Our Justice Journeys: Three Centuries of Striving for a Better World

This compact volume, edited by Thomas Dobson, offers a richness in content that belies its length. Offering a range of papers reflecting on the ‘Walking with Micah’ social justice project that reported to the British Methodist Conference in 2021, it offers a fascinating insight into the sometimes unknown history of Methodist encounters with injustice arising from class, race, and sex.The focus is largely historical, reflecting the contributors’ and publisher’s concern with the heritage aspects of Methodism. Far from this rendering the subject irrelevant to the concerns of today, however, the focus on Methodist history suggests the importance of context and lived experience in the quest for a more just society. How previous generations of Methodists struggled with injustice in practical ways offers helpful reflections for how we might do the same.A striking element of the volume is the connection made between the struggle for justice in the lives of Christians and the various Methodist archives and heritage sites. These places range from the contents of the Methodist Women’s Collection at Epworth (in the article by Ruth Slatter and Hannah Worthen), to the New Room and its location in the struggles of John Wesley’s Bristol (described in Kate Rogers’s article), to Englesea Brook and the Primitive Methodist cultivation of the preaching of women and working-class men (illuminated in the pieces by Elizabeth Morris and Tim Macquiban). This emphasis on time, place, and personal history anchors the reflections of contributors on what it means to follow the God who requires us to ‘act justly and to love mercy’ (Micah 6:8) in our journey as Christians.That the past informs the present is implicit in the pieces offered. There is a keen sense of the role played by Primitive Methodists in shaping the social justice strand in contemporary Methodism. At a time when class is once again becoming a key political concern, not just because of the limits it too often places on individual opportunities, but also because of its role in the construction of identity and values, the discussion of the variety of backgrounds of several local preachers is particularly timely.This collection is at its most engaging in its refusal to offer self-congratulatory accounts of the Methodist pursuit of social justice. Slatter and Worthen’s reflection on the Methodist Women’s Collection does not shy away from the pain that accompanied the disbanding of Network in 2010 and its subsequent reemergence as ‘Methodist Women in Britain’ (34). That Slatter and Worthen engage with this and the significance of feminist archiving is much to their credit.To those who are not historians, there is much that speaks to today’s struggles for social justice. Jonathan Hustler’s concluding essay on ‘Methodist Justice Today’ is helpful in detailing the climate emergency and the tension encountered when attempting to navigate the way between engaging and disengaging with fossil fuel companies. A similar tension is reflected in the discussion of reparation for the continuing economic and social ramifications of slavery. What emerges is a keen sense of what it means to grapple with the very real, messy reality of creating a juster world. By focusing on the realities of past lives, the desire for overly simple solutions to complex and often systemic problems is challenged. The importance of coming alongside those struggling with the injustices of our age—listening, as Rachel Lampard argues, to those struggling with the reality of social suffering—may well challenge our own preconceptions of the conflict situations in today’s world. The Church’s prophetic voice is to be heard, not in peddling simplistic solutions to the world’s ills but through undertaking the painstaking work of standing alongside those whose lives might reveal to us what God is calling us to do, but also how God in their lives and experiences is at work in our world.

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