EVENTS

Date:	Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Time:	12:00 PM -- 2:00 PM
Location:	Wohlstetter Conference Center, Twelfth Floor, AEI 1150 Seventeenth Street, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20036

WASHINGTON, JUNE 24, 2009--Two leading evangelical Christian thinkers engaged the relationship of "social justice" and freedom at AEI on June 23. The term, usually found in Roman Catholic or liberal Protestant discourse on public policy, is gaining currency among evangelicals. Marvin Olasky, the provost of the King's College and editor of World magazine, found "inherent problems" with the term, arguing that social justice obscures the biblical understanding of justice as righteousness done from one individual to another. James W. Skillen, the president of the Center for Public Justice, said that institutions have responsibilities too, including the government, whose responsibility is the enforcement of individuals' responsibilities.

"Social justice" is usually used to refer to justice beyond that adjudicated in a court of law. Thus, for example, the poor may be given benefits or thought to have rights beyond those which are accorded to them in law in order to achieve equity or reduce poverty. Olasky opened with a roundabout critique of the nebulousness of the concept. He quoted President Obama's Father's Day remarks: "That doesn't mean that I didn't feel my father's absence. That's something that leaves a hole in a child's heart that a government can't fill." Olasky asked: "Is there any injustice greater than that inflicted on a child than not having a father?" He then attributed the breakdown in fatherhood to social welfare policies that were enacted in the pursuit of social justice.

Olasky then turned to the biblical concept of justice, which he said is closely linked to righteousness. Justice also happens in relationships: parent and child, husband and wife, employee and employer. "What, then, is the role of government in all this?" he asked. "A government that promotes strong families and marriages can be seen to be promoting justice; we may even call that social justice." Moreover, Olasky added, social justice programs can crowd out opportunities for civil society--individuals, churches, civic organizations--to act with justice, just as public assistance has crowded out many forms of charity.

"Love is slower than revolution," Olasky added. "But justice, person by person, family by family, is what changes lives."

Skillen agreed with Olasky that "social justice" lacks definition. "It is too broad and undifferentiated a term," he said. He prefers "public justice," which is rooted in the question of who's responsible for what. He contended with Olasky's view of justice as strictly between individuals: "There is a lot more to human society than that and that begins to get at the issue of social justice. . . . The political community--its job is to do public justice." It does this first by identifying the responsibilities of individuals and institutions and making sure they do them. Skillen, a student of Christian Democracy in Europe, adapted Dutch theologian-politican Abraham Kuyper's concept of "sphere sovereignty" as "spheres of responsibility." Within its sphere, "the political community is precisely called to do justice." Skillen applied this concept in response to a question from Cato Institute chairman Bill Niskanen about justice and the recent government interventions in the private economy. The bailouts are outside of government responsibilities and are an imposition on private enterprise, Skillen replied, making them a "public injustice."

Olasky traced the provenance of social justice. It originated in Roman Catholic social thought in the late nineteenth century, he said, especially in Pope Leo XIII's encyclical Rerum Novarum. The phrase came to the United States in the 1930s with Charles Coughlin, who became famous as "Father Coughlin" for his radio sermons. The left adopted the term widely in the 1960s, Olasky said.

AEI has a long history of supporting research into the religious and philosophical moorings of public policy. In the 1970s, then-AEI president William Baroody Sr. invited Michael Novak to take up residence at the Institute, where Novak authored The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism and later received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion. The June 23 discussion, moderator Henry Olsen said, is the first event as part of AEI's Program on American Values and Capitalism, which will engage evangelicals and evangelical thought in debates about policy.

--EVAN SPARKS

• Video, audio, and event materials
• Related AEI Press book: Religion and the American Future
• Video of a related lecture by Michael Novak on why "social justice is not what you think it is"
• Bradley Lecture by John Tomasi on F. A. Hayek and the "mirage of social justice"