John Addison Teevan offers a reflective roadmap for implementing social justice

By John Addison Teevan (Christian’s Library, 2014)

In Integrated Justice and Equality: Biblical Wisdom For Those Who Do Good Works, longtime Evangelical pastor John Addison Teevan remarks that Evangelicals and Catholics alike can be tempted to simply equate social justice with popular economic struggles–income inequality, immigration, fair trade. He notes that the popular meaning of social justice is limited to material well-being. Christians, he argues, don’t realize “that justice and social justice are not interchangeable terms.”

Teevan tries to extract a Christian sense of justice from the popular meaning. “We must insist on an integrated . . . view of justice that includes society and is personal, rather than almost exclusively institutional,” he says. Society is the field, but not the ultimate source for social justice. God’s grace is the surpassing reality, and from that bedrock source alone can we be “ministers of grace” in serving others. In that spirit, Teevan hopes the gospel becomes more attractive “with hearts and hands committed to acts of compassion,” a sentiment Catholics would share with Pope Francis.

Teevan devotes five chapters to treating social justice from economic, philosophical, and biblical perspectives. His sixth and concluding chapter features applications for how to best respond to human needs in both a godly and effective manner.

Along the way, consideration of Catholic social thought is brief, but the book offers several provocative conversation starters for Catholics in the field, such as: “Fair-trade projects may unintentionally extend poverty,” and “There is excess and narcissism in social justice, as, for example, in many short-term, church-sponsored mission trips.”

For those who want to see how the gospel can help the whole person, and who also want to better understand steps to bring justice to the world, Integrated Justice and Equality is rich in reflective value.

This review appeared in the April 2015 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 80, No. 4, page 43).