When people rise against injustice, they often draw strength from one of two wells: faith in the sacred or faith in human reason and solidarity. The history of social justice is filled with both voices—sometimes clashing, sometimes converging, and sometimes discovering they are not so different after all.
The Religious Spark
Religion, for much of history, has been both the justification for oppression and the inspiration for liberation. Its duality is stark.
Take the abolitionist movement in the United States. Some of the loudest defenders of slavery quoted the Bible, insisting that scripture sanctified hierarchy. But in the same breath, enslaved Black communities sang spirituals like “Go Down, Moses”, finding in the Exodus story a God who broke chains. Harriet Tubman, the “Moses of her people,” spoke of visions and divine guidance as she led fugitives through the Underground Railroad.
Fast forward to the 20th century, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. invoked the prophets of Israel and the teachings of Jesus to galvanize America’s conscience. His sermons echoed in the streets: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.” Without his pulpit, his moral authority may have lacked the resonance it carried.
In South America, Liberation Theology in the 1970s and 80s gave peasants and workers a language to resist dictatorships and economic exploitation. Priests like Óscar Romero in El Salvador preached that Christ lived among the poor, and that to serve Him was to resist systems of oppression—even at the cost of Romero’s life, gunned down at the altar.
Religion, in these cases, did not merely comfort the oppressed—it became their weapon.
The Irreligious Flame
Yet history also shows the transformative power of irreligion—of secular, rationalist, or outright atheist visions for justice.
Consider Dr. B. R. Ambedkar in India. Born into a caste that condemned him as untouchable, Ambedkar concluded that Hinduism’s structure was inseparable from caste oppression. Rejecting religion as he knew it, he forged Navayana Buddhism, a rationalized, social-justice-centered reinterpretation of the Buddha’s path. His mass conversion movement was not about metaphysics but about dignity, a declaration that no divine sanction could make one human inferior to another.
In Europe, the French Revolution—not without its excesses—sprang from Enlightenment ideals that dethroned the church and enthroned human rights. The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen proclaimed liberty, equality, and fraternity without appeal to divine authority.
Closer to our time, Bertrand Russell and Christopher Hitchens—atheists both—challenged not just superstition but also the way institutional religion sometimes defended patriarchy, war, or intolerance. Their voices fueled secular humanist movements that demanded justice grounded not in faith but in reason and universal ethics.
And yet, irreligion is not merely intellectual. The labor movement in many countries was led not by priests but by secular trade unionists who believed that solidarity—not salvation—would liberate workers.
Collaboration and Collision
The real story, however, is not religion versus irreligion, but their uneasy dance.
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In the Civil Rights Movement, churches provided organizing space, funding, and moral firepower. But alongside King were secular figures like Bayard Rustin, an openly gay man who identified as a Quaker but argued more from strategy than scripture.
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In the Indian struggle against caste, Ambedkar’s secular critique clashed with Gandhi’s religious reformism. Gandhi believed caste could be purified of its abuses through spiritual reinterpretation, while Ambedkar believed the whole edifice was rotten. Both sought justice; their paths diverged.
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In climate activism today, one hears Pope Francis declaring in Laudato Si’ that caring for the Earth is a divine mandate. Beside him are secular scientists, Greta Thunberg among them, who warn not of sin but of carbon metrics and tipping points. Together, they point in the same direction even if their compasses differ.
Lessons for Today
So what can we learn from this interplay?
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Religion mobilizes communities. Faith traditions create rituals, identities, and networks that secular movements often lack. A sermon or a scripture can ignite passion that a policy memo cannot.
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Irreligion sharpens critique. Secular reasoning challenges dogma, questions sacred authority, and pushes for universality. It refuses to let revelation trump rights.
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Justice thrives in the tension. When religious passion and secular reason converge, they can shake empires. When they clash, they force each other to evolve.
A Shared Horizon
Whether from pulpit or picket line, monastery or union hall, both religion and irreligion at their best affirm the same core truth: that no human being should be trampled by another, and that dignity is non-negotiable.
The abolitionist preachers and the secular revolutionaries, the Dalit Buddhists and the atheist feminists—all, in their own idioms, declared the same thing: another world is possible.
Perhaps the real question is not whether religion or irreligion is “better” for social justice, but whether we can learn to hear in both the same heartbeat: a stubborn, unyielding demand for freedom.
✨ Injustice wears many disguises. So must justice—sometimes robed in prayer, sometimes armed with reason, always walking toward the horizon of human dignity.
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