Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office, Edinburgh - Briefing Document Six

Email SCPO

Parliamentary Officer:Rev Graham Blount
Phone:
0131 558 8137

Briefing Document No 6 - Page 3 of 4

Social Justice ... A Scotland Where Everyone Matters - Continued.

Commentary

1. Politically, a number of criticisms have been made of the documents :
(a) They have been claimed to be too woolly, and stronger on rhetoric than on substance - a "wish list" rather than measurable targets.
(b) The idea of 20-year targets has been dismissed as betrayal of a generation.
(c) The failure to set distinctively Scottish targets has been attacked.
(d) Several indicators proposed in the draft Evaluation Framework have been dropped.
(e) The specific measurements proposed in the draft have been replaced by broad statements, like "reducing" or "improving".
(f) They fail to adopt European criteria of poverty and on employment, which would allow international comparisons.
(g) They omit such areas as specific housing problems and fuel poverty.

2. Other models of target-setting include the draft Evaluation Framework prepared by one of the Social Inclusion Action Teams, a set developed by the Rowntree Trust (on which a first progress report has suggested that poverty and inequalities are increasing) and a paper produced for the Parliamentary Social Inclusion Committee by SPICe

Theological Comment

The Bible does not propound a theory of justice, but bears witness to a God of justice - a God whose justice is dynamic and creative, of new life, new relationships and new communities. This justice is to be reflected in the lives of communities (in structures like the jubilee), intervening to remedy the injustices which breed on each other, because injustices and inequalities are destructive not only of their individual victims but also of communities. This is the radical action of the God who intervenes effectively on behalf of the poor, to set things and people right (iustitia iustificans). It demands responses built into the social and economic structures of communities - responses which, like the jubilee, recognise that injustices reappear; they are not to be legislated out of any possibility of recurrence, but tackled as and when they find new forms. At root, this is about original sin infecting economic structures and corrupting even the best of intentions.

Clearly this is a different form of "targeting" from that set out above, but key areas for intervention are identified, notably land-ownership and debt. Recent research has shown that these were key issues running through the Biblical period; when Jesus spoke of forgiveness of debts, his audience knew from bitter experience what real debt meant. Changing economic patterns will mean that other areas may come to have greater significance as focal points of injustice. To work out what these are in Scotland today, and what can be done to remedy them, seems an appropriate response to that same God.

This God of justice is also the God who is incarnate in the homeless Jesus, who becomes a refugee and is identified with the poor. It is to Him we must turn for a realistic understanding of justice or injustice in Scotland today - to the people in whom we are told we will meet Him: the hungry, the stranger, and others who know what it means from the inside. It is people mugged on the Jericho road who can tell us about what makes a real neighbour.

An incarnational theology of justice will therefore not be the preserve of "professionals", in theology or any other discipline, but will come from "below" (which seems a particularly condescending way to put it!). And that is a profound challenge, not only to the Executive's social justice strategy but to how we do our work too.