Justice Making

Now that I've come out of blogospheric hybernation, I suppose I ought to catch up with a few other loose ends. A few months ago I attended a day-long training session with Marie Fortune around the issue of working pastorally with survivors of domestic abuse. As part of that training, she spelled out a seven-step process (or perhaps paradigm is a better word) for Justice Making, which I thought was extremely insightful and relevant to a much broader set of situations and circumstances. So while it's still relatively fresh in my mind, I thought I'd flesh it out a bit and share it here.

* Truth-Telling -- Justice-Making begins by creating a safe space where people can tell the truth about their experience. Perpetrators depend upon the silence of their victims in order to hide their behavior from the scrutiny of others. Creating opportunities for people to find their voice again, and to offer their testimony, is the first step from victimization to survival.

* Acknowledgement -- Once people have found the courage to tell their truth, it is also essential that we listen to them, hear what they have to say, and acknowledge that what happened to them wasn't right or fair. Victims typically blame themselves for their misfortunes; survivors are able to distinguish between the things they had control over and the things they didn't, and need to be affirmed in their understanding that they are still OK even though what happened to them wasn't.

* A Compassionate Response -- Often the temptation when we hear a story of injustice is to want to "fix it" -- to become angry, to want to do something, to forget about the person while we focus on the problem. But the person should always come first. Compassion means literally "to suffer with." The Compassionate Response to injustice is basically that same old "ministry of presence" we were taught about in CPE: a person-to-person connection that lifts up our common humanity and holds it in relationship regardless of what may have been suffered.

* Protect the Vulnerable -- Safety for victims and potential victims is the sine qua non of authentic justice making. If injustice can not be "arrested," then attempting to establish justice in an atmosphere of uncertainty, insecurity and vulnerability becomes very difficult indeed.

* Accountability for Perpetrators -- In its essence, the call for accountability is an invitation to repentence. It asks (and insists) that the perpetrator(s) of an injustice recognize that their actions and choices do not take place in a consequence-free environment, and that they take responsibility for the consequences of their own behavior. To frame this in a religious context, without repentence their can be no atonement, and without atonement there can be no forgiveness.

* Restitution -- Domestic abuse, like any other abuse of power, is ultimately about broken covenants, the violation of boundaries, and damaged relationships. Religious professionals in particular often have a bias for attempting to repair those relationships prematurely, before first attending to the more fundamental issues of safety and accountability. Likewise, often times these relationships are broken beyond repair, at which point the work of ministry becomes one of shared grieving rather than attempted healing.

* Vindication -- OK, so maybe it does have the same root as "vindictive," but vindication is not about revenge; nor is it reconciliation, forgiveness, or even atonement. Rather, it's about being liberated from the burden of something that was not your responsibility in the first place. Or to put it another way, it is the public recognition of an injustice rather than the "acceptance" of one, which in turn releases the victim from those insidious feelings of shame and guilt regarding their own victimization, and sets them solidly on the path to healing, wholeness, and "survivorhood." It is the public affirmation of a private truth, which "justifies" the survivor and sets them free.