March 13, 2010
byValerie Elverton-Dixon

Fox News host Glenn Beck has created a firestorm by calling for Christians to leave congregations that preach and teach social justice. According to Beck, this is code for a socialist agenda. He has said that the one idea that Nazis and Communists have in common is the concept of social justice. Many Christians, and I would dare say many non Christians, are outraged by such statements. It is clear that Beck has neither a clear understanding of what social justice is or what most religions require of believers. Moreover, social justice is not only a requirement of faith, but it is a duty of citizenship.

Religion is the recognition that we as individuals are connected to others – to a transcendence, to other human beings, to nature and to all of creation. This connection leads to moral responsibilities both to ourselves and to others. We err when we think that we exist only for our individual selves or only for our family, tribe or nation. The more we grow in spiritual maturity, the wider is our range of moral concern. We not only care about our moral obligations to ourselves, but that care extends out to all. The them versus us delusion falls away, and we come to recognize that they and we are the same. We each are a part of the other. Martin Luther King called it a network of mutuality. This insight helps me to know the imperative that commands me to love God with all my heart and soul and to love my neighbor as myself.

This means that when I see anyone in need, I have an obligation to help to meet the need. I have an obligation to see to their health and well-being as I have an obligation to see to my own. I have an obligation to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, care for the sick, welcome the stranger, and to visit the prisoner. This was so important to the teaching of Jesus that he said that "As you have done to the least of these you have done it unto me." (Matthew 25:40) It is important to remember that when Jesus spoke these words, Christianity as a separate religion did not exist. Jesus was a Jewish rabbi. It is also important to note that Jesus is recognized as a prophet in Islam. Humanists recognize him as an important teacher in the history of human ideas. Non Abrahamic religions also teach an obligation to give to the poor and to treat others the way we would want to be treated. So the instruction to see to the needs of the poor is a critical moral duty across religions and in the history of human thought.

However, this is not only an instruction for our personal righteousness. This is a value that does have social, political and economic implications. We come together in societies and form governments to craft an order that will help us live together with as little friction as possible. We live under a rule of law, and our laws reflect our values as a society. Our religious understandings help us to shape shared values and beliefs and these values in turn help us to shape our laws. When we care about the needs of the least among us, that is and ought to be not only a matter of personal righteousness, but it becomes a matter of social justice. How do the structures of society affect the economic well-being of people in the society? How does the political economy favor one group over another? According to one assessment, only ten per cent of Americans own most of the nation's wealth.

"The top 10% have 80% to 90% of stocks, bonds, trust funds, and business equity,and over 75% of non-home real estate. Since financial wealth is what counts as far as the control of income-producing assets, we can say that just 10% of the people own the United State of America." (http://sociology.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html, accessed 3/13/2010)

Do the top 10% of America's families work harder than the bottom 90%? The reason for this disparity is because of the work that we value in the country and the structure of our political economy. It is a function of who the tax laws favor and whose interests are represented in Congress. Social justice requires a more equitable distribution of the goods of a society. It requires that laws see to the life and flourishing of all of a nation's people. This is the political and economic dimension of the religious obligation to care about social justice.

Further, social justice is not only a religious obligation. It is an obligation of citizenship. The preamble to the Constitution of the United States reminds us that the Constiution exists to, among other things, "establish justice." Justice is multifaceted. Distributive justice is an aspect of justice. This is the concept that there ought to be equity in how goods and services are allocated. Each ought to get what is due him or her as a person living in this society. Justice is necessary for peace, for the domestic tranquility that is another reason for the Constitution's existence.

This is not the first time that Glenn Beck has said outrageous things. He has called President Obama a racist. He called Van Jones, special advisor for green jobs to President Obama, a communist. Jones left that position in the wake of the controversy. Now Beck is calling social justice a code word for socialism. The logical fallacy that Beck makes here is to think that because there may be some forms of socialism that are bad, that everything that calls for social justice is also bad.

When I was a girl, my teachers taught me: She who knows not and knows that she knows not and wants to learn is a student, teach her. She who knows and knows that she knows is wise, learn from her. She who knows not and knows not that she knows not is a fool shun her. As I have grown and lived my life, I know that even she who knows and knows that she knows also knows that there are things that she knows not. The more I learn, the more I learn how much I do not know. Glenn Beck does not seem to know that he knows not.

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