Canadian CRC Members Say Doing Justice Is Part of Faith

Findings from a research project released this week provide insight into how CRC people in Canada understand and pursue justice as part of their Christian faith and life.

The Justice and Faith project published interim results from its first year of data collection. Two reports summarize themes and insights from key informant interviews, and responses to questions in a representative survey of CRC members in Canada.

The Justice and Faith project is a partnership between the Christian Reformed Church, the Centre for Philosophy, Religion and Social Ethics at the Institute for Christian Studies, and the Centre for Community Based Research, and is supported by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

“This integration of faith in life, this is our roots. This is what it means to be Reformed.” (key informant)

The results demonstrate a strong, shared commitment among CRC people to do justice as an integral part of Christian faith and life. More than 85 percent of the people surveyed said they strongly or somewhat agree that “Being a Christian requires me to pursue justice.”

Other highlights include:

• “Fairness” and “accountability” are two of the leading ways that CRC members understand justice.
• Other ways of understanding justice included justice as retribution, as making and growing disciples, and as restoring all of creation.
• CRC members rely primarily on the Bible (80 percent of survey respondents) for developing their understanding of justice. Fewer than one quarter say that denominational or other popular Christian resources have helped them to understand justice.
• Seeing examples of others who do justice and hearing stories of justice work were two of the most important ways that people are encouraged or enabled to work for justice.
• Busy lifestyles, the perceived complexity of justice, and a lack of exposure to people experiencing injustice were the most important barriers to working for justice.
• Many key words and phrases used to talk about justice are used frequently, but mean rather different things to different people. These include “kingdom,” “shalom,” “Kuyperian,” and or course, the term “justice” itself. Several key informants also observed that they and others in their congregation preferred to use different words or phrases such as “helping,” “blessing,” or “relationship building” instead of the word “justice.”
• A majority of CRC members (about 2/3rds) strongly or somewhat agreed that they would like to learn more about justice and be more active in doing justice.

Over the next year, CRC members and others will have opportunities to interact with the findings and offer their insights and feedback, including through conference calls, Day of Encouragement workshops, and community forums in locations across Canada. 

For more information about the Justice and Faith project, to share your thoughts and feedback, and for a schedule of coming events, visit http://www.crcna.org/CanadianMinistries/justice-and-faith-project or http://www.icscanada.edu/cprse/justice-and-faith.

The Justice and Faith project is funded by a Partnership Development Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, one of three Canadian federal government research funding agencies. It builds on the insights of a pilot project conducted in early 2013 by the same partners.