Christianity And Social Justice

 Tim Keller (click here for a bio) is a deservedly well respected and popular leader in Reformed Theology. He thinks through issues more thoroughly than many other leaders. He will use the Reformed Theological traditions, the confessions and catechisms, without putting them on too high a pedestal. And many Christians from the Reformed theological tradition rightfully look to him for guidance when confronting today's issues. Of course Keller is not infallible. But some of the criticisms of him are simply silly and reflect more on his critics than on him.

But there are valid criticisms to make of what he teaches, and his approach to justice have some questionable areas depending on one's context. And hopefully, the criticisms made in this blogpost will not add to the list of silly criticisms made by some others. The article being reviewed here is called Justice In The Bible (click here for the article). This article is part of a series of articles on justice and it contains links to those other articles.

The article, if it is to be read within the context of its title, is an important subject for Christians to study and to act on. But, and this cannot be emphasized enough, Biblical justice is not social justice--a distinction not made in the article being reviewed from what I have read. The difference between the two can be found in who is defining justice. In the former, God's Word tells us what is just. In the latter, it must be society that determines what is just and must act on what it finds. Keller's article makes some very good points that many other Christians fail to make in talking about biblical justice. But it does not provide a good aid for Christians who are working for social justice. Why is that? It is because despite some of his words that state otherwise, Keller's assessment of social justice movements acts more to discourage Christians from working for social justice than to encourage them.

Again, we should be reminded that social justice must be a societal response. That means that for the Christian to pursue social justice, they must work side by side with unbelievers. And that becomes difficult when Christian leaders, Keller is not the only one, overly criticize social justice movements while extolling a given Christian approach. And that is how Keller begins his article. He states that only the Bible gives a comprehensive enough treatment on the subject of justice while secular approaches are reductive.

What should be pointed out here is that the Bible's treatment of justice is one that cannot be fully reached this side of heaven. Thus, not everything that the Bible prescribes about justice is applicable here. In addition, along with overly criticizing secular approaches to justice, Keller writes that Christians who wish to pursue justice should begin with the Church. Though he does tell believers to work in the world, when we combine the claim of having a superior view of justice with his criticism of social justice approaches along with some errors in how he describes some secular movements, those who uncritically agree with him have far more reasons to not only work for justice within the confines of the Church, but to restrict their readings on justice to Christian views only. Thus, they will tend to be unable to pursue social justice.

Some of his errors in assessing other groups come with his comments about the Left. His comments about socialism imply that socialism is a monolith about power (a statement made from another article in his series on justice) that believes that a person's money belongs to the state. At this point, Keller has not only failed to distinguish Socialism in the Marxist tradition from Socialism that existed before Marx, he has failed to distinguish the different approaches to Socialism by those who lean toward Marx. Libertarian Socialism, for example, doesn't really believe in the State. Other forms of Marxist Socialism don't apply an all-or-nothing approach to private possessions and wealth as what Keller seems to have assumed.

And perhaps one of his most blatant errors in this article is when he says the following about Critical Race Theory (CRT)

CRT sees all racial disparities and inequalities are due to structural factors.

But how can that be when CRT sees racism as a combination of individual racial prejudice and social structures that discriminate or oppress people because of race (click here and there).

Furthermore, he seems to have strongly discouraged Christians from relying too much on a CRT viewpoint. Why? The following quotes might help answer that.

On the one hand, CRT can’t be used merely as a tool apart from its worldview assumptions, because the underlying worldview in many ways is the tool.

And

Listening to CRT thinkers can help us rediscover our own tools, rather than simply using theirs.

Regarding the first quote, we should remember that  CRT's worldview assumptions do not have be either accepted or reject in whole. They can be accepted in varying degrees depending on how they match up with God's Word.

The second quote shows why this article does not help Christians in pursuing social justice. This Christian apartheid approach to tools used to pursue justice removes Christians from working with CRT in part. It seems that Christians are restricted to using tools founded by other Christians.

Likewise, when Keller talks about equality, he seems to say that the concept of equality started with the Scriptures. If we consider the fact that the attempts to promote equality by our nation's founding fathers was flawed, then Keller's comments on why Aristotle seem to overstate the case. Aristotle, in a flawed way, did teach about and promote equality. Thus, the Bible doesn't have a monopoly on the concept of equality.

We might also ask if why Keller sees universal equality in the Scriptures because of the times. We should note that at least some others from the Reformed theological tradition did not necessarily see the same in the Scriptures. Here we could think of the Puritans, Jonathan Edwards, J. Gresham Machen.

Finally, I got the impression that this article by Keller was written as if he was participating in a measuring contest where he was writing to show the vast superiority of what he sees as the biblical approach to justice compared to what we see in the secular social justice movements, in particular those influenced by Marxism.

The above lists some of the flaws in Keller's article. and realize that those some of those flaws depend on the context in which one reads the article, there is much good in the article which is usually absent from other religiously conservative Christian writings on justice. His writings on how we are to advocate for the the vulnerable is a bright spot though he is reluctant for the Church to speak out as an institution on politics.

Perhaps the biggest strength of this article is found in Keller's treatment of corporate sin and corporate responsibility. To better understand those concepts, we only need to replace the word 'corporate' with the word 'group' where, in this case, the group is a society or the state. This part of Keller's teaching is very important because of the emphasis on individualism by many religiously conservative American Christians. We sin partly because of how the groups we are a part of have influenced us and the groups we belong to sin. The former explains why Israel was punished for the sins of individual Israelites. It also explains why Achen's family was punished with him for his sin (see Joshua 7). Keller lists how some nations sinned and thus were punished by God in the Old Testament. And by some nations it means that Israel was not the only nation punished for its sins.

Keller did well in drawing attention to systemic racism. As Keller wrote in the article, this is a very tough reality for American white Christians to acknowledge and Keller does well to bring this reality to our attention. He tells us that all of us Christians must work together to see how systemic racism was evident through slavery, Jim Crow, and redlining (he refers to that concept without using the word). But then he mentions how systemic racism exists today such as in how public schools are funded and how racism exists in the criminal justice system. But as Keller called systemic racism the 'elephant' in the room, economic classism shows that one can have more than one elephant in the room.

Keller also does well to remind us Christians of our duty to help and care for the vulnerable such as the poor. That not only should we be advocates for them, but that our efforts to help them should be sacrificial. 

There are other good parts in the article and it is well worth reading. I should note that my own history might have colored how I have read this article. My experiences of protesting wars, protesting for the rights of immigrants, my past participation in a local activist group as well as in Occupy Wall Street have moved me to believe that we Christians need to be working hand in hand with others and not be afraid of what social justice movements teach. If we know the Scriptures well enough, we should be able discern what beliefs in those movements are not scriptural.

And we should note that Keller tells us to be political but not partisan. I believe that a better way to say that is to say that we should be involved in different social group movements but without being tribal. Here, being tribal, or tribalism, refers to a possessing a high degree of loyalty to a group such that loyalty to that group trumps our commitment to principles and values, especially those we learn from the Scriptures. The end result of tribalism is that we see right and wrong being determined by who does what to whom. We shouldn't have such allegiance to any group that prevents us from errors and sins.