Posted on 03/17/2010 9:02:14 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
When Glenn Beck urged Christians to leave churches that preach social justice, he allowed himself to be tripped up by conventional buzzwords of the campus Left. In plain English, “social justice” is a goal of all churches and refers to helping the poor and seeking equality. As a code word, it refers to a controversial package of goals including political redistribution of wealth, gay marriage, and a campaign against “institutional racism,” “classism,” “ableism,” and “heterosexism.” Beck was wildly off base linking “social justice” (of either form) to Communism and Nazism, but he was correct to note that the term is often used as a code.
In the words of Peter Wood, head of the National Association of Scholars, “The campus left learned with its promotion of the concept of ‘diversity’ the advantages of packaging hard-core ideology in bland, feel-good terminology.” “Social justice” is one of several terms — others include “dispositions,” “sustainability,” and “cultural competence” — that has been given in-group meanings by the wordsmiths of the cultural Left.
In 2002, for example, the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) issued new guidelines requiring education departments that listed social justice as a goal to “include some measure of a candidate’s commitment to social justice” when evaluating the “dispositions” of their students. As soon became clear, this provided education schools a back-door method of ensuring ideological conformity among their students.
At Brooklyn College, Washington State, and Alaska-Fairbanks — all public institutions covered by the First Amendment — students were punished for voicing opinions that differed from those of the faculty. At Washington State, where the college of education tried to expel a student for his conservative opinions, the dean was asked whether Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia could pass a disposition test at the school. “I’m not sure how to answer that,” she replied.
Eventually, NCATE clarified its wording a bit. Sounding very much like Jim Wallis teeing off against Glenn Beck, NCATE protested the attack on the words “social justice,” saying, “To most Americans the phrase social justice is positive and connotes values associated with the Judeo-Christian tradition.” The problem is that even in its mildest form, the insistence on dedication to social justice puts schools in a position of judging the acceptability of students’ political and social opinions.
Other fashionable buzzwords include “secure livelihoods” and “strong economies,” which seem to refer to redistribution of wealth, not economic development to create new wealth. (Few of the words are precisely defined, but used in context, they convey the general idea.) “Cultural competence” may sound like it would refer to knowledge of different cultures. But it really means the acceptance of multicultural ideology and cultural relativism.
The most potent of the current buzzwords is “sustainability,” which ties traditional environmentalism to the entire left-wing agenda. As Wood says, hundreds of campuses now have sustainability officers, courses that promote the ideology, and most ominously “co-curricular programs run through student life and residence halls to ‘educate’ students about their mistaken ‘worldviews’ and bring them aboard this new ideological ark.” Kathleen Kerr, who ran an astonishing all-out indoctrination program in the residential halls of the University of Delaware (students were all expected to accuse themselves of racism, for example), admitted in a speech that “the social-justice aspects of sustainability education” included lessons on “environmental racism” “domestic partnerships,” and “gender equity.” We are far from tree-hugging here.
The apparently harmless lingo of the Left can’t be taken at face value. It needs an English translation.
— John Leo is editor of Minding the Campus, a website of the Manhattan Institute.
Catholics do not ignore it, they vote Democrat, 54% of Catholics voted for Obama. Protestants as usual, voted Republican.
Even within the Hispanic vote Catholics are a solid Democrat constituency at almost 70%, while Protestant Hispanics are a roughly 50/50 vote, without Catholics the American left would be sucking air.
"Ignoring" it, is liberalism.
In 2004 Catholics went 52% to 47% for Bush.
In 2008 white Catholics went for McCain 52% to 41%.
41% should be 47%
It is found in the book of Leviticus, where we read 23:22 ” ‘When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and the alien. I am the LORD your God.’ ”
May we add a fourth?
Fourth, it directs the recipients' attention, gratitude, and dependency toward a tyrannical slavemaster (government), not the Creator and Source of life and liberty.
In the local church, when an opportunity presents itself, Christians should accentuate these points.
Example: a local government Social Services fund which helps Seniors with heating costs is exhausted and a representative of Social Services ask churches for help in replenishing the fund through the winter, asking for gifts to be made and distributed by SS.
Church A's Community Outreach Committee takes up the request. Members agree that Seniors should be helped and that the SS agency can identify the needs and distribute to those most worthy, but discuss how it should be handled.
One Committee member who is "aware" of the Church leadership's tendency toward the so-called "social gospel," but also understands the "problems" identified above by Cicero, raises questions about filtering Christian charity through a government agency, and persuades Committee members to the following compromise:
A gift will be made for aiding the Seniors, on the condition the Agency will provide to each Senior recipient of donated fuel a note saying, "The money for this fuel has been donated by XYZ Church members out of loving concern for your wellbeing this winter."
Many times, Church organizations simply find it easier to refer needy people to government agencies than to do it themselves or to think through the unintended consequences of doing so. If it's that the leadership believes government is the answer, that's one thing. If it's that no one takes the time to think through the fact that recipients' attention should be directed to the Creator instead of government, that's another.
“social Justice are Leftie code words for ‘creeping, soulless, socialist, enslavement’. And all “clergy” who espouse it are nothing more than Judas heretics. Their souls are damned.
Right, in his reelection Bush won 52% of the Catholic vote, but not in 2000, and Bush won 56% of the Protestant Hispanic vote in that 2004 reelection race.
In the 2008 election you break out the White only vote, which doesn’t change the point, Catholics voted for Obama.
“Kathleen Kerr, who ran an astonishing all-out indoctrination program in the residential halls of the University of Delaware (students were all expected to accuse themselves of racism, for example), admitted in a speech that “the social-justice aspects of sustainability education” included lessons on “environmental racism” “domestic partnerships,” and “gender equity.”
The best thing that the United States can do to save itself and the rest of Western Civilization would be to close down government bureaucracies that fund crap like this.
That’s called “gleaning”, not “Social justice”. You are confusing mercy with justice
If you break it down between orthodox, church-going Catholics and CINOs, then the Republicans do much better among the Mass-attending Catholics.
Historically, the Catholic Church in America had a LOT of working-class, members from ethnic minorities, who were discriminated against by the WASP establishment: Irish, Italian, Polish, and so forth. Almost all of them were Democrats, which was the party of the workers.
That started to shift when the Democrats went overboard for abortion, gay rights, etc. But it takes a while for such changes to happen. Those Catholics who are loyal to the Church and attend Mass are far more likely to be influenced by such considerations as the right to life.
The shift over from Democrat to REpublican was steady for several decades. Now it seems to have paused. But support for the right to life has been growing among young people and likely will continue to grow.
It’s too bad that you had a bad experience. For several years, Forbes magazine has rated The Salvation Army as the best non-profit in the USA, in terms of the small administrative costs, and thus the highest percent of donations actually getting to the intended need.
I want to encourage that change, I would like to see more militancy among conservative American Catholics and I would like to see them get some of that old fashioned American trait of laying down the law and demanding compliance of their leadership to get more on board with their American sensibilities and temperament and expertise.
The results are from PEW, for what that’s worth.
You broke out the Hispanic vote, so I broke out the white vote.
Without Hispanic Catholics the left would be sucking air would be another way to interpet the results.
I do think the Catholic layity need to make their positions known to the clergy. I agree it can’t be ignored.
I broke out the Hispanic vote because it separates into what Catholics are absorbing and what Protestants are absorbing.
About 32% of the Hispanic vote is Protestant and they are definitely in play for conservative American politics.
“Social justice” sounds like something promoted by Jesse Jackson.
Agreed.
The language and its associated agenda is not in the Bible. It is Marxist/Progressive.
And there is NOTHING "just" about Communism.
Bump!
That "commandment" you allude to does not appear to be an edict of government redistribution.
The government does not own the fields.
They were, and are, privately held.
Ergo, It is a mercy. And if you will note, it is not quantified. So it is discretionary. Again, a matter of individual generosity is invoked.
Not a state-mandate.
Also interesting is how the Quaker's own "American Friends Service Committee" was transformed into a radical Anti-American organization, and not just recently, but by progressives in the 20's and routinely preaches social and economic "justice".
Interestingly, its hired-employees... is manned by a majority of non-believers.
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