The things Botolph and Tiffy have mentioned are good and admirable. Being active in promoting change for the better is really good. Advocating justice for those to whom injustice has been done is a good thing. All up to a point. But there can be 'too much of a good thing,' don't you agree? People can go overboard with an idea. In the secular world, "social justice" tends to mean something more extreme than you've suggested. If we can recognize the differences and distinguishing factors between the world's use of the term and Christians' intended use of the term, we should be all right. If we don't distinguish, then when we hear secular society use the term "social justice," we are in danger of agreeing with something ill. Secular proponents of social justice tend to believe that society is comprised of advantaged groups and disadvantaged groups, of oppressed people and those who oppress. Their simplistic view sees any disadvantaged group as being so due to the fault of others, in disregard for the possibility that the disadvantaged may have caused or contributed to their own disadvantage. It also assumes that any people who are not part of the disadvantaged group are automatically guilty of having taken advantage of them. And the perceived remedy generally involves taking something from those who appear advantaged and giving it to the disadvantaged. This actually can be highly unjust. What if some non-disadvantaged have actually done nothing to cause harm to the disadvantaged? Taking property, opportunities, or rights from innocent non-disadvantaged to give to the disadvantaged is an unjust wrong perpetrated upon the non-disadvantaged. I'll give you an example from this past summer in the US. In Portland, Oregon, some people proclaimed that they had been disadvantaged by society. These people happened to be mostly poor and of color. They took up weapons and seized several blocks, calling it by a new name and proclaiming it to belong to them. They burned, looted, robbed, and terrorized within their new territory. The mayor of Portland and the governor of Oregon chose to let them carry on in this manner for weeks, in the name of social justice. After all, these are poor people of color, disadvantaged presumably by the caucasian business owners who had shops and restaurants in that area, and social justice calls for reparations. An amazing number of people in the US, people of the progressive mindset, were happy to show solidarity with these 'poor, disadvantaged' folks, and MSM (being controlled by progressive interests) was mostly supportive as well. Never mind that these 'disadvantaged' people did nothing to provide for their own support other than to take what did not belong to them and use the proceeds to get high on drugs, chase women, and enjoy life while their victims suffered. My point is that we really need to have some awareness of what secular society is doing with the concept of social justice, so we can differentiate. My personal feeling is that the term, once representing something good, has been co-opted and turned into something evil. Who comes to steal and destroy, but Satan? Thus I do not like to say that I am in favor of social justice, simply because the meaning is no longer as good and wholesome as some folks think it is. Now, I hope I don't get things off to a tangent, but I'd like to say something about the George Floyd situation. George Floyd's death was spectacularly misused by MSM to agitate the population. Look at it dispassionately for a minute. Floyd was known to police as a past offender. Floyd and the lead cop, Chauvin, had a history of conflict between them, so there was a personal aspect (they didn't like each other). Floyd was high on drugs and not acting rationally. The drugs in Floyd's system played a large role in his susceptibility to death in a restraint situation that has been safely used on many other suspects. Take all of these factors, and imagine: what if Chauvin had been black and Floyd had been white? It could just as easily have happened to be that way. If Floyd had been white, where would be the outrage? Would his death have spawned demonstrations and riots? No, of course not. George Floyd's death was tragic and Chauvin might be found criminally liable by a jury. That's all we should draw from the incident. Floyd did not die 'because he was black.' Yet the news outlets made it all about race, and much harm was done by the rioting, looting, revenge beatings of innocent Caucasians, and people marching for social justice and financial reparations to all African-Americans (presumably from all who are not). Obviously some people are still consumed with the lie that Floyd's death is an example of racial injustice. That simply is not true. It was more an example of many things gone wrong all at once.
Ok, but it’s absent in the immediately preceding 1892 edition: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1892/BCP_1892.htm it’s not even present in the 1928 Proposed BCP of Great Britain: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/CofE1928/ This shows that social justice is a fabricated 20th century concept which had no prior organic history in the Church, or even among the philosophers (other than Marx).
Yet Plato, Socrates and Augustine all express views for a just and fair society, and embody the essence of social justice in their understanding. And indeed many of the Biblical accounts both Old and New have a sense of expectation that those who wield power and authority should do so with a mind to the poor and the disadvantaged - the widow and the orphan.
You continue to assert that "social justice" is equivalent to "justice", when that is precisely what is being denied. Please do more than just merely assert it. "What is freely asserted, is easily rejected." Yes, Plato, Socrates, Augustine, the New and Old Testament, and indeed the whole entire history of Western civilization have been concerned with the question of justice, and a just society. That does not alter the fact that the concept of "social justice" is substantially different from it, or that it did not find usage for thousands of years until the 20th century, when the ideology and concerns of Marxism become more pronounced.
My view is that we are called to work and advocate : 4. To transform unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation. My argument is that this is not novel, and not a modern error. To work towards a more just society is not the exclusive prerogative of Marxists, and indeed there are many who would conclude (myself included) that they have failed in this. Changing who holds the gun does not fix the problem. What I don't understand is why you believe that social justice is opposed top the pursuit of a just society.
Oh, I just came across something that I really must share. This is rich! "Social justice education!" https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/opinion-what-is-social-justice-education-anyway/2019/01 I'll paste part of it below: The notion of social justice pedagogy has become pertinent in education, especially in urban communities that have a history of being oppressed through schooling. To practice social justice teaching and learning practices is to truly see students for who they are and where they come from. But what does it mean to see students? Seeing students requires teachers to recognize them as valuable contributors to the classroom space, as opposed to social, cultural, and academic burdens on the so-called master in the room—the teacher. What I am describing here is social reproduction theory, developed by Karl Marx, to illustrate the ways that social inequality is passed on from one generation to the next. What does this have to do with education? Well, we must begin to look at education intersectionally. We cannot talk about schools, without addressing race, class, gender, ability, sexuality, and politics, because education is a political act. To ignore intersectionality within schools erases the very identities present in our classrooms and in our respective communities, every day. As the director of a teacher-education program, one of my primary goals upon stepping into this role was building a vision that honors social justice teaching and learning practices. In one of my courses on curriculum and instruction, I implore students to look at curriculum as a primary mechanism for making the world a more equitable place. We learn curricular theories from the likes of John Dewey and bell hooks. We use these theories as lenses to better understand ourselves, those who are different from us, and the various communities we all represent. Through this process, students begin to come to terms with the ways that their own education has been oppressive, while thinking through solutions for not repeating the cycle, once they step into the classroom. A social justice education is centered in democracy and the freedom to exercise one’s full humanity. Conceptions of equity and democracy have always been practically and theoretically connected to the field of education, which is often perceived as the greatest human equalizer. Although there is some truth to this, it is important to understand that the notion of meritocracy is flawed, especially when you come from economically marginalized communities. If you work hard and get straight As in school, it does not automatically mean that you will attain social mobility. This is the very nature of capitalism: Somebody wins, and many people lose. This is particularly true if you are from a poor or working-class community. In this type of education, instead of treating kids as if they're present to receive knowledge and instruction from the teacher, the students are instead treated like they are the repositories of unique knowledge to be bestowed upon and shared with classmates and teacher alike. As a former 7th Grade teacher, I can't imagine how this could work! My former students were already so boisterous and full of themselves, it was a job and a half to rein them in. Making them feel as if they, not the teacher, are the real educators is just off-the-wall nonsense! The teacher/author states that "meritocracy is flawed." In other words, she's teaching kids that trying to better oneself through individual achievement is futile. She unabashedly models her social justice education on the ideas of John Dewey (famous socialist), bell hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins, an extreme feminist and social activist), and Karl Marx. Her methods emphasize "intersectionality," which (according to Wikipedia) is "an analytical framework for understanding how aspects of a person's social and political identities combine to create different modes of discrimination and privilege;" in other words, kids are encouraged to think that any failure to learn is due, not to lack of trying, but to someone taking unfair advantage of them. And she encourages students to think of the school/education system itself as "oppressing" them (no wonder they are rebellious against authority figures at school and elsewhere!). I don't know how widespread this 'social justice education' happens to be right now, but my instinct says it's gaining traction. This article's author is director of a program for (re)educating teachers in this new way of teaching.
I don't find this paragraph awful. Meritocracy is flawed, and one of the great flaws is that we don't start from the same place. A genius hard working child born in a refugee camp is like to die young and in poverty, whilst the indolent children of the super affluent are likely to die millionaires.
Add to that the fact that complications exist, and the fact that meritocracy is flawed tends to be ignored. I worked and taught at one of the most deprived and later at one of the most privileged schools/colleges in England. Both offered high quality education but the pupils in either establishment had very different aspirations and financial backing. One was a 'day school' on a council estate where many were on benefits and living in relative poverty. The other was a Private College boarding school with some 'day' scholarship pupils but with fees of upwards of £26,000 a year per pupil. One had average exam results, the other had spectacularly good exam results. Guess which was which. Merit is by no means the only factor affecting social mobility, suggestions that it actually is are demonstrably false. .
Of course not. But in fact Marxists do not work for 'a just society', because Marxists don't believe in a term like 'justice' in the first place. You can look at Marx's Capital, or his 1844 Paris Manuscripts, or any of the other major works. Or you can consult Friedrich Engels work, even his descriptions of the miseries of workers in factory situations, and he never applies words like 'justice' or 'injustice' to their plight. And the same applies to Lenin's analysis of the Russian Empire, or the Western countries. He has left many works, and you can consult and search through them easily. Finally the same applies to Chairman Mao and his marxist analysis in China. Why don't they use the concept of justice? Because 'justice' pertains to the domain of philosophy, and philosophy as such, all of philosophy, is considered by Marxists a bourgeois field which has no merit. This is why Marxists do not concern themselves with philosophy, but with economics, as the most relevant field for understanding human events. Why? Because they believe in dialectical materialism, and therefore it is economics and the material conditions which move society, not abstract ideas like 'justice' which may not (to them) even exist. Now, when Marxist theory had started to invade Western societies, they needed to formulate their views in ways which philosophic-minded Westerners could understand. Reducing everything to economics and material forces seems absurd to us. Thus they began to develop parallel philosophic terms, which only exist in the West, and not in their own communist countries; terms like: -social justice (vs. justice) -political correctness (vs. correctness) The term of 'justice' was already filled with 3000 years of meaning, thus they created 'social justice' which was a new word, which had no meaning, and they filled it with their meaning. Similarly for 'correctness' (or scientific correctness), it was already filled with centuries of meaning stemming from the scientific revolution and Aristotle's propositional objective realism. Thus they created a parallel term, 'political correctness', which had no meaning, and they filled it with their meaning. Thus we today are governed by 'social justice' instead of justice, and by 'political correctness' instead of correctness. So I am with you about the goals of striving for a just society; and let us consult the 3000 year history of Western civilization, along with the divinely inspired word of God in the Scriptures, to inform us on what the principles of that are. But let us work to strive the goals of justice; let us not work to strive for the goals of social justice, which is alien and foreign to Western philosophy, to the Church, and to God.
The only point I would take issue with here is: "Thus we today are governed by 'social justice' instead of justice, and by 'political correctness' instead of correctness." I don't think we are 'governed' by them yet. There are those, who for reasons of their own would like us to be, and there are those, who for reasons of their own would like us to believe we already are, but justice is still just justice and socialism is not entirely unjust. Monasticism was an early form of communism and kibbutzniks are not communists or necessarily advocates of communist ideology. There is a right wing McCarthyist style faction that would like us all to believe the USA and UK are riddled with USSR and Mao style communists forcing 'niceness' upon anyone who would want to otherwise use blunt and politically/racially offensive language. The McCarthyists dress this up as fighting for the cause of 'Free Speech' in order to promote their own kind of political dictatorship. Viva justice and viva correctness I say, both fully supported recommended in the teachings of Our Lord. .
Well, of course we shouldn't be surprised to find a grain of truth in there. The best lies start with a grain of truth. Let's remember the context. This woman is working to change education in the US. A particular US teacher may have a large number of inner city kids in her class, or a large number of suburbanite kids, or a large number of rural kids.... but only one or the other or the other, not all at one time. In other words, one will not find children "born in a refugee camp" together in a US classroom with "indolent children of the super affluent." Thus, within a particular classroom, rewarding learning on a merit system will still work because nearly all the students in a given classroom will come from a similar-enough socioeconomic background. The citizens of the United States have long considered their country to be a "melting pot" in which people of many ethnicities and backgrounds can come together and form a unified society, and in which practically anyone with sufficient ambition and desire can "pull himself up by his own bootstraps" to better himself. People aren't stuck in 'classes' such as lowborn and highborn, and 'rags-to-riches' true stories are plentiful here; for example, the US historically has been the best place in the world for someone to start a business on a shoestring in his garage and build it into a multi-million-dollar enterprise. This new "social justice education" is aimed at destroying both the "melting pot" idea and the "bootstrap" idea. The new way strives to highlight the differences, not the common ground, between the students, making them not a 'part of the melted whole' but teaches them to act as separate, non-mixable parts (like oil and water). "Pulling oneself up" by individual effort and achievement is being replaced by a concept of victimization and being 'owed a debt' from everyone else who has more (even if they have more because they performed better). Social justice education is a recipe for future jealousy, envy, strife, and conflict. It will tear to shreds the fabric of national unity.
I am an old, white, straight, conservative, Christian, Polish-American male. There aren't very many old, white, straight, conservative, Christian, Polish-American males alive today, so that makes me a minority. And I'm clearly oppressed because of my old, white, straight, conservative, Christian, Polish-American maleness! Where do I get in line to receive reparations???
In Australia when I was growing up, one of our great ambitions was 'integration' very much in line with the idea or the melting pot. Somewhere in the late 70's and the early 80's the new mantra became 'multi-culturalism'. There is a bit of a cultural pendulum that is involved here, and two days ago a line in the Australian National Anthem was changed from 'we are young and free' to 'we are one and free'. The reason for this change was towards inclusiveness as our First Nations Peoples felt alienated and excluded as the represent the oldest continuing cultural stream on the planet. In a sense the change may seem insignificant, however it does represent a response that says, yes we do hear you and we do affirm that you are part of 'we'. I suspect that some of the 'multi-culturalism' agenda has been unhelpful, and perhaps the problem is that it looks back and not forward. Where two streams meet in the woods the river that rises flows as one. The various bits of the river do not continue as their own streams flowing together, and yet neither does it diminish the contribution of each of the streams. But of course we are talking about people, not H2O molecules. Multi-culturalism in many ways undermines social cohesion in that it emphasizes the adjective/s over the noun. It focuses on the things that divide us, rather than the things that unite us. The answers to these questions are not easy, and in no sense do I think we should diminish cultural heritage, but rather recognise the gifts it brings to strengthen the whole.
"Social Justice" Seems to be a totally overused politically correct term that has lost any relevance. But I think we all agree on the basic words and actions of our Savior. We are to care for the poor and needy, "take care of the widows". It is clearly sinful that 10% of the populace controls 90% of the wealth and therefore have all their needs met; housing, food, decent medical care, etc. at the expense of everyone else. And this rampant racism is very clearly against any Word or Action of Christ.
While I do appreciate your sardonic point.................Reparations are a whole other subject. But I would say to you that white folks have no concept of the extent of their privilege. When you get pulled over for a traffic violation, do you have to extend both hands out while trembling with fear that some cop is going to shoot and kill you? Last case of unarmed black man shot in America was in his own garage with a cell phone. Do people cross to the other side of the street when they see you approach? When you go into a convenience store does the clerk follow you around until you checkout and pay for your items? In America blacks traditionally get longer sentences for similar crimes, and they get the death penalty far more often than white folks. Black Lives Matter arose not because black folks are evil. But because they are tired/frustrated/worn out with fighting bigotry that should have ended a couple hundred years ago. These are not exaggerations. I have black hubby and 3 black children and can tell you I have personally experienced most of these things. Until white folks stand up and DEMAND that this crap is not acceptable it will not end. And where are our Christian Priests? Why are they not denouncing this on a regular basis from the pulpit?
And I'm fairly certain that every one of us on this forum is in the 10%. But, why do you refer to a lack of generosity on the part of some people as 'rampant racism'? I don't see how you make that connection.
In reality I suspect that the first percentage is smaller and the 2nd percentage is higher. It is however not sinful to have a lot of money, or power. It is sinful to not use those things for good. It is sinful to lust after power, and degrading to ones own self. I am sure I don't need to give you examples. I worked in Papua New Guinea for a few years, and I remember one day, having boiled some water to I could have a shower and a shave, I set the mirror up, and I was quite clearly shocked that I saw in the mirror and white face looking back at me. I realised that it had been some time since I had seen a white face, and I had forgotten my European heritage. I really can't get away from it, of course, it is part of the baggage I bring to the table. I suspect I am not in the 10% either, not that I am hard done by. I have a roof over my head and bread on the table. Yet I am prepared to stand up and say things are not all OK, not at all. Many folk work on the assumption that they are not racist, however if you are never exposed to an alternative culture you really have no way of knowing.
I guess I didn't state my post very well. My intent was to refer to two different areas of social justice. The first being the avaricious amassing of money by the very small percentage of Uber wealthy people, while there are so many needy, starving people in the world. And as Botolph states, it is not sinful to have a lot of money. As long as one is not in love with it. Better to remember that "To Whom much is given, much is expected." I interpret that to mean if God has blessed you with great wealth, you should use a bit of it to help the poor and needy as you are able. My second statement was meant to point out the fact that racial inequality or racism is another great social injustice. And one that is clearly not in alignment with a Christian faith.
It is not necessarily sinful to have a lot of money, unless it has been amassed by sinful methods: "Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are motheaten. Your gold and silver is cankered; and the rust of them shall be a witness against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. Ye have heaped treasure together for the last days. Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is of you kept back by fraud, crieth: and the cries of them which have reaped are entered into the ears of the Lord of sabaoth. Ye have lived in pleasure on the earth, and been wanton; ye have nourished your hearts, as in a day of slaughter. Ye have condemned and killed the just; and he doth not resist you". James 5:1-6. Wealth can also simply be inherited and merely a fortunate 'gift' of birth. The danger of amassed wealth to the individual though, especially when that wealth has just been inherited from someone else's efforts or deeds, is the temptation not to see it as a gift from God enabling one to do God's will on earth more effectively, but as a right, a possession, a definition of ones worth in society, a reason for oneself to be in a position of authority, having command and control over others who have not been blessed with such a 'gift' from God. The tendency to blame the poverty stricken for their own predicament is a form of stoney hearted selfishness. An oblivious unconcern for the plight of those who have been abused by the vagaries of cruel fate in a world still under the heel of Satan. It is in effect, aiding and abetting Satan's cause. .
From the 1928 Prayer Book (USA), scroll about half-way through this page: http://justus.anglican.org/resources/bcp/1928/Pray&Thanks.htm For Social Justice. ALMIGHTY God, who hast created man in thine own image; Grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil, and to make no peace with oppression; and, that we may reverently use our freedom, help us to employ it in the maintenance of justice among men and nations, to the glory of thy holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. The concept of Social Justice may well have strong ties to the 'Social Gospel' and to left-leaning politics, but I think this collect (probably the first entrance of the term into Anglicanism) gives us a healthy and positive example of what the term can/should mean.