Justice, Christianity, and Natural Law

Natural Law as the Enduring Driver of Social Justice

I argue that justice is best served when Natural Law guides the judicial decision maker.?My contention supporting the resolution of disputes through the application of Christian Justice doctrine based on Natural Law is based on the following:

1.?????The concept of “Social Justice” is solidly rooted in Natural Law.

2.?????Natural Law recognizes social injustice and clearly positions social justice as a primary concern for Christians, as stated in Proverbs 31:8-9, “…bring about just righteousness …for those that cannot speak for themselves.”?

3.?????The ideals of “chesedth” and “mishpat” apply to the core of this specific dispute and all human generated disputes. ?

4.?????The concept of “caritas,” which translated means “charity” but also and perhaps more meaningfully, means “love.” The term is found throughout the Christian Bible, perhaps most famously in?1 Corinthians 13 - “And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.”?This love, this charity, in the ancient and early medieval world, was about care for others.

5.?????The doctrine of Natural Law most nurtures and supports a society based on liberty, equality, and justice, as reasoned and promoted by critical theorists.

6.?????There is a need to consider the input of critical theorists regarding the use of conventional tactics to pursue equality and justice, and that those who have suffered racial indignities can best articulate the reasons to struggle for social justice (through story telling).

A Resolution Based on Natural Law

???????????Natural law leaves no doubt, as to how Christians should view social injustice, to include the struggle of a minority of a people against oppression by a majority of another people. ?Affirmative action acts to address historical discrimination based on prejudices by people that have the power to manifest, promote, and protect their prejudices.?The key point being the power of one people over another.??When people feel protected in their prejudices, they will act to promote and ensure that they, and the heritage they pass on, continues to hold power over others in the form of prejudices and discrimination.??Power is exhibited politically and legally, through the form of governance and laws of a society.1?Consequently, as in the days of the creation of Israel and reflected in the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 2:13 – 23), the flight from Egypt and the struggle against injustice and oppression that existed more than one thousand years ago, continues to this day.?

In order to defend against and repel the offense generated by a prejudiced people, two reactions are necessary:

1.?????One is to learn and understand how the prejudices manifest themselves in common institutions and, therefore, appear in daily life, such as through schools, churches, and the courtrooms, and then to attack the root cause of such manifestations through institutional change.

2.?????The other action is to appeal to and garner the empathy of those who have been standing on the sidelines and recusing themselves from the conflict.

I will first describe item #2 mention above, which states that garnering and nurturing the empathy of others is essential in the struggle against social injustice.

Garnering and Nurturing the Empathy of Others – Initial Failures

In churches, as in other organizations with leanings toward empathy, the effort has been to diversify, and include minorities (African-Americans, Latinos, Asians, even women) within the organizational structure and activities of the church.?In short, diversity programs have sought to have minorities complement the otherwise white, male majority.?

However, Christians, as others attempting to adjust to the equality of races, went through a period of struggling with the discomforts of something new and unfamiliar.?White Christians suddenly had to deal with the contradictions that had been buried deep into the assumptions and acceptance of a church associated with a segregated and unequal society. ???Now, there were questions facing congregations.?Questions such as the following:

·????????being prolife versus witnessing the murder by some police of blacks; or,

·????????relying on prayer versus political activism; or,

·????????whether racism was a sin or simply a skin issue; or,

·????????how to make minorities feel comfortable enough to join a church that previously had been far too blind to the realities of social injustice.

More assertive Christians forced such questions and issues to the surface.?Among such progressive Christian was Martin Luther King.?Although King was an activist, he was first a minister and his Faith served as the foundation for his commitment to achieving social justice for all.2??King, along with other civil rights activists, felt that evangelism was “crucial for all revivals”, that spreading the movement’s social gospel was no different from proselytizing for the Kingdom of God. Moreover, all new converts, regardless of their race or religious propensities, were considered ‘brothers’, because they had joined ‘God’s struggle’. These activists saw God as the author of “the social change” that would free them from the clutches of white supremacy. This religious imagery created a powerful ‘new religion’ that inspired political long-suffering and a strong sense of destiny. As well noted by historians of the civil rights movement, no other force “could have kept the masses going through years of state sponsored terrorism.”3

King realized his appeal to other religious leaders was not enough.?In his ‘Letter from Birmingham Jail’, King wrote of his Christian duty “to carry the gospel of freedom” across America. He compared civil rights protestors’ acts of civil disobedience to the resistance of Biblical dissidents.4?Even then, Evangelical leaders denunciated integration, and stated, “It is un–Christian, unrealistic and utterly foolish” and “to force those barriers of race which have been established by God and which when destroyed by man are to his own loss.”?Consequently, by 1957, the Southern Presbyterian journal “adopted voluntary segregation as its official policy.”5 With the Supreme Court decision in Brown v. The Board of Education, White Evangelists were then stuck between supporting Jim Crow laws or working to change them.

Intervention of the Government – Subsequent Change in Christian Perspective

???????????The 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. The Board of Education set in place two critical paths in the civil rights movement.??The landmark Supreme Court decision formed the basis for rulings by other courts dealing with desegregation matters.??However, while court rulings led to additional criticism of the civil rights movement by some Christians, such as the prominent journal, the Christian Life, which?propagated the view that civil disobedience was “in conflict with God’s Law,”?it also brought encouraging word from prominent Evangelical leaders, such as Billy Graham.

???????????Billy Graham, who advised several presidents on race relations, viewed the push for civil rights as a “threat to (evangelicals’) understanding of religion.”?Graham’s church was deeply segregated; a profound contradiction to his teaching that after conversion the Holy Spirit would transform racists’ hearts. The states in which Graham’s Christian teachings flourished were the most segregated states in America.6??Churches such as the Church of God and the Assemblies of God were resistant to King’s message.??For example, in segregated San Antonio, Texas, the Assemblies of God church, which I attended as a child with my family, focused on maintaining the distance between races, and not mixing church activities and worship with the distractions of the secular world.?Like the fundamentalist black churches, Hispanic churches acknowledged that minorities were repressed by economic coercion.?However, they sought to prepare for the next life in Heaven and considered protest against the oppression as anti-American.?My mother was a community activist and, painfully, disregarded the message of her Assembly of God church.?Her resentment and anger toward segregation and discrimination overruled the church’s message to ignore the secular world.

???????????Like my mother, Billy Graham disregarded the evangelical’s in support of segregation and in 1957 invited King to pray at his crusade in New York.??However, under pressure from his congregation that said he was contravening scripture, in 1958 he invited Texas Governor Price Daniel, an imminent segregationist, to a crusade in San Antonio.?Further, Graham went on to urge moderation and branded integrationists as extremists.?This was the cause of fury in my mother and family of “radical” Christians, and the beginning of a movement toward a coalition between Hispanic/Chicano and African-Americans activists.

Eisenhower and the Exertion of Federal Power – A Demonstration of Legal Positivism

???????????When the Supreme Court ruled in 1954, in Brown v. Board of Education, that separate schools for whites and blacks were unconstitutional and inherently unequal, the slow and often violent dismantling of segregation in educational institutions began across the country.??????????With the expectation that a strong anti-desegregation effort across the South would result, the Supreme Court did not set a deadline for schools to begin to desegregate.

???????????However, in 1955, when the court became frustrated with the lack of progress by the states in desegregating, in Brown v. Board of Education II, it set a deadline for schools to begin the desegregation process.7??Even though a few rural schools in Arkansas had begun a slow process of desegregation, by 1957 when nine black students attempted to attend Central High School in Little Rock, a large urban school, protests ensued along with threats of violence.8

???????????The backlash against the Court’s verdict reached the highest levels of government: In 1956, 82 representatives and 19 senators endorsed a so-called?“Southern Manifesto”?in Congress, urging Southerners to use all “lawful means” at their disposal to resist the “chaos and confusion” that school desegregation would cause.9?(In 1964, 98 percent of black students in the South still attended segregated schools.10 )

???????????In 1957, the resistance to desegregation led to President Dwight D. Eisenhower issuing Executive Order 10730, which put the Arkansas National Guard under federal authority and sent 1,000 U.S. troops to Little Rock to maintain order as Central High School desegregated.11?Eisenhower had to make a decision, to allow states to defy a federal order and demonstrate to the world the country’s racial discrimination, or exert the power of the federal government.?Eisenhower’s decision was clearly political, to maintain the power of the federal government, by ensuring that Brown was enforced. ?Eisenhower’s decision, to exert the authority of the ruling group to enforce is power and not due to moral considerations, is one that would be applauded by advocates of legal positivism.?As per H.L.A. Hart, the command theory of law requires that sanctions back up the law.12 ?However, King, and the civil rights movement, viewed Eisenhower’s decision to back up the Supreme Court’s Brown decision by use of Executive Order and the military as an example of a reaction to people exercising a moral responsibility to break unjust laws and to take direct action rather than waiting potentially forever for justice to come through the courts.?

King viewed Eisenhower’s actions as the result of civil rights activists’ pursuit of the principles of natural law.13 ?He continued to preach the message of how all people, including the church, must face the contradiction within their Faith and the deceit of their political promises.?King’s last sermon speaks of the character of what is Natural Law.?The rightness of Natural Law is embodied in Biblical Scripture, and historically in the opposition faced due to the church’s message of reliance on promises of a future free world, in Heaven.??As well as the “coldness of jurisprudence” used against the black man and all people in the world that was held in empty promises and respect given only through consensus (“conscience tells the man, what is right.”)14

???????????Further, King often referred to 1 Corinthians 13, and the concept of “charity” as expressed in the Bible.?For example, “And if I should distribute all my goods to feed the poor, and if I should deliver my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing” and “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But, when I became a man, I put away the things of a child,” as well as, “And now there remain faith, hope, and charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.”?Martin Luther King was a minister committed to the Faith and Holy World of Divine Law.??Consequently, King was a disciple of Natural Law. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail is a classic example of Natural Law applied to the struggles of civil rights.15

Legal Positivism and Social Justice – How Prohibiting Affirmative Action Can be Valid Law

???????????Legal positivism separates the ideals of morality from the law (the exact opposite of natural law) and focuses on near absolute subordination to law of the state in order to protect “human frailties.” ?Human frailties include behaviors to which human beings are tempted, such as violence, theft, and deception.?Legal positivism aims to control such undesirable behaviors so that people can coexist.?Consequently, legal positivism requires the members of society obey laws regardless of their personal objection.??Although legal positivism recognizes that the change of laws may sometimes be necessary to sustain an orderly society, such change must be orderly and directed by individuals or a group with the power to make laws.16 ?As a result, the ruling class or status quo, regardless of a moral repugnancy (i.e., Nazi law), is allowed self-perpetuation.

???????????The debate for the separation of moral and legal rights is a heated debate. One of the most notable debates between legal positivism and natural law involves H.L.A. Hart and Lon L. Fuller.?Fuller argued as the advocate for natural law, that legal and moral rights can never and should never be separated.

Hart argued that there should be a strict separation of law and morality, he denied that there are universally shared necessary moral standards of legal validity, and he denied that an individual recognizes law as good law based on morality and can accept law based on purely non-moral considerations

???????????Fuller argued that law and morality cannot be separated because they are naturally connected.?Fuller stated that there is “…a moral duty to do what we think is right and decent.”17 ?Such a belief directly correlates with the arguments of Martin Luther King in his applicability of natural law to social justice.18 ?

???????????The dispute regarding the appropriateness of affirmative action programs can be addressed by legal positivism’s contention that law and morality are to be strictly separated. ?Legal positivism would reason that if a law making body believed in this strict separation of law and morality, and they passed legislation that is incompatible with the society’s beliefs, it would cause havoc. The government that passes such a bill is destined to fall. Because the law is bound to be met with hatred and might be taken as an insult by the society.?Hart argued that where a legal system failed to receive general approval, it would be both morally and politically objectionable.?Further, that for a legal system to be valid, its components such as rules, must be obeyed to be effective.19

???????????????A referendum prohibiting preferential treatment based on race, gender, and ethnicity passed by the majority of citizens, it is a valid law which must be obeyed regardless of how morally objectionable it may be.?This is the situation Martin Luther King found himself in when he stated in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, “How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law.”

The Role of Critical Legal Theory in Social Justice

???????????While Critical Legal Studies (CLS) attacks against the “establishment” initially provided hope for groups such as minorities and women seeking social justice, eventually those seeking social justice became disillusioned by CLS fuzzy line between individual “needs” and individual and social “rights” to the extent that the two concepts became undisguisable.?Martin Luther King recognized the “need” for social justice as expounded by CLS.?However, he also saw much more, a clear dichotomy between “rights” and needs” in which promoting the “rights” of people had a solidifying effect among those who were identified by CLS as more of social groups in “need” rather than individuals (with their personal experiences) comprising a group seeking “rights.”?This emphasis on fighting for individual and social “rights” over personally indistinguishable “needs” widened the gap between CLS and social justice advocates.?It also drew social justice advocates towards critical legal theory and its emphasis on rights to individual and social liberty, equality, and justice which recognized personal, marginalizing experiences .20?

I use a personal experience from childhood to illustrate the effectiveness of proclaiming a “right” over a “need.”??Texas had a poll tax, or pay to vote requirement, until 1964 when the United States ratified the 24th amendment, prohibiting any poll tax in federal elections.?Rally’s against the poll tax were most effective when people proclaimed a “right to vote.” ?Had the rallying cry been a “need to vote” people would not have been as inspired (not to argue that a “need” is not relevant).?Basic liberties, when promoted as a right, are accepted more rapidly and meaningfully than when described as a need.

???????????I personally had the opportunity to witness and participate in the campaigns of civil rights groups such as La Raza Unida and the American Indian Movement in which the leadership clearly spoke of the “right” to vote, quality education, and equal treatment more so than the “need.”?The belief was that obtaining the “right” to vote, for example, would fulfill the missing “needs.”?Often, personal stories were described, which depicted the denial of a “right” stemming from the denial to all with shared personal and/or social characteristics.?As King observed, rally’s involving “rights” associated with liberty, equality, and justice were very solidifying.21?The struggle for rights became the “means to the end” of social justice, as critical legal theorists argued it should be.?The leadership of social justice/civil rights groups, such as the La Raza Unida and the American Indian Movement, consulted and collaborated with Martin Luther King while he was alive, and following King’s death, they continued to do so with the new black civil rights leadership.???

???????????Regarding the dispute over preferential treatment, advocates of critical legal theory would support affirmative action programs because the personal experiences of those denied liberty, equality, and freedom formed the basis for an entire group that is “condemned to the margins of legal existence” as the result of a denial of “rights.” 22

Summary

???????????The Christian doctrine of Justice based on Natural Law best resolves this particular dispute, as well as disputes and conflicts in general.?The struggle for social justice of Martin Luther King demonstrates the core values of natural law and the importance of consistency and persistence.?King navigated through the opposition of institutionalized racism.?Instead of allies in the church, he encountered hypocrisy.?Instead of dependence on the ideals of the country, such as liberty and justice for all, he encountered deceit. ?Instead of non-partiality in legislatures, he encountered partiality.?Nonetheless, King had Faith, and consistently based his sermons and message to the country on Biblical Scripture.?

???????????Martin Luther King’s greatest “weapon” was the Divine Truth of Scripture, upon which Natural Law is based.?King often cited the following verses in support of his message that racial discrimination is wrong:

1 Corinthians 12:13, “For we were all baptized by?one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink,”

1 Samuel 16:7, “But the LORD said to Samuel, ’Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him.?The LORD does not look at the things people look at.?People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.’”

???????????Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

James 2: 4, “have you not discriminated among yourselves and become judges with evil thoughts?”

Christians or members of any religious belief, as human beings, have a common moral compass to apply in the relationships between people, personally and through institutions. Current social justice issues such as racial inequality, hostility toward immigrants, economic equality, and health care for all are moral battlegrounds facing all nations. Instituting natural law doctrine, grounded in the respect and dignity of all human beings, in our institutions and value system must be a high priority.

References

1.?????Raymond Wacks, Philosophy of Law, Oxford University Press, Oxford, U.K., 2014, pgs. 114 – 118.

2.?????Crosswalk.Com., Martin Luther King, Jr.,: How Faith Shaped the Civil Rights Movement, DaySpring Blog, January 15, 2018.

3.?????Julius Ghunta, What Role did Christian Teachings Play in the American Civil Right?, E-International Relations. November 1, 2018.

4.?????Ibid.

5.?????Ibid.

6.?????Ibid.

7.?????Brown v. Board of Education II, 349?U.S.?294?(1955).

8.?????Sarah Pruitt, Brown v. Board of Education: The First Step in the Desegregation of America’s Schools, History Stories, History, August 31, 2018.

9.?????United States House of Representatives, The Southern Manifesto of 1956, History, Arts, & Archives, United States House of Representatives, March 12, 1956.

10.?Cass R. Sunstein, Did Brown Matter? The New Yorker, April 26, 2004.

11.?National Archives, Document for September 23rd: Executive Order 10730: Desegregation of Central High School, National Archives, September 23, 1957.

12.?Ibid, Wacks, pg. 35.

13.?King, Martin Luther, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963.

14.?Martin Luther King, The Last Sunday Sermon, https://youtu.be/uFmP3YA3i9g, March 31, 1968. ?King’s message on the power of doing what is right contained these words, “[L]et us keep the issues where they are. The issue is injustice. The issue is the refusal of Memphis to be fair and honest in its dealings with its public servants, who happen to be sanitation workers. Now, we've got to keep attention on that. That's always the problem with a little violence. You know what happened the other day, and the press dealt only with the window-breaking. I read the articles. They very seldom got around to mentioning the fact that one thousand, three hundred sanitation workers were on strike, and that Memphis is not being fair to them, and that Mayor Loeb is in dire need of a doctor. They didn't get around to that.

Now we're going to march again, and we've got to march again, in order to put the issue where it is supposed to be. And force everybody to see that there are thirteen hundred of God's children here suffering, sometimes going hungry, going through dark and dreary nights wondering how this thing is going to come out. That's the issue. And we've got to say to the nation: we know it's coming out. For when people get caught up with that which is right and they are willing to sacrifice for it, there is no stopping point short of victory.”

15.?Harrison Searles, MLK and Natural Law, Ethics,?Natural Law,?Thomas Aquinas, Right Reason, January 17, 2917.??Among the most notable Natural Law references:?“How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distort the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I-it" relationship for an "I-thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and awful. Paul Tillich said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression 'of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.”

16.?Ibid, Wacks, Philosophy of Law, pg. 38.

17.?Lon L. Fuller, Positivism and Fidelity to Law: A Reply to Professor Hart, Harvard Law Review, Vol. 71, No. 4. February 1958. pg. 656.

18.?Ibid, Searles, MLK and Natural Law, Ethics,?Natural Law,?Thomas Aquinas.

19.?Ibid, Wacks, Philosophy of Law, pg. 39.

20.?Patricia Williams, Alchemical Notes: Reconstructed Ideals From Deconstructed Rights, 22 Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties L. Rev. 401 (1987).?

21.?Ibid, Wacks, Philosophy of Law, pg. 127.

22.?Ibid, pg. 127.?