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| April - May 2009 | Volume 58, Issue 2 |
From the Pastor's Desk: Social Rightousness
The Constitution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) says that “the great ends of the church are the proclamation of the Gospel for the salvation of humankind; the shelter, nurture, and spiritual fellowship of the children of God; the maintenance of divine worship; the preservation of the truth; the promotion of social righteousness; and the exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the world.” (Book of Order God-1.0200)
Recently in the news some churches have come under attack because of their insistence that social injustice or social righteousness are prominent in what they understand to be the mission of the church. Since the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) is one of the churches under attack, I thought it would be useful for you to understand what social righteousness is and what it is not.
A good understanding of Scripture helps us to define what social righteousness means. In the Hebrew Scriptures there are many verses which encourage the people to look out for the needs of the poor and needy. In the book of Amos for example, the prophet reveals the judgment of God because Israel has trampled the head of the poor into the dust of the earth and pushed the afflicted out of the way (paraphrased from Amos 2:6-7). The New Testament also has numerous passages that indicate our responsibility to look to the needs of the less fortunate. For example, in the parable of “Lazarus and the Rich Man,” Lazarus is welcomed into salvation while the rich man is left in torment because he ignored the needs of his brother Lazarus in life (Luke 16:19-31). Historically we know that the pagans were astounded that Christians welcomed and fed the poor and sick on a regular basis.
The Presbyterian Church has always been in the forefront in our nation in working to better society. For example, Presbyterians were very involved in the fight against unfair taxation by the British prior to the Revolutionary War (Incidentally, Presbyterian pastor John Witherspoon was the only clergyman to sign the Declaration of Independence). In the 19th & 20th centuries, Presbyterians were leaders in the abolition movement, in women's suffrage, in public education, in charity towards the poor of society, in civil rights and racial equality and in many other ways. We believe that the church ought to exhibit its faith in the public sphere through not only its preaching and teaching, but in its outreach as well.
Thus, today social righteousness is still at the core of who we are. Yet there are diverse ways of how to best work toward social righteousness. For some, it means empowering the government to reach out to the least of society, seeing that as the best avenue to help promote justice. For others social righteousness means that it is the church's responsibility to work for the betterment of society without empowering government entities to fulfill its mission in any way. Probably most Presbyterians (myself included) would fall somewhere in between these two extremes seeing the vast governmental resources as a limited tool to enhance society without abrogating the church's responsibility to do the work it is called to do, not relying on soulless bureaucracies (oops! – my opinion] to do the work of the church.
Social righteousness does not equal to socialism or communism or capitalism or any other economic or political system. Rather, it is the fiber of what the church is to be doing in the world. Those who would seek to define the church's mission as equivalent to political agendas on the left or the right or the center would be best to understand that we belong -- body and soul, in life and in death -- not to ourselves but to our faithful Savior, Jesus Christ (the Heidelberg Catechism, 4.001) and thus, in whatever we do, we do it for the glory of God.
