Is there a core vision of faith-based justice organizations?

Faith-based justice organizations engage in a wide variety of work to make the world a better place for everyone to live. Climate change, conflict transformation, economic and social challenges – a long list. Do they share a common mission in the midst of their diversity? If so, what might that be?

As I understand the term, “faith-based” includes people of any spiritual or religious tradition and “justice” includes organizations committed to practices of compassion, healing, and freedom. Their various organizational missions can all be part of what the Hebrew tradition calls repairing the world (tikkun olam) and what all spiritual traditions at their best envision as a world of peace, joy, and love.

My knowledge of sacred texts of many religions is limited, but my ecumenical experience convinces me that in their diversity we find a core vision of a world of healing, freedom, and justice – and a love that permeates it all. I believe that in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, the word “salvation” means healing, freedom, and justice, and the source of that “salvation” is love.

Am I limiting healing, freedom, and justice – even love – to religious traditions and texts? Not at all. Many non-religious traditions also share this core vision of a world where healing, freedom, and justice, permeated by love, become the reality for all of creation. Can organizations that come from this non-religious background, perhaps considering themselves secular but sharing this core vision, be considered “faith-based,” meaning spiritual but not religious? Yes.

Another path to this vision comes by taking up the call of the Hebrew prophets to do justice, love goodness, and walk humbly in this world. When justice organizations talk about these things and use the language of justice, goodness, and humility as we communicate our mission and develop our strategies to fulfill it, we are faith-based – spiritual, perhaps religious. Our mission strategies come by naming their opposites – injustice, cruelty, and arrogance, along with fear, dominance, power, greed, and lies – and calling them out wherever we see them. We design strategic actions to work against these systemic realities of our world and to work for a world we can envision where healing, freedom, and justice become the new systemic realities for everyone and all of creation.