Labels: Fair Trade, social justice

What is unique in the Hasidic approach to reconciliation is that it points the way to seeing justice and love as necessary complements of each other rather than as alternatives between which one must choose... The large majority of people in our culture hold the distorted view that the God of the Old Testament is a harsh and wrathful God in contrast to the loving and merciful God of the New... An "eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is not the expression of a vengeful God but a primitive statement of basic social democracy in which no [one] is held of greater worth than another, because each is created in the image of God... Throughout all history, indeed, the natural inequality of man has justified razing a whole city to revenge the murder of one privileged man. Countless others have been exterminated with impunity because they were slaves or serfs or members of an "inferior race." "An eye for an eye" is a fundamental conception of social justice.

~ Maurice Friedman, "Hasidism and the love of enemies" in Peace is the Way

Labels: social justice, theology

The book, as the title implies, is about justice - about the ways each of us can live into the way of life Jesus calls us to live. I think too often we get overwhelmed by justice issues and decide that they are just for the Mother Teresas or the Shane Claibornes of the world to care about. So this book is about the ways each of us in our simple everyday lives can act justly. In it I explore the ways that we can love our neighbors through what we eat, wear, drive, and consume. But the book isn’t just a list of do’s and don’ts, but an exploration of what it means to love our neighbor. It explores what it means not only to pursue justice with our day to day actions, but also how we can avoid supporting systems of injustice with those actions as well.

Labels: Everyday Justice, Julie, social justice

As Secretary of State I view these issues (human trafficking) as central to our foreign policy, not as adjunct or auxiliary or in any way lesser from all of the other issues that we have to confront. I too have followed the stories: this is not culture, this is not custom, this is criminal … I’ve also read closely Nick Kristof’s articles over the last many months on the young women he’s both rescued from prostitution and met who have been enslaved, tortured in every way: physically, emotionally, morally and I take very seriously the function of the State Department to lead the U.S. Government through the Office on Human Trafficking to do all that we can to end this modern form of slavery. We have sex slavery. We have wage slavery and it is primarily a slavery of girls and women.

Labels: politics, social justice

To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds. And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to suffering outside our borders; nor can we consume the world's resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.

Labels: Obama, social justice

I've been remembering the fear I had. It's made me think about how a lot of people in this world have to live with a lot of fear every day. Not acute fear maybe, but chronic, and big. Of course we all live with fear, you can't avoid it. But still, to be afraid for your kids. To be afraid of getting sick because you don't have health care. That fear itself makes you sick. That's fifty million people in our country. That's a fear we could remove. It seems to me now that government of the people, by the people, and for the people should be removing all the fears that we can. There will always be basic fears we can't remove - fear of death, fear of loss - but we can do better on removing the fear of destitution, and our fear for our kids and the world they'll inherit.

One way we could do that would be to guarantee health insurance. Make it a simple system, like Canada's or Holland's or Denmark's, and make sure everyone has it. That's well within our ability to fund. All the healthiest countries do it that way. Let's admit the free market botched this and we need to put our house in order. Health shouldn't be something that can bankrupt you. It's not a market commodity. Admitting that and moving on would remove one of the greatest fears of all.

Another thing we could do would be to institute full employment. Government of the people, by the people, and for the people could offer jobs to everyone who wants one. It would be like the Works Progress Administration during the Depression, only more wide-ranging. Because there's an awful lot of work that needs doing, and we've got the resources to get things started. We could do it.

One of the more interesting aspects of full employment as an idea is how quickly it reveals the fear that lies at the heart of our current system. You'll notice that anytime unemployment drops below 5% the stock market begins to flag, because capital has begun to worry that lower unemployment will mean "wage pressure," meaning management faces a shortage in supply of labor and has to demand it, has to bid for it, pay more in competition, and wages therefore go up - and profits down.

Think for a minute about what that means about the system we've agreed to live in. Five percent of our working population is about ten million people. Ten million people out of jobs, and a lot of them therefore homeless and without health insurance. Destitute and hungry. But this is structural, it's part of the plan. We can't hire them without big businesses getting scared at the prospect that they might have to compete for labor by offering higher wages and more benefits. So unemployment never dips below 5% without having a chilling effect on the market, which depresses new investments and new hiring, and as a result the unemployment rate goes back up. No one has to say anything - it works as if by itself - but the fear keeps being created and profits stay high. People stay hungry and compliant.

So essentially, by these attitudes and responses, big business and stock owners act as a cartel to keep the economy cranking along at a high rate but with unemployment included as an element, so that the bottom wage earners are immiserated and desperate, and the rest of the wage earners will take any job they can get, at any wages, even below a living wage, because that's so much better than nothing. And so all wage earners and most salary earners are kept under the thumb of capital, and have no leverage to better their deal in the system.

But if government of the people, by the people, and for the people were offering all citizens employment at a real living wage, then private business would have to match that or they wouldn't be able to get any labor. Supply and demand, baby - and so the bids for labor would get competitive, as they say. That all by itself would raise the income and living standards for about 70 percent of our population faster than any other single move I could think of. The biggest blessing would be for the lowest 30 percent or so - what's that, a hundred million people? Or could we just say, working America? Or just America?

Of course it's a global labor market, and so we would need other countries to enact similar programs, but we could work on that. We could take the lead and exert America's usual heavyweight influence. We could put the arm on countries not in compliance, by keeping out investment capital and so on. Globalization has gotten far enough along that the tools are there to leverage the whole system in various ways. You could leverage it toward justice just as easily as toward extraction and exploitation. In fact it would be easier, because people would like it and support it. I think it's worth a try.

Labels: politics, social justice

Labels: social justice

The other night a soldier called us on the phone (not that unusual these days). He said that he and his friend had just gotten back from Iraq, where a bunch of folks were passing around a copy of the book The Irresistible Revolution. His friend had been in a shooting conflict with some Iraqis, and he shot an older man. Now this twenty-year-old American soldier was having a hard time sleeping. But it wasn't the fact that he had killed the man that was keeping him up at night. It was the face of the man's son, a twelve-year-old boy, who had run out of the house, grabbed his dead father's gun, and started shooting at the US soldiers. So the soldier's friend shot the boy too.

What else could he have done? The soldier said it's absolutely maddening; people feel like they are turning into animals. And every time they point a gun in some young kid's face, they feel they're creating a terrorist. He said that our guns and wars are not making the world safer.

Labels: politics, Shane Claiborne, social justice

Between Mother's Day Weekend and Father's Day Weekend, 2008, diverse families from around the country will create meaningful conversations about faith, family, and LGBT people. We seek first to understand, and then to be understood, as we engage the families at six of America's leading mega-churches. We visit these churches because we recognize the enormous influence each has within Christianity and the larger culture, through ministries, radio and television programs, and books that reach millions. We believe these churches have the potential to be a positive force in ending the physical and spiritual violence perpetuated by some religious voices against LGBT people and their families. Some of these churches have exercised inspirational leadership on social issues such as poverty and AIDS, and we believe they can exercise comparable, courageous leadership in ending spiritual and physical violence against LGBT people.

• Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church in Houston, TX
• Bishop T.D. Jakes of The Potter's House in Dallas, TX
• Bishop Harry Jackson, Jr. of Hope Christian Church near Washington D.C.
• Bishop Eddie Long of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church near Atlanta, GA
• Bill Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago, IL
• Rick Warren of Saddleback Community Church in Orange County, CA

Labels: social justice

Labels: Brian McLaren, conferences, emerging church, social justice

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever confronts him.

I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant.

I believe that even amid today's motor bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men.

I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land.

"And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid."

I still believe that we shall overcome.

Click here for the entire address.

Labels: Martin Luther King Jr., social justice

"Through [Jesus'] life and teaching, through his suffering, death, and resurrection, he inserted into human history a seed of grace, truth, and hope that can never be defeated. This seed will, against all opposition and odds, prevail over the evil and injustice of humanity and lead to the world's ongoing transformation into the world God dreams of." (pp. 79-80)

"All who find in Jesus God's hope and truth discover the privilege of participating in his ongoing work of personal and global transformation and liberation from evil and injustice. As part of his transforming community, they experience liberation from the fear of death and condemnation. This is not something they earn or achieve, but rather a free gift they receive as an expression of God's grace and love." (p. 80)

Labels: Brian McLaren, emerging church, social justice

Concern about illegal immigrants has a familiar ring to us Native Americans. We have been empathizing with those concerns for over half a millennium.

Let's see ...Were the first immigrants to America illegal? By every definition - yes! But perhaps if they had a good reason it makes their trespass less offensive. What of their motives? The stated intent of some of the earliest European settlers in America was first to establish military superiority over the inhabitants and then "civilize" them by assimilating them into their form of government and converting them to a foreign religion. Such was the case in the earliest American colonies: From the First Charter of Virginia, April 10, 1606..."[we] may in time bring the Infidels and Savages, living in those parts, to human Civility, and to a settled and quiet Government."

And talk about attitude ... they even came expecting us to learn their language. For example, I always thought, if you come to Cherokee country, you should speak Cherokee.

Early American immigrants, now well established, may have conveniently forgotten that their ancestors did not come as law-abiding citizens, but were intent on making their own laws and disregarding any laws already established by the original Americans. They often justified the taking of innocent lives and the removal of the original inhabitants by their religion. I could go on ... believe me ... I could go on. Suffice it to say, when I look at the track record of the current immigrants compared to the first immigrants, I find much hope for the future of our country.

Labels: immigration, politics, social justice

Labels: social justice

"The people had no hope. When people have no hope, all they think about is scraping by for one more day. There is no tomorrow, there is no creativity, there is no will to organize, people can't even think straight, because they have no hope... we weren't there just to help them as some superior people helping inferiors. No, we were there because we genuinely loved them - no, not just that - we liked them... It wasn't the resources we brought that made a difference. It was our presence. We were simply among them as people with hope, among them as people with love, and that made the difference. They caught our hope."

Labels: Brian McLaren, personal, social justice

The hard work of rebuilding community and family is essential - through community organizing, through moral instruction in local churches, through support for women and children through community centers and health clinics and schools, through micro-enterprise projects and drug rehabilitation programs to help people develop employment or become employable.

In my travels, whether in the inner cities of the United States or in slums around the world, the vast majority of these programs are overtly or implicitly faith-based, often drawing inspiration from Jesus’ good news of the kingdom of God. For all the obvious failures of “organized religion,” in these organizations I see the power of organizing religion… people of faith organizing for something truly beautiful and good. As they promote a vision for the common good resourced by Jesus’ good news of the kingdom of God, they promote the seven components of equity: trade with integrity (both free and fair), wise aid, wise debt relief, respect for environmental limits in terms of both resource consumption and population growth, fair wages, the development of justice systems, and community and family development.

If there is a force in the world powerful and good enough to overcome the grinding, destructive momentum of the suicide machine [his term for our currently corrupt and unsustainable global systems of prosperity, security and equity], it is to be found, not in organized religion seeking institutional self-preservation, but in religion organizing for the common good.

Labels: Brian McLaren, social justice

The house at 1212 1/2 West Front Street in Plainfield, N.J., is a conventional midcentury home with slate-gray siding, white trim and Victorian lines. When I stood in front of it on a breezy day in October, I could hear the cries of children from the playground of an elementary school around the corner. American flags fluttered from porches and windows. The neighborhood is a leafy, middle-class Anytown. The house is set back off the street, near two convenience stores and a gift shop. On the door of Superior Supermarket was pasted a sign issued by the Plainfield police: ''Safe neighborhoods save lives.'' The store's manager, who refused to tell me his name, said he never noticed anything unusual about the house, and never heard anything. But David Miranda, the young man behind the counter of Westside Convenience, told me he saw girls from the house roughly once a week. ''They came in to buy candy and soda, then went back to the house,'' he said. The same girls rarely came twice, and they were all very young, Miranda said. They never asked for anything beyond what they were purchasing; they certainly never asked for help. Cars drove up to the house all day; nice cars, all kinds of cars. Dozens of men came and went. ''But no one here knew what was really going on,'' Miranda said. And no one ever asked.

On a tip, the Plainfield police raided the house in February 2002, expecting to find illegal aliens working an underground brothel. What the police found were four girls between the ages of 14 and 17. They were all Mexican nationals without documentation. But they weren't prostitutes; they were sex slaves. The distinction is important: these girls weren't working for profit or a paycheck. They were captives to the traffickers and keepers who controlled their every move. ''I consider myself hardened,'' Mark J. Kelly, now a special agent with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the largest investigative arm of the Department of Homeland Security), told me recently. ''I spent time in the Marine Corps. But seeing some of the stuff I saw, then heard about, from those girls was a difficult, eye-opening experience.''

The police found a squalid, land-based equivalent of a 19th-century slave ship, with rancid, doorless bathrooms; bare, putrid mattresses; and a stash of penicillin, ''morning after'' pills and misoprostol, an antiulcer medication that can induce abortion. The girls were pale, exhausted and malnourished.

It turned out that 1212 1/2 West Front Street was one of what law-enforcement officials say are dozens of active stash houses and apartments in the New York metropolitan area -- mirroring hundreds more in other major cities like Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago -- where under-age girls and young women from dozens of countries are trafficked and held captive. Most of them -- whether they started out in Eastern Europe or Latin America -- are taken to the United States through Mexico. Some of them have been baited by promises of legitimate jobs and a better life in America; many have been abducted; others have been bought from or abandoned by their impoverished families.

Labels: social justice

Labels: social justice, theology

Labels: environment, social justice

Labels: social justice, theology