Secular-Christian Social Justice: Climate, Race, and Gender in the 21st Century
Noa Ben-Asher
Material excerpted from Secular-Christian Social Justice: Climate, Race, and Gender in the 21st Century by Noa Ben-Asher © 2026 by New York University Press. Excerpted with permission from the publisher.
In the opening decades of the twenty-first century, a distinctive vocabulary has emerged across social justice domains. Pope Francis called for an end to “the senseless war against creation,” urging humans to “repent for their ecological sins,” and leaders at the Parliament of the World’s Religions publicly confessed “failing to care for the Earth.” President Biden characterized slavery as America’s “original sin,” describing its legacy as a moral stain that demands continued reckoning. The #MeToo movement fueled debates over whether those accused of misconduct deserve a “path to redemption.” Although leaders and social justice movements increasingly adopt secular vocabularies, their language, logic, imagery, and emotional resonance echo theological frameworks.
This book investigates the hybrid secular-theological nature of contemporary social justice domains. It asks: what does social justice mean in the twenty-first century? Twenty-first-century climate, racial, and gender justice domains in the United States—by which I mean the interconnected fields of activism, law, policy, culture, and public rhetoric through which claims of social justice are articulated—center on concerns regarding a range of political injustices. These include structural inequalities, a pending climate catastrophe, a prison industrial complex, gender and racial wealth gaps, climate migration, police violence, and sexual and gender harassment in the workplace. In articulating claims for social, legal, and political change, those working within these social justice domains have manifested a fascinating combination of theological and secular motifs and experiences.
The central thesis of this book is that Christian theology fundamentally shapes contemporary social justice domains. The lived experience of social justice today is neither purely secular nor purely religious. I call this phenomenon Secular-Christian Social Justice. This does not mean that social justice domains have wholly accepted Christian doctrine as metaphysical, theoretical, or abstract truth. Rather, for those operating within social justice domains, the reality of day-to-day life bears striking resemblances to core aspects of Christian religious experience. These resemblances manifest in theological structures, rhetorical forms, and affective registers: apocalyptic narratives, trauma-centered frameworks, appeals to inherent injured dignity, and calls for economic justice. Contemporary social justice reproduces fundamental modalities of Christian theology and religious experience.
In offering this analysis of social justice domains, this book is in dialogue with literature about the role of religion and secularism in modern societies. Philosopher Jürgen Habermas has characterized Western countries (such as the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom) as “post-secular” societies in which religious and secular worldviews coexist and engage in mutual dialogue, recognizing the continued relevance of religion in the public sphere. Habermas considers this reciprocal dialogue essential for navigating pluralistic societies and building social unity. Political theorist Charles Taylor, by contrast, has proposed that secularization in Western societies has involved a fundamental shift in the conditions of belief. This “secular age” is characterized by the possibility of what Taylor calls “exclusive humanism”—a worldview that finds meaning without reference to transcendence, the divine, or the supernatural. It does not preclude religious belief, but rather creates a context where both belief and unbelief are understood as choices within a pluralistic landscape.
Others have critically interrogated the category of the “secular” in colonialist power structures. Anthropologist Talal Asad has argued that “the secular” is not a neutral, universal category but a product of specific historical processes, particularly those tied to Western modernity. Asad demonstrates how modern secularism emerged as a historically contingent project shaped by Protestant Christian assumptions about belief, subjectivity, and freedom. He critiques how colonial and postcolonial governments have mobilized secularism to regulate religious life, discipline non-Christian traditions, and impose Eurocentric norms of public reason and personal autonomy. Anthropologist Saba Mahmood has examined how secular governance enables certain forms of religious expression while constraining others in Egyptian Islamic revival movements. She contends that understanding contemporary societies requires moving beyond the religious/secular binary to examine how religious practices and secular power interact.
Building on but departing from these perspectives, this book examines how contemporary secular justice movements remain Christian in their logic, rhetoric, and affect. Rather than framing contemporary social justice as a “dialogue” between religion and secularism (Haber-mas) or as a landscape where belief and unbelief coexist as “options” (Taylor), this book demonstrates that Christian theological concepts constitute the very framework through which dominant U.S. justice movements understand and articulate their claims. Unlike Asad and Mahmood, whose critiques focus on how secularism operates as a historically contingent and power-laden category that regulates religious expression and maintains colonial dynamics, my approach shifts attention to the internal theological formations of secular justice discourse itself, revealing how social justice domains reproduce Christian frameworks.
The Four Pillars of Secular-Christian Social Justice
The book identifies and explores four theological motifs at the core of contemporary social justice domains: an approach to history (apocalypse), a theory of injury (trauma), a foundational value (dignity), and a vision of economic justice (material equality). Together, these form secular-Christian social justice. By illuminating this phenomenon and its implications, the book provides insights for policymakers, lawmakers, political scientists, and others invested in twenty-first-century social justice. The analysis reveals how even ostensibly secular social justice goals can reproduce Christian theological frameworks. The book investigates each of these four characteristics of social justice domains.
The first inquiry explores apocalyptic themes in contemporary social justice movements. Several scholars have observed the apocalyptic nature of social justice claims, especially in climate justice. I extend this analysis to other social justice movements and contrast early Jewish and Christian apocalyptic texts with current apocalyptic worldviews. Drawing on theological studies of Paul, this first inquiry explores how three Pauline apocalyptic themes—eschatology, epistemology, and redemption—manifest in contemporary social justice domains.
First, eschatology combines the Greek ἔσχατος eskhatos (last) with “-logy” (field of studies). Contemporary social justice domains frequently engage “last-ologies” descriptively and prescriptively, shaping how people experience their world. Climate justice advocates warn about destruction of the planet; racial justice advocates posit endings to traditional accounts of American history, while offering more accurate historical narratives; and gender justice advocates, gaining increasing public attention with the #MeToo movement, propose an end to traditional structures of gender oppression. Second, epistemology combines Greek ἐπιστήμη (knowledge) with “-logy,” and is defined as a “theory of knowledge and understanding.”
Theologians describe Paul’s apocalyptic epistemology as knowledge in morality, ethics, and virtue. Contemporary social justice domains likewise function as systems of morality, ethics, and virtue. They articulate not only what counts as harm and responsibility but also prescribe norms of appropriate conduct. Advocacy, public expression, and consumption habits are imbued with moral significance. Finally, I contrast theological theories of redemption with current political and legal discussions regarding redemption for climate, racial, and gender-related wrongdoing. Claims for racial and climate reparations rest heavily on a theory of redemption, requiring those who had benefited from racial injustices or from climate warming to make amends. Redemption thus completes the apocalyptic cycle. After revelation of ending (eschatology) and moral reckoning (epistemology), redemption offers a path forward through transformation and atonement. This tripartite structure—of ending, moral judgment, and potential redemption—shapes ancient theological apocalyptic texts and replicates in contemporary social justice domains navigating climate collapse, racial reckonings, and transformation in gender relations.
The second inquiry examines how trauma functions as the perceived primary injury of social injustices. Trauma operates as both an official medical-scientific diagnosis and a generator of moral and ethical claims. As a medical-scientific diagnosis (rooted in psychoanalysis, a leading science of the twentieth century) that experts allegedly find and treat in the human body, trauma appears as secular. Its uptake in social justice domains has, however, overlapped dramatically with a Christian theology of grace. Social justice narratives intertwine trauma and grace, viewing suffering beyond mere injury as a potentially transformative and redemptive experience that generates moral and ethical claims. This trauma-centered framework shapes legal claims and political identities of individuals and communities subjected to climate, racial, and gender injustices.
Third, this book delves into human dignity. In secular-Christian social justice, human dignity is the foundational liberal right. Harm to dignity is often a core feature (cause and consequence) of trauma. Liberal legal systems have recognized dignity as a constitutional right, a private law value, and an international human right. Legal, policy, and social claims for climate, racial, and gender justice frequently invoke the inherent dignity of humans and of the planet (including specific flora, fauna, and ecosystems). Drawing on work by historians and legal theorists who have demonstrated that modern human rights are shaped by Christian institutions and ideals, I argue that within the United States, human dignity in social justice domains represents a twenty-first-century manifestation of Christian thought and experience.
Finally, secular-Christian social justice centers on a primary theory of economic justice: material equality. Social justice movements understand material inequality as both a primary cause and a symptom of social injustices. This understanding persists from the Hebrew Bible through ancient religious teachings, contemporary social justice movements, and secular philosophical traditions. Theological ideas have shaped contemporary social justice, which reflects a progression from early Jewish tradition through Jesus and Paul’s teachings on wealth to modern movements and theories. Material inequality themes pervade contemporary social justice: the theological concept of stewardship has evolved into critiques of capitalist exploitation of nature in climate justice movements; feminist and abolitionist activists view material inequality as a primary cause and consequence of racial and gender injustice; and racial justice movements—from W. E. B. Du Bois’s economic framing of racial oppression through Martin Luther King Jr.’s critique of capitalism to the Black Lives Matter movement—have consistently emphasized racial exploitation and material inequality as key manifestations of racial injustice.
Each chapter in this book focuses on one central pillar of secular-Christian social justice. In each, I do two things. First, I illustrate the centrality of each motif (apocalypse, trauma, dignity, economic justice) in climate, racial, and gender justice domains by examining laws, policies, literature, film, social justice platforms, and other sources. Second, I situate the motif in its theological context, tracing its transformation into the twenty-first century. Through this work, I reveal the extent to which Christian theology has influenced and shaped contemporary social justice domains.
Why does this matter? What is at stake in characterizing social justice in the twenty-first century as secular-Christian? If you are persuaded by the book’s descriptive argument about the current state of social justice domains, how it will matter to you depends on your religious, political, ethical, personal, and other orientations regarding climate, racial, and gender justice.
Consider two possible responses to this book. Imagine you are Patrick. You are a white man, a devout Catholic thinker, who believes that liberalism has failed and that foundations for contemporary society lie in a return to traditional family and religious values through the Catholic faith. Your response will probably be, “Hurray! These progressive ‘woke’ movements have replicated our values, those of Christ. They are neither original nor creative and they have brought upon us a crisis of culture.” Now imagine that you are Greta, a young climate activist.
Reading this book, you realize that values you have fought for your entire life, sailing across continents, speaking to world leaders, marching, rallying, are rooted in Christianity. Your response will probably be, “So what! I can achieve these goals and save the world from climate change, racism, sexism, xenophobia, and injustice. Why should I care that my sources are Christian?” I have encountered many Patricks and Gretas. Both types are persuaded by similar principles, leading them in opposite political, legal, and cultural directions. Probably neither will be affected by this book. I write from the legal, political, and cultural left. But I resist a purely consequentialist approach. The stories, myths, and ideals we rely on when articulating social justice shape our world, who we are, and the history we make.
Ignoring the theological origins of contemporary social justice carries high stakes. Conservative social, political, and legal thinkers have identified and weaponized the theological premises of liberal and constitutional norms and institutions. German legal theorist Carl Schmitt declared, “All significant concepts of the modern theory of the state are secularized theological concepts.” In this influential text, written during the Weimar Republic (1919–1933), Schmitt argued that modern political concepts are secularized versions of theological ideas. He persuasively challenged the belief that politics can be fully separated from its religious origins, while critiquing liberal democracy and parliamentarism as ineffective. Today, his disciples in the United States (including some on the Supreme Court) propose a return to traditional society through Catholic governance. Contemporary Catholic Integralists call, among other things, for banning abortion and contraceptives, overruling same-sex marriage recognition, denying transgender rights, and re-turning to “traditional” family values.
This book stems from my belief that those on the legal, political, and cultural left must interrogate the theological aspects of our social justice claims, for two reasons. First, intellectual honesty and ethics require us to reveal and test our assumptions. Second, once political theologies are critically identified and interrogated, we can generate ideas and forms of action more radical and emancipatory than those grounded in Christian theological frameworks. The current secular-Christian framings of legal and political claims, while sometimes useful, limit politics and possibilities. For example, as chapter two (“The Force of Trauma”) demonstrates, the primacy of trauma as a presumed injury has generated legal and political claims for climate, racial, and gender justice that are limited to traumatic injuries. Political and legal claims that transcend trauma hold exciting potential. Likewise, although the concept of human dignity has been critical for enhancing reproductive and sexuality rights, it now serves as a weapon against gender, racial, and sexual minorities.
Noa Ben-Asher is Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law, where they teach Torts, Family Law, and Gender, Law, and Sexuality. They hold a Doctor of the Science of Law (J.S.D.) from New York University School of Law. Their scholarship has appeared in numerous legal journals and edited collections.
Recommended Citation
Ben-Asher, Noa. “Secular-Christian Social Justice: Climate, Race, and Gender in the 21st Century.” Canopy Forum, June 26, 2026. https://canopyforum.org/2026/06/26/secular-christian-social-justice-climate-race-and-gender-in-the-21st-century/.
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