Kolvenbach + King on Justice

From King’s famous line “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” to the refined mission of the Jesuits Kolvenbach deposits as moving from “ ’the service of faith,’ [to] also include ‘the promotion of justice’ ” (23), these speakers are among many who raise a call to action to work to expand our sense of community and shift from concepts to action, to context, to experience, to the now. They both address justice, the role of experience, (directly and indirectly) the role of leaders for change, and the need to name a particular group to be protected now.



Both work their messages through a faith structure assuming their audiences have connections to the respective faith bases. The directive to consider an action-based pursuit of faith and actualizing it challenges the understanding of our individual roles. Thus, that role, unlike that of professing the idealism of the concepts like peace and justice ad nauseam, requires preference and action for specific groups of particularly marginalized people that have been ostracized.



In discussing the promotion of justice and positive peace, community shaping, King directs his frustration toward the white moderates, whose efforts he acknowledges, but who he notices to be so focused on “a negative peace [or absence of tension] … to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.” Thus he writes that these individuals are in verbal and abstract agreement that peace as a concept is needed, but at the same time, they reject “ ‘methods of direct action’ “ (King, 3). Kolvenbach expresses that Jesuit educators, leaders and visionaries (as one could imagine Birmingham clergy too) “express faith-filled concern for justice,” however, they sometimes miss the mark in connecting with the community or in bringing concepts [like justice] down, [and then] guiding the masses towards a just revolution (Kolvenbach, 22, 37). In other words, both Authors seem to suggest these leaders and guiders of change who have links to the texts and understandings of the concepts have a duty to apply it to the world. They need to have a direct link to experience and shape the community they have the ear of by stating the need for use of that knowledge.



When responding to another letter a “[white Texas brother in faith],” King referred to the “tragic misconception of time” that he and other Christian followers had (King, 4). This is dealt with in a leader to these nine spiritual leaders rather than directly to this individual. King clearer agrees with Kolvenbach (though not explicitly) that certain members of our society because of their unique positions of guidance can have more influence on larger groups to affect a preference for a certain marginalized group if they bring attention to those needs. Such is needed because as King says “privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily” (King, 2) and thus leaders can guide the conversations and actionable change.



Thus the authors work within the faith structures but push for a truer sense of the tradition calling for a transformation of the world to stay in accordance with larger goals of human flourishing for all.


The difference between the two essays is the following. The racialized aspect added by King speaks directly to the core identity group he finds to be most vulnerable in his respective time. Such group is often also placed into an impoverished one, but King points out early in his address that this “airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society” that many black people find/found themselves into, goes beyond the removal of access and ostracization before impoverished. He uses the example of talking to his daughter, of being unable to explain that the " ‘nobodyness’ " and “agonizing pathos” she and many others find themselves in, to demonstrate that they find themselves in the most urgent vulnerable position, not because of circumstances, but rather because of a systematic outcasting of an unchangeable visible identity(King, 2). Thus, when Kolvenbach correctly identifies a “[societal] rift, with its causes in class, racial and economic differences, [that] has its root cause in chronic discrepancies in the quality of education...schools where Afro-American and immigrant students drop out in droves”(Kolvenbach, 31) he associates bad education as a key root cause associated with the identity he speaks to repeatedly (i.e. class, economic differences) and not enough about the role of racial components used to justify rifts. He slips the identity between two other terms upholding his overall quasi-liberation theology call for a preferential option for the poor but particularly extending this thought in the realm of poor education, poor knowledge, poor access.



Kolvenbach has the same fuel, but King would have to say he missed the mark in the preferenced group, despite also utilizing his writing skills to inspire the influencers of society too.