Ryan Bell is back in the news as he was recently interviewed by the Christian Post. In the article entitled: Former pastor Ryan Bell on why he abandoned his Christian faith: I gave it my best shotBell gives us some clues about how his politics became his religion and the new Progressivism displaced his Chrisitan faith. I doubt he understands how this really happened to him but it is something many of us have warned against for the last several years.
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all profess an all-knowing and all-powerful supernatural being: God. Progressives may say they do not belong to a religion because they do not believe in God. But Progressivism professes an all-powerful State. The State is Progressives' god and determines what is moral and immoral and has the power to destroy whom it wants.https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/08/progressivism_takes_its_place_among_the_major_religions.html
Toward the beginning of his interview Ryan Bell says:
" Another way to think about this is that conservative Christianity is a very bounded community. There are clear markers of who is in and who is out. Part of the theological and ministry project I found myself a part of was widening that community to include more people and a broader analysis of politics. Eventually, it widens so far that it includes everyone and at that point, I didn't feel the need for Christianity, per se. It was just the human family.
Notice how his supposed broader analysis of politics led him to feel no need of Christianity. Progressives often feel that they have the truth on politics, that truth becomes their truth and their believe in their political views is their new religion. Bell continues:
CP: How do you describe yourself now? Would you call yourself an atheist?Bell: There's no one identity that perfectly captures how I think of myself today. I am an atheist, for sure, but there's so much more to me than that. I'm a humanist in the sense that I don't believe anyone is coming to save us. We are the ones we're waiting for. I'm also a democratic socialist, which describes how I understand politics. My humanism and my democratic socialism go hand in hand. I can't separate existential questions about meaning and value from political questions about who has access to a materially good life.
Bell's Progressivism led him to socialism and socialism to humanism which is actually a religion
Roy Wood Sellars, who drafted Humanist Manifesto I, wrote in The Humanist (Vol. I, 1941, p. 5), an article “Humanism as a Religion,” in which he stated:Undeniably there is something imaginative and daring in bringing together in one phrase two such profoundly symbolic words as humanism and religion. An intimate union is foreshadowed in which religion will become humanistic and humanism religious. And I believe that such a synthesis is imperative if humanity is ever to achieve a firm and adequate understanding of itself and its cosmic situation…. Religious humanism rests upon the bedrock of a decision that it is, in the long run, saner and wiser to face facts than to live in a world of fable.https://www.thenewamerican.com/reviews/opinion/item/10697-is-humanism-a-religion
With Bell's new Progressive religion it is the way of integrity:
...Do you think this trend is being driven by the current secularization of American culture?Bell: The short answer is, yes, I think there is probably a positive feedback loop of some sort at work here. Secularization is driven by people determined to live their lives out from under old norms that turned out to be very exclusive and harmful to large swaths of the population. That secularization, in turn, encourages others to step out and live their lives with integrity and authenticity. If we take secularization to mean the de-religionization of America, then I think this means people are increasingly comfortable re-evaluating their ethics without reference to religion. People like Joshua Harris have done incredible harm to people by telling them that who they are isn't trustworthy or good. When you start to see the falsehood of that narrative come to life in the lives of the people you've influenced then yeah, that's either going to force you to question the foundations of your belief system or it will force you deeper into denial. Thankfully (from my perspective), Mr. Harris has chosen the path of integrity.
Democrats have traditionally had a strong base of religious voters. A decade ago, more than 80 percent of self-identified Democrats were affiliated with some sort of religion, according to the Pew Research Center. The party was nearly one-quarter Catholic and nearly one-half Protestant, including mainline, evangelical, and historically black denominations. By 2014, those numbers had shifted significantly: Pew found that 28 percent of Democrats identified as religiously unaffiliated.
One of the closing paragraphs of the Atlantic article sums it up:
"Perhaps the takeaway from this data, then, is that the Democratic Party is going through a transformative moment of both sentiment and identity. Many liberals are feeling anger, and finding ways to express that. The elite part of the party, especially those who are well educated, is most engaged. And for these people, progressive politics may offer a form of meaning making, especially if they are disconnected from other forms of ethnic or religious identity."
It is pretty clear that Progressivism will lead to two things. 1. the removal of Christianity and 2. Progression toward socialism. As Bell says. "My humanism and my democratic socialism go hand in hand." We always have to remember that in socialism the democratic part is just window dressing.
Bell is on the path to the more Perfect savior of humanity via socialism and communism. We all know the old Soviet Union and its attitude of Atheism the political progressivism of Ryan Bell and frankly, many of the writers at Adventist Today and Spectrum are on that same path.
For Further reading consider this article from Discover the Networks:
Marxist doctrine holds that just as society evolved from feudalism to capitalism, it will inexorably progress still further to socialism and eventually communism. Communists consider socialism to be an intermediary step between capitalism (out of which socialism is said to grow) and communism. That is, communism (whose motto is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”) is deemed a further development, or “higher stage,” of socialism (whose motto is “From each according to his ability, to each according to his deeds”). Communism, in other words, is viewed as the more “perfect” of two systems that both advocate public ownership of the means of production, centralized economic planning, and the widespread redistribution of wealth.
The socialist principle of distribution according to deeds, or the quality and quantity of work that people perform, stands in marked contrast to the communist principle of distribution according to people’s needs. The former, because it accepts deed-based distribution of wealth, is considered easier to implement in a capitalist society without large-scale overhauls of existing political and economic structures. In essence, socialists view capitalism as a viable economic mechanism whose reins must simply be transferred from the currently dominant “oppressor class” that misuses capitalism to exploit workers, into the hands of the “worker class” which could use the system for laudable ends. http://archive.discoverthenetworks.org/guideDesc.asp?catid=115&type=issue
There has been a lot of talk in recent months on Adventist websites like Spectrum and Adventist Today about “social justice”. Unfortunately many Christians have bought into the idea of social justice that is being delivered through Progressive political partisans. What they proclaim is a Christ-less social justice it is in fact Marxism also known as socialism.
We are living in a time when political Progressives are attempting to bring together science and religion and government. The science is derived from what is often called environmental justice which includes the idea that humanity is causing global warming and the more definable problem of pollution. But since most western countries have made great improvements in regards to pollution the global warming/climate change hysteria has largely taken over the pollution concerns.
What happens to the true believer in man made global warming, especially when it can be seen that pursuing the issue of global warming will also help instill their socialist political views upon nations. To fight global warming is to fight for socialism. To fight for environmental justice is to fight against capitalism. To destroy capitalism is to destroy the economic growth of nations which would in effect decrease the greenhouse gases which they feel are causing global warming. They reason how can one be a religious person, how can one be a good Christian if one does not accept these principles, socialism, global warming, environment and social and economic justice?
6. Capitalism, and the imperialist system that develops upon its economic foundations, is the main cause of human poverty, exploitation, violence and suffering in the modern world…
7. The gigantic scale of the existing productive forces and the extraordinary advances in technology are more than sufficient not only to abolish poverty but also to guarantee every human being on the planet a high standard of living…
9. The irreconcilable conflict between the profit system and the very survival of humanity finds, in a literal sense, its most noxious expression in the crisis of global warming and the natural environment. The cause of this crisis lies not, as is falsely claimed by the bourgeois media, with population growth. Nor is it the result of science and technology – whose development is critical to the advance of human civilization – but, rather, with their misuse by an irrational and obsolete economic order…
10. The solution to the spreading economic crisis and the deteriorating social position of the working class lies not in the reform of capitalism, for it is beyond reform. The crisis is of a systemic and historical character. As feudalism gave way to capitalism, capitalism must give way to socialism...
When you read through the Socialist statement of principles you can quickly see most of the things that people talk about as social, economic and environmental justice are covered as being problems of Capitalism. For instance today we are hearing about the law in Arizona designed to curb illegal immigration. The idea of borders according to the socialist is again part of the effect of Capitalism:
The source of the contradiction between what is and what should be is a global economic system based on private ownership of the means of production, and the irrational division of the world into rival nation-states. (from statement 7 above).
All ills it seems to the socialist are rooted in the United States of America’s Capitalist traditions.
12. The Socialist Equality Party unequivocally condemns the “War on Terror” as a fraudulent pretext for the use of military violence by the American corporate and financial elite in pursuit of its global ambitions.
13. The SEP demands the immediate withdrawal of all US military forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, and calls for an end to threats against Iran and other countries, which, for one or another reason, are seen by the White House and Pentagon as obstacles to US imperialism’s global interests…
33. An essential precondition for the forging of this unity is the unconditional defense of the democratic rights of immigrants living in the United States. The Socialist Equality Party stands for the unconditional right of workers of every country to live and work where they choose. We call for full democratic and citizenship rights for all immigrants, including the 12 million or more now classified as undocumented or “illegal.”…
There is no doubt that socialism is on the rise in the United States, Newsweek magazine after Obama’s election produced a cover and the article “we are all socialists now” . The question you might ask is do you see a real difference between the political Progressives, the Liberal Democrats and the ideas of the socialists. They all use the term democracy or democratic rights but honestly with their ideology as expressed above what does democracy mean. Illegal aliens should have democratic rights and there should be no borders and if in democracy I can vote to take away your property since property is equated to imperialism and capitalism and the destruction of the world, what does citizenship even mean.
Ron Osborn a frequent contributor to Spectrum Magazine online says:
“Against the assumptions of laissez-faire capitalism—which posits a world of unlimited human needs, individualism, and competitive rivalry for scarce resources—Jesus declares that we are stewards rather than owners of property, that God’s creation is abundant and our earthly needs limited, and that God’s liberation of Israel from slavery is normative for how we should treat the poor among us.” (The Christ of the Fifth Way: Recovering the Politics of Jesus, Part III: Kingdom Come
Apparently in his mind a steward can’t be an owner, but as we know from other New Testament reference that is not true, compare the parable of the buried treasure.
“In capitalism, entrepreneurs pay producers as little as possible and charge consumers as much as they can. Over time, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Eventually, neither can afford to buy or sell and the economy “crashes and burns.”
From a capitalist point of view, this is a good thing. Like forest fires that consume the dead and weak, recessions and depressions eliminate sick businesses that should have disappeared much earlier. But these economic downturns also burn people.”
Actually a recent report showed that the rich get poorer and the poor get richer, as Money reported in 2006:
“The evidence is in a new Fed study of family finances, the latest in a triennial series. It shows modest but clear signs of incomes converging rather than diverging. Between 2001 and 2004 (the most recent year for which data are available), incomes of the poorest 20 percent of families increased while incomes of the richest 20 percent fell. Basically, the poorest families' share of total incomes grew, and the richest families' share shrank. Incomes became just a little less unequal.”
In fact through most of the 20th century the poor were getting richer and moving into the middle class rather than the middle class moving into the poor. Most of us don’t need statistics to realize the truth in the above statement as we can remember what we grew up with, how our childhood homes compare to what we live in today. Of course if socialism gets its way the statement the rich get richer and the poor get poorer will actually be true. The rich of course will be those of the ruling socialist government class and the poor being everyone else. (see also the article: An economist looks at the numbers The Myth of the Declining Middle Class Stephen Rose Ph.D, June 9, 2008 )
Look out world: the rich are getting richer by helping the poor get richer. The New York Times warns us that “Big Banks Draw Profits From Microloans to Poor.”…
But profits aren’t made on anyone’s backs. They are made by creating value and are a sign of mutual gain. Nike profits by making great shoes. Amazon.com profits by running a quality online bookstore. McDonald’s profits by serving delicious food to anyone willing to spend a few bucks. They all profit by making us better off (otherwise we would patronize their competitors). Well, microloan companies profit by providing the poor with a service they desperately need at prices they willingly pay.
It is not a real surprise that the overall emphasis of political liberals/Progressives at Spectrum magazine…since it has been going on for years. But you have to realize that that political view they are using when dealing with the news of the day. Thus they support social justice even though they don’t define it and they refuse to believe that it has anything to do with socialism/Marxism. Their religion is heavily influenced by their politics so they were very opposed to the Christianity of the conservatives and highly supported of the Christian political mix of the liberal democrats AKA political Progressives. (see Obamas Faith based programs pushing global warming climate change, green issues)
This is what we see today, a Christ-less social justice, a Christ-less socialism. Socialism has lead to two of the most destructive movements of the 20th century, Communism and Nazism. Yet the basis, the socialist ideals are still being retained and now our fellow Adventists have begun to accept those ideals, the same ideals as we see in the Socialist Principles linked above. Only now clothed in the garments of Christianity because while socialism has never worked, even the socialist democracies of Europe our rapidly failing, the true believers feel that if only they are in charge the ideals will succeed. Yet these Christians are actually supporting the Christ-less socialist of the Progressive movement and Christ-less social justice and Christ-less socialism are the same thing and they cannot produce the freedom that is man’s God given right. The right which through most of history governments have trampled. Yet strangely now those born under those freedoms stand against them and embrace the belief that government will solve the problems of this world.
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.
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-eraAmerica 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."
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.
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.
Inspired by the values of social justice, democracy and peace, in the name of the President of the BolivarianRepublic 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:
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.
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.
Today in an article on the Spectrum Website entitled: Theological Harmony in New Orleans By Bonnie Dwyer, she reports on the joint meeting Adventist Theological Society and the Adventist Society for Religious Studies, the article states in the opening paragraph:
Adventism’s two theological society presidents agreed on the biblical call for social justice and the significance of Scripture on people’s lives during a historic session in which the two societies met to not only share a meal but to present ideas for discussion.
She does not define what “social justice” means and that is a problem. Today it is often a code word for redistribution of wealth through the government. As this article The Scandal of Social Work Education NAS Study says:
Use of the term "social justice" today generally equates with the advocacy of more egalitarian access to income through state-sponsored redistribution. The phrase is also frequently used to justify new entitlement rights for individuals and whole categories of people, i.e., legally enforceable claims of individuals or groups against the state itself. ("Economic justice" is even a stronger term, largely confined to populist and radical rhetoric.)
Here is a University of Wisconsin student newspaper’s definition of social justice in response to an article by Dr. Hansen mentioned who asserted social justice is misleading rhetoric.
Dr. Hansen’s article proposes, “until ‘social justice’ can be precisely and understandably defined, programs to promote this goal cannot hope to succeed.” Well, is it really that difficult to define it? Social justice is a system, a process, and an end result where all members of society have equal access to resources and benefit from them equally without regard to their identity, specifically race, gender, sexual orientation, ability, religion, class and age.
You notice that the student newspaper author describes the goal not the system. Socialism and communism are the two most commonly used systems or processes which claim to end with this utopian goal. We know from experience that neither system ends in the utopian goal however. Notice the newspaper author included “ability” in the list, let us assume that the government had a medical school. By the social justice definition above anyone could go and demand equal access to the resources and the benefit of the medical school education whether they had any ability or not. We could hope that the person with no ability would not graduate from the school…but if you can’t differentiate due to ability everyone needs to graduate. Achievement and ability mean nothing under this type of social justice.
From Sharpton to Wright, social justice has come to mean redressing the wrongs of the past in the form of government benefits or reparations. The expression has a hint of retribution as in “you owe us.” In actuality, the words haven’t any real meaning. There are always those who grieve, and as long as the government attempts to satisfy those with a gripe, the plaintive cry for social justice will have irresistible appeal.
Fair and proper administration of lawsconforming to the natural law that all persons, irrespective of ethnic origin, gender, possessions, race, religion, etc., are to be treated equally and without prejudice. See also civil rights.
I guess if that is the definition that the two theological societies are agreeing upon that is good. They are agreeing upon the most basic idea or civil rights found in the latter half of the 20th century. Hardly a newsworthy proclamation unless one of those groups had been opposing civil rights. I think common sense tells us that that is not really the meaning of social justice that is intended, but we have to hold out that possibility sense those involved seem unable to define what they mean…thought when you can’t define your meaning the chances become much higher that the use is a code word otherwise why not define your terms.
"Social justice" is a phrase currently often employed by "emergent church" types who, in their reaction to the Church's nonparticipation (actual or perceived) in the world, suddenly believe they're the only ones interested in helping the poor and feeding the hungry.
Apparently among many, these problems -- and the world entirely? -- are viewed to have begun yesterday. There's no perspective of history, the fact that people in both the Church and governments have been aware and trying to alleviate poverty before -- especially when it comes to the failed attempts of federal governments to overextend their constitutional (and worse, Biblical) bounds and take the place of the citizenry and religious institutions in terms of charity.
Among such "social justice" advocates, there's also very little perspective of the actual Scripture in these quasi-utopian visions, which indirectly contradict the Bible's portrayal of the rest of human history.
Christ-followers certainly disagree on what end-times events occur when, but there is (or was) an overall consensus against the notion that people would eradicate poverty, hunger, all that sort of thing, without Christ or at least before He comes back to take a look at our planetary renovations.
But now we're back to the same stuff -- and while it's very, very true that Christ-followers are to be a means of "common grace" toward the poor and abused among nonbelievers, this is not the be-all-and-end-all of the Gospel. "Social justice" is only an outgrowth: at the center should be the actual truths of God as Creator, humans as rebels against Him, and Christ as redeemed. Are these professing evangelicals using "social justice" as a means toward proclaiming the Gospel? Or do they operate completely the opposite?
As it is, many of them are advocating a clone religion of Christianity And, as His Utter Subliminity Screwtape (from C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters) said is such an effective strategy. In this case, the "new" idea is Christianity And Social Justice -- and it's not so new, either; it's a mere strain of "liberation theology" liberalism that's somehow been accepted as legitimately evangelical. (10 Dr. Ransom at 10:52 AM on Jul 22:)
A zero-sum game is one where one person or group wins and the other players or group of players lose. It is often wrongly assumed that our economic system known as Capitalism is a zero-sum game. A good quote on that subject is found on this site:
Capitalism means that no one is subject to arbitrary coercion by others. Because we have the option of simply refraining from signing a contract or doing a business deal if we prefer some other solution, the only way of getting rich in a free market is by giving people something they want, something they will pay for of their own free will. Both parties to a free exchange have to feel that they benefit from it; otherwise there won't be any deal. Economics, then, is not a zero-sum game. The bigger a person's income in a market economy, the more that person has done to offer people what they want. Bill Gates and Madonna earn millions, but they don't steal that money; they earn it by offering software and music that a lot of people think are worth paying for. In this sense, they are essentially our servants. Firms and individuals struggle to develop better goods and more efficient ways of providing for our needs. The alternative is for the government to take our resources and then decide which types of behavior to encourage. The only question is why the government knows what we want and what we consider important in our lives better than we ourselves do.
In this analogy Adventism is the construct we are working within. Inside the Adventist church we are able to influence others but not by coercion. In this marketplace of ideas we succeed when we offer people something that they want or need. Based upon the free exchange of our ideas and their ideas for the benefit of all involved. We don’t have to take their ideas and they don’t have to take our ideas, ideas that benefit the person will be accepted those which don’t won’t find a buyer. Adventism is dealing in the wider Christian marketplace of ideas where we struggle to develop better ideas and services then other churches, though for this article we will just deal within the Adventist church.
Before we go on however we have to look at what the alternative is. For instance in economics the main alternative to Capitalism is Socialism. Socialism being that defined as: social organization in which the means of producing and distributing goods is owned collectively or by a centralized government that often plans and controls the economy. In Adventism this would be the Adventist leadership or bureaucracy. Thus the leadership would say this is what we believe and this is what you are to believe in Adventism. Since Adventism does not have the force of government, it has no IRS to collect your tithes and offerings, no prisons to jail dissenters, the force of the Adventist socialist leadership would be in the exclusion of membership of church members. Since in Adventism we are dealing in the marketplace of ideas, we are talking about the exclusion from the Adventist marketplace of ideas. A person or group of people could be excluded but still allowed to go and sit and be preached at or they could still go and sing in corporate song services and certainly they could still give to the Adventist leadership. They would simply be restricted when it comes to the expression of their ideas.
Adventism is not a zero-sum game however, it is not a magisterium, it does not take what ideas it accepts and redistributes them as it sees fit. If a Progressive Adventist becomes a traditional Adventist or a traditional Adventist becomes a Progressive Adventist it is not a win lose situation. In fact there are many or maybe even most Adventists holding to ideas between the quintessential Traditional or Progressive Adventist perspectives. Often we would not even agree upon what each idea is that makes up a Progressive or a Traditional Adventist even among those who label themselves as Progressive or Traditional Adventist when describing their own beliefs.
Since we are not a zero-sum game the various factions should not have to worry about any defections from their camp to the other camp. After all each group could go out and recruit more new members from outside of Adventism. So we are left with this marketplace of ideas, a place where ideas that serve people the best will be most accepted. As in Capitalism we are essentially servants who need to be offering ideas and services that people want and need and are willing to expend their time and energy to become involved with. At some point those being served will want to market themselves and become servants and then besides their time and energy they may offer their money to improve the product. Capitalism is effective because it creates wealth; it is not about redistributing wealth because that is a very temporary solution and much closer to the zero-sum game idea. The church that is creating a wealth of ideas stimulates more people to do more and create more ideas and ways to serve.
Does this seem elementary? Perhaps though today fewer and fewer people believe in Capitalism, usually because they don’t know what it is or because they think that a big government who tells them what to do is a better solution. Why that would be I have no idea, perhaps it is because some people won’t do anything to help someone else unless they are forced to do it. So if government forces them to help others maybe they will actually help some more people; though since the socialism does not create wealth ultimately they defeat their purpose. So it may be inside Adventism where some feel that the Adventist leadership simply knows what is best and they will shower down their wisdom upon the local churches and make them successful and helpful. The fact still remains that innovation comes from the grassroots not from the bureaucracy. It is the innovators that create the wealth.
So how is your local church at innovation, what have they tried, what ideas are being presented. If your church is like mine than it is doing precious little innovation and ideas are routinely limited. I am sure it is more difficult in Adventism since they have the idea that they have inherited the truth…what need of new ideas or innovations then? But really how many of us really believe that?
