Social Justice & The American Church – lessons for Singapore?

[I wrote this on 12 Jun 2020 and it was originally published at lazyiroh.wordpress.com ]

[Note: This is a collection of my own research and my thoughts packaged primarily for a Singaporean audience; I do not claim to be an expert on the American Church’s response to Social Justice (a massive sprawling subject), am and I open to correction if I get any facts or concepts wrong.]

For purposes of this article, I will divide the Evangelical Christian response to Social Justice issues into 3 broad camps, which for simplicity sake, I will term ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘center’. Most of my data is based on racial related issues, particularly in response to the George Floyd riots, but these divisions have existed for some time now, and cut across to various other social divides in addition to race.

On the left are Evangelical Christians who whole-heartedly adopt terminology and concepts of secular Critical Theory and present them as gospel priorities. This camp believes that the church is not being obedient to God (and therefore they are sinning) if they do not do the work of deconstructing oppressor groups and structures, and uplifting oppressed groups. I am least familiar with this camp, but key books in this camp appear to be Be The Bridge (by Latasha Morrison), White Awake (by Daniel Hill) and Can White People Be Saved? (by Love Sechrest). There is also the work of James Cone, particularly A Black Theology of Liberation, and perhaps also secular texts such as Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility, and the works of Ibram X Kendi. There is probably a spectrum of views in this camp, and I assume most of non-Evangelical Christianity lie within this camp as well.

On the right are Christians who call for a flat out rejection that the church should get involved with social justice issues. They will claim something to the aspect that a desire to love and care for others is part of the sanctified Christian life, but it’s not the role of the church, and it’s not a gospel issue. Furthermore, they are wary about claims otherwise as secular ideology (e.g. “Cultural Marxism”) seeping into the church, and vehemently defend their claims as protecting the church from dangerous heresy. This is the camp behind the online “Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel“. Most active in this camp is probably Tom Ascol (of Founders Ministries), but the most prominent adherent is probably John MacArthur.

In the center are those who find problems with both sides. They agree with the right that the left side has dangerously imbibed secular pagan ideology into their theology, but they disagree with the right about the role the church has to play in serving and caring for the oppressed. They would criticize the right for being callous to real hurts and pains of people, which the church is called to listen to and to care for. They further agree to adopt some terminology and concepts of critical theory insofar as to identify the hurts, pains and injustices, but call for the rejection of the secular worldview (unlike the left). This position is detailed in Resolution 9 of the 2019 Southern Baptists Convention, which caused a rift between the right and center camps. Most prominent adherents of this camp include Al Mohler, Ligon Duncan and Mark Dever. The theology of mercy and social justice articulated by this camp is also deeply influenced by the work of Tim Keller.

It is quite possible that some individuals do not fall neatly into either camp. In particular Thabiti Anyabwile feels in between center and left. Regardless, broadly speaking there are clear lines of tension and hostility across the three camps, and the many cries for Christian unity go largely unheard.

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Singapore is an odd place when it comes to being self-reflective on our own social divides. The COVID-19 situation highlighted the plight of low-wage foreign workers and their status as the bottom rung of Singapore society. A heavily criticized forum letter sent to Lianhe Zaobao, as well as social media comments about foreign worker dormitories revealed that Singapore society is deeply divided about its understanding on xenophobia. Local support for the George Floyd protests have been called out for hypocrisy given that Singapore appears to lag behind even America when it comes to racial equality, evidence by a 2016 photo of a bunch of RJC students in blackface to celebrate an Indian classmate’s birthday. And in response to the global tearing down of statues, questions were raised about whether we should tear down the statue of Raffles, partly because of the atrocities the British has inflicted on the indigenous people of Singapore (who have largely lost their pre-colonial history and identity).

As for the Singaporean church, my sense is majority of the traditional and charismatic churches will align with the “right” on social justice issues. There already is a prevalent attitude that mercy ministry is only performed as pre-evangelism, and Evangelism is largely the only task the church is asked the perform with respect to those outside the church. We add this to the already prevalent air of pragmatism in churches, and the general unwillingness to be involve socio-political issues from the pulpit (which has its own history worth exploring, but not here).

There is however, a growing “woke” population in Singapore, primarily millennials, both inside and outside the church. My own analysis is that this generation emerged this way for two reasons: they are more exposed to global affairs (and ideologies) via social media (and good old American domination of entertainment), as well as being far removed from the early post-independent years of Singapore, where a pragmatist worldview was seen as necessary for survival. Some have also suggested that Singaporean millennials are disenchanted with their parents’ vision of the Singaporean materialist dream, having experienced the spiritual and emotional toil of having to grow up in such families. But yet at the same time, they are still culturally bound by the honour-shame ethos, feeling great insecurity and anxiety about the need to perform (and be seen to be doing) “the right thing”, which will increasingly be defined by western-influenced ideals instead of their parents’. To illustrate, I recently had a conversation with a young millennial (who goes to a conservative reformed church) where she said that she imagines God “scolding” her if she fails to do her part to help and serve the suffering in society (and thus feels anxious for the need to perform social justice).

Within older Singaporean churches, many have already observed a “generation gap”, where millennials and Gen X church goers desire to do church differently from their predecessors, while the “old guard” struggle to adapt an increasingly defiant or indifferent younger generation. Perhaps this would erupt into a clear rift similar to the Amercian situation, based on our own Singapore social issues. To my knowledge, there is currently only one progressive church in Singapore but will these churches grow and proliferate as Singapore gets more and more “woke”?

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What lessons can we draw from the Amercian situation to prepare ourselves? I guess the answer varies depending on which side of the spectrum you already lie on. If you lean left, for example, these are welcome developments which perhaps you would like to accelerate. If you lean right however, you may feel the need to prepare additional defenses against this upcoming onslaught of liberal pagan ideology.

But if like myself, your convictions are gospel-focused and lean center, we have a few hard things to think about. One, we probably cannot avoid talking about social issues from the pulpit. We need to show how the gospel is relevant to these real issues of hurt and pain, and to present a gospel framework on how God is indeed calling us to serve and care for the suffering. Two, we need to equip our church members to engage well (and to love!) with those who disagree with them, either left or right. Disagreements are rarely pleasant, but opportunities to display counter-cultural godly character is not an unwelcome thing. Three, genuine, sincere and sustainable mercy ministry may become more important than ever, and capacity for such ministry needs to be developed by churches.