This past year, the polarizing prominence of Black Lives Matter has brought the social justice movement to everyone’s doorstep. Increasingly, those blissfully or willfully ignorant are forced to take sides – to share the right posts on social media, to put up the right sign in the yard, to signal the right virtues – or to be condemned to the wrong side of history. (To be fair, the pressure on conservatives not to conform is also high). How should Christians respond to this new moral awakening?
In Why Social Justice is not Biblical Justice, Scott Allen makes the case that not all justice is created equal. Superficially, both the social justice movement and Christianity share the goal of bringing justice to the oppressed. However, ideological social justice (the term Allen uses for the comprehensive worldview of critical theory, intersectionality, and identity politics) defines justice wrongly.
Only the Christian worldview corresponds with reality. It defines “for all times, and all peoples, what words such as truth, love, justice, and equality actually mean” (2). Biblical justice is both communal (love thy neighbor) and distributive (authorities must impartially punish evil and reward good). Two Christian beliefs – that one day every person will reckon with the perfect Judge, and that in Christ believers receive unmerited mercy instead of judgment – make it possible for Christians to forgive, even if justice never comes in this life.
By contrast, ideological social justice is best understood as a postmodern religious alternative. The source of evil is not sin, but oppressive social structures. Allen points out the many ways that ideological social justice actually perverts justice. It undermines due process, erodes freedom of speech, rejects absolute moral truth, and removes personal responsibility. Instead of striving for unity, it divides people into “competing tribes, pitted against each other in an endless power struggle” (64).
When facing a nonbiblical worldview, the church has three options: conform, accommodate, or resist. The first two lead to compromise, but Allen doesn’t give a free pass to those who choose to resist either. He faults the fundamentalism of the last century for being a reactionary movement “defined largely by what it was against” (171). That’s a trap we do well to avoid. Rather than pitting the gospel against social justice, we need to recover a biblical approach to cultural engagement. In other words: “Let’s not be simply anti-ideological social justice. Let’s be probiblical worldview” (182).
I recommend this book for two reasons: First, in this age of kneejerk Facebook rants, Allen offers a thoughtful, cohesive critique that will challenge readers on both sides of the debate. Second, instead of rhetoric, this book provides an actionable way forward to live out biblical justice.