How Social Justice Got to Me and Why It Never Left

In september, 1976, the college where I was teaching, Calvin College, sent me to a conference at the University of Potchefstroom in South Africa—this being one of the old Afrikaner universities. There were a fair number of Dutch scholars present at the conference. They were well acquainted with the South African situation, much better than were any of us who came from North America. And they very angry with the Afrikaners. For two days they exploited every opening they could find to vent their anger at the Afrikaners; the Afrikaners, in turn, exploited every opening they could find to vent their anger at the Dutch for being so angry at them. After a couple of days of this angry back-and-forth, neither party had anything new to say to the other. Then the scholars from South Africa who were so-called blacks and coloreds began to speak up, not so much in tones of anger as in tones of hurt. They described the daily indignities heaped upon them and the many ways in which they were demeaned, they spoke of being expelled from their homes and herded off into Bantustans, and they cried out for justice. I was deeply moved. I felt that I had been issued a call to speak up for these wronged people—in the classic Protestant sense of a call. I did not hear God speaking words in the air. But I had no doubt that fidelity to God required that I speak up for these victims of injustice in whatever way might prove appropriate.

Anger · Economic Justice · Injustice · Linguistics · Political science · Protestantism · Social injustice · Sociology · Stress (linguistics) · African cultural and philosophical studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Reformed Theology and Governance · Social Psychology · South African History and Culture

• W olterstorff on Love and Justice

  Open Access•Joseph Clair•Journal of Religious Ethics•2013

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