Glenn Beck, Mormonism, and Social Justice

“I beg you, look for the words 'social justice' or 'economic justice' on your church Web site. If you find it, run as fast as you can. Social justice and economic justice, they are code words. Now, am I advising people to leave their church? Yes!"
-- Glenn Beck

I’m going to say this right up front: I’m glad Glenn Beck is a Mormon. Not because I have any particular use for the man, but because I have a strong testimony of the restored gospel and, therefore, I believe that joining the LDS Church is the right thing for someone to do. (And for that reason, I’d be equally happy if Noam Chomsky joined the Church.) I’ll also say this: I’m embarrassed that Glenn Beck is a Mormon. Not because I disagree with him in every particular, but because he encourages the kind of dangerously lazy, knee-jerk thinking that bothers me no matter what political position it comes from, and I hate the fact that people watch him bloviate and say to themselves “That guy’s a Mormon.” Beck and I probably actually agree on some points, but in my opinion he’s a blowhard and an ideological bully who tries to gather disciples rather than encourage independent or even critical thinking about the issues he addresses. The Book of Mormon has a term for that kind of behavior—the term is “priestcraft” (2 Nephi 26:29)—and it seems to me that it’s wrong regardless of whether the particular viewpoints you’re advancing have merit in themselves.

But my point was going to be about social justice, not about priestcraft. Generally, I shy away from terms like “social justice” and “economic justice” because they strike me as more resonant than meaningful; they’re great for eliciting an emotional response, but don’t do much to help you solve real-world problems. Both phrases are like warm Play Doh—they can be manipulated to mean whatever the speaker wants them to mean. For example, which is more “just”: that I be allowed to keep the money I earn by the sweat of my brow, or that I be required to share some of the money that I’ve gained at least in part because of my (modestly) privileged place in society? Both propositions have some merit in terms of justice, but they’re also fundamentally at odds with each other. (Which is why most rational people argue about the proper blend of those two propositions, rather than asserting that one of them is completely right and the other absolutely wrong.)

To some degree, I sympathize with what Beck is saying about churches that preach “social justice.” When I hear that phrase in a sermon or read it in a pamphlet, I often get the feeling that it’s a spiritual cop-out, a cowardly rejection of difficult but absolute truths in favor of easy but contingent ones. It seems to me that many churches are increasingly embarrassed to preach anything that might conceivably offend anyone other than those we all agree are fair game (the rich and comfortable), and are especially unwilling to say anything that might sound in any way conservative. This makes it very difficult for them to preach much of what has historically constituted Christian doctrine, while simultaneously making it very easy to preach social justice.

However, speaking as a Mormon, to have someone like Glenn Beck inveighing against churches that preach social justice is pretty amusing. He claims to be a believing Mormon himself, yet he doesn’t seem to have delved very deeply (or even superficially) into either the Church’s scriptures or the teachings of its founding prophet. He certainly can’t have read much in the Doctrine & Covenants. If he had, he might have been startled to come across passages in the D/C in which the Lord specifically and unambiguously prescribes economic equality among the Saints (see D/C 49:20, 51:3, 78:6, and, especially, 104:16). The Book of Mormon prophets inveighed frequently and at length against social pride, the seeking of wealth, and economic inequality (see 2 Nephi 9:30, 3 Nephi 6:15, Alma 4:8, and Helaman 4:12). Depending on what you mean when you say “social justice,” Beck may be counseling himself to run away from the church he recently joined.

Here’s the thing, though, and it’s something that strengthens my testimony whenever I think about it. In the LDS Church, we practically never use the phrase “social justice.” That may be because many of us are so conservative that a phrase like that never even enters our heads, but I think there’s a much better and deeper reason: it’s that we talk about consecration instead. To me, “justice” is a lightweight word; “consecration” is a heavyweight word. (It’s like the difference between “wedding” and “marriage,” or between “commitment” and “covenant.”) Because I’m a temple-going member of the Church, I have accepted the law of consecration, which means that everything I own (including my time and my abilities) is dedicated to building the kingdom of God. Living up fully to that covenant is the work of a lifetime, but to the degree that each member of the Church does live up to it, questions of economic justice become irrelevant—not because justice isn’t important, but because justice becomes a natural byproduct of the pursuit of something much deeper and more eternally significant. If I consecrate everything I have to the Lord, then there’s no question of whether I’ll be richer than my neighbor, because I won’t hesitate to share everything I have. None of it is “mine” anymore, and I no longer covet my own property (D/C 19:25-26). In reality, I don’t claim to be anywhere near that level of faithfulness, but I do think that’s the ideal we should be preaching and to which we should be aspiring: if all of us make and keep those covenants, then social and economic justice will follow naturally. If we focus instead on what most people mean when they say “social justice,” then I think we treat a symptom without dealing with the disease, which is covetousness and selfishness.