This GCSE RE Christianity takes a look at social justice. It could well be argued that social justice belongs right at the top of the Christian agenda. A Christian perspective on the (Old Testament) Prophets shows that their message was often along such lines as ‘When God’s chosen one [the Messiah] comes to reign, under His new order all present forms of inequality will be abolished’. And at one of the earliest stages of the Incarnation, when the angel tells Mary she is to be the Mother of God, her response ~ in the form of a canticle, known by its Latin title ‘Magnificat’ ~ makes significant reference to God raising the lowly while bringing the mighty low. Such notions set the tenor for Jesus’ ministry and teachings, and of course for His supreme self-sacrifice to bring back even the most wretched into potential communion with their Maker.
Now that (as Teresa of Avila put it, in the 16th century) ‘Christ has no body now on earth but ours’, it is the calling of living Christian followers to do all they can to right wrongs and do away with avoidable ills, which leaves the challenge of plenty of scope. In some countries the Church, in its various forms, can work openly alongside the statutory authorities: providing relief for those on the margins of society, for instance, through activities, food-banks and help programmes. In places where Christianity is regarded with suspicion, hostility or repression, there would be other challenges again, and maintaining one’s own faith-observances and doing quiet deeds of Christian charity would be particularly difficult.
Indeed, freedom of religion is itself a basic human right for which Christians and others need to campaign ~ respectfully but firmly, as in all they set out to do.