America is caught up in a new great awakening. Students of Christian history in America will recall the revivals that swept the nation, leading to repentance and renewed spiritual fervor in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Ours is a similar revival, touching all of society. Scores of people confess their sins daily, renounce the ways of the past, and look hopefully to an expectant future of peace and relief from the suffering of this world.
It is, however, not a revival to Christianity.
As Joshua Mitchell argues, it is a fully religious revival that borrows all the trappings of Christianity, but without the core convictions of the Christian faith anchoring its vision of life. A spiritual hunger manifests itself in a longing for significance and meaning. But where once churches gathered to bring hope to religious seekers in the Gospel of Christ’s atonement for sin, the lonely sort themselves into surrogate faith communities centered around transcendent experiences. They seek to find their true identities in new gender expression, bond over the latest Netflix show, reinforce aggrievement in underground nationalist groups, or escape the world entirely in a digital metaverse.
A common element in all of this is newfound passion for social activism. In many ways, social justice is the new orthodoxy of our age. Not only have slogans of social justice appeared on nightly news in scenes of burning cars and smashed windows in Portland, Oregon, or in crowds of hooded figures in Charlottesville, West Virginia. It also is also present on the sidelines of sports games, in primary school classrooms, and even used to sell razor blades. If you are not for justice, so the all-pervasive messaging implies, you stand against everything our country is for. Indeed, objecting to social justice may even put you “on the wrong side of history.”
For Christians, these can be extremely disorienting times. Shouldn’t I care about justice? The Bible is full of commands to help the poor and advocate for the marginalized. Even Jesus himself cries woe to those who neglect “justice, mercy, and faithfulness” (Mt. 23:23 CSB). But does this mean that Christians should get behind the fight for abortion rights, medical care for teen gender transitions, or the dismantling of the nuclear family that is a symbol of racial privilege?
Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth
In his book Confronting Justice without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask about Social Justice, Thaddeus Williams provides a timely resource for Christians wrestling with such questions. Justice, Williams argues, is a thoroughly biblical concept, and in fact is one of the great contributions of Christianity to Western culture. From the days of the early church, Christians were known for their care for the sick, poor, and marginalized. As Robert Louis Wilken recently argues, Christianity gave the world the concept of the dignity of human life and inalienable human rights that all earthly authorities should recognize. Armed with their faith, Christians led the charge for the abolition of chattel slavery. The Civil Rights Movement was fueled by Christian convictions.
But is the way justice is understood by our culture at large the same as how the Bible portrays justice? Williams argues that in fact we are witnessing the emergence of an understanding of justice quite different from biblical justice. He calls the vision of justice of the Bible, rooted in God’s holy character and the law given in his self-revelation, Social Justice A. This is in contrast to Social Justice B, which has emerged from worldviews very much at odds with Christian scripture. In many ways, the aims of Social Justice A and Social Justice B overlap, and the two can sometimes work together for the common good, such as when we feed the hungry or work toward securing equal rights for all people under the law.
But when we begin to drill down into what we exactly mean by “helping” the poor, or when we ask whether we should pursue “equality” versus “equity” for the marginalized, the worldview differences separating the two systems become apparent. As Williams says, justice is downstream from worldview, and “there is simply no worldview-neutral way to think about or act out justice.”
Our worldviews are made up of our truest convictions about the world and our place in it. We are often unaware of these convictions, but we almost always act in accordance with them. Throughout the book Williams offers twelve questions to guide our understanding of justice in relationship to dominant beliefs of Social Justice B. This he does by considering four key parts of what comprises a worldview: (1) what we believe about God and who or what we worship, (2) what we believe about our communities and the bonds that hold us together with others, (3) what we believe about salvation and the resolution of suffering in the world, and (4) what we believe about knowledge and how we come by it.
Worship, Community, Salvation, and Truth
In the four parts of the book Williams offers questions to help Christians calibrate their understanding of justice around what the Bible teaches, and contrasts this with the motivations and goals of Social Justice B.
In the first part, Williams takes up the issue of worship, asking if our vision of social justice rightly recognizes God as the stable source and ultimate norm for all our convictions. Against the relativism of our day, in which justice has no fixed source outside ourselves as something real and unchanging, it is essential that Christians hold fast to belief in God as the one who determines right and wrong. This is the foundation from which Christians can then turn to inquire about the nature and value of human life (Chapter 2). Christians can see that humans are worshipping creatures who make idols out of all kinds of things that compete with God as the grounds for true justice (Chapter 3).
In the second part, Williams turns to questions of community, asking what we should see as appropriate ways to construct our identity together with other people. He argues that Social Justice B often sees group identity as what is most true of individuals, as opposed to our identity as all humans “in Adam,” and for some as Christians “in Christ” (Chapter 4). He asks if we should give in to further splintering of society into competing indemnity and interest groups to secure justice for all (Chapter 5). The answer is no, for such a vision of justice has only led to greater suffering and further marginalization in society. Following on this, Williams offers the fruit of Christian virtue—love, peace, patience, etc.—as the litmus test for determining whether our vision of justice pursues Social Justice A or Social Justice B outcomes (Chapter 6).
In the third part he turns to the questions of what we consider the be the source of human suffering and how we understand salvation from this condition. He inquires about whether disparities in the outcomes of individuals is an appropriate lens by which to understand sin (Chapter 7). This leads to whether emphasizing racial identity and power dynamics is the best way to transcend the sin of racism (Chapter 8), as well as whether there can be any true forgiveness in such an economy which trades in racial power. He argues there can’t be (Chapter 9).
The fourth part consists of three questions centered around truth and knowledge. He argues that against Social Justice B, which tends to see things only in the black and white terms of oppressor and oppressed, Social Justice A rooted in Christianity better makes sense of the complexities of the world (Chapter 10). In the next question, he asks whether one’s lived experience provides a privileged view of true justice, arguing that we must always be subject to the Bible to make sense of our experiences (Chapter 11). Williams’ last question then exposes the hidden game of trading in the currency of affliction to determine who should have the greatest power to steer conversations of justice (Chapter 12).
In all of this, Williams tackles many of the hot topics of our day: equity, systemic racism, standpoint theory, white privilege, ethno-nationalism, and even capitalism. In each chapter he brings in voices of those who had at one time embraced Social Justice B, but through disillusionment or reading Scripture have found the liberating vision of God’s justice offered by Social Justice A. Helpful reflection and small group discussion questions, along with specific prayers, conclude each chapter. Especially helpful as well are the many appendices exploring specific issues further, and the final chart highlighting the differences between Social Justice A and Social Justice B.
Williams has provided a truly accessible framework for making sense of these confusing times and how to be sure our view of justice aligns with the way God has made the world, revealed himself to us in it, and offers salvation from the brokenness and injustice wrought by sin.
Where to Go from Here?
Williams’ discussion of these topics goes far in introducing Christians to the complex conversations over justice in our culture today. But these are just the starting points.
If you want to dig deeper into the topic of social justice which captivates our culture with a spiritual fervor, consider studying with us through further readings and guided research into the questions and topics you face in your Christian life and ministry.
We will explore the roots of the Social Justice B worldviews, trace how they manifest in religious terms and categories that compete with Christianity, and consider connecting points between the hunger for justice in nonbelievers and the true hope offered in the Bible’s view of the world.
Our Institute courses can be taken at the undergraduate or graduate level and qualify for academic transfer credit to be applied toward a degree at one of our partner or cooperating schools.
For more information, please inquire here.
Dennis Greeson is associate director of the BibleMesh Institute and a PhD candidate in systematic theology at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
