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The entire Biblical witness reminds us of God's special concern
for those in greatest need. God loves all of us equally, but
just as a parent has a special concern for the child who is
sick, so God has a special concern for those who are poor and
in greatest need, and the church is called to reflect that special
concern in its mission. Equal love for all requires unequal
concern according to unequal need.
But how do we express our love, our special concern for the
poor? Is caring for the poor primarily an option of charity
or an obligation of justice? That is a critical question.
Throughout our long history, the Christian church has generously
given charity to the poor and engaged in countless ministries
of compassion, and we continue that noble heritage today.
During my year traveling around our church as moderator of
the 210th General Assembly (1998-1999), I was most impressed
with the way so many of our congregations are reaching out to
their communities in ministries of compassion. We Presbyterians
build more Habit-for-Humanity homes than any other Christian
denomination per capita. Ninety percent of our congregations
are involved in on-going programs related to hunger at home
and/or abroad. Scores of local churches have tutoring programs,
night shelter programs, day-care centers, food pantries, clothes
closets, and countless other innovative programs for the poor
and needy.
I was also greatly moved by the many wonderful ways our mission
workers are reaching out to the needs of people in the eighty
countries where they serve, some as teachers, doctors, nurses,
administrators, public health workers, and the list goes on
and on. Many congregations send volunteer young people and adults
to work on short-term mission projects throughout the world.
Most of our presbyteries and synods also have programs that
minister to those in greatest need. Presbyterians contribute
many millions of dollars every year to support these programs
and to help those who face a natural disaster both in the United
States and around the world.
We should be proud of the many ways our church at every level
is serving people in need in the name of Jesus Christ. What
would our communities be like without the financial generosity
of so many people, and the countless volunteers who give so
many hours to help those in need through our churches' wonderful
ministries of compassion? Perhaps never before have we done
so much in various ministries of charity and compassion. Thanks
be to God!
Without taking away one iota from the critical importance of
that, I am afraid the issue we often overlook is our obligation
to justice. Jesus once said to the Pharisees, "Woe to you,
hypocrites, for you are careful to tithe dill and cummin, but
you have neglected the weightier matters of the law; justice,
mercy, and faith." (Matthew 23: 23-24) I wonder sometimes
whether Jesus would say to us, "Woe to you, Presbyterians,
for you are careful to give charity to the poor and you have
wonderful ministries of compassion, but you neglect the weightier
matters of … justice." I am afraid we often forget
that while we worship a God of great love and compassion, we
also worship a God of justice. Whatever else the Bible says
about God, it makes it abundantly clear that God is a God who
loves justice, who delights in justice, who executes justice,
who promises to establish justice, and who demands justice.
That's a Biblical theme we comfortable, middle-class Christians
are prone to give less attention to than the theme of charity
and compassion.
Indeed, I am afraid that over the past few decades we have
diminished our commitment to justice in the public arena. A
1999 survey by The Presbyterian Panel showed that half of our
pastors and specialized clergy believe that "the public
influence of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has declined significantly
since the 1960s." It also showed that "the Washington
Office of the PC(USA) is little known by panelists." Furthermore,
"only a minority of pastors is aware of any congregational
or presbytery efforts to influence state government policy."*
One of the Six Great Ends of our Presbyterian Church is the
"pursuit of social righteousness," but a recent prioritizing
process of the General Assembly Mission Council (September 2000) ranked
the work of the Washington Office and social justice ministries
toward the bottom of the list.
It must be quickly acknowledged that ministries of compassion
contribute to the common good, and individual Presbyterians
who take leadership in their communities exert considerable
public influence, and those elected to public office shape public
policy. It also needs to be recognized that sermons and church
school classes help set the tone of a community that can have
an indirect, but decisive, influence on public life.
However, it can still be persuasively argued today that the
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) as a denomination and individual
Presbyterians are far less active and have considerably less
influence in shaping public policy than in the past. I believe
we were far more involved as advocates of racial justice in
the 1960s and 1970s than we are today. Many of us were active
in opposing the war in Vietnam and supporting the War on Poverty
in the 1970s. The Christian community in America (including
the Presbyterian Church) was frequently cited as an important
influence impacting public policy regarding those issues.
Some will argue that the issues today are not as clear as they
once were. I remember, however, grappling with the complexity
of many of the issues in earlier years, issues which seem so
much clearer in retrospect. But don't we all have considerable
clarity today, for example, about the disgraceful way we are
treating so many children in America, the wealthiest country
in the world, where one out of six lives below the poverty line
(three times the average of the other industrial countries)
and where 11 million of our children don't have health insurance?
Don't we have clarity about the morally scandalous ever-growing
economic disparities between the rich and the poor in our country
and around the world? Did God intend the world to be this way?
Don't we all have some clarity about our desperate need to improve
our public schools and our critical need to reform campaign
financing? Don't we all have some clarity about the need to
stop polluting the world God loves and depleting the ozone layer?
I believe there are so many issues of justice about which we
have considerable clarity.
Albert Camus once said, "there is an apathy born of comfort
and an apathy born of complexity." To be sure, many issues
today are deeply complex and we are tempted to throw up our
hands in despair and let someone else worry about them, but
I would suggest that most of our apathy, our failure to impact
public policy, is a result of our comfort. It is also a result
of our disillusionment with the political process; there is
a growing feeling among us that no matter how hard we try to
impact public policy, it won't make any difference because of
all the powerful special interest groups that lobby in congress
and in state governments who pay tremendous sums of money toward
the campaigns of those who are elected. To capitulate to that
apathy is a self-fulfilling prophecy.
We need to acknowledge that most of us are not experts in shaping
public policies. Some years ago Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
was debating on television the pastor of the Riverside Church
in New York City, William Sloan Coffin. The debate centered
on third world poverty, and in a moment of frustration, Dr.
Kissinger asked Dr. Coffin, "what do you want us to do?"
Dr. Coffin replied, "As a Christian minister, my calling
is to say to you, "Let justice roll down like waters and
righteousness like an ever-flowing stream, and your job, sir,
is to figure out the irrigation system!" Perhaps our primary
roll as a Christian community is to be advocates for justice,
to remind our policy makers that the present 'irrigation system'
is not working very well for many of God's people, and to urge
them to figure out a better, more effective, and more equitable
one.
What is the difference between charity and justice? Both can
and should be an expression of love. Both are concerned for
the welfare of others. But while charity is expressed in voluntary
gifts of time and money, justice is primarily embodied in laws,
policies, programs, structures, and systems of society as a
whole. Over a century ago, J.S. Mill pointed to the difference
when he wrote that "justice implies something which is
not only right to do and wrong not to do, but which some individual
can claim from us as his (or her) moral right."
Perhaps that's the nub of the issue. We acknowledge in America
political and civil rights, but do people have any economic
rights? Do the poor have a right to the basic necessities of
life when resources are available? Do children have the right
to adequate food and health care?
The issue is whether caring for the poor is primarily the responsibility
of some of us who care, or primarily the responsibility of all
of us in a just society, whether we care or not. The issue is
whether the community as a whole has an obligation for justice,
or whether people are to be made dependent on the charitable
inclinations of their kind neighbors? The issue is whether caring
for the poor is first of all a matter of charity and compassion,
or an obligation of justice.
Of course, equally conscientious Christians will disagree about
this, and caring for the poor must involve both charity and
justice. Both are important, but I have come to believe that
caring for the poor is primarily an obligation of justice,
a responsibility of all of us in a just society and not just
some of us who care for religious or humanitarian reasons. I
have come to that conclusion because I believe that the inherent
and immeasurable worth that God's unconditional love bestows
on every human being gives each one a moral right to the basic
necessities of life, if they are available. I have come to that
conclusion because I am convinced that one policy decision of
our federal, state, or local governments can have a far greater
impact on the poor than all our ministries of compassion. I
have come to that conclusion because I believe it is simply
unfair and unjust to make large groups of people (like one out
of six children in America) depend on the unstable and passing
impulses of generosity of private persons, rather than the common
responsibility of the community to which we belong. One theologian
said it this way:
"A person's fate cannot be made to rest solely upon
other people's spiritual condition. That is where the significance
of law comes in. No one can be made to depend upon his neighbor's
moral qualities for the basic necessities of life."
[boldface mine]
So, what must we do? To be sure, we must keep increasing our
charity and expanding our ministries of compassion. In spite
of how many social programs we have for the poor, in spite of
how good our public policies are, there will always be those
who slip between the cracks and need our help. Let no one minimize
the importance of such ministries.
But I believe we must also become more active advocates for
justice as we seek to impact public policy on behalf of the
poor. It is not enough to talk about justice, to study the Bible
about justice, or to worry about the injustice in the world.
The Biblical mandate is to DO justice, to SEEK justice, to ESTABLISH
justice. Those are active verbs and call us to action.
For a few of us, that means a willingness to run for public
office where social policies are shaped and adopted. John Calvin
said that civil service was the "most noble and most honorable
calling." For some of us, it means supporting candidates
for public office who will adopt and implement policies and
programs that help those in greatest need.
For others of us, it means joining organizations like Bread
for the World, the Children's Defense Fund, and our own Presbyterian
Stewardship of Public Life program, and lobbying our governmental
policy makers at the federal, state and local levels as partisans
for the poor, writing letters, making phone calls, sending emails,
or visiting their offices.
For those of us who preach, it means seeking more often in
our sermons to faithfully relate the Biblical Word to the greatest
issues of social justice and peace in our day, helping to set
the tone, the climate, the spirit of our communities. It means
voicing a clear, clarion Biblical call to let "justice
roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing
stream," and urging our policy makers to make the "irrigation
system" work more effectively for those who so desperately
need it.
*Research Services, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). The Public
Role of Presbyterians: Report of August 1999 Presbyterian Panel
Survey. Louisville, KY, 2000.
Douglas W. Oldenburg recently retired in North Carolina. Over the
last 14 years he served as president of Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur,
Georgia. |
