Some error occured while loading the Quick View. Please close the Quick View and try reloading the page.
Explores the Christian-theological foundations of modern social justice movements and how they've shaped contemporary debates on climate, race, and gender
From Pope Francis’s call to “repent for ecological sins” to murals depicting George Floyd in the Virgin Mary’s arms, Christian motifs have permeated contemporary justice discourse. In Secular Christian-Social Justice, legal scholar Noa Ben-Asher investigates the often-hidden theological foundations of seemingly secular social justice movements, exploring how climate, racial, and gender justice are fundamentally animated by Christian themes and values.
Combining critical legal theory, theology, feminist and queer thought, and cultural analysis, Ben-Asher demonstrates that contemporary social justice movements operate through four distinctly Christian theological frameworks: apocalyptic worldviews that frame social crises as existential battles between good and evil; trauma-centered narratives that mirror Christian concepts of grace and redemption; appeals to human dignity rooted in Catholic social teaching; and critiques of material inequality that echo biblical economic justice traditions. This interdisciplinary approach allows for tracing the subtle yet pervasive influence of Christian thought across climate, racial, and gender justice. Thus, Ben-Asher argues, the so-called “culture wars” in the United States aren’t taking place between religious and secular forces, but between two Christianities: one traditional and institutional, the other reformist and ostensibly secular.
The book contends that reckoning with these theological foundations is essential for both intellectual honesty and effective legal and political action. Providing a critical diagnosis of contemporary law and activism, Secular-Christian Social Justice challenges and deepens readers’ understanding of the relationship between religion, law, and politics in America, and calls for more radical forms of climate, racial, and gender justice that transcend inherited theological paradigms.
— Simon Stern, Faculty of Law and Department of English, University of Toronto
"Noa Ben-Asher contends that those on the American left who think of themselves antagonistic to the Christian right are just as much indebted to a political theology as their foes. Is it possible that tracing key elements of our ostensibly secular outlook to their religious sources would help in engaging in campaigns for social justice more successfully? Read this essential book to find out."
— Samuel Moyn, author of Christian Human Rights
"In 1922, Carl Schmitt proposed that "all significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts." Updating Schmitt, Noa Ben-Asher argues that key social justice ideas of the present – like climate catastrophe, trauma, human dignity, and inequality – are secularized versions of Christian theology. Brilliantly provocative and timely, Secular-Christian Social Justice demands that we approach our political commitments with nuanced awareness of their origins; their baggage; and ours."
— Noah Feldman, Arthur Kingsley Porter University Professor, Harvard Law School
"Provocative and insightful, Secular-Christian Social Justice offers an original account of how Christian tropes continue to shape contemporary social justice movements and the range of what they can demand, recognize, and imagine as emancipatory. Ben-Asher offers an honest and fearless exegesis of the orthodoxies that sustain liberal faith."
— Aya Gruber, author of The Feminist War on Crime