Comments on: Religion and Social Justice

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Tue, 09 Nov 2004 06:40:54 +0000

Feed the Children does not appear to be particularly relevant to the current debate, since the vast majority of its budget is in-kind gifts of surplus food from businesses, not charitable donations from individuals or churches. The Salvation Army is a notable instance of an evangelical church that does a lot of charitable work, but that only points up the apparent inactivity of the others. I still haven’t seen anything to suggest that any more than a tiny fraction of the money donated to churches is spent on charitable works.

By: james

james — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 23:57:26 +0000

You mean Christian charities like the Salvation Army or YMCA. For the Oxfam guy – Feed the Children (Christian charity) $504 million in projects. $575 million budget. Most Christian charities are not well known. Much of the charity work is done on a church by church basis.

By: mona

mona — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 12:20:31 +0000

Hear, hear…

By: abb1

abb1 — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 09:58:20 +0000

Asg, Generally speaking, why do lefties like abb1 think of themselves as open-minded, well-read, skeptical, critical-thinking types, when in reality they are the opposite? Discus. I think you’re confusing ‘lefties’ with ‘liberals’ here. I don’t think we, the lefties, think of ourselves as open-minded, etc. We have our dogma and that’s all there is it – no need for the critical-thinking stuff, who needs this shit. But we do really care about Social Justice. Now, the liberals – yes. They do indeed fancy themselves as open-minded, etc. And judging by this thread where they discuss such nonsense at such length they really are open-minded, not to mention ‘well-read’. Not that anything’s wrong with that. Thanks.

By: Chris

Chris — Mon, 08 Nov 2004 02:20:34 +0000

This is kind of funny. I hear the bitter ‘why aren’t Christians out helping the poor, they are such f*cking hypocrites’ stuff occasionally. Here in Australia we have problems of conflict within the church over adopting standard PC values. Whether appointing bishops who bat for the other team is OK or not…? Meanwhile the people who are sincere christians are supporting kids via World Vision, they are the anonymous donors to aid and famine relief campaigns, they are visiting the sick and those in prison. They cook casseroles and take them to a newly-widowed neighbor, they organise a working bee to clean the yard of a single mother. Just as do many non-Christians. The believers of Western Societies are literate, heterogeneous (do semiotics on THAT word!) and motivated by the same stuff as everyone. Your original question is a fraud, a baseball bat for hitting your morally inferior opponents who for some reason are the scapegoat du jour. What could you be seeking to blame others for right now?????… oh right. Democrats lost this election because DEMOCRATS voted Bush.

By: Uncle Kvetch

Uncle Kvetch — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 23:52:17 +0000

Poverty is very much a relative term. So we're doing even better than Ethiopia? I guess Bush's rising tide really has lifted all boats, after all. Sorry...here I am getting all catty with Jason again. Jason, in all seriousness: do you realize that when you say "poverty is a relative term" you're essentially supporting Bellatrys' assertion that there are, in fact, poor people in America?

By: Jason G. Williscroft

Jason G. Williscroft — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 20:24:35 +0000

Bellatrys… I recall an interview that Terry Gross did on Fresh Air a few years ago. She was interviewing a prominent Ethiopian activist (I don’t recall his name) who had spent much of his life in prison there, and who had recently emigrated to the U.S. She asked him why, after sacrificing and enduring so much on behalf of the Ethiopian people, after finally procuring his own release and securing many of the changes he had sought for so long, he had decided to leave his native country. I will never forget his response: “Terry, I decided that, before I died, I wanted to live in a place where the poor people are fat.” Poverty is very much a relative term.

By: John Quiggin

John Quiggin — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 20:19:22 +0000

Looking at the list provided by Sam, I thought a reasonable starting point would be to compare the activity levels of evangelical and secular charities. Food for the Hungry has an annual budget of $27 million. This doesn’t seem like much, given that the numbers cited imply total church-based giving in the tens of billions. For comparison, Oxfam (UK) has a budget of more than 100 million pounds, drawn from a much smaller population. Maybe there is a more systematic study somewhere. At least as far as monetary contributions go, I remain sceptical of claims that churches are particularly active.

By: bellatrys

bellatrys — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 19:01:35 +0000

Whoah, I missed that by trotsky. Somebody really thinks there’s no poverty in the US? They should try living on $.75 to the male dollar, where there are no good jobs, with no health insurance, with the cost of living rising – or maybe they could just, you know, go do some inner city social work. If that were the case, my liberal church wouldn’t have extended its alternative Spring Break program to Appalachia and inner-city MA, as well as the Caribbean. It’s amazing how ignorant some people are!

By: asg

asg — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 15:36:21 +0000

Generally speaking, why do lefties like abb1 think of themselves as open-minded, well-read, skeptical, critical-thinking types, when in reality they are the opposite? Discus.

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 14:11:21 +0000

What the right has done effectively in the UK and the US (it seems) is to tell us that God will look after the good guys and guns the bad guys. The thing the right doesn’t want us to do is get real and develop collective political and social action – the only thing that works. There’s nothing new here – just making sure the divided and ruled stay that way.

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 14:09:30 +0000

By: Richard

Richard — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 14:08:46 +0000

By: mona

mona — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 12:14:28 +0000

Charity is not social justice. Matt is right: Indeed Christianity throughout the world still seems, to my non-expert eyes, to have a lot more in common with the left-egalitarian model [often combined with more socially conservative views on the family] than it does with the current ascendency of the Christian right in the US. Christianity includes all sorts of views, from left to right, and it does adapt to different cultures and societies. It also depends on which Christian church you’re talking about. For instance where Catholicism is the predominant religion, you see a stronger presence of egalitarian views. I don’t think it’s religion itself that shapes these differences. I think it’s a two-way process, but mostly it works the other way round – existing national, cultural and social differences shape different views of Christianity in relation to social matters. So you need to look at those factors.

By: abb1

abb1 — Sun, 07 Nov 2004 11:55:41 +0000

May I suggest a couple more questions of the same profundity: – why the national-socialists in 1930s Germany were nothing like the usual socialists? – why the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia is neither liberal nor democratic but an extreme right-wing party? – why do the Fox News people insist that they are ‘fair and balanced’ when they are not? – generally speaking: why do wingnuts like to think of themselves as the ‘good guys’ – christians, fair, balanced, freedom lovers, pro-life, moral, etc., while in reality they are exactly the opposite? Discuss.