All are beloved by God. We believe that God is within the essence of every human being; therefore our social justice work is faith-driven. As God loves every being and all of creation, it is our calling to do the same. The world is not neatly divided into good people or bad people, the just and the unjust, "us" and "them." The Divine is present in all. We believe that all have the potential to be good at heart, though we may be living within dysfunctional systems and relationships. Recognizing that there exist great inequities of power among human beings, we believe that this is the basis of much of the injustice in our world and that we are called to address the injustice with compassion. We further believe that all living beings are interdependent and that the actions of one person, for better or for worse, affect all others.
All are wounded. We are called to minister to woundedness, seen and unseen, including our own. If we are to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit those in prison, we recognize that these conditions exist in both literal and metaphorical manifestations in others and within ourselves.
We recognize that we who become involved in social justice work may come to it from a place of woundedness ourselves. In this respect there is no difference between giver and receiver. We affirm the need for human connection, relatedness, and healthy interdependence, and we acknowledge the need for freedom in people's exercise of choice.
All are capable of transformation. We are all organic, living beings in the process of becoming and are capable of transformation despite our various situations and conditions. We have a moral obligation to support Social Justice initiatives that respond to human need and contribute to the spiritual development of both the giver and the receiver, so that both giver and receiver participate in a process of healing. We believe that it is important to teach the "hungry" how to fish as well as give the hungry fish to eat.