PSYC 520 Annotated_Bibliography_by_Adrianne_Wang ESSAY 2021.pdf

Social Justice in Psychology and Christianity

Annotated Bibliography

Adrianne Wang

Department of Psychology, Liberty University

PSYC 520 Psychology and Christianity

Dr. Myers

July 18,2020

What is Social Justice?

According to the United Nations, “social justice is the view that everyone deserves equal

economic, political and social rights and opportunities.”

Social workers, sociologist, psychology, theology, religions (including Christianity) all have their

own views and understandings of what social justice is. Because the topic of social justice itself

is very broad and complex, different people groups have different understandings, opinions and

ideas about how to handle this issue. This paper will specifically focus on how psychology and

Christianity define and view social justice differently and/or similarly, and their values, approach

and understanding of what can be done to fight for and be an advocate for justice that everyone

deserves. As mentioned above, because of the complexity and different issues embedded within

the topic of social justice itself, this paper will mainly focus on the issue of poverty, education,

abuse (especially child/domestic abuse) and sex trafficking/sexual exploitation.

Mildred, Y., & Fiona, H. (2012). A Biblical Basis for Social Justice. Micah

Network. https://www.micahnetwork.org/sites/default/files/doc/page/a_biblical_basis_for_social

_justice_fiona_hahn.pdf

As Christians, and from a biblical point of view, we as Christians, must recognize that

Christ, “in his very essence, is Just (Mildred, Fiona, 2012).” As sin entered the world, and the

enemy actively continues do to whatever he can to distort God’s creation, thereby causing

brokenness to entered the world, its effect has manifested in many ways, one example being

through oppression. The authors of this research highlights that “virtually all social injustices or

abuses of power happen between people groups, or between rich and poor people, or between

men and women (Mildred, Fiona, 2012),” including children. The paper goes further in depths to

discuss many of these social issues and how we as Christians must act, but mainly focus on the

first three chapters- 1. “Biblical Basis for Christian Concerns for Issues of Social Justice; 2. Evil

and Sin; and 3. The Role of Christians to Reflect the Values of Christ in the World Today.

Chapter 1 uses a lot of biblical examples, especially from the Old Testament that shows

one of God’s many characteristics- a Just God. Then, it moves on to the New Testament, talking

about His death and resurrection to restore relationship and for justice; and how we, as Christians

need to continue to strive for and purse justice that God so cherishes and values. Chapter 2, as

mentioned in the introduction paragraph, talks about evil and sin, and that “justice is incomplete

without addressing the origin (Mildred, Fiona, 2012)” of these injustices that are sadly still going

on all around the world. Lastly, Chapter 3 touches on the importance of not just our knowledge

about Christianity, but about our faith and genuine heart for God, knowing that Jesus has already

conquered death and darkness once and for all and the enemy does not stand a chance.

Furthermore, this chapter urges us and challenges us to depend on Him, remembering his victory

on the cross, and recognizing that Jesus, too, aches for the brokenness and injustice in this world.

Vasquez, M. J. (2011). Psychology and Social Justice: Why we do what we do. PsycEXTRA

Dataset, 67(5), 337-346. https://doi.org/10.1037/e692142011-001

This article states that one of the main goals of psychology science is to “decrease human

suffering and promote human values of equality and justice (Vasquez, 2011).” Research and

developments concerning various issues of social justice exists in many different fields such as

social work, psychoanalysis, counseling and more. And again, despite the varying

understandings and approaches to social justice, the common goal for in all these fields involved

with social justice is raising awareness of social justice is and how it impacts people all over the

world. According to American Psychology Association (APA), their core values include

“continual pursuit of excellence; knowledge and its application based upon methods of science;

outstanding service to its members and to society; social justice, diversity and inclusion; ethical

action in all that we do.” “Who are those who care about social justice?” is one of the questions

that is raised in this article, and it talks about processes and logistics involved in engaging in

social justice in APA. It further goes on and continues to talk about development of policies and

goals. The article acknowledges that due to the field of social justice being extremely broad and

wide, it is inevitable for controversy and disagreement, and their goal and hope is to develop

strategies to deal with potential differences with respect, working together in effective manner.

Poe, M. A. (2007). Fairness Is Not Enough: Social Justice as Restoration of Right

Relationships. Journal of the North American Association of Christians in Social

Work, 34(42007), 449-470.

This article, written by Mary Anne Poe talks about social justice being a “foundational

concept for both social work practice and Christian faith (Poe, 2007),” and explore the

challenges that may bring questions to how Christians can integrate faith and social justice.

Because we are human beings coexisting with other beings in this world and forming their own

cultures and societies, the idea of justice is one of the most sought-after notion, something that is

deeply embedded and rooted in our core beings. This article emphasizes on the fact that social

justice and human relationships cannot be separated. Furthermore, it talks about the two distinct

different views of social justice between psychology and Christianity. Psychology, science, and

the “secular” world have established laws and rules to settle for justice and fairness as much as a

human being can possibly do. On the other hand, for Christians, Jesus serves as and is the

definition of justice. Justice is much more than mere rules and regulations, and “even”

distribution of goods because that in itself is impossible as power is being abused, and the

current world we live is the evidence of that. We must recognize that, as stated above, justice is

much more than rule following and keeping, but it concerns human beings and restoring broken

relationships, recognizing and actively reaching out to the vulnerable and the marginalized.

Shafique, S., Bhattacharyya, D. S., Anwar, I., & Adams, A. (2018). Right to health and social

justice in Bangladesh: Ethical dilemmas and obligations of state and non-state actors to ensure

health for urban poor. BMC Medical Ethics, 19(S1). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-018-0285-2

Poverty is arguably one of the most important issues in social justice. Poverty leads to

lack of education, health care access, hygiene, and other basic needs, and this vicious cycle goes

on and on, leading and causing other social justice issues, such as abuse, and human trafficking.

Social justice, which states that everyone deserves to have equal rights, cannot be met when one

is living in poverty without access to any of the basic human needs as mentioned above. This

article studied and looked into Bangladesh specifically to show the discrepancy that is all over

the world, especially in those dark unseen areas. Again, it cannot be emphasized enough that the

issue of poverty alone is connected to so many other factors. The study found that such

vulnerability and the absence of basic amenities for those living in poverty creates another “cycle

of infection, malnutrition, and poor health.” In other words, it is an endless and a vicious cycle

that needs to be fought for and stopped in order to prevent further detrimental damages, because

if we don’t, it will only create more and more injustice to the vulnerable and the marginalized yet

again. In summary, this article, which talks specifically about poverty in Bangladesh, serves as

an example and resource to emphasis again that the there is no simple solution to problems so

complex like social justice.

Johan, M. (204). The Social Justice Debates in Psychology and Theology: Thoughts on "Turning

the World Upside Down". Journal of Psychology and Christianity, 33(2), 127-138.

The article described very concisely but accurately described the affect and impact of

brokenness in social justice. It says, “Racism scars the self-image of the minority client. Poverty

reduces opportunities to flourish. Abuse disempowers those who have little social power.” In

these three short sentences, it brought up the different issues and topics related to social justice

and what the reality of injustice can do to a person. Furthermore, the article looked at social

justice both in the field of psychology and also in the field of theology. In the field of

psychology, the author pointed out that although all psychologies are innately concerned with

justice, “it appeared that there was no consensual understanding of the meaning of the term

“social justice.” However, both psychology and theology were aware of the difficulty and

complexity of dealing with this issue as Cutts (2013) stated, “social justice is both a goal of

action and the process of action itself, which involves an emphasis on equity or equality for

individuals in society in terms of access to a number of different resources and opportunities, the

right to self-determination or autonomy and participation in decision-making, freedom from

oppression, and a balancing a power across society.” However, psychologies and mental health

professions all agree that it is almost impossible to give every individual equal rights, and have

equal distribution of power, as one will always have more than another. This is the nature of this

fallen world. As Christians, we must also be aware of this, but not lose hope. Having a sense of

awareness of the reality of this world, bringing this issue to light and having passion to change

the world, and of course with caution and guidance from the Lord, we, although may not be able

to stop everything, may be able to at least bring to light things that God’s heart aches for, such as

sexual exploitation and poverty.

Tran, T. D., Luchters, S., & Fisher, J. (2016). Early childhood development: Impact of national

human development, family poverty, parenting practices and access to early childhood

education. Child: Care, Health and Development, 43(3), 415-

426. https://doi.org/10.1111/cch.12395

It is an undeniable truth that early childhood experiences and upbringings impact one’s

adulthood. This article focused on the impact poverty, one of the issues and topics concerning

social justice, has on a child’s wellbeing. The article also indirectly talked about domestic abuse

as a result of poverty, and psychological factors mixed together in the lives of these families. The

article used data collected from UNICEF to study the relationship between poverty and its

impact on families’ lives and on children. The article concluded that poverty is “associated

significantly and marked inequality in early childhood development (Tran and Fisher, 2016).”

This article is another example that shows that poverty, which, once again, as many of the

previous article showed, spirals down and leads to other problems such as poor health, lack of

education and more. In other words, poverty, alone is undoubtedly an issue of it’s own, and it is

one of the most important factor in social justice that one must look into and consider, when

trying to fight for, advocating and helping those who are in desperate places that need help

getting out of their situations.

Castano Rodriguez, C., Barraza, L., & Martin, J. (2019). Rethinking equity: Standpoints

emerging from a community project with victims of violence and abuse in Argentina. Cultural

Studies of Science Education, 14(2), 393-409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11422-019-09920-3

“Social justice has been strongly associated with the concept of “equality” (Rodriguez,

Barraza, and Martin, 2019)”. This is in fact an undeniable truth since social justice exists so that

everyone is equally treated and have equal rights as a human being by being given to the

opportunity to have access to health care, food, education and other basic necessities that human

beings need. This article looked into problems and issues in South America, specifically

Argentina, and presented that there are high levels of poverty, thus once again going through the

vicious cycle of economic inequality, violence, and much more. The article discussed as well

about the inequality in education as children from rural areas are more likely to drop out of

school, creating more problems further down the road for these children.

Todd, N. R., & Rufa, A. K. (2012). Social justice and religious participation: A qualitative

investigation of Christian perspectives. American Journal of Community Psychology, 51(3-4),

315-331. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-012-9552-4

Due to the diversity and development of the world, society, and human beings, multiple

understands of social justice have been formed. As a result, there inevitable is always a gap

between different ideas, perception and understanding of what social justice is, and the article

proceeds to suggest that the gap must be filled in order to affectively contribute to this ongoing

problem with social justice. Different studies and experiments were performed, such as

interviewing people about their understanding of social justice, to further and better understand

the issue and how to fill in these gaps. Through the study, it was clear that most presented their

understanding of “social justice and discussed it as inequalities resulting from systems that do

not work,” for example systems that are not “fair” and that don’t give equal opportunities due to

unequal power distribution. So then the question rises- what can we as Christians do to fill this

gap and to fight for social justice? As Christians, we all have a sense of awareness whether big or

small that social justice was at the heart of Jesus’ ministries here on earth. While the article

continues to discuss about what we can “do,” but also looked honestly at the reality. From their

studies and interviews with participants, many stated that the lack of resources of time and

energy as major barrier for involvement in social justice. Another interesting finding was that

some individuals talked about guilt, worth and fear as their barrier. They feared that they will be

“heartbroken” and guilty for having privileges while some people in the world don’t.

Litam, S. D. (2017). Human sex trafficking in America: What counselors need to know. The

Professional Counselor, 7(1), 45-61. https://doi.org/10.15241/sdal.7.1.45

Human sex trafficking/sexual exploitation is not just a problem of the third world

country, but everywhere all around the world, and America too is not an exception. According to

the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, the act of human trafficking in “which the person is

induced to perform a sex act is under 18 years of age (U.S. Department of state, 2000).” Sadly,

the human sex trafficking market does not limit their “targets,” to one group of people. However,

it is usually the more vulnerable and marginalized population, such as those living in poverty,

that becomes victims of entering this dark world of sexual exploitation. It is often the third world

countries, especially those living in remote, unseen, unnoticed areas, that have a “large supplies

of available victims (Litam, 2017). As mentioned in previous article summaries, poverty has

strong correlation with sex trafficking. It is a sad but a true reality that many people willingly

choose to go into this industry believing that they will have better opportunities to earn money

for survival. Furthermore, as the title of the article states, sex trafficking exists in America as

well. Though, once again, there are no specific targets, it is usually those dealing with other crisis

such as domestic abuse, living under low-socioeconomic status, thus becoming vulnerable to

other dark industries like drug dealing that becomes victims of sex trafficking.

Au, C. (2012). Justice and peace for global commercial sex workers. The Ecumenical

Review, 64(3), 267-280. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1758-6623.2012.00173.x

This article, which also talks about human sex trafficking and its relation to poverty and

family background, focused on looking at and studying the aboriginal migrant women in Taiwan.

According to the article, Taiwan is one of the Asian countries with the most sex workers. These

women, due to social injustice, were not able to get proper education, which caused them

difficulties getting a “normal” job, thus leading them poverty and into sex industry in order to

earn “easy” money, so they can provide food on the table and also provide for themselves and the

family the basic necessities. The article also talked about children who witnessed their mother

being involved this industry, who then later on enter the industry as well, because they think they

have no other options. Once again, social injustice is a complex issue where so many brokenness

is all tied and mixed together, causing more and more damage. The sad reality is that it is still an

ongoing issue all around the world and it is something we cannot do to fix and rescue every

single victim right away. But as the article suggested, we, as Christians, should not judge these

women and children for the “choices” they have made, but see them as our family in Christ, who

for some reason had no choice but to enter into this dark industry in order to make ends meet.

We, as Christians, and also our world in general, need to break down our own fears and

misconception of issues and surrounding human trafficking. We can bring Jesus to them and ask

fervently and passionately for Him to enter into all those crack and brokenness in the lives of

these victims.

References