When did "social justice" become a bad term?

When I am on long drives, I frequently listen to political talk radio. In most of the country, this means conservative talk radio such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, etc. Over the last couple weeks, I probably spent 30 hours in the car, and a significant amount of that time I spent listening to these conservative talkers.

While listening, I heard an unusual theme. Far more often than I would have expected, they ripped on the concepts of "social justice" and "economic justice". Unfortunately I did not get enough context to find out why this was the target of particular wrath, but it was clear that most of them were talking about it and warning about its "dangers".

Glen Beck was particularly interesting to me in this regard, because he was spelling out the dangers as if they were theological heresy. He was opposing it on religious grounds. Although I am not an expert on all the theological positions of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (aka, the Mormons) to which Beck belongs, I am fairly certain they do not have any official theological objections to social justice, as they frequently practice it as a church. But Beck was ranting on it the way I have heard some ministers rant on dangerous theological heresies (ironically, such as the LDS).

Beck, while being the most explicit, was not alone. All of the hosts I heard talk about it, with the exceptions of Limbaugh and Neal Boortz, spoke of it as antithetical to their faiths. This included two professed Roman Catholics and two professed Evangelicals.

My guess is that these conservative talkers were conflating two very different concepts: "social justice" and "social gospel". Adherents of the "social gospel" might argue that "sharing the good news" means helping the poor, and does not deal with personal salvation from sins. "Social justice", however, does not necessarily do this at all. In fact, many evangelical leaders today argue that helping the poor and disenfranchised goes hand-in-hand with sharing the Good News of salvation from sin and restored relationship with God.

So, what happened? My guess is this is a legacy of "Fox News Channel Christians", people who conflate the teachings of the Bible with American conservative ideology. (See my previous post if you want to read more about that concept.)

This has not been my first post on social justice, and I'm sure it won't be my last. If you are interested in my thoughts on this, please browse around the blog.