The Ministers for Racial, Social and Economic Justice (MRS EJ) are an association of Christian ministers that actively pursues political resolution of Racial, Social and Economic Justice issues. MRS EJ is the clergy component of the African-American historically under represented peoples of the United Church of Christ. Although it operates separately from United Black Christians, the lay component of the African-American historically under represented peoples, the two entities do sometimes work together on pronouncements within the UCC.
According to their web page, they are a group that seeks to "address racial justice, within the structure of the church and within the world, to focus on economic justice, noting that economic denial is one facet of racism, and to give voice and power to the many social issues where people are denied justice."
The organization has been involved in the anti-war movement in opposition to the invasion of Iraq and its National President, Rev. Graylan Hagler, was featured as a peace movement leader in the Martin Sheen-narrated documentary film Finding Our Voices: Stories of American Dissent".
In addition to peace-related activities, MRSEJ was also in the news in September 2005 for calling upon the U.S. Congress to censure President George W. Bush for his mishandled response to Hurricane Katrina.
Famous quotes containing the words ministers, social, economic and/or justice:
“Only men of moral and mental force, of a patriotic regard for the relationship of the two races, can be of real service as ministers in the South. Less theology and more of human brotherhood, less declamation and more common sense and love for truth, must be the qualifications of the new ministry that shall yet save the race from the evils of false teaching.”
—Fannie Barrier Williams (1855–1944)
“Any one who knows what the worth of family affection is among the lower classes, and who has seen the array of little portraits stuck over a labourer’s fireplace ... will perhaps feel with me that in counteracting the tendencies, social and industrial, which every day are sapping the healthier family affections, the sixpenny photograph is doing more for the poor than all the philanthropists in the world.”
—Macmillan’s Magazine (London, September 1871)
“But I would emphasize again that social and economic solutions, as such, will not avail to satisfy the aspirations of the people unless they conform with the traditions of our race, deeply grooved in their sentiments through a century and a half of struggle for ideals of life that are rooted in religion and fed from purely spiritual springs.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“Take but degree away, untune that string,
And hark what discord follows!
...
Force should be right, or, rather, right and wrong—
Between whose endless jar justice resides—
Should lose their names, and so should justice too.
Then everything includes itself in power,
Power into will, will into appetite;
And appetite, an universal wolf,
So doubly seconded with will and power,
Must make perforce an universal prey,
And last eat up himself.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)