SuttaCentral
Human concerns are general for everyone: food, etc.
Religious concerns are specific for some people: food purity, anathema foods, etc.
Religious people will be concerned with basic human concerns, but not all humans will be concerned with religious concerns. You see the distinction now, I hope.
Yes, I see your distinction and it is a valid one. It just happens to be a different distinction than what I was making. They are not mutually exclusive. I was talking about social systems. Social systems can be religious or secular. I was referring to the impact of a religious social system. There are many examples of religious social systems. One example is the Vedic system that divides society into different classes. Whatever the social system happens to be it will have outcomes that can be assessed using various criteria. Sustainable development indices are useful measures for assessing the long term viability of a society and its culture. In addition, there are other important indices as well.
Those indices are secular, you’re moving away from your own OP here.
Let’s get back to basics: the answer to “What’s the best social system for Buddhists to support & pursue?” is “One that lets them have the fourfold Sangha.”
That’s it.
I don’t think it is as simply as that - as a Buddhist, I don’t feel that I should endorse or actively support any system, or any aspects of a particular system, that result in unnecessary suffering, cruelty, etc…
As a human, you mean… unless, you’d actively support aspects of a system that result in unnecessary suffering if you weren’t a Buddhist? Or do you think Buddhism is the only source of this idea?
Compassion, tenderheartedness, that unnecessary suffering is unnecessary & to be avoided… these sorts of things are basic human values. A specifically Buddhist approach must have components that are specifically Buddhist.
‘Sustainable Development’ (SD) indices are not only secular. SD is a multidisciplinary area of study. I have a degree in sustainable development! The indices are used to assess development in four areas: 1) economic, 2) environmental: 3) social and; 4) cultural. Religions have beliefs and practices that are relevant to all 4 domains but, in SD religion is defined as a cultural phenomena.
There is nothing peculiar about the notion of religious sociocultural practices and systems. That is all we had before the advent of secularism. You might like to insist that we make a sharp distinction between society and religion, the secular and the religious for your own ideological reasons. This distinction is a fairly recent one in the history of ideas. It serves a valuable purpose but it is not the only prism we can look through to make valid observations about forms of human organisation in large scale communities and societies.
I didn’t say they were only secular. I said that talking about SD indices is as yet unrelated to the OP, as far as I can tell. Do you want to say that Buddhists have different indices? Is Buddhism an index to which non-Buddhists are compared, with respect to SD? What’s the connection?
As to the OP, I think we are in agreement:
And,
I know. We can also say “it’s a modern one”, and move forward using the terms.
Good point. Whether we are Buddhists or not, we should not support that which leads to suffering for living beings.
If I was a Christian, I might say “As a Christian.”
My point was more addressing the scenario in which say, a social system tolerates Buddhism and even actively supports the maintenance of the fourfold Sangha, but exploits and harms outsiders. Exhibit A might be the Rohingya crisis in Burma.
If you confine Buddhism only to those aspects not found in other religions or philosophical systems, you discard many absolutely essential components such as basic ethical behavior, meditation practices, and the emphasis on unconditional love and compassion. You would be left with a pathetic excuse for “religion” IMO, and it would no longer resemble the real Dhamma.
You did say (above) that the indices I used are secular i.e. not applicable to religion. I ‘beg to differ’ as I believe religious practice can and ‘often does’ have economic, social, environmental and, cultural aspects and outcomes that can be assessed and evaluated. To me, religion is not just an abstract belief system that is seperate from social behaviour. If there has been digression it is a result of your efforts. 
We have different ways of looking at religion and social phenomena. You like to use a secular language game that does not float my boat!
None of this is specifically Buddhist.
And laurence, we’re just talking past one another at this point, so I’ll get outta here. Thanks for trying to connect SD and Buddhism. (I wish you’d focused more on the fact that we agree, with respect to the OP here, but alas.)
That was my whole point! It doesn’t matter that it isn’t “specifically Buddhist”. I think it is silly to insist that only those aspects of the Dhamma which are completely unique and original are worthy of consideration. In fact, skewing things that way leaves you with something that is not truly in tune with the Dhamma.
Well said! Buddhism without compassion and a social conscience or, care and concern for the welfare of sentient beings - is not Buddhism.
It is also nonsense to insist that we can only consider these important issues from one particular frame of reference i.e. social systems are a secular concern that have nothing to do with religion. There are other forms of modern discourse and inquiry that are not remotely interested in the secular/religious divide. They can provide us with detailed assessments and policy directives that can improve our future prospects.
No one claimed this.
Sorry daverupa, I felt as if that is what you were suggesting.
Yes, but it appears that what he mostly taught them about is the path to the end of suffering.
It’s hard to know for sure what the full scope of the Buddha’s teaching to the lay community might have been, since what was most faithfully preserved are the teachings to monks that were preserved orally by the sangha. But if the picture we get through those teachings is on the whole accurate, his engagement was primarily oriented toward teaching spiritual liberation, not social reform. There is very little writing in the whole history of classical Buddhist thought that constitutes what we would classify as “political philosophy.” If the Buddha was greatly interested in the long-term preservation, progress and ideal organization of society, he would have had more to say about marriage, households, children, economic organization, trade, war, diplomacy and statecraft. But his comments on these aspects of the world are spare, to say the least. His conversations with kings are mainly concerned with the spiritual well-being of those kings. His conversations with householders are mainly concerned with guiding those (generally older) householders toward living an ascetic, quasi-monastic life, and recommending that others refrain from certain very bad livelihoods.
Well, you can practice wherever you are reborn, right? No need to preserve the Earth specifically. 
Just to say more about this, if we look at the popular early Buddhism that seems to be preserved in the Jatakas, the Dhammapada commentary and similar narrative-based literature, we see that the impact the Buddha made on the community beyond the sangha was seen as a profoundly inspiring social message of equality, love, sharing, forgiveness, non-violence and social harmony. It is possible that these more broadly socially oriented perspectives on the teaching derive not just from the stories that have actually been preserved, but from a body of teachings that were not committed to memory and orally preserved in the disciplined manner of the suttas, because they were preached directly to lay people by both the Buddha and his disciples, and took place outside of the sangha and its structured disciplines of recitation and oral preservation. It’s clear the Buddha exerted a profound influence on his entire culture, but the view we get from the suttas, where the lay community is mostly on the sidelines, might be a bit of a distortion due to the selective nature of oral tradition.
Really interesting idea - sounds plausible to me. Although I do think you see those qualities (love, sharing, forgiveness, etc…) in the Suttas as well.
What do you mean?
Yes, I agree, and see them as well. But I remember that when I was first learning about Buddhism, I thought of it primarily as an optimistic and open-hearted religion of universal love, pacifism and active kindness. That’s definitely to be found in the suttas too, but it tends to be submerged a bit under all the stuff about the stages of meditation and the analytic treatments of the way the mind works. And even the more social teachings are restricted a bit in the direction of promotion of harmony within the sangha.
But the Dhammapada commentary contains things like the moving story of Prince Dhighavu, which grabs my heart more than most of what is in the suttas.
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/vin/mv/mv.10.02.03-20.than.html