Timothy Dalrymple offers an intriguingly persuasive case that Tea Party movement could be considered a social justice campaign:
Since it is intent on the formation of a more accountable and more restrained government that will better serve the interest of all Americans: Is the Tea Party movement a social justice movement?
When I asked this question of my beloved liberal friends, they were mortified. There may be no quicker way to help a food-poisoned progressive empty the contents of her stomach than to suggest that the Tea Party movement is just as much a “social justice” movement as are living wage or immigrants’ rights movements.
The reason for their response is simple. For many religious progressives, “social justice” has eclipsed the old God in whom they no longer quite believe. The hope of a socially just world has not complemented and enriched (as it should) but impoverished and occluded their hope of eternity with God. Thus, for them, social justice is the final refuge of the transcendent, the one pure act that remains in a tarnished world, the last vision with the power to stir the graying embers of their religious devotion.
Even religious progressives who still believe in an eternal relationship with God tend to see social justice as holy in the Hebrew sense, as that which sets them apart — apart from the fat cats and the country clubbers, to be sure, but also apart from those Christians, the Christians who live in “Jesusland,” attend megachurches, and wear flags on their lapels: the very same conservative Christians who might be found at a Tea Party rally. Thus, to suggest that the Tea Partiers are engaged in a social justice movement is not only to soil their sacred ideal with the grubby fingers of the bigoted Tea Partiers, but to suggest that progressive Christians and conservative Christians are not separated so much by the presence or absence of love for the poor but by their sense of the policies that best serve the poor and the rest of society.
(Via: The Anchoress)
June 17th, 2010 | 9:46 am
Dalrymple is kidding, right? I admire him speaking the truth in love to the poor, but is opposition to providing them health care a social justice issue now? Most Tea Partiers are fairly well off, and their complaint that liberal government doesn’t represent them is just so much juvenile whining. We live in a democracy. Sometimes their side wins elections, and sometimes the other side wins. That doesn’t make the other side illegitimate.
June 17th, 2010 | 9:48 am
The divide is over where justice comes from. Progressives tend to see justice as a function of government. Tea partiers tend to see justice as an outcome of taking personal responsibility.
Which is biblical? I’m in the middle of Amos – who sees justice growing out of people, not government, taking responsibility for the needy around them.
June 17th, 2010 | 1:13 pm
I’m in the middle of Amos – who sees justice growing out of people, not government, taking responsibility for the needy around them.
But that doesn’t really settle the problem of the extent to which the people should take care of others through the instrument of government. Financial regulation and environmental rules are (or can be) examples of people being taken care in a way only a government can.
June 17th, 2010 | 2:36 pm
Dalrymple hits the nail on the head by noting that progressive Christians and conservative Christians are not separated so much by the presence or absence of love for the poor but by their sense of the policies that best serve the poor and the rest of society. The Heritage Foundation has recently produced a curriculum that makes the same point. Called Seek Social Justice, the six-lesson DVD and study guide shows the roles and responsibilities of family, church, business and government in promoting the common good. (You can find it for free at http://www.seeksocialjustice.com.) Redistributionists don’t have a monopoly on caring for those in need; in fact, their approaches (i.e. growing the welfare state) often undermine the true goals of social justice: thriving people in thriving communities.
June 17th, 2010 | 9:57 pm
Dalrymple hits the nail on the head by noting that progressive Christians and conservative Christians are not separated so much by the presence or absence of love for the poor but by their sense of the policies that best serve the poor and the rest of society.
You might want to read some of the other blogs here and see how much concern you see for the poor, versus how much disdain you find. Certainly many conservatives care, and certainly conservatives have principled arguments to make against liberal attempts to help the poor. But Tea Party conservatism is characterized by resentment, not compassion.
June 18th, 2010 | 12:29 am
@Ken:
The resentment I see from Tea Partiers is resentment towards an irresponsible Govt that spends trillions of dollars beyond its means, and at the corruption they see in the so-called social justice programs and its recipients.
The true resentment towards persons, and I would say hatred and violence as well, is directed towards the Tea Partiers by the neo-socialists. The Church has condemned socialism.
Pope John Paul II decried the Social Assistance Statists for the same reasons as the Tea Partiers.
“By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending.” (Pope John Paul II, Centesimus Annus #48)
June 18th, 2010 | 10:37 am
Ken H, I think the trick is to balance the conservative concerns highlighted in John Paul II’s statement with the need to care for the poor when private individuals don’t do enough. The Scripture tells us to care for the needy — it doesn’t say care for some of the needy some of the time.
Also, if you’re going to cry socialism, then you need to be consistent, and get rid of the governmental social safety net we already have.
June 18th, 2010 | 11:40 pm
@Ken
We agree that God calls his followers to care for the needy, especially widows and orphans in their distress. We both recognize this call in scripture and the social magisterium of the church.
Where we don’t agree is where you interpret John Paul II’s social magisterium as merely a “statement” of “conservative concern”. The social teachings of the church are neither conservative nor liberal. They are Catholic. The former are political labels which do not apply to the teaching of the Church.
What we see in society today are power-hungry political parties that stoke the sin of envy in the poor in order to garner their votes to hold onto political power. In return, the political parties pay off these constituencies with enormous sums of money that enormously exceed the money Govt has available to spend. This modus operandi is evil in its irresponsibility and its leading of the poor into the sin of envy. They lead them further into sin by encouraging them to act violently towards anyone who proposes to return the status quo back towards fiscal responsibility by ending the bribery scheme.
Just as many have utterly distorted the teachings of Vatican II in the name of the so-called “spirit of Vatican II”, so also, many have distorted the Church’s social teachings to suit their ends. The notion of social justice is now widely misunderstood and misrepresented and variously defined by both secular and religious cultures. Finally, this self-interested distortion has led to a widespread lack of gratitude for charity, and to an ugly, destructive attitude of entitlement.
June 19th, 2010 | 8:28 am
Ken H, thanks for the response. John Paul II is a hero to me, and I didn’t mean to to belittle his teaching by calling it a concern. That said, I’m Anglican, not Catholic.
What we see in society today are power-hungry political parties that stoke the sin of envy in the poor in order to garner their votes to hold onto political power. In return, the political parties pay off these constituencies with enormous sums of money that enormously exceed the money Govt has available to spend.
Why the cynicism when there is another obvious reason why liberals focus on the poor? Is Jim Wallis power hungry? (I’m cynical about the Tea Party for a number of reasons including that by and large its members are well off, but I respect small government conservatism in principle). The poor don’t vote in large numbers — those power hungry politicians receive the majority of their votes from people who are not poor. What are their motives?
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