Religion and social justice

Some eminent nineteenth-century intellectuals such as Karl Marx and August Comte predicted the imminent demise of religion as modern science and technology transformed human consciousness. Religion has not only refused to die but, on the contrary, has staged a phenomenal resurgence round the world, thus necessitating a reappraisal of the role of religion in many areas of human activity and aspiration. This book is a philosophical examination of the relationship between religion and social justice. Its main thesis is that, since the primary purpose of religion is the moral and spiritual transformation of human nature, it ought not to be construed as a direct instrument of social justice on earth - as it is by Liberation theologians, for example, and by many liberal Christians and Jews. Indirectly, however, religion may well be a precondition of social justice. For it can be argued that, in the absence of the counteracting effects of the moral and spiritual values prescribed by religion, the liberal vision of individual rights and social justice may be self-defeating. The conditions for social justice are maximized when two conflicting utopias - liberalism, on the one hand, and the biblical idea of the kingdom of God (and its equivalents in the other great religions of the world), on the other - act as much-needed counterweights to each other.