when it was discovered that she lied about her PhD. See the article here,

The Future of Liberalism/Progressivism

The recent weeks have given us a frightening look at what the future of this nation will be like under liberal/progressivism. It is a world defined by prejudice and intolerance clothed in the guise of tolerance and progressive understanding.  In all comes from the strange reaction to the following quote of Dan Cathy COO of Chick-fil-A on the Ken Coleman show, as Ken Colman writes:

While discussing fatherhood with me, Dan Cathy expressed the following thoughts that have contributed to the media firestorm:

"I think we are inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say, 'We know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage,'" Cathy said. "And I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude to think that we have the audacity to define what marriage is about."

In modern liberal/progressive political circles this rather traditional support of traditional marriage definition became a rallying cry of hate. Somehow this religious statement is hate filled. But of course there is nothing hateful about it. He did not condemn Homosexuals or say anything against them or indicate that he discriminates against them. No those things are read into his statements.
To get to these extreme views the liberal/progressives have worked hard to redefine the language. Not simply trying to make the word marriage fit same sexes but by making hate groups out of normally mainstream religious groups. Thus Since Cathy supports certain religious groups those groups become known as hate groups. For example here is a comment from a recent article on Spectrum magazine website:

Keith doesn't mention that this business owner contributes huge amounts to anti-gay groups that spew hatred, prejudice, and lies about gays and lesbians.

Of course to actually name these anti-gay groups would show that they are not in fact anti-gay groups but religious groups holding traditional religious beliefs. The liberal/progressives get here by…well you guessed it lying. People like the writer of the comment simply believe the lies and then repeat them. One of the chief liars in all of this is the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). The Chick-fil-A corporation gives to the Family Research Council. SPLC names David Barton as anti-gay as well. Of course if they wanted they could put most any traditional religious group as anti-gay. They could have even put President Obama as anti-gay as just over 3 years ago he also opposed gay marriage. But of course opposing gay marriage is not being anti-gay. There are even gays against gay marriage. 

But why is an individual’s freedom of speech when expressing traditional marriage and traditional religious values hate speech? The answer is that in the new future delivered by the liberal/progressive movement their views are the correct views and anything opposed to or not in alignment with their view has to be hate. They are unable to make the case so they rely upon false generalizations against those who don’t think like them.

This is because these political movements do not respect freedom they desire power and control and their chosen method is through the government.  “Liberal” no longer even mean classical liberalism, which is more akin to what we call libertarianism and Progressive does not mean moving forward toward more freedom and individual responsibility but Progressive in terms of more centralized governmental control and decreased freedom of thought. Propaganda is the method they chose to employ and propaganda is frequently composed of lies and misinformation.

This is a future that we cannot afford to allow. Fortunately Millions of Americans still see the foolishness of the liberal/progressive movement and as we saw last week they took much time out of their busy lives to show their support for the Chick-fil-A even when numerous political figures like the Mayor of Chicago the protégé of President Obama Rahm Emanuel declared that “They disrespect our fellow neighbors and residents. This would be a bad investment, since it would be empty.” It may well be that the Chicago way has no place for traditional Christians. 

This blog often takes on traditional Christianity but we must fight for their freedom of expression and belief; because their freedom is our freedom. The biggest disrespect comes from those who refuse to give others the respect of their beliefs and ideas.

More foolish predictions from AToday colunmist

As some of you know who follow this blog the Atoday Columnist Stephen Foster is one of my favorite targets. He is to me one of the greatest examples of myopic traditional Adventism. He presents false information as if it were true and true information as if it were false. Well yes that later could be said of numerous political leftists but since Foster embodies both myopic traditional Adventism and ill informed political progressivism he strikes just the perfect cord of absolute silliness. Unfortunately absolute silliness is becoming all to common in Adventism.

In the past Foster has declared in his comment section of one of his articles that “arbitrary” means making a decision. Therefore since God makes decisions He is arbitrary. It did not matter if I showed him the dictionary meaning as well as the synonyms for arbitrary he would not be moved. So I said he was being disingenuous and he was a mixed up guy. That got me banned from posting comments on Atoday. Well there is no way to educate the editor/moderator at Atoday, so I don't post there anymore as a columnist or commentor. Actually quite happy to no longer have to try and write articles that the editor has to approve, because frankly it is hard to do when the editor knows so little.

For instance in Stephen Foster's latest article he mentions Rick Santorum's statement about nearly throwing up after reading JFK's speech. Foster then quotes a statement from Santorum the day after he made the throw up comment. Yet Foster ignored the Santorum statement that his throw up comment was an over reaction. So it stands in Foster's article as if Santorum had never corrected himself, even if you don't believe him why would you not offer the reader the facts in the matter. Well the reason is because information is not the purpose of the article it is propaganda. And propaganda cares little for the facts. Propaganda is one of the specialties of the political left. I suppose the right will use it to some extent but it appears not to be used nearly as much as the political left. The Editor at Atoday probably did not even know that Santorum had corrected his statement the next day. Because another unfortunate problem of the Traditional Adventists and the political left is that they are poorly informed about current events. Their sources of information are often restricted to those that agree with their ideology, and they rarely hear anything to the contrary.

So Foster puts forth his opinion and his selected retelling of the facts carefully omitting things that don't work toward his preordained conclusions. Though he did kindly note in the first part of his article that if you don't hold to his view of Traditional Adventist Eschatology you will not likely agree with him. Apparently if you agree with him then you will agree with his article. You see how the myopic views work. Their information is not intended to be persuasive to those who may differ but to be persuasive to those who already agree with them. Again something very common in Traditional Adventism and political progressives.

The main import of his article however was put forth in his opening line: “Does anybody continue to believe that things are not lining up according to prophecy?” Prophecy to Foster being his traditional Adventist Eschatology where in the Roman Catholic church rises up and takes over in both church and state relations. Santorum is a Roman Catholic running for President, and Santorum does not think that Religious people should be silent as to the affairs of state. Thus to fulfill the prediction of the 19^th century Foster produces another prediction for what is happening now, even though Santorum has little chance of becoming the Republican candidate and even though Santorum says he will not enforce his religious ideas in the political realm just as he did not do so when he was a Senator. But the prophecy lines up, because the prediction in each case is the same and to most Traditional Adventists prediction is prophecy. But predictions are not prophecy they are interpretations someone has placed upon a prophecy. They are consistently proven wrong. Yet consistently trotted out again and again, because they are at least to the believer never proven wrong because they can always still happen just around the corner.

Bill Maher, stranger to reason

Here is a good view into the mind of a political liberal. It is sad and disturbing but likely thought of by those with limited thinking capabilities to be funny.  Bill Maher said the following on his HBO show:

BILL MAHER: But I bring up the old tale of the poisoned apple -- no, not "Snow White," that's a fairy tale - because the Adam and Eve story is taken literally by half the country and it's no coincidence that the type of tree which god forbade Adam and Eve eating from was the Tree of Knowledge. Rick Santorum homeschools his children because he does not want them eating that f--king apple. He wants them locked up in the Christian madrassa that is the family living room not out in public where they could be infected by the virus of reason. If you're a kid and the only adults you've ever met are mom and dad, and then they're also the smartest adults you've met, why not keep it that way? Why mess up paradise with a lot knowledge? After all, a mind is a terrible thing to open.

You could read that and think it was just an attempt by a mediocre comedian to make a joke. Until you see he includes reason into the equation and ends with a call for an open mind afterall. For what he thinks is reason is simply misinformation. He begins the account by mentioning a poison apple, no poison apple is in the Biblical story; in fact no specific fruit is mentioned at all. Then he intentionally misnames the name of the tree. The name  of the tree in Genesis being the tree of knowledge of good and evil. To him it is the tree of knowledge. God simply did not want Adam and Eve to have knowledge any knowledge apparently. But of course the story is much more relevant than Maher’s misinformation. God did not want them to eat of the fruit and learn what evil was.

Then Maher moves to Rick Santorum who home schools his children. In Maher’s created world if they go out in public they will be exposed to the virus of reason. Reason really, does he know what reason is. Is reason ever the product of intentional misinformation and lies. Do Santorum’s children never go out in public or hear any other voices? What about the Christian Madrassa? That is clever right, a Christian “Muslim school”, that is what madrassa means a Muslim school. Reasonable?

Possibly to the political liberal it is because they can’t argue from facts so they resort to the type of argument Bill Maher uses. And amazingly enough HBO pays him to produce this kind of material! And even more amazingly people watch him and some people think he has some intelligence. This perhaps is true if one does not look very close at anything he says; but if you actually do use reason. Well he does not do too well.

National Council of churches when politic become Ecumenism

Spectrum magazine online had a recent couple of articles on the National Council of Churches former President's presentation by Dr. Michael Kinnamon he gave a talk entitled, “The Ecumenical Movement and Why You Should Be Involved.”

What I find more interesting is what is the reason behind the NCC, if you read their website you see that though the language is very couched it has an overriding concern for liberal politics. In point 4 listed in the Spectrum article you read the following:

In seeking to manifest the unity we have in Christ, ecumenical churches refuse to separate theological truth from social justice; they integrate theology and justice.

Social Justice has become one of the code words of liberal politics (other such words, Environmental Justice, Economic justice etc). As you read the above sentence why would anyone include “social justice” in the first part of the clause and then theology and justice in the last part? (See my articles on Social Justice and here.) The insertion of “social justice” is to inform the listener/reader that  political aspects are being referred to. This reflects the Rev. Jim Wallis view that social justice is the heart of the gospel. So theology and social justice must be equated and social justice is the political lefts answer to the gospel therefore it is equal with theology, they cannot be separated. Likely no one would have a problem with the statement of justice, justice being doing what is right and fair but the political left is not trying for equal justice thus the favored term social justice.

A good quote on the subject is found from the Christian News Wire. Com:

IRD President James Tonkowich commented,

"Edgar's view of the church's role in society usually involved a more expansive federal government. While some hailed him as a prophetic voice on issues of war, poverty and environment, what he advocated exclusively pointed to liberal politics and human institutions as the answer.

"Edgar placed the council on a firmer financial footing by seeking funding from secular liberal foundations that were interested in a leftist political agenda, not the spread of the gospel.

"The NCC's ever-reluctant member communions were unconvinced by Edgar that they needed to further bear the financial burden of the activities done in their name. Clearly, the NCC's increasingly political agenda did not appeal to many of the member denominations, many of whom declined to contribute any financial support to the organization.

"Edgar often dismissed the precipitous membership plunge of many of the NCC member communions, saying that influence was more important than numbers. Both however seemed equally in decline as the national media, policymakers and everyday churchgoers increasingly directed their attentions toward mainstream Evangelical voices and away from older mainline leadership and tired institutional ecumenism.

"During Edgar's tenure, the NCC continued to prove unappealing to more orthodox faith groups, with evangelicals wary of the NCC's agenda and one member denomination choosing to permanently disassociate itself from the council.

"Bob Edgar's legacy is a financially sound council, but unfortunately not a strengthened ecumenism."

The Institute on Religion and Democracy is an ecumenical alliance of U.S. Christians working to reform their churches' social witness in accord with biblical and historic Christian teachings.

In 2005 in reply to such charges as the above Edgar responded:

“There are those who try to dilute our witness and mislead our friends by suggesting that the National Council of Churches is a partisan, left-leaning organization,” said Rev. Edgar. “But you know who it is that calls us to pursue peace, fight poverty and injustice, and care for the earth. It is the Prince of Peace who each day of his life showed his bias for the poor and prayed to the Creator who gave us this beautiful world,” he said.”

This always sounds good, as if right leaning organization don't want peace, don't fight poverty and injustice or care about the earth. It seems that only the political left uses this kind of logic. As most people of good will would agree with those goals the question is always how to arrive at them. Only when you start to think that your politics are the will of God do you become intolerant and become obsessed with seeing things only one way. Edgar went from his NCC position to the political liberal organization Common Cause.

During the recent so called budget debate (The US Senate has not passed a budget in over 1000 days) over the rise in the debt ceiling the leaders of the NCC took it upon themselves to protest:

The National Council of Churches out-radicalized even Jim Wallis, boasting about arrests of its officials in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in protest against budget "cuts." "Our elected officials are protecting corporations and wealthy individuals while shredding the safety net for millions of the most vulnerable people in our nation and abroad," hyperventilated the NCC's former president after his arrest. Another arrested NCC official explained, "We are citizens first and foremost of the realm of God," When steps Congress is taking contradicts our call as followers of Jesus Christ, we must take action." Interestingly, Wallis, despite many arrests in his colorful past, declined to join the civil disobedience this time.

It may, in the short run seem that the way to protect the poor is to keep devaluing money or borrowing money from China but that may not be correct. But it does point out that there are differences in how people respond to problems. To claim that your way is the only way or the way that Jesus would do it is most often simply a gratuitous assertion, but it becomes even worse when it becomes attached to theology.

Unfortunately for Adventism, Spectrum and Adventist Today magazine and online have become havens for this kind of politics as theology. Thinking that Progressive Adventist is more about politics then theology and then equating the politics with theology has left them with with little momentum to deal with the actual theological problems in the Adventist church.

Social Justice, Politics and Useful Idiots

It has been a while since I broached the topic of Social Justice in my article Adventism and Social Justice. In that article I pointed out that the term social justice is most frequently used as a code word for political socialist ideas. I pointed out that it is, when used mostly undefined, which of course makes it perfect for political manipulation. After all words that sound good have often been used by totalitarian regimes attempting to persuade people that their methods were simply ways the government can do good. The most obvious example being: “From each, according to his ability; to each, according to his need” by Karl Marx. The Wikipedia gives us the whole paragraph of Marx’s famous slogan:

The complete paragraph containing Marx's statement of the creed in the 'Critique of the Gotha Program' is as follows:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

The slogan which sounds so magnanimous and compassionate produced communist tyrannies that killed multiple millions of people and enslaved their populations. A slogan no matter how good sounding often carries with it implications that a good hearted person would never think of.

Recently certain Progressive Adventists have taken to attacking those who have pointed out the ulterior motives behind the term social justice. Not by using a reasoned argument to show that social justice has no connection to socialism, communism, or Nazi sympathizers, after all those are all actual historical connections, no they attack the person who brings the historical connections to the public light.

Recently Spectrum magazine online has posted two articles related to social justice and Glenn Beck. Two interesting things about those articles are that they are both factually wrong about Glenn Beck and neither article defines social justice. The first article Kill the. . .Huh?: Health Care Reform, Jesus, and the Sabbath by Alexander Carpenter where he writes:

This is the point: Jesus, by saying He acted through God's power to heal the man, undermined the power of the religious leaders. It was their domain. Saying who could receive grace and healing was where they got their power (and money) in society. When anyone works for social justice, structural change to our society to make it more egalitarian, they continue to the work of Jesus. And it's dangerous. Note: Glenn Beck's new crusade against Jim Wallis and churches that advocate social justice.

Of course Glenn Beck had no crusade against Jim Wallis, Jim Wallis attacked Glenn Beck. As the New York Times reported:

Last week, the conservative broadcaster Glenn Beck called on Christians to leave their churches if they hear preaching about social or economic justice, saying they were code words for Communism and Nazism.

This week the remarks prompted outrage from several Christian bloggers. The Rev. Jim Wallis, who leads the liberal Christian antipoverty group Sojourners, in Washington, called on Christians to leave Glenn Beck.

“What he has said attacks the very heart of our Christian faith, and Christians should no longer watch his show,” Mr. Wallis wrote on his blog, God’s Politics. “His show should now be in the same category as Howard Stern.”

Interestingly Jim Wallis is a Marxist by his own admission. He is as DiscovertheNetworks.org summarizes:

• Activist preacher and editor of the leftwing Christian magazine Sojourners
• Democratic Party operative
• Apologist for communist atrocities in Cambodia and Vietnam
• Dedicated foe of capitalism
• Contends that Biblical scripture calls for large central government to aid the poor
  

He is also an advisor to President Obama and advisor to the Democratic National Committee. One thing for certain is once he attacked Glenn Beck he and his blog got a lot more publicity. As Jim Wallis said in his open letter to Glenn Beck, Wallis believes the heart of the gospel is social justice:

“Instead, let's have a conversation about whether social justice "is a perversion of the Gospel," as you say, or at the heart of the Gospel, as I say.”

Most of the readers of this blog are Christians yet how many of you would ever define the gospel as social justice. Few if any I would guess, the heart of the gospel is Jesus Christ, the incarnation of God who came into the world to reconcile the world to God. The gospel is not the Golden Rule, “do unto others as you would have them do to you”, because there is no salvation there, no reconciliation to God there. The heart of the gospel is the love, forgiveness and acceptance of God that is seen through the life of Jesus Christ and the assurance through His resurrection that God has the power to give us eternal life. Social justice no matter how it is defined is not the gospel. And when social justice is defined by communists it is far a field from anything the Bible encourages.

Remember social justice was the slogan of the Jew hating pro Nazi Reverend Charles E. Coughlin (1891-1979), here is a portion of his biography from the Social Security website:

Father Coughlin first took to the airwaves in 1926, broadcasting weekly sermons over the radio. By the early 1930s the content of his broadcasts had shifted from theology to economics and politics. Just as the rest of the nation was obsessed by matters economic and political in the aftermath of the Depression, so too was Father Coughlin. Coughlin had a well-developed theory of what he termed "social justice," predicated on monetary "reforms." He began as an early Roosevelt supporter, coining a famous expression, that the nation's choice was between "Roosevelt or ruin." Later in the 1930s he turned against FDR and became one of the president's harshest critics. His program of "social justice" was a very radical challenge to capitalism and to many of the political institutions of his day…

Father Coughlin's influence on Depression-era America was enormous. Millions of Americans listened to his weekly radio broadcast. At the height of his popularity, one-third of the nation was tuned into his weekly broadcasts. In the early 1930s, Coughlin was, arguably, one of the most influential men in America. Although his core message was one of economic populism, his sermons also included attacks on prominent Jewish figures--attacks that many people considered evidence of anti-Semitism. His broadcasts became increasingly controversial for this reason, and in 1940 his superiors in the Catholic Church forced him to stop his broadcasts and return to his work as a parish priest.

His published magazine by the name Social Justice. Here are a few excepts from PBS.org

In November of 1934, Coughlin set up his own organization, the National Union for Social Justice. Two years later he began publishing a nationally circulating paper called "Social Justice" and, as his public identification with Roosevelt's New Deal politics waned, he began to seek closer grounds with some of the most right-wing and reactionary groups in the country.

…By 1938, the pages of "Social Justice" were frequently filled with accusations about Jewish control of America's financial institutions. In the summer of that year, Coughlin published a version of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion." A virulently anti-Semitic piece of propaganda that had originated in Russia at the turn of the century, the "Protocols" accused Jews of planning to seize control of the world. Jewish leaders were shocked by Coughlin's actions.

The owner of WMCA, the New York station that carried Coughlin's show, refused to broadcast Coughlin's next radio message. The Nazi press reacted to the news with fury: "America is Not Allowed to Hear the Truth" declared one headline. "Jewish organizations camouflaged as American...have conducted such a campaign...that the radio station company has proceeded to muzzle the well-loved Father Coughlin." A "New York Times" correspondent in Germany noted that Coughlin had become for the moment "the hero of Nazi Germany."

Coughlin legacy lives on in the American Nazi Party whose website states:

Although National Socialism encompasses many various issues of concern to Aryan Americans, including a healthy environment, children's welfare, and freedom of belief without fear of System persecution...the two main tenants of National Socialism embodies the Struggle for Aryan Racial survival, and Social Justice for White Working Class people throughout our land.

Granted they modify social justice for white people but then when you don’t have a definition that is easy to do.

In Germany the The Social Democratic Party of Germany is the socialist party in Germany though the blend of capitalism and socialism is apparent, their party platform also includes social justice, as Wikipedia states:

The current party platform of the SPD espouses the goal of social democracy, which is seen as a vision of a societal arrangement in which freedom and social justice are paramount.

The Communist Party USA espouses social justice:

In the new millennium, the CPUSA maintains its commitment to the same political ideas that drove the Russian Revolution, but it embraces a more peaceful approach to creating change and social justice. Among the ideas it actively supports are socialized medicine, improved SOCIAL SECURITY benefits, stronger legislation to protect the environment, and full funding for education. The party also seeks greater cooperation with other political groups, believing that the best way to effect change is through the strength of broad-based coalitions.

Why we see that the Venezuelan Ambassador in his address points to the social justice of Hugo Chavez:

Inspired by the values of social justice, democracy and peace, in the name of the President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez Frias, I wish to reaffirm to you our support of the UN, from a position that is critical but unambiguous and totally consistent with its highest goals.

I hope you get the idea because I could go on and on with these examples. Do any of the readers of this article really think that all these and other instances by nations and political organizations are referring to Christian beliefs, to the heart of the gospel? Are these racists and dictators really in harmony with the teachings of Christ just because they use the term social justice?

Of course they are not in harmony with Christ in whatever their definition of social justice is and that leads me to the second article where Ryan Bell sets out to make public service video’s with people saying they are social justice Christians. Again, without giving any definition of social justice. Just as with the with Alexander Carpenter article Bell has an article on the Huffington Post which again misinterprets Glenn Beck.

Glenn Beck, of course, is opposed to any interpretation of Christianity that would imply that people have a responsibility to take care of each other in any corporate sense. Let me be specific.

You might think that when he gets specific he would quote Glenn Beck but he does not, he does go on to say more fictional things however:

Finally, when the church makes acts of charity the only way to be involved in the world, it leaves systemic injustice -- and I would say, evil -- unchallenged. I have come to the conclusion that focusing exclusively on charity actually allows injustice to flourish. Providers of charity become those who service the wreckage of an economic system that leaves millions of people destitute. By holding to this theology of charity alone, Christians actually facilitate injustice rather than challenging it.

First he assumes that Beck has said that churches are only to be involved in charity as if the members of the churches would do nothing else, they won’t vote they won’t pursue any changes etc. Then Bell moves onto the same type of social justice we saw from Father Coughlin, and all those nations and political parties mentioned above. So we honestly have to wonder what he really means by social justice and why if it is so clearly Biblical and gospel centered it can’t be defined when it is used. The only answer I can see is that the term is meant as a political code word for socialized government just as it is used throughout the world: pretending the term to be a Christian virtue. After all how often have we seen the political liberals and Progressives come out in support of Christians in the past 20 years? That certainly seems strange. It is however totally in character for the political left to attack the political right like Glenn Beck, though even though he is a Latter Day Saint his references to God and the Bible are far more often and heart felt than any other talk show host it seems very strange that he is being so attacked by other Christians like Pastor Bell. That to me is very indicative of political ideology supplanting Christianity and frankly complete dishonesty about what Glenn Beck has been saying.

Here are a couple of important links for further reading:

Glenn Beck: What Is 'Social Justice'?

The second link I was going to use seems to be having trouble so I will just post the article here for now, from First Things Magazine December 2000 by Michael Novak

Last year marked the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Friedrich Hayek, among whose many contributions to the twentieth century was a sustained and animated put–down of most of the usages of the term “social justice.” I have never encountered a writer, religious or philosophical, who directly answers Hayek’s criticisms. In trying to understand social justice in our own time, there is no better place to start than with the man who, in his own intellectual life, exemplified the virtue whose common misuse he so deplored.

The trouble with “social justice” begins with the very meaning of the term. Hayek points out that whole books and treatises have been written about social justice without ever offering a definition of it. It is allowed to float in the air as if everyone will recognize an instance of it when it appears. This vagueness seems indispensable. The minute one begins to define social justice, one runs into embarrassing intellectual difficulties. It becomes, most often, a term of art whose operational meaning is, “We need a law against that.” In other words, it becomes an instrument of ideological intimidation, for the purpose of gaining the power of legal coercion.

Hayek points out another defect of twentieth–century theories of social justice. Most authors assert that they use it to designate a virtue (a moral virtue, by their account). But most of the descriptions they attach to it appertain to impersonal states of affairs—“high unemployment” or “inequality of incomes” or “lack of a living wage” are cited as instances of “social injustice.” Hayek goes to the heart of the matter: social justice is either a virtue or it is not. If it is, it can properly be ascribed only to the reflective and deliberate acts of individual persons. Most who use the term, however, ascribe it not to individuals but to social systems. They use “social justice” to denote a regulative principle of order; again, their focus is not virtue but power.

The term “social justice” was first used in 1840 by a Sicilian priest, Luigi Taparelli d’Azeglio, and given prominence by Antonio Rosmini–Serbati in La Costitutione Civile Secondo la Giustizia Sociale in 1848. John Stuart Mill gave this anthropomorphic approach to social questions almost canonical status for modern thinkers thirteen years later in Utilitarianism:

Society should treat all equally well who have deserved equally well of it, that is, who have deserved equally well absolutely. This is the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice; towards which all institutions, and the efforts of all virtuous citizens, should be made in the utmost degree to converge. [Emphasis added.]

Mill imagines that societies can be virtuous in the same way that individuals can be. Perhaps in highly personalized societies of the ancient type, such a usage might make sense—under kings, tyrants, or tribal chiefs, for example, where one person made all the crucial social decisions. Curiously, however, the demand for the term “social justice” did not arise until modern times, in which more complex societies operate by impersonal rules applied with equal force to all under “the rule of law.”

The birth of the concept of social justice coincided with two other shifts in human consciousness: the “death of God” and the rise of the ideal of the command economy. When God “died,” people began to trust a conceit of reason and its inflated ambition to do what even God had not deigned to do: construct a just social order. The divinization of reason found its extension in the command economy; reason (that is, science) would command and humankind would collectively follow. The death of God, the rise of science, and the command economy yielded “scientific socialism.” Where reason would rule, the intellectuals would rule. (Or so some thought. Actually, the lovers of power would rule.)

From this line of reasoning it follows that “social justice” would have its natural end in a command economy in which individuals are told what to do, so that it would always be possible to identify those in charge and to hold them responsible. This notion presupposes that people are guided by specific external directions rather than internalized, personal rules of just conduct. It further implies that no individual should be held responsible for his relative position. To assert that he is responsible would be “blaming the victim.” It is the function of “social justice” to blame somebody else, to blame the system, to blame those who (mythically) “control” it. As Leszek Kolakowski wrote in his magisterial history of communism, the fundamental paradigm of Communist ideology is guaranteed to have wide appeal: you suffer; your suffering is caused by powerful others; these oppressors must be destroyed. We need to hold someone accountable, Hayek notes, even when we recognize that such a protest is absurd.

We are not wrong, Hayek concedes, in perceiving that the effects of the individual choices and open processes of a free society are not distributed according to a recognizable principle of justice. The meritorious are sometimes tragically unlucky; the evil prosper; good ideas don’t pan out, and sometimes those who backed them, however noble their vision, lose their shirts. But a system that values both trial–and–error and free choice is in no position to guarantee outcomes in advance. Furthermore, no one individual (and certainly no politburo or congressional committee or political party) can design rules that would treat each person according to his merit or even his need. No one has sufficient knowledge of all relevant personal details, and as Kant writes, no general rule has a grip fine enough to grasp them.

Hayek made a sharp distinction, however, between those failures of justice that involve breaking agreed–upon rules of fairness and those that consist in results that no one designed, foresaw, or commanded. The first sort of failure earned his severe moral condemnation. No one should break the rules; freedom imposes high moral responsibilities. The second, insofar as it springs from no willful or deliberate act, seemed to him not a moral matter but an inescapable feature of all societies and of nature itself. When labeling unfortunate results as “social injustices” leads to an attack upon the free society, with the aim of moving it toward a command society, Hayek strenuously opposes the term. The historical records of the command economies of Nazism and communism justify his revulsion at that way of thinking.

Hayek recognized that at the end of the nineteenth century, when the term “social justice” came to prominence, it was first used as an appeal to the ruling classes to attend to the needs of the new masses of uprooted peasants who had become urban workers. To this he had no objection. What he did object to was careless thinking. Careless thinkers forget that justice is by definition social. Such carelessness becomes positively destructive when the term “social” no longer describes the product of the virtuous actions of many individuals, but rather the utopian goal toward which all institutions and all individuals are “made in the utmost degree to converge” by coercion. In that case, the “social” in “social justice” refers to something that emerges not organically and spontaneously from the rule–abiding behavior of free individuals, but rather from an abstract ideal imposed from above.

Given the strength of Hayek’s argument against the term, it may seem odd to assert that he himself was a practitioner of social justice—even if one adds, as one must, “social justice rightly understood.” Still, Hayek plainly saw in his vocation as a thinker a life of service to his fellow men. Helping others to understand the intellectual keys to a free and creative society is to render them a great benefit. Hayek’s intellectual work was not merely a matter of his own self–interest, narrowly understood, but was aimed at the good of the human city as a whole. It was a work of justice in a social dimension—in other words, a work of virtue. To explain what Hayek did, then, we need a conception of social justice that Hayek never considered.

Social justice rightly understood is a specific habit of justice that is “social” in two senses. First, the skills it requires are those of inspiring, working with, and organizing others to accomplish together a work of justice. These are the elementary skills of civil society, through which free citizens exercise self–government by doing for themselves (that is, without turning to government) what needs to be done. Citizens who take part commonly explain their efforts as attempts to “give back” for all that they have received from the free society, or to meet the obligations of free citizens to think and act for themselves. The fact that this activity is carried out with others is one reason for designating it as a specific type of justice; it requires a broader range of social skills than do acts of individual justice.

The second characteristic of “social justice rightly understood” is that it aims at the good of the city, not at the good of one agent only. Citizens may band together, as in pioneer days, to put up a school or build a bridge. They may get together in the modern city to hold a bake sale for some charitable cause, to repair a playground, to clean up the environment, or for a million other purposes that their social imaginations might lead them to. Hence the second sense in which this habit of justice is “social”: its object, as well as its form, primarily involves the good of others.

One happy characteristic of this definition of the virtue of social justice is that it is ideologically neutral. It is as open to people on the left as on the right or in the center. Its field of activity may be literary, scientific, religious, political, economic, cultural, athletic, and so on, across the whole spectrum of human social activities. The virtue of social justice allows for people of good will to reach different—even opposing—practical judgments about the material content of the common good (ends) and how to get there (means). Such differences are the stuff of politics.

We must rule out any use of “social justice” that does not attach to the habits (that is, virtues) of individuals. Social justice is a virtue, an attribute of individuals, or it is a fraud. And if Tocqueville is right that “the principle of association is the first law of democracy,” then social justice is the first virtue of democracy, for it is the habit of putting the principle of association into daily practice. Neglect of it, Hayek wrote, has moral consequences:

It is one of the greatest weaknesses of our time that we lack the patience and faith to build up voluntary organizations for purposes which we value highly, and immediately ask the government to bring about by coercion (or with means raised by coercion) anything that appears as desirable to large numbers. Yet nothing can have a more deadening effect on real participation by the citizens than if government, instead of merely providing the essential framework of spontaneous growth, becomes monolithic and takes charge of the provision for all needs, which can be provided for only by the common effort of many.

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Michael Novak holds the George Frederick Jewett Chair in Religion and Public Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. This essay is adapted from a lecture delivered at the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought.