Last year, the SJC did an exercise within our group in which we were supposed to say something about ourselves that other people don't know and maybe don't expect. My fact: I am religious. The reaction I received surprised me. "Wow, social justice and religion? Those don't seem like they'd fit very well together to me." This is not an uncommon reaction, I guess. Many people associate religion with intolerance and oppression.
But why is that? For me, religion has always been the way I get perspective because it reminds me that I am one part of a larger whole. I find it easy to slip into egotistical and vain behavior given all of the temptations in the world that address me as an isolated individual rather than as a member of a community. This is not to say that I am not an individual, but that the world is greater than me and my occasionally selfish desires.
But yet many still align religion with the forcing of traditional morals and gender roles onto others instead of focusing on the positive role it can play in a person's life. I recently read a blog on atheism written by Austin Cline in which he claims that we are in a religious revival, but "whereas past religions revivals have led to Christian action in areas of social justice (abolition for example) today it leads to a focus on private sexual morality to the exclusion of all else". In answering this question, he points to the Christian right's alignment in the U.S. with the republican party and the resultant interest in promoting capitalism. He argues that as long as the Christian right is dependent on the political clout and funding that the Republican party provide, they are unlikely to back any challenge of capitalist interests. He also points out that the American religious right is increasingly nationalistic, shying away from alignment with international religious groups and focusing instead on religion as it exists within the U.S.'s cultural climate.
His article stems in part from an article posted in Mark Schmitt's blog, The Decembrist in which he points to the politicization of religion as religion moves from the private sphere to the public sphere, causing a religious revival that is more concerned with the public sector and ways for inducing change in the personal, moral lives of others.
These views on the relationship between social justice and religion, or rather the lack thereof, were discouraging to say the least.
Then I came across an article on a website called Zeek: A Journal For Jewish Thought and Culture, an awesome magazine/website looking to "represent, define and create" modern Jewish culture. The article was entitled "Why Social Justice Needs Religion". Written by Jo Ellen Green Kaiser, the article argued that religion helps to prevent service, specifically direct service, from becoming an act of Narcissism or self-alienation. She claims that the communal nature of religion prevents both alienation and narcissism because "I do not exist without you. I am changed by you. We are in the same boat".
This captured the way I felt exactly. Religion reminds me that we are all connected. Let me stress that I do not personally believe that social justice requires religion, but actually that religion requires social justice. The communal worldview that religion inspires should necessarily be accompanied by direct involvement in social justice. I hope to see the religious right in America working harder to enrich the lives of others rather than encouraging others to conform to moral and political beliefs.
