William Sloane Coffin: Sayings on Social and Economic Justice

Not to take sides is effectively to weigh in on the side of the stronger.

The Bible is less concerned with alleviating the effects of injustice than in eliminating the causes of it.

With spiritual arrogance goes the itch to destroy. History warns that the best is always a hair's breadth from the worst, and that heartless moralists in the corridors of power are those who start inquisitions.

Hell is truth seen too late.

When the rich take from the poor, it's called an economic plan. When the poor take from the rich, it 's called class warfare. It must be wonderful for President Bush to deplore class warfare while making sure his class wins.

Not only Christians but all Americans subscribe to the notion that "all people are created equal." But how many feel the monstrosity of inequality? I'm thinking not only of racial inequality, but also of today's excess of wealth and poverty, the absence of affordable housing that "Mr.Conservative," Senator Robert Taft, in the 1940s considered a moral imperative. (The stated goal of the 1948 Taft Housing Legislation was a decent home for every American family.

Few of us today are troubled by the way our economy flourishes not by providing necessities but by providing luxuries, and by the national goal of ending welfare as we know it, when a more just goal would be seeking to end poverty as we know it. We Christians mean well, feebly. We may be repelled by materialism, but we are caught up in it. We are troubled by widespread poverty, but we overly esteem wealth. In short, ours generally is a superficial religious identity, and a superficial religious identity is just that. Superficial.

The word "homeless " is devastating, suggesting neither comfort nor companionship, dignity nor grace, and precious little identity. To have no place is to be no place. Homelessness is nowheresville.

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