Jesuits and Social Justice

This article examines the history of social justice ministries within the Society of Jesus. Despite the fact that the term is fraught by a great disagreement both about its meaning and its place within Jesuit apostolates, successive Jesuit general congregations have upheld its importance over the last five decades. Even though what we now consider to be social justice has been a part of Jesuit life since the order’s founding, this paper primarily considers the period 1974–present, so as to coincide with GC 32 (1974–75). Social justice has taken many forms, based both on geography and personal interests of the particular Jesuit in question. The broad term covers issues such as the Jesuit Refugee Service, the Plowshares Movement, justice in higher education, and Homeboy Industries. Finally, the paper concludes by considering two growing edges for the order regarding social justice: the role of women in Jesuit apostolates, and the ecological question.

Peace, Nonviolence, and Disarmament

This chapter explores the pacifism of the early Christian church and how the conversion of Constantine in the fourth century led to the development of the just war doctrine. At the conclusion of World War II, the advent of the nuclear arms race rendered some aspects of the just war doctrine obsolete. Pope John XXIII addressed these concerns in his encyclical Pacem in Terris, released in 1963. Numerous Catholic peace groups thought that the Vatican did not take a strong enough stance on war, militarism, and nuclear weapons. The Catholic Worker movement called for a return to pacifism and introduced the techniques of nonviolent noncooperation with civil defense drills in the 1950s. The chapter covers other Catholic peace movements and organizations, including Pax Christi, the Catholic Left that opposed the Vietnam War through draft card burnings and draft board raids, and the Plowshares movement, whose members damaged nuclear weapons to obstruct the nuclear arms race. Eventually, the US Catholic Bishops released the pastoral letter The Challenge of Peace, which condemned nuclear weapons and called for disarmament.

Religion and Progressive Activism

This volume focuses on an important, if often overlooked, way that religion and politics intersect in the United States. Within almost every community, and involved with almost every possible issue or area of public concern, progressive religious activists are a driving force in American public life. Their presence complicates the prevailing wisdom that religion is necessarily conservative and political progressivism is necessarily secular. Yet little is known about these activists, either among the public or within academia. This book brings together a group of leading experts who describe and analyze the inner worlds and public activities of the progressive religious activist field, including chapters on faith-based community organizing, immigrant rights activism, the Plowshares movement, the New Left, and the Nuns on the Bus, among others. Other chapters consider the political engagement of various religious communities, including Mainline Protestants, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, and Catholics. Finally, authors consider connections between these activists and the Democratic Party, examine what factors lead congregations to mobilize for progressive causes, and trace the revival of civil religious rhetoric. Taken together, this book challenges common perceptions of religiously motivated social action, and offers new ways of thinking about the American religio-political landscape as a whole.

Religious Beliefs and Perceptions of Repression in the U.S. and Swedish Plowshares Movements

Sharon Erickson Nepstad’s chapter hones our understanding of how religion can shape activists’ interpretations of repression. Through a comparative analysis of the Plowshares movements in the United States and Sweden, this chapter argues that long prison sentences did not harm the U.S. Plowshares movement in part because activists’ Catholic beliefs and identity led them to view repression in religious terms that deepened their commitment, motivation, and unity. The chapter contrasts the U.S. case to the experience of the secular Swedish Plowshares activists, who interpreted their repression in ways that made them susceptible to internal disputes, waning commitment, and co-optation.