Christianity and Social Justice Quotes

“the current call for social justice is not a recent phenomenon. It is a repackaged configuration of egalitarian ideas heavily influenced over the past century by postmodern and Marxist derivatives.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“the Social Justice Gospel of today (or the Woke Gospel) mirrors the political and liberal trends today. Now that a more aggressive form of cultural Marxism is now in vogue with political and secular elites”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“From the streets of France to the heart of American evangelical Christianity, the past three hundred years have seen many changes in the nature of redistributive social justice. Jean-Jacques Rousseau imagined a centralized power capable of achieving egalitarian equality. Karl Marx wanted to accomplish this dream through the redistribution of resources from the haves to the have-nots. Walter Rauschenbusch Christianized socialism under the banner of “social justice.” Antonio Gramsci believed it was the cultural hegemony, and not simply the haves, which was actually responsible for oppressing the have-nots. György Lukács saw capitalism as an oppressive mindset and not just an economic system. The Frankfurt School developed critical theory to analyze oppression in cultural institutions. French postmodernists, like Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault deconstructed language and knowledge as social constructs and power dynamics. Kimbery Williams Crenshaw developed intersectionality, which attempts to construct a new hierarchy based on a matrix of socially constructed victim categories. Achieving social justice has gone from the redistribution of income to the redistribution of privilege, from the liberation of the lower classes to the liberation of culturally constructed identities, from lamenting victimhood to promoting victimhood, and from changing society through politics to changing politics through society. No social organization remains unaffected. Gramsci’s “long march through the institutions” is almost complete. The final stage is to capture the last stand for Western Civilization and conscious of the country—the American evangelical church.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“When informed by critical race theory and its postmodern attachment to finding truth through an oppressed lens, this creates a knowledge hierarchy whereby less social power means greater access to knowledge about systemic oppression in society.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“Identifying as a social victim implies a right to social compensation and a need for social representation from allies both in dominant and sub-dominant cultures.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“For example, Crenshaw stated that “race can also be a coalition of straight and gay people of color, and thus serve as a basis for critique of churches and other cultural institutions that reproduce heterosexism.”82”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“The theory’s basic teaching is that racism is systemically embedded within the fabric of society and can only be addressed by first interpreting the world through the lens of minority experience. While critical race theory accomplishes deconstruction, the sub-theory “intersectionality” accomplishes construction. It is this element which has become, perhaps, the most important concept for understanding the modern social justice movement.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“Derrick Bell, a law professor at Harvard and one of the founders of critical race theory, believed “progress in American race relations is largely a mirage, obscuring the fact that whites continue, consciously or unconsciously to do all in their power to ensure their dominion and maintain control.”77”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“Sir Roger Scruton, a conservative political philosopher, pointed out that the thinkers who motivated the New Left treated things like the “patriarchal family,” prisons and madhouses, selfish desire, and “heterosexual respectability” as manifestations of the power of the bourgeoisie.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“Herbert Marcuse is sometimes called the father of the New Left, a movement begun primarily among students who protested for social justice against the oppression of middle-class cultural standards and expectations. In 1965, Marcuse wrote that “the small and powerless minorities… must be helped” even if it meant suspending constitutional “rights and liberties.” In Marcuse’s mind, free speech and assembly should not be allowed for “groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of public services, social security, medical care, etc.” In a foreshadowing of today’s “political correctness,” Marcuse taught that “liberating tolerance” actually meant “intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left.”61”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“The study suggested that even traits such as “submission to parental authority,” a belief in traditional gender roles, family pride, “fear of homosexuality,” a strong devotion to Christianity, and the notion that foreign ideas posed a threat to American institutions signaled “implicit prefascist tendencies.”59 As a result of this kind of thinking, some started referring to the Institute’s philosophy as “cultural Marxism” in the 1970s since instead of reducing individuals to economic classes, it categorized people according to various oppressed or oppressor behaviors and identities.60 It was this particular philosophy, combined with postmodernism, that provided the rationale behind the New Left movement of the 1960s and 70s.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“In their view, Western entertainment media deceived the masses by imposing upon them values supporting the myth”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“This approach he referred to as critical theory and described “its goal is man’s emancipation from slavery.”53”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“Max Horkheimer became the director in 1930 and charged his colleagues to examine the “entire material and spiritual culture of mankind” in order to expose hidden oppression woven into the fabric of society itself.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“Only Marxism, an all-encompassing view of reality, held the key for social liberation bound up in the sacred knowledge of the workers. Soon, this kind of profound insight broadened to include identities other than economic classes.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“The significance of Lukács’ teaching lies in the fact that he helped make censorship intellectually justifiable as Marxist regimes and organizations restricted viewpoints they believed did not accord to orthodox lower-class perspectives”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“Rudi Dutschke summed up his strategy in 1967 with the famous phrase, “the long march through the institutions,” which Herbert Marcuse of the Frankfurt School described as “working against the established institutions while working within them” and building “counterinstitutions.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“What they did not realize, according to Gramsci, was that their passivity was the result of values imposed on them through things like libraries, schools, voluntary associations, architecture, street names, and the church.42”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“Michelle Alexander’s revisionist work The New Jim Crow,”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“children’s”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“an”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“it now”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“stop”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“Most of us can now clearly see the attacks on objective truth, the created order, natural affection, impartial justice, and the gospel of grace are not going away any time soon.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“The relatively new “Kingdom Diversity” department hosted talks on kneeling at football games, taking down Confederate monuments, and honoring people like black liberation theologian James Cone.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict

“The New Jim Crow by Michele Alexander.”
― Jon Harris, Christianity and Social Justice: Religions in Conflict