Brief Advice for Social Justice Christians

This comment is true. The problem is that the term "social justice" is now too closely associated with Marxism because socialists frequently use the term to promote specifically socialist agendas. What do we do?

 

Christians who want to support social justice, specifically its biblical form have two options: 1) either distance yourself from socialism by frequently denouncing it or 2) use a different term other than "social justice" but with the same content.

 

Personally, I prefer the first option. It takes back the term for Christ while denouncing an ideology that is one of the chief causes of social injustice. Regardless, if Christians are truly serious about biblically-based social justice, they need to adopt a strategy that makes their message and mission more palatable to those wary of socialism.

 

However, I have two concerns: 1) there is an apparent dearth of social justice Christians attempting to be palatable to more traditionalist/conservative Christians. The typical approach is one of criticism, shaming, and unproductive distancing. Such approaches come off as smug and fundamentalistic. It leads me to question whether the person really believes in social justice or whether he or she is just using the issue as a badge of personal and social approval. We social justice Christians need to better explain what we are doing and why we are doing it, so we can get more Christians on board.

 

2) I am concerned that there is a sense that social justice Christians are either hesitant or unwilling to criticize socialism, even to further the Kingdom. Whether because of peer pressure or general agreement, they prefer not to do so. This is a problem on many fronts but for this context such refusals to denounce socialism hampers the Christian social justice movement. Social justice Christians are rightly quick to denounce fundamentalism and Landmarkism as impediments to the Faith; we should be just as quick to denounce socialism. Otherwise, we feed the notion that one must be socialist, communist, or liberal to be for social justice.