Social Justice through Interfaith The way to walk your spiritual talk!

Monday, August 19, 2013

A few days ago a post by Crystal Blanton positing that perhaps Social Justice is the “New Interfaith” appeared in The Wild Hunt.
"While Pagans in the Interfaith community continue to work toward religious tolerance, integration, and networking, we are hearing more about the work of social justice in the community. Is social justice becoming the new interfaith?"

It caused me to stop and think for a moment. Is this author saying that interfaith is somehow obsolete? Is she saying that Interfaith does not deal with the issues of Social justice? Does she, like so many others, believe that all we do in interfaith settings is hug each other and sing warm and fuzzy songs of faith swaying back and forth while congratulating ourselves on tolerating the “other”? Actually I’m pretty certain that Crystal doesn’t ,but It no longer surprises me to find that most who have not participated in the deeper processes of interfaith believe this. It is however about as far from the truth as any two diametrically opposed ideas can be. While I do not necessarily disagree with any of the ideals discussed in the article, I will take absolute exception to the idea that interfaith work is somehow unrelated to social justice.

I am all for any work done in the name of social justice, but social justice outside of the framework of religious practice leaves spiritually behind, as was pointed out by one comment made when the respondent claimed to be conflicted about the idea of this practice outside of his spiritual way of life. Social Justice through the lens of interfaith allows people from any spiritual path to walk their talk, and in particular those who beliefs are based in orthopraxy (right doing) vs. orthodoxy (right thinking or right writings).

http://covenantinterfaith.blogspot.ca/2013/08/social-justice-through-interfaith-way.html