Editor’s Note: This is the 2nd of a 2-part series on the sermon,
“Justice, Blind Justice and “God Damned” Social Justice”, given by Rev. Lyn Stangland-Cameron on March 27, 2011. Read Part One.

Another story that illustrates the need for social justice is the story of the babies in the river — people picnicking along the banks of a river discover a baby – floating in the stream – one man wades in and rescues the baby and everyone is outraged but they dry it off and begin tending to it when another baby comes floating down – ad yet another rescue is made. But before that infant can be cared for, yet another man leaps in to save another baby and then more babies come floating along -with everyone in the town busily trying to rescue babies and to find them shelter, food and clothes and mourning in despair because as hard as they try, the babies keep floating by and the entire town is becoming exhausted and anxious until someone determines that what they need to do is to travel upstream to see what is happening there. They decide that what they need to do is find out why the babies are floating in the river in the first place. — In Social Justice, we seek an answer that does not simply address the symptoms but seeks an ending the causes of injustice.

Carl Bankston III, a professor of sociology at Tulane University, explains the history of “ Social Justice” in “Social Justice, Cultural origins of a Perspective and a Theory” (The Independent Review, v. 15, n. 2, Fall 2010, ISSN 1086–1653, Copyright © 2010, pp. 165–178.) Bankston writes,

….the late philosopher John Rawls is the theorist most closely associated with the term (Social Justice and) …it expressed attitudes shaped by two historical experiences: the rise of a mass- consumption economy and the adoption of the civil rights movement….

He continues,

By the early 1950s, the United States was responsible for 45 percent of world manufacturing output and 18 percent of all exports (Frost 1992). By 1958, economist John Kenneth Galbraith was characterizing the United States as an “affluent society.” In this new economy, according to Galbraith, the fundamental issue was no longer how to achieve sufficient production, but how to distribute what was being produced. He argued that the nation was spending too much on private consumption to the detriment of public goods and public interests. Galbraith, later an associate and advisor of President John F. Kennedy, maintained that the production of private consumer goods without government guidance left corporations to pursue profits through advertising to increase demand for luxuries, while roads fell into disrepair and children attended badly maintained schools. This high private consumption also left the poor behind the rest of society.

We all know the term de’ja vu? Well, does this description sound familiar?

Galbraith proposed steering more investments toward public spending, especially spending for education…

President Kennedy identified the country’s underprivileged segment as an area of increased attention at the beginning of his own administration… Kennedy’s attention to the poor reflected distributional expectations as well as ideas about the relationship between demand and production. In the land of plenty, there should be no shortages for anyone. Not only must prosperity be widely shared, but it must also completely wipe out poverty.

Boosting the poor’s ability to consume had both a demand- side economic rationale and a moral force.

…. the federal assistance programs of the New Deal era—including the Social Security Act of 1935 and its welfare provisions (Aid to Dependent Children, Aid to the Blind, and Aid to the Disabled, and the National Housing Act of 1934) — were at least in part efforts to stimulate the economy by increasing demand. By the postwar period, it had become the common wisdom that spending drove production

The issue that Glen Beck and others continually harp upon is their concern that “Progressives” use the term “social justice’ to “redistribute wealth” — to take from the hard-working rich and give to the undeserving poor has, in my perspective, obviously succeeded in allowing America’s corporations and the very rich to become even richer and even more powerful.

The “political right” are also outraged that their tax monies support moral and social values they deem unworthy: schools and services for illegal aliens, to support “diversity” (members of the BGLT community,) and non-traditional families (single parents and welfare mothers) or even to provide resources for family planning and women

So I think it is time that we UU’s here in Idaho Falls examine our relationship with social justice – with the causes that our social justice team has identified and that we have stepped forward to support -with our stance against torture, for a compassionate national program that would provide heath care for all, with work for peace, with the “350” program that emphasizes a reduction in CO2 and strives for sustainability, with our rallies against bullying and for legislation in Idaho that protects human rights for all including members of the bisexual, gay, lesbian and transsexual community and others.

Two of the seven principles of our Unitarian Universalist Association incorporate the word “Justice”

The second principle reads, “We covenant to affirm and promote justice, equity and compassion in human relations, and number six reads “we covenant to affirm and promote the goal of world community with peace, liberty and justice for all.

Richard S. Gilbert, long time minister of The UU Church in Rochester, New York, ends “Prophetic Imperative, Social Gospel in Theory and Practice” devotes this text to an exploration and justification for why our Unitarian Universalist churches, societies, fellowships communities, and congregations, ( we may call ourselves by different names but we are one in our covenant) devote so much of our efforts to “social justice” to the very causes that those like Beck and others so condemn. Gilbert, like the mainline Christian denominations recognizes an Old Testament – Hebrew Bible “prophetic imperative” based on Biblical passages like that of the prophets, Micah, Isaiah, Amos and others who,

pointed out the perils of wickedness…the ancient prophets believed that the meaning of life is the struggle for justice in the community. The prophet Micah 6:10”What does the Lord require of you but to do justice and to walk humbly with your God?” and Amos 5: 21, 24 rails against the temple ceremonies and sacrifices that occupy so much time and energy -saying, “I despise your feasts, I take no delight in your solemn assemblies…but let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.”

And Gilbert reminds us that the Jesus of the Gospels certainly spoke out against injustice and stood on the side of the forgotten and downtrodden. From the parable of the Good Samaritan to the Sermon on the Mount Jesus did not side with those in power, nor with the rich and powerful but with those in need. Gilbert uses the term “Social Gospel” to describe “that historic turn of the century movement in American churches that sought to relate the churches as a corporate entity to social problems. “Justice making” he says is a contemporary synonym for social gospel.” (p7)

It is from this tradition that reformers like Jane Adams and Albert Schweitzer, Susan B. Anthony, Rachael Carson, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King were born. It is a tradition that recognizes that “freedom, by its very nature places an imperative claim on the free person to expand that freedom to all.” And church leaders realized as well defined the church as “ a social change agent and a transformer of culture…

Gilbert continues, …it is appropriate for the religious community to self-consciously analyze its role in the society as an agency of potential power, a task difficult for the free-church tradition with its stress on individualism.” (p8)

The church then is called to participate as a change agent — to participate not only in “charity” but also in creating systemic change – change that is directed at the underlying causes of social problems rather than merely at their symptoms. Gilbert reminds us that food kitchens, which do a wonderful job of feeding people need to be accompanied by actions and plans designed to root out the causes of the hunger and want. A systemic approach challenges the underlying premise of the American economy which produces poverty in the middle of plenty and deals with public policy issues: taxation, government welfare programs, and income distribution among others.” (p8)

One stark reminder that a systemic approach to justice is needed – that-social justice is necessary is very present in the recent discussions surrounding the cost of education in the US. in a presentation to Susquehanna University Angela Davis, retired professor from the University of California, revealed that a government study by the Justice Policy Institute found that the increase between 1985 and 2000 in spending on education in states was on average 24 percent. The increase on corrections spending was 166 percent!

Rev. Gilbert concludes his work by quoting an un-named soldier of the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War, “People who have principles but no programs,” he said, “turn out in the end to have no principles.”

Related Articles

• “Justice, Blind Justice and “God Damned” Social Justice” (uucifsocialjustice.wordpress.com)