Prophetic Social Criticism, Solidarity, and Just War

Richard B. Miller’s account of liberal social criticism strikingly finds in the prophetic voices of religious traditions moral resources for cultivating a community of political solidarity and for fostering resistance to political power embedded in just war morality. This chapter explores the interrelationship and tensions between liberal social criticism and prophetic moral criticism, assessing whether Miller’s observations about prophetic narratives and voices intimate that prophetic criticism contributes something to the ethics of solidarity and just war that otherwise is neglected by secular or philosophical interpretations. I examine this issue initially by providing an exposition of the ethics of prophetic moral critique, incorporating exemplary narratives in the biblical literature, which focuses on a calling of a community to moral accountability. A prophetic ethics relies on a morally thick narrative of gift, empathy, memory, and community to move communities and social structures from oppression to social justice and care for the vulnerable that contrasts with the morally thin liberal critical narrative of rights and individualism. A prophetic moral voice may thereby provide different reasons or motivations for assuming similar ethical commitments of respect and equality advocated by liberal social criticism.