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Social justice isn’t about justice! It’s about stirring up animosity between groups in society so as to overthrow the existing order and create a new one very much unlike the one that previously existed.
Becoming familiar with some key terms1 is essential to understanding the social justice movement. Let’s start with these.
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- Socialism is “an economic system based upon governmental or communal ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods and services.”2
- Socialism is a component of Marxism, which is “an atheistic and materialistic worldview based on the ideas of Karl Marx that promotes the abolition of private property, public ownership of the means of production (i.e., socialism), and the utopian dream of a future communistic state.”3
- Communism is “the Marxist ideal of a classless and stateless utopian society in which all property is commonly owned and each person is paid according to his or her abilities and needs.”4
- Capitalism or free enterprise is “an economic system in which capital assets are privately owned, and the prices, production, and distribution of goods and services are determined by competition within a free market.”5
- Social justice, “also known as economic justice, is a term describing the redistribution of wealth supposedly for the common good of all. However, this comes at the expense of wage earners and liberty by demanding a society to conform. Those who work and have must give to those who don’t work and don’t have.”6
- Socialism is “an economic system based upon governmental or communal ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods and services.”2
Additional terms7 you need to know include woke, critical race theory, intersectionality, and cultural Marxism.
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- The term woke refers to a component within the social justice movement that stresses the importance being keenly aware of and sensitive to what is believed to be society’s systemic oppression of blacks and other minorities. Who, or what, is responsible for this oppression? Whites, whiteness, and/or white supremacy, of course! However, this is agenda-driven and not rooted in fact.8 Whites are considered “woke” if they are mindful of this oppression and if they’re willing to take responsibility for it, including engaging in efforts to correct it in society and in the church. Whites must repent of the sins of slavery, lynchings, and other similar actions, whether or not they themselves were the actual, hands-on perpetrators. The “remedies” that are demanded typically include government redistribution of wealth—from groups who have been “privileged” to groups who have been “oppressed.” Similarly, blacks are woke when they are wise to the “fact” that they and their people have been held back, and when they’re willing to push hard for corrective measures in society and in the church. Finally, churches are woke when they put the themes of white supremacy and its oppression of minorities front and center. Often the woke narrative is introduced in a predominantly white church with the question, Why are our churches so white? The woke answer is that whites are guilty of racism and oppression, not just as individuals, but as a group. Local demographics and the freedom people of all races have to attend the churches of their choice usually are not even considered. Significantly, wokeness has been called “the religion of progressivism.”
- Two key ideologies of the woke movement are critical race theory and intersectionality. Both of these are rooted in cultural Marxism, the application of Marxist economic principles to cultural categories such as race, class, sex differences, and sexual behavior, a category the LGBT movement would refer to as sexual orientation. Karl Marx viewed society as the working class pitted against the elites. He said that eventually and inevitably, working classes would overthrow elites everywhere. When observers waiting for this to happen on a broad scale didn’t see it happen, they began to ask why. Leftist European intellectuals reasoned that Marxism doesn’t have just an economic application, but cultural applications as well, applications they needed to utilize. Their movement, which started mainly between the two World Wars,9 was known as the Frankfurt School. It “sought (among many other things) to apply the ideas of Marx in a social context. What developed from this school was Critical Theory [CT], which is ultimately a re-envisioning of the way the world is seen.”10 Critical race theory [CRT], an ideology that emphasizes various ways racial groups pit themselves against one another, emerged from CT. Both CT and CRT stress the importance of groups rather than individuals in the social structure.
- Critical race theory, along with wokeness and intersectionality—all three of these—strongly push the narrative that society is infused with white supremacy, white privilege, and systemic oppression against minorities, especially blacks. The oppression and the oppressors, adherents to these movements say, need to be overthrown by empowering those who have been held back. Who, pray tell, are the people who’ve been held back? Minorities, women, homosexuals, and other groups with members who don’t fit the stereotype of those who’ve enjoyed the greatest privilege—straight, white males. Enter intersectionality,11 which declares that the degree of oppression you experience is compounded by the number of oppressed groups of which you are a member. In other words, if you’re a woman you’re oppressed; if you’re a black woman you’re really oppressed; and that if you’re a black lesbian you are really, really oppressed! Put yet another way, the more of these marginalized groups you’re part of, the more abused and mistreated you are, and the more empowered you need to become to throw off the shackles that have kept you trapped and imprisoned. There’s something else as well. Social justice proponents believe that the more oppressed you are, the more moral authority12 you have to speak about oppression and its consequences.
Copyright © 2021 by B. Nathaniel Sullivan. All rights reserved.
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Notes:
2Jeff Myers and David A. Nobel, Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, (Manitou Springs, CO: Summit Ministries, 2016), 100.
3Ibid.
4Ibid.
5Ibid.
8Take, for example, the concept of forgiveness. Christianity teaches that individuals who repent of their sins and receive Christ as their Savior are forgiven and given eternal life and a new nature that seeks to please and honor God through good works (see Eph. 2:8-10). By contrast, the religion of social justice teaches that members of oppressive groups must repent of a host of sins, some of which they themselves may not even be guilty. When repentance occurs, social justice warriors withhold forgiveness and demand retribution (see https://bit.ly/3geVU4X). Can unity occur under such a scenario? Can any semblance of racial reconciliation? No, despite the fact social justice warriors claim reconciliation is their goal. What occurs instead? Division, envy, bitterness, resentment, hatred, and victimhood. This is light years away from biblical Christianity!