The Rev. Chuck Queen, a Baptist minister, approached the subject from the standpoint of the “progressive Christian,” claiming that King’s speech was a “progressive Christian vision for the world,” a “world where everyone has enough – not just to survive, but to thrive and flourish.” He concluded that “these things are not at the heart of their [Conservative Christian’s] gospel.” Among those “things,” he also noted a level playing field, inclusion of the excluded (didn’t identify), dignity, equality, and respect.
Dr. Cameron said the secular progressive’s welfare state induces black women to marry the government instead of men, noting that nearly 75% of black children have no father of record. True. They subsist on various government handouts usually channeled through their single mothers, grandmothers, schools and are beneficiaries of elements comprising what the Rev. Queen meant in mentioning three times in his article the term “social justice,” while not indicating how it is secured and maintained other than through government, certainly not the church.
The church, because of the gross stinginess of its members, is not equipped for that maintenance and wouldn’t be even if its “religious” thrust were not political correctness instead of spiritual or scriptural correctness, the case throughout much of U.S. religiosity, denominational or otherwise. The apropos definition of social: “of or relating to human society.” The apropos definition of justice: “the administration of law.” So, “social justice” is “administering the law to human society.”
Dr. Cameron maintained that the laws passed in the 1960s, as administered to blacks, have comprised “a utopian project of unspeakable cruelty, especially to kids.” He mentioned some contingent highlights: Planned Parenthood (eugenics movement…inordinate number of black abortions); affirmative action (skin-color, not character, paramount); “stop & frisk” (account inordinate crimes by blacks mostly on blacks); students mired in terrible schools and consequent failure, especially through lack of school-choice; amnesty for illegals allowing too much competition for entry-level jobs. There were more.
The entitlement laws causing these problems were/are what Rev. Queen would term “social justice,” establishing a level playing field by attempting to reduce everyone to the lowest common denominator, whether or not intended. Congresses passing those laws thought of them as awarding “social justice” to blacks. The president considers them as redistributing the wealth, therefore supposedly ending poverty, and has criticized the Constitution for not providing redistribution.
People are not cookie-cutter products; rather, they are so different that never have two of them been exactly alike. Inherently, they do not subscribe to being their brothers’ keepers, especially if their brothers, though able, are not willing to work. “Social Justice” is a one-size-fits-all affair, thus never works.
The Reverend anchored his case in the fact that people must love each other – great theology but divorced from reality. Loving even the enemy is scriptural but most people worldwide, including the U.S., are not scriptural. Nor is there consensus about the definition of love. Jesus loved people enough to die for them but also fashioned a whip and striped greedy vendors in the Temple.
At the “Last Supper,” Jesus told his disciples to arm themselves (for defense, not aggression), even if they had to sell clothes to do so. He insisted in Matthew 25 that a slothful employee was not to be tolerated. His was “tough love,” almost the antithesis of Queen’s “social justice.” Christ’s command (also Matthew 25) was to help the vulnerable—the sick, the widows, the hungry, the children. This was not “social justice;” rather, it was social mercy.
The state, attempting Queen’s “social justice” and dominated by the secular progressive, uses power to divide people into “groups and classes,” enslaving some at the expense of others. Schaeffer’s description of the “secular progressive” exactly fits Queen’s description of the “progressive Christian” in the U.S. Each demands that government tax producers to the limit in effecting “social justice,” beneficence based not on merit but on political correctness. Secular/Christian progressives have turned King’s dream into a nightmare.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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