Tim Høiland

reader, writer, occasional arithmeticker

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‘Seek Social Justice’ (Part Three)

April 19th, 2010 · Faith & Spirituality, Politics & Social Issues

[Part 3 of 6 in my review of the Seek Social Justice study from the Heritage Foundation and WORLD Magazine]

Serving the Whole Person: Churches and Ministries is the name of the third section in the study. As the title suggests, the lesson focuses on two things: (1) the central role churches are to play in social justice efforts and (2) the need for churches to serve the “whole person” – not merely as a conversion prospect, but first and foremost as a man or a woman made in the image of God.

Once again, the study makes its case directly in contrast to the prevailing government welfare model. All too often, as Al Mohler of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary says in the video, the church has “franchised out” its responsibility to care for those in need to the government. The argument is made that churches and faith-based ministries can go deeper in addressing human needs than can government programs. I agree all the way.

During my time as a ministry leader at my church in Lancaster County, a suburban evangelical megachurch, I had the privilege of being part of a growing push among leaders and members to become more actively involved in community service projects in the community and in the nearby city of Lancaster.  We recognized we were doing a pretty good job within the walls of the church building and on the other side of the world, but had mostly overlooked the needs in our own backyard. We had our successes and our failures as we experimented with what it looks like to be the church in our community, and life circumstances have pulled me away from leadership in that, but the role of the local church in seeking social justice is one of my biggest passions, so I am so excited to see this study highlighting this very thing.

My concern is this: while it is true that churches can and should be leaders in social justice in every community in the United States and that government welfare programs create all sorts of problems, the fact of the matter remains that churches simply have not done their part. We’ve dropped the ball, plain and simple. I am all for scaling up church involvement in social justice efforts and for scaling down government welfare programs as churches “run them out of business.” But until churches have demonstrated that regardless of the need, we are there to listen and love and do whatever necessary to make it right, we have no legitimacy in supporting reduced government benefits for the poor.

I worked for a faith-based nonprofit organization in Lancaster a couple of years ago, helping to assist newly arrived refugees with the resettlement process. Among other things,  we helped our clients gain access to basic social services available in the community from both government and nonprofit sources, especially until they could find gainful employment in the private sector. Throughout my time working there, I experienced frustration with the various government agencies with whom we interacted. If they weren’t imposing unrealistic requirements they were losing clients’ paperwork; it was one thing after another. I also came to see and appreciate the varied Christian organizations and churches that were (and still are) meeting human needs and providing key social services in the city, doing what government agencies cannot or will not.

But I must also say, unfortunately, that one of the hardest things to do was to find churches and Christians willing to befriend refugees, willing to help them get on their feet, willing to challenge unjust immigration policies that tear families apart. There were some, but never enough. And as an organization depending on church support, this had a crippling effect on our work and for our friends in need, it made their lives extremely difficult and lonely. Meanwhile, despite our frustrations, the welfare officers were there Monday to Friday and our clients received their benefits according to government policy. This was an essential stepping stone in the resettlement process until they could find employment and become more self-sustainable.

So, why was it so hard for us to find churches willing and ready to offer simple things like friendship, some transportation, and perhaps a helping hand to people fleeing some of the craziest corners of the world? All sorts of reasons, certainly, and I’m not particularly interested in judging motives. But the fact remains that the church wasn’t being the church, not in the lives of these refugees, not nearly enough. [A terrific book I'd recommend about some amazing things that are happening in and through churches across the country is Churches That Make a Difference: Reaching Your Community with Good News and Good Works by Ron Sider, Philip Olson, and Heidi Unruh.]

So while I was delighted to work through this wonderful study on the unique role the church can play in social justice, and I’m enough of an optimist to believe that churches really can grow into this sort of a community-transforming role, the realist in me knows all too well that we’re not there yet, and utopian black-and-white arguments seem a bit premature.

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‘Seek Social Justice’ (Part Two)

April 15th, 2010 · Faith & Spirituality, Politics & Social Issues

[Part 2 of 6 in my review of the Seek Social Justice study from the Heritage Foundation and WORLD Magazine]

The second section of the study is called Cultivating Justice from the Ground Up: Marriage, Family, and Friendship. To set the stage for making a strong case for the importance of solid, loving, nuclear family structures, a couple of heart-breaking statistics are presented:

“Roughly 80 percent of all long-term poverty occurs in single-parent homes.”

“Nearly four in 10 children are born to single mothers. Seven out of 10 black children are born to an unwed mother. These children are seven times more likely to experience poverty than those born and raised in a home with their married parents.”

From the perspective of the study, these statistics seem to indicate a relatively straightforward cause-and-effect relationship: broken families cause poverty. It’s impossible to deny the correlation, I’d say, but I’m hesitant to read into those statistics a simple, one-way causal relationship.  Isn’t it also likely that poverty breaks down relationships? And couldn’t there be some deeper, more systemic reasons why certain demographics tend to be poorer than others? Are broken families really the underlying determining factor? Again, I don’t deny a correlation; I just hesitate to arrive too quickly at causality.

Nonetheless, the study hits the nail on the head in emphasizing that in order to address the breakdown of families, we as Christians and neighbors will need to “roll up our sleeves” and get personally involved. Family issues, after all, are best addressed at family and relational levels.  I think of Donald Miller’s organization, The Mentoring Project, and the excellent work they are doing in response to the needs of a fatherless generation.

Rudy Carrasco, former executive director of Harambee Christian Family Center in Pasadena, says in the video, “The family is an integral part of social justice because it is the starting point of social justice.” And I have to admit, the authors of this study make a very compelling case. When you consider that there are parts of the United States where kids grow up without witnessing any healthy marriages, and then think about the way marriage is cheapened on TV and in Hollywood, it strikes you as both tragic and inevitable that the cycle of family brokenness would continue unabated.

A year and a half ago, we had a guest join our family for Thanksgiving. He was living at the local rescue mission, part of a rehabilitation program there, and my uncle had begun mentoring him. After spending several hours with our family, he told my uncle with tears in his eyes that he had never, in fifty years, been around a family that really loved each other.

Families and communities really do shape who we become as men and women, husbands and wives, parents and neighbors. The “horizons of the possible” are either broad or quite contracted depending on what we have seen and experienced. It seems to me that a truly Christian understanding of abundant life can’t minimize the role of the family in helping people to thrive, to help create an environment where human flourishing can happen.

I think the study does an excellent job at highlighting the family as an all-too-often ignored factor in social justice.  In the book of James we learn that real religion has to do with caring for orphans and widows. Personally, I have tended to focus on the sociopolitical side of this – orphans and widows represent those who are particularly vulnerable to abuse by the powerful, which I still absolutely believe to be true – but I admittedly haven’t paid enough attention to the significant family implications in their situation.

Not too long ago I read an excellent compilation of essays called The Justice Project. An acquaintance of mine, Ruth Padilla DeBorst, contributed a chapter called “Parenting for Justice: How Can Parents Instill the Value of Justice in Their Children?” and I found it quite inspiring. By watching justice-focused documentaries, doing community projects together, cultivating a more simple lifestyle, eating dinner together and having substantial conversations, and displaying a poster of family hero Oscar Romero in the house, Ruth and her husband James provide a great, accessible example of what it looks like to seek social justice as a family.

Though I am not married and do not yet have kids, these considerations give me a compelling vision of what I would like my own home and family to be like someday. So much so that when I consider the sort of woman I’d like to marry, a commitment to social justice is without a doubt one of the most attractive qualities there is. You know, that other part of Proverbs 31.

So, I’ll conclude with this: while addressing broken family structures alone is not enough in terms of social justice, it’s definitely an essential building block, and I think the study does an excellent job of making that case.

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‘Seek Social Justice’ (Part One)

April 12th, 2010 · Faith & Spirituality, Politics & Social Issues

[Part 1 of 6 in my review of the Seek Social Justice study from the Heritage Foundation and WORLD Magazine]

In the introduction to the study, the authors emphasize the importance of “correctly diagnosing the suffering we see around us.” Failing to do so, they wisely argue, can result in well-intentioned efforts that actually do more harm than good. In this case, we’re invited to explore the roots of poverty specifically in the United States. The authors acknowledge that for the poor in developing countries, different circumstances may require different approaches. But the same general rule applies: there is a unique role for everyone – families, churches, non-profit groups, businesses and government.

Section One of the study is called Rethinking Social Justice: Getting to the Root of the Problem, and the emphasis is overwhelmingly on the importance of relationships, even invoking the term relational justice. In a nutshell, “a relational approach means that social justice is best cultivated from the ground up.”

I love that this is where they start.

Dr. Amy Sherman, of the Morsch Center for Social Justice at Trevecca Nazarene University, is featured in the video that accompanies the study. She articulates the rich Hebrew concept of shalom, which has to do with relationships in four directions: with God, self, others, and the created world. When these relationships are damaged or destroyed, things go haywire. Working to restore these relationships is what Jesus was all about during his earthly ministry and is what the church is to be about today. It’s what we mean when we pray the Lord’s Prayer: “Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of WORLD Magazine and author of books including The Tragedy of American Compassion, sums up these insights when he says, “Social justice is the sum of millions of acts of relational justice.” Is that true? Well, yes or no, depending on what exactly the term relational justice includes.

As would be expected from a think tank that exists to promote (among other things) limited government, the role of the state is quite minimized in this study, at least so far. That’s perfectly understandable, given the source. But while loving relationships will undoubtedly go a long way in addressing injustices, I’m with Martin Luther King, who articulated the matter quite poignantly: “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.”  Just as government policies and laws are in place to prohibit such evils as rape and murder, it seems to me there’s a place for robust policies that prevent the abuse of the poor and marginalized by the powerful, the sort of abuse that medical anthropologist Dr. Paul Farmer brilliantly describes as structural violence – which includes far more than what one might immediately think of as violence. (The issue of welfare programs and so-called “government handouts” is a different topic altogether, which will certainly arise in the study’s later section dealing specifically with the role of the government.)

One final theme that I think warrants a brief mention is from the study’s workbook, in which participants are asked to read a few handpicked verses from the book of Proverbs (10:4; 13:18; 19:15; and 21:5), and to reflect on what is taught about the roots of economic poverty. Key words and phrases from the selected verses are “a slack hand,” “the one who ignores instruction,” “sloth,” “idle,” and “hasty.” Now, I’m not about to argue with the wisest person who ever lived (Solomon), but bear with me for a moment. Tim Keller, pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC, makes an important observation about the book of Proverbs:

When I studied the book of Proverbs, I came to see that a proverb is not the same as a command or a promise. Proverbs say things like, “In general, if you work hard, you won’t find yourself lacking the basics, but there are plenty of exceptions. So work hard, but don’t be shocked if something goes wrong.” That’s not an iron-clad promise (that everyone who works hard will be well off) nor a command. It is a statement about a wise course of action.

We’d do well to take the wisdom in these proverbs quite seriously. No argument from me there. But what about the rest of what the Bible has to say about the rich and the poor? Whereas these proverbs certainly represent “a wise course of action” the Bible is also full of warnings to the rich – verses that are quite inconvenient for successful free-market capitalists, even compassionate and well-intentioned ones, which certainly includes those behind this study. Perhaps in a later section there will be a more complete exploration of relevant biblical teachings on the matter of wealth and poverty, but it struck me as unbalanced (I won’t go so far as to say deceptive) to focus solely on verses that support a “pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps” mentality without considering the bigger picture.

Again, despite my concerns with these certain weak spots, I love that the study begins by focusing on relationships. It is, after all, social justice we’re talking about.

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