I am on the mailing list for an organization from one of the mainline churches that takes kids just out of college and puts them together in houses 0f 4-10 around the country for one year, and has them volunteer at various institutions. The point of this organization is to "explore spirituality while working for social justice, living in intentional community, and simplifying their lifestyles." I'm on their mailing list because I know some people involved in the group, and went to a few meetings with them a few years back.
Social justice - properly understood - is a very real part of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Our Lord challenged the conventions and assumptions of the religious establishment of His day, and He helped people physically and materially. The early Church did the same things, as know from reading the New Testament. The Incarnation is the basis of social ministry and social justice.
The problem I have with groups like this, though, is that they seem to be entirely focused upon meeting the temporal needs of people, but not their spiritual needs. One would expect a "Christian" organization to address both sides of the issue. Sadly, these groups do not; for they are based more on Marxism than the Sacred Scriptures and the teaching of the Church. Classical Marxism is an entirely materialistic system, where there is nothing transcendent, and most, if not all, of life is reduced to an economic struggle. These groups do not believe that man has any spiritual need. And if they do, it is just that: a vague sort of spiritual need - not a need for union with the Holy Trinity through Jesus Christ. Not a need for salvation from sin and alientation from God and others. Indeed, they do not even mention Jesus in any of their literature! How sad. It is especially sad when one considers that this group is named for one of the greatest reformers of the Church - a man who was especially concerned that people know and believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
One person from this group writes in the latest newsletter: "When we view our year of service only as 'my good deed for others' or 'the way I am going to help people', then we do the people we work with a disservice because we have stopped viewing them as people and have begun seeing them as objects of charity. The beauty of service is then lost because you are no longer relating person to person as equals, but rather as one with power and one without."
Did you catch that last little bit that smacks of Nietzche and Marx? Since when is helping someone doing them a disservice or disrespecting them? What she says is true if everything is material, and there is nothing transcendant, and man is no different from anything else in creation. But as Christians we do not believe that everything is material, and we believe that man is made in God's image, and placed in a position of lordship over the creation. The beauty of service in the Christian tradition is that in serving others we are serving Jesus Christ. If we serve Jesus Christ, does that do Him a disservice? Of course not! We are being obedient to Him and worshipping Him in that act. The same thing is true when we serve others in His name.
The liberal mainline groups have completely undercut their social ministries by stripping them of their biblical and theological foundations. I hope that some day soon orthodox Anglicans can establish a social ministry group similar to these that is based on orthodox Christianity, and that addresses all of the needs of people: the social and spiritual.
