Several years ago I wrote a short piece on this topic which appeared in Comment, the publication of the Canadian think tank Cardus. Here is an excerpt:
Must the pursuit of social justice be tethered to statist solutions? Not necessarily. This is where I believe neocalvinism has much to offer as an alternative. To be sure, recognizing that there are systemic causes to the social question undoubtedly entails a strong government willing and able to intervene on behalf of the poor. Provided they are fine-tuned so as not inadvertently to subsidize personal irresponsibility, the programs of the welfare state have a legitimate role to play as a social safety net shielding citizens from the worst of the market’s deficiencies. Returning to the era of unfettered markets, the night-watchman state, and no labour unions would be a historically regressive move to say the least.
At the same time, the notion that government can solve the social question outright is misguided. There is a certain persuasiveness to the libertarian argument that social responsibility is a misnomer because society as such is not a responsible agent. Indeed, policies aimed at ameliorating poverty should recognize the pluriformity of society, including the multiplicity of responsible agents therein. The full complexity of society cannot be reduced to state and market, as if these were the only two factors to be accounted for. Much of the current debate pits political parties that would strengthen the state at the expense of the market in opposition to parties that would enhance the market at the state’s expense. What is missing on both sides is an acknowledgment that a healthy society consists of much more than these two constituent elements.
March 17th, 2010 | 9:00 am | #1
this article/post should drive some people crazy
Libertarians have generally been alarmed by these developments, but they have offered little in the way of policies that would rectify the potential excesses of statism other than to reaffirm the free market and consumer sovereignty—the single-minded promotion of which led to the earlier abuses in the first place!
Great article – virtually completely agree.
March 17th, 2010 | 10:24 am | #2
[...] Ray Pennings on a social justice strategy for conservatives. David Koyzis points us toward a very clear and helpful summary of social justice issues from Comment magazine (presciently from 2004, which I think we can call “ahead of the [...]
March 17th, 2010 | 12:03 pm | #3
Christopher, you are very much in luck — or should I say, you are the beneficiary of Providence? It so happens that an article of mine on precisely this subject appears in the new print issue of Comment:
Two Kingdoms and Cultural Obedience. The article is not online, so you will have to order the issue from Cardus itself. I would definitely recommend Comment, which posts new articles every week. I like to think of it as Canada’s counterpart to First Things, if that’s not too presumptuous.
March 17th, 2010 | 1:10 pm | #4
Not to give too much away, I will say that Darryl Hart, David VanDrunen et al., have something of a Lutheran reading of Calvin. Yes, Calvin distinguished between the institutional church and the political authorities, but this is not quite the same as arguing for two kingdoms in quite the way the Westminster West folk do.
March 18th, 2010 | 10:49 pm | #5
If Hart and others had a Lutheran reading of Calvin, they would be no less theocrats than Calvin was. To be clear, Luther and Calvin both had “two kingdom” views and were both theocrats.
Hart is an advocate of a kind of neo-two-kingdom’ism. Unlike other advocates of yet another kind of neo-two-kingdom’ism, Hart denies that anything except for individual persons and the eccleisal sphere proper can be “Christian.”
Hart’s views are largely unique to himself, and should not be confused with those of other advocates of neo-two-kingdom’ism.
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