Justice is faith-based
In Equal Justice Under the Law, Sojourner's Jim Wallis has observed a strange irony in this week's U.S. Supreme Court rulings. First, on June 25, the court struck down as unconstitutional a part of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 intended to maintain free voting access for low-income and people of color. Many of my friends in justice ministries were shocked at this ruling. When I first saw the headlines, I really thought it was a joke, or that someone had accidently brought up a news article from the 1930s. The next day the same court also thwarted two laws that had prevented same-sex marriage, the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and California's Proposition 8, the "Marriage Defense Act".
While recognizing that many Christians have deep concerns about homosexuality, based on their reading of the Bible, Wallis has joined a growing number of religious people who support same-sex marriage as a matter of civil rights. After all, legal marriage in the U.S. and presumably many other countries privileges couples with certain federally guaranteed economic benefits, including joint tax filing, Social Security benefits and joint property ownership. Wallis argues that it is a good thing when two people want to pledge a life-time of faithfulness to each other and Christians should not get in their way.
At the same time Wallis has a deep concern about the general decline of marriage in the west. While affirming the right of his gay and lesbian friends to marry, he expresses alarm at the growing "dysfunction" of heterosexual marriages. "The nation’s soaring divorce rate is a matter of deep concern — and the divorce rate among conservative Christians is comparable to that of non-Christians." He points out a number of contributing factors, the inability to commit, a social preference of "recreational" sex as opposed to covenanting relationships, media that turn bodies into commodities, and economic and immigration systems that separate families, but don't blame same-sex marriage.
While the Supreme Court can open the door to the civil right of same-sex marriage, by declaring barriers to such marriage unconstitutional, it can also, strangely, close doors to basic civil rights by allowing people to set up barriers to the voter registration of minorities. Already, Wallis notes, several states are introducing measures to suppress minority voter registration.
Which brings me to the point of this blog. Justice is faith-based. Christians need to practice justice, really put justice into practice in their homes, work and leisure activities. At the end of the day, the Supreme Court cannot actually establish justice. It can only give an opinion about what is constitutional or not. People living in communities and families establish justice. The Bible is a deep conversation about justice, the justice of God's reign which is breaking into this broken world. America is not a Christian nation, but Christians can and must work with it as with all other cities and states, regardless of the fact that its courts produce mixed rulings and its legislators produce less than perfect laws. But even more than that Christians must practice and teach and preach the powerful and merciful justice that the prophets said would roll down like waters, that Jesus embodied in his life, death and resurrection. And we need to catechize our young and new believers in ways that they drink deeply from the same wells that sustained people like Martin Luther King, Jr. Because it is the fiber of that faith, lived out, that will uphold justice long after this Supreme Court has been forgotten.
While recognizing that many Christians have deep concerns about homosexuality, based on their reading of the Bible, Wallis has joined a growing number of religious people who support same-sex marriage as a matter of civil rights. After all, legal marriage in the U.S. and presumably many other countries privileges couples with certain federally guaranteed economic benefits, including joint tax filing, Social Security benefits and joint property ownership. Wallis argues that it is a good thing when two people want to pledge a life-time of faithfulness to each other and Christians should not get in their way.
At the same time Wallis has a deep concern about the general decline of marriage in the west. While affirming the right of his gay and lesbian friends to marry, he expresses alarm at the growing "dysfunction" of heterosexual marriages. "The nation’s soaring divorce rate is a matter of deep concern — and the divorce rate among conservative Christians is comparable to that of non-Christians." He points out a number of contributing factors, the inability to commit, a social preference of "recreational" sex as opposed to covenanting relationships, media that turn bodies into commodities, and economic and immigration systems that separate families, but don't blame same-sex marriage.
While the Supreme Court can open the door to the civil right of same-sex marriage, by declaring barriers to such marriage unconstitutional, it can also, strangely, close doors to basic civil rights by allowing people to set up barriers to the voter registration of minorities. Already, Wallis notes, several states are introducing measures to suppress minority voter registration.
Which brings me to the point of this blog. Justice is faith-based. Christians need to practice justice, really put justice into practice in their homes, work and leisure activities. At the end of the day, the Supreme Court cannot actually establish justice. It can only give an opinion about what is constitutional or not. People living in communities and families establish justice. The Bible is a deep conversation about justice, the justice of God's reign which is breaking into this broken world. America is not a Christian nation, but Christians can and must work with it as with all other cities and states, regardless of the fact that its courts produce mixed rulings and its legislators produce less than perfect laws. But even more than that Christians must practice and teach and preach the powerful and merciful justice that the prophets said would roll down like waters, that Jesus embodied in his life, death and resurrection. And we need to catechize our young and new believers in ways that they drink deeply from the same wells that sustained people like Martin Luther King, Jr. Because it is the fiber of that faith, lived out, that will uphold justice long after this Supreme Court has been forgotten.
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