What Is a Social Conscience?
by Jennifer M. Phillips

"What is a social conscience?" asks Lutheran pastor George S. Johnson. How does one develop a social conscience or help children do so?

This little compendium of resources, which expands and revises the author’s earlier work Beyond Guilt and Powerlessness [Augsburg 1989], is his answer to these questions.

Johnson has served his denomination (the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) as director of their hunger program, has served parishes in California and Minnesota, and taught a class on Justice and Compassion at seminaries in the USA, Africa and India. He holds an M.Div and M.Th. from Luther Seminary, Minnesota and a D.Min. from Claremont School of Theology in California.

Johnson’s format poses a series of journeys of the soul: from struggle to celebration, from believing to following, from silence to speech, from charity to justice, from guilt to responsibility, from peace to peacemaker — to name just some of the 24 sections.

The structure of the work lends itself most ideally to a youth confirmation class or perhaps an adult education series. Each offers a few pithy quotations, a reflection by the author, a selection of "other voices" of social activists, theologians, and writers, and a set of action/reflection questions and exercises.

Essays are brief enough to be read aloud in a few minutes. There are even cartoons and some pieces of music, for despite the array of troubling issues Johnson explores, he urges his readers again and again to sing and celebrate God’s goodness even in the face of suffering.

The scope of topics is huge: environmental threats, nonviolence and war, individualism and community, corporate wealth and corruption, interfaith struggles, sustainable agriculture, population pressures, genocide, famine, Palestinian-Israeli conflict, and more. As a result, each gets only a brief introduction, and one reading the book cover to cover might find it sketchy and limited in depth.

Still, the author’s intention is to bring readers to the questions, and surely this would send them out to research topics of special interest in more depth for themselves. The quotations and credits offer a wealth of background literature, though the book might have benefited from a topical — possibly annotated — bibliography at the back. The author generously allows reproduction of text with proper attribution without special permission — a great boon to parish educators.

"How is hope subversive?" "What economic decisions did you make in the last month?" "How does your congregation or group give voice to the voiceless?" These are wonderful and provocative questions for Christian inquirers of any age. Beyond Guilt makes a useful addition to the Christian Education library of any congregation.

The Rev. Dr. Jennifer Phillips is vicar of St. Augustine’s Episcopal Church in Kingston, Rhode Island, and an Associate of The Society of St. John the Evangelist. Her numerous articles (on urban ministry, poverty, liturgy, AIDS/HIV, sexuality, and theology) have appeared in Anglican Theological Review, The Sewanee Theological Review, The Witness, Episcopal Life, Anglican Digest, The Journal of Thanatology, Open, and her poetry has appeared in numerous journals. Jennifer may be reached by email at revjphillips@earthlink.net