BOOK REVIEW NUGGETS: The New Jim Crow, The Problem with Racial Reconciliation, and Doing Democracy

These three books should be read together as a trio of closely related books:  The New Jim Crow written by a black lawyer; The Problem with Racial Reconciliation by a black, evangelical theologian; Doing Democracy by a veteran, white social activist or scholar/activist.  Since economic inequality (racial wealth gap) is closely tied to mass incarceration, I also recommend either The Hidden Cost of Being African American by a white sociologist, Thomas Shapiro, or Punishment and Inequality by Bruce Western, a white sociologist.

Michelle Alexander, in her brilliant and well-received expose of mass incarceration entitled The New Jim Crow, states that there are two requirements to solve the problem: 1) create a social movement to force the government to take action on unjust mass incarceration, and 2) to grapple with the underlying problem of racism (racial profiling).  Neither abolitionists nor the civil rights movement succeeded in destroying the racism behind slavery and segregation.  When the underlying racism was not eliminated, racist oppressors simply designed a new system of oppression---mass incarceration. 

In a previous essay, I discussed the book by Ken Young entitled The Problem with Racial Reconciliation.  Young shows that white evangelicals have not yet adequately grappled with racism and racialization.  He also explains how biblical justice and reconciliation are the key to a solution.

Doing Democracy: The MAP [Movement Action Plan] for Organizing Social Movements by Bill Moyers (not the PBS bill Moyers) is another book that must be read along with The New Jim Crow.  It describes in great detail how to create a successful social movement; Michelle Alexander believes that a social movement is beginning to build around mass incarceration.  Moyers is a disciple of the Gandhi, King, Mandela non-violent type of social movement; he wants to improve democracy, not destroy it.  Some readers might be overwhelmed by all the factors necessary for a successful social movement; some will be grateful for advance warning about the many factors that might derail a social movement.  

Now some nuggets from Doing Democracy:

In the United States, the recognition of basic human rights---the abolition of slavery, the right of labor to organize, child labor laws, the right for African Americans and women to vote---came about through the efforts of engaged citizens. . . . Nonviolent social movements, based in grassroots people power, are a means for ordinary people to act on their deepest values and successfully challenge unjust social conditions and policies, despite the determined resistance of entrenched private and public power.

MAP defines social movements as collective actions in which the populace is alerted, educated, and mobilized, sometimes over years and decades, to challenge the powerholders and the whole society to redress social problems or grievances and restore critical social values.

In 19th-century America, the abolition, temperance, labor, and women's movements used many nonviolent strategies, such a marches and rallies, to raise issues and demand change. . . . In the last three decades, the women's movement, which arose in the United States out of the civil rights and peace movements, has blossomed everywhere, with women in Africa and the Middle East also engaged in collective actions.

MAP allows activists to:
* identify where, on the normal eight-stage road of movement success, their movement is at any specific time;
* create stage-appropriate strategies, tactics, and programs that enable them to advance their movement along to the next step on the road to success;
* identify and celebrate their movement's incremental progress and successes;
* play all four roles of activism effectively;
* overcome irrational feelings of powerlessness and failure; and
* engage ordinary citizens in the grand strategy of effective social movements---participatory democracy.

There are four different roles activists and social movements need to play in order to successfully create social change: the citizen, rebel, change agent, and reformer.  Each role has different purposes, styles, skills, and needs and can be played effectively and ineffectively.

Change agent: move society from reform to social change by promoting a paradigm shift.

On page 27, there is a brilliant discussion of how citizen, rebel, change agent and reform roles can and often do conflict.

The eight stages of the process of social movement success are:

1. Normal times  2. Prove the failure of official institutions  3.  Ripening Conditions  4. Take off  5. Perception of failure  6. Majority Public Opinion  7.  Success  8. Continuing the struggle human society is made up of three interconnected and interdependent parts: individuals, culture, and social systems and institutions, the "I", "we", and "it."  They are different aspects of the same whole; consequently, one can't be transformed for long without the requisite changes in the other two.

To be continued

Economic Inequality: Political and Economic Oppression

Recently both Pope Francis and President Obama have vigorously spoken out against economic inequality.  Pope Francis identified corporate/financial capitalism as our current system of oppression using phrases such as unfettered capitalism, idolatry of money and deified markets.  President Obama called economic inequality the defining issue of our time.

I prefer the phrase political and economic oppression over economic inequality.  This phrase captures the essence of a plutocracy---rule by the rich who have taken over our democracy.  If a person understand that biblically oppression means the cruel and unjust exercise of power and authority (what oppression IS).  What does oppression DO to a people---it crushes them, humiliates them, treats people like animals; it also impoverishes, enslaves and kills human beings created in the image of God.

And tragedy of tragedies, we far too often have to add religious oppression to political and economic oppression.  Just as in Jesus' day when a religio-politico-economic elite ran the temple as a "den of robbers," so today in modern America much of the religious establishment either actively supports oppressive American corporate/financial capitalism or it tolerates it or only weakly opposes it.  Lacking a comprehensive socioeconomic theology of society, we are easily seduced by American materialism and don't know what to do about it.

In 1987, I wrote a book entitled Sociotheology; chapter 12 charted the beginnings of a biblical economics.  The following comes my self-published book:

There seems to be an endless debate over which economic system is more Christian---capitalism or socialism.  Each is regarded by the other as a great evil visited upon the earth.  Unfortunately neither landlord agricultural capitalism not state controlled, collective agriculture, neither industrial, corporate capitalism nor state-run, industrial socialism as they are commonly practiced in our world today come close to following scriptural principles.  Baptizing either capitalism or socialism with a few scripture verses will not make either Christian.  Greed and power have corrupted both economic systems almost beyond repair.  Each is essentially a secular system.

Jacques Ellul, author of Money and Power, a French sociologist and Christian ethicist, is not enamored with either capitalism or socialism.  Both fall short of kingdom of God principles.  Ellul states:

Capitalism has progressively subordinated all of life---individual and collective---to money. . . .  One by one the state, the legal system, art and the churches have submitted to the power of money. . . . One of the results of capitalism . . . is the subservience of being to having.

In a socialist society, individuals . . . remain entirely submitted to production.  The economy is the basis of their lives.  This is precisely the source of real alienation--not the subservience of being to personal having, but the subservience of being . . . to collective having.

Old Testament

We need to go back to the basics; we need a fresh look at the Scriptures.  Fortunately, we have a person who has done his scriptural homework who can guide us.  Christopher J.H. Wright (Ph.D., Cambridge), has written two masterpieces, an article and a book, on old Testament social ethics.  The article is "The Ethical Relevance of Israel as a Society," published in Transformation, an evangelical journal on social ethics.  The book is entitled An Eye for An Eye: The Place of Old Testament Ethics Today.  Both the article and the book cover much the same material, but the article delves in greater detail on some socioeconomic aspects of Israeli society.  Though Wright does not use the term. I call these masterpieces, sociotheology.  In my judgment, sociotheology can give us the setting and guidelines for a just economic system.

To be continued

The Enigma of Nelson Mandela: the agnostic who lived a more Christlike life than most Christians live.

Richard Stengel, author of Mandela's Way: Fifteen Lessons on Life, Love and Courage (2009) and who assisted on Mandel's autobiography Long Walk to Freedom, asserts the following about Mandela:

"He saw injustice and tried to fix it."  Mandel strove for national "harmony and equal opportunity."  He put these ideals ahead of personal and family needs:  "I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunity.  It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve.  But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." (1990)

Observers of Mandela have described him as a person of grace and humility, one who forgives and reconciles, a person who was kind and redemptive.  He not only desired to free his people from oppression (apartheid), but also to reconcile both the oppressors (Afrikaners) and the oppressed (Africans) so that both could live in harmony in a new South Africa.  Grace, forgiveness and reconciliation are normally words we use to describe biblical Christians or Christ himself.  But in reading about Mandela, watching media reports and documentaries, I have not noted a single reference to a deep religious faith or that God called and empowered Mandela.  In fact, Richard Stengel at the end of his book declared that Mandela did not believe in a higher power, that we each shape and determine our own destiny.  So where did this remarkable ability to combine justice and reconciliation come from?

I wish to suggest six factors that shaped Mandela's life and ministry:

1.  The Image of God

Mandela may refuse to acknowledge this truth because he doesn't believe in God, but the fact remains that he was created in the image of God.  This is a remarkable gift to any human being.  He and we can use our minds to think creatively and wisely, to think, at least partially, the thoughts of God.  Sin/depravity confuses and distorts, but it does not destroy the image of God.

2.  The Common Grace of Creation

Romans 1:19-20: "God has made it plain to them.  For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities---his eternal power and divine nature---have been clearly seen. . . . so that men are without excuse."  The creation around us reveals God.  Some of this wisdom has been preserved in the liberal (liberating) arts.  Mandela read widely in this treasure of human wisdom.

3.  Disciple of Gandhi and King

Gandhi and King lived out the non-violent, peace-making, justice-seeking, love and reconcile with your enemies/oppressors message of the Sermon on the Mount.  Mandela drank deeply from this kingdom of God ethic even though he ignored the God part.

4.  Bi-cultural

Mandela believed deeply in ubuntu, the African ideal of the collective, more we than me (enlightenment); this shaped his goal of making the nation of South Africa, one nation with liberty and justice for all.  But he was also shaped by Western culture.  When a person is bi-cultural, he is less like to be trapped by tradition and ideology as substitutes for truth.  Both Gandhi and King were bi-cultural as are John Perkins and Jean Thomas who are remarkable leaders in their own right.  Being bi-cultural broadens your perspective.

5.  An independent thinker

Mandela was very much a free and independent thinker; he enjoyed conversing with other independent thinkers so he could see all angles, all sides of an issue.  Mandela was not doctrinaire, legalistic.  He held deeply to a few core principles such as human dignity, freedom, justice, etc. but in other things he was willing to change and adapt.

6. His prison experience

The younger Mandela was passionate and committed, but too immature to be a great leader in a time of crisis; 27 years of prison refined Mandela into maturity---the ability to see and chart the way to a new nation with the needed forgiveness to reconcile bitter enemies.

Some nuggets from the pen of Mandela:

His mission was "to liberate the oppressed and the oppressors both because both are robbed of their humanity when human freedom is restricted."

"For to be free is not merely to cast off one's chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others."

"A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination."

Pope Francis and President Obama

While Gandhi, King and Mandela were remarkably successful in gaining freedom and reconciliation, nonviolently, for their people, they did not have the same success in achieving economic justice for their poor.  But today God is raising up two persons to provide leadership in attacking economic inequality (systems of economic oppression that excessively reward the rich and exploit the poor).  Pope Francis and President Obama are these leaders.  Both have given recent speeches/teachings on this defining issue of our times.

But they cannot achieve economic justice alone; citizens, pulpits and pews must also become fully engaged.  Here are some of my proposals; what are yours?

1.  Increase the minimum wage into a living wage of around $15.00 an hour; predistribution (living wage) is much better than redistribution (welfare type programs).

2.  In the financial sector, sharply cut back on Wall Street by expanding community banks, state banks and credit unions.

3.  In the production sector, tightly regulate corporations such as we now do with utilities.  Reduce CEO salaries, heavily tax the 1 percent.  Greatly expand Mondragon style cooperatives.  Sharply cut subsidies to Big Oil and corporate agriculture.  Instead, assist family farms and small businesses.

4.  At the college and university level, create a salary cap for coaches at $100,000.  Reduce staff numbers by half.  Prioritize teacher education department by increasing their salaries, resources and prestige.

5.  Create a NT theology of society addressing such social evils as ethnocentrism and oppression and solutions such as justice and reconciliation.

6.  What are your proposals?  What are you willing to commit to?

7.

8.

9.

Pope Francis and President Obama and Us

I see the hand of God, the Holy Spirit, at work through Pope Francis and President Obama; now it is up to we the people and we the pew to act.

More REQUIRED READING: 

Charles Blow, my favorite Afro American political pundit, sees the handwriting on the wall in his editorial column in the Dec. 5, 2013 entitled "The President, the Pope and the People."  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/opinion/blow-the-president-the-pope-and-the-people.html?emc=eta1

The New York Times Editorial Board, Dec.4 writes about the president's recent speech on inequality; they sum up the speech and its signficance with phrases such as "one of his strongest speeches" he "will spend the rest of his presidency on the defining challenge of our time, reducing economic inequality and improving upward mobility."  http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/05/opinion/the-president-on-inequality.html?emc=eta1 

Both Pope Francis and President have spoken boldly and bluntly on economic inequality and how it oppresses the poor; now will pastors and priests and rabbis do the same.  Now will NT scholars finally get down to business and create a NT theology of society built upon love and justice, upon an understanding of the social evils of ethnocentrism and oppression.  Could CCDA host a summit bringing Pope Francis, President Obama and John Perkins together to chart a new direction for America?

John Perkins and Pope Francis are biblical justice cousins

Pope Francis' exhortation/manifesto entitled "The Joy of the Gospel" is REQUIRED reading. Google "Pope Francis The Joy of the Gospel" and you can read the complete text.  I would have sub-titled his manifesto "Joy Requires Justice."

In my opinion, John Perkins and Pope Francis are biblical justice cousins.  Pope Francis has his own version of John Perkins' three "r's"

Relocation---from the sanctuary to the streets.

Reconciliation---from exclusion to inclusion.

Redistribution---from economic inequality to justice.

I also see Pope Francis reflecting both Luke 4:18-19 and Luke 4:25-30.  Luke 4:18 highlights the oppressed poor and Luke 4:25-30 grapples with religious ethnocentrism (exclusion).

Francis urges the church to move from the security of the sanctuary to the suffering of the streets; the church should be among "the bruised, hurting and dirty," among the marginalized, excluded and oppressed.

Pope Francis, almost thou hast persuadest me to be a Catholic, at least in terms of your profoundly biblical social teaching.  I see you as a desperately needed prophetic figure for today's times.  Martin Luther King was a drum major for justice.  I see you as a drum major for the poor and against systems of economic oppression run by the rich.  Your exhortation is bold and clear.

King was beginning to become a biblical prophet against the rich and for the poor when he was assassinated.  One pundit sees your recent prophetic teaching "The Joy of the Gospel" as the equivalent to King's "I Have a Dream" speech; it also echoes King's "I Live a Nightmare" speech [my title] given in December 1967.  Matthew Fox, a radical priest who was defrocked because of his anti-rich and pro-poor stance, is glowing in his praise of "The Joy of the Gospel."  Fox asserts:

I think that he [Pope Francis] delivered a tremendous message yesterday with this document about justice in the world.  I think it goes far beyond church reform. . . . he is willing to really critique the economic system with strong language and connecting it to the biblical tradition of justice and the prophetic work on behalf of the poor . . . [who are] defenseless against the deified market.

Note some of the powerful phrases Francis uses:  "unfettered capitalism, a new tyranny, idolatry of money, trickle-down economics, deified market, consumerism, covetous heart, feverish pursuit of frivolous pleasures, blunted conscience, where powerful feed upon the powerless, crude and naive trust in the prevailing economic system, the socioeconomic system is unjust at its root, evil crystallized in unjust social structures."

I also see that Pope Francis, in his own way, critiques the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism. 

To be continued

Democracy or Plutocracy (rule by the rich)???

Two score and ten years ago, a rich, white, male president, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated.  Seven score and ten years ago, a poor, white, male president, Abraham Lincoln, gave his Gettysburg address.  Neither president understood the nature and necessity of justice for the nation.  In 1776, a rich, white, male elite drafted the Declaration of Independence; in 1787, a rich, white, male elite drafted the United States Constitution.

These documents are rightly remembered and treasured.  But I place the Pledge of Allegiance about the Declaration and the Constitution.  Why?  The Declaration and Constitution do refer to the concepts of freedom and equality, but they omit the equally important and absolutely necessary concept of justice.  The Pledge ends with this fundamental requirement of a democracy---"with liberty and justice for all."

Without justice for all its citizens, freedom and equality ring hollow.  For example:

     * Without justice, slavery can be abolished and legal freedom gained; but they were quickly followed by a new birth of oppression---legal segregation.

     * Without justice, legal segregation can be abolished and legal freedom regained; but these victories were quickly followed by an exploding racial wealth gap and the mass incarceration of young Black and Hispanic males.

     * Without justice, the beautiful and eloquent phrase "a government of the people, by the people, and for the people," becomes, in tragic reality, "a government created by a rich, white, male elite for a rich, white, male elite."

Justice demands that we look underneath the oppressive systems of slavery, segregation, wealth gap and mass incarceration to find the underlying causes/values and uproot them---something neither Lincoln nor Kennedy did.  As a nation, we must confess and repent from our national sins of American exceptionalism, white supremacy, WASPness (White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant), and the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism---something the nation has never done.

Without a public statement of confession and repentance, we repeat the same national sins, slightly revised, over and over again.  The Declaration and the Constitution did not lead us from repentance to justice.  Neither does the Pledge, but at least the Pledge, for the first time in American history, publicly tied freedom and justice together.

We need to add another sentence or two to our Pledge:  "We pledge, under God, in a spirit of repentance and restitution, to free all our oppressed peoples.  We will pursue, under God, Jubilee justice for all our citizens."



ps  I will love my God with all my heart; likewise, I choose to love my neighbor as myself, especially my poor, oppressed, ethnic neighbor.  I pledge to pursue Jubilee justice for all my neighbors.  I do not want to make the same mistake the Pharisees who professed faith in God but who neglected justice and the love of God (Luke 11).  God, help me to keep spirituality and justice close

Continuing with the theme of Modern Day American Pharisees

This essay will draw from #OccupytheBible: What Jesus Really Said (and Did) About Money and Power by Susan Thistlethwaite (2012).  First, a provocative quotation:

          Gustavo Gutierrez, a pioneer of reading the Bible from the perspective of those at the street level rather than those on the eighth floor, once explained the importance of understanding theology from the most human of locations, the body.  Gutierrez was being honored at a faculty reception at a school where he was a visiting professor.  There was a lavish banquet, and senior professor in theology, carrying a plate piled high with food from the buffet, came over to where Gutierrez and I were chatting.  He loomed over Gutierrez and intoned, "So, Professor Gutierrez, explain liberation theology to me."  Gutierrez looked at him for a moment and replied, "It's a matter of the stomach."  "The stomach?" the tall. portly professor said.  "Yes,"  said Gutierrez.  He looked pointedly at the professor's loaded plate.  "You do theology differently when your stomach is full than when it is empty."

Those who are on the street [the least of these], who are hungry and in poor health, are the one's feeling the real effects of economic policies that have made HALF of all Americans poor or near poor, according to new Census Bureau data.  Possibly those of you who are preachers should run your next sermon by the scrutiny of one of the least of these to make sure your theology is accurate and relevant.

Temple religious leaders "were using scripture to justify driving people into poverty through increased debt and low wages, and driving them out of their homes and jobs."

"temptation is always about the desire to gain power over others."  "So much of American life is tied up in wrestling with the temptation to overreach, to think of ourselves as exceptional and not resist the lure of political and financial power." 

"The Temple in Jerusalem was the national bank of Israel in Jesus' time; it was a powerful national treasury that did not let its great wealth sit idle.  The bank lent the money it collected [huge amounts] at interest, violating Jewish tradition on lending. . . .  These unjust lending practices drove many residents into extreme poverty."

"Our current economic crisis is really a credit crisis generated by the way banks decided to change their lending practices, effectively crashing the system."  "Jesus' economic plan [Jubilee] is about sharing resources and celebrating community.  This kind of economic model is about 'power with' not 'power over'"  "Money is an enormous source of temptation; the desire for money is the hook the Devil uses to lure humanity into becoming every more greedy."

In one of the best chapters of her book entitled "Den of Thieves", Thistlethwaite refers to the national bank, a part of the Temple operation, in this way:  "The whole issue of charging interest on loans and poor people falling further and further into debt is a huge biblical issue . . . the center of Jesus' teaching and actions."  "The vast wealth of the 1% in Israel reached unbelievable proportions in the days of Herod."

"God is a movement God, and unless we as Christians quit mistaking our institutional forms of faith for the movement of God in history, we won't be able to see the signs even if they are written in letters a thousand feet high.  "When did we see you, Lord?" Jesus is asked.  But Jesus was right in front of them in the poor, the sick, and the imprisoned, and they never saw him.  The trick is to actually "see," and you can't see what's happening if you don't get out of your house and out of your church and move around where people are gathering in the streets."

From the lips of a Catholic priest:  "The Vatican sounded like the Pharisees of the New Testament;---legalistic, paternalistic and orthodox---while 'the good sisters' were the ones who were feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the sick and imprisoned, educating the immigrant."

In terms of money, wealth and power, are most American Christians modern day Pharisees?

In terms of money, wealth and power, are most American Christians modern day Pharisees?  After reading Money, Possession and Eternity by Randy Alcorn (2003) and #OccupytheBible by Susan Thistlethwaite (2012), I would answer a resounding, YES.

From Luke/Jesus 16:13-14, we read: "You cannot serve [both] God and mammon.  The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all of this, and they scoffed at him."  Luke 11:42: Jesus accused the Pharisees of "neglecting justice and the love of God."

After Jesus declared that a person cannot serve both God and Money at the same time, the bible-believing Pharisees sneered/scoffed at Jesus.  Why?  Because they had been doing both at the same time for a long time, and it seemed to be working well for them.  As both "lovers of money" and "lovers of God," they were running a religious racket.  This blending of religion and materialism was now natural and normal; Jesus was the weird one who questioned the status quo.

Randy Alcorn, a conservative evangelical, is deeply troubled by the widespread American blend of Christianity and materialism; hint: its influence goes far beyond the prosperity gospel.  Alcorn devotes four chapters to the topic of materialism:  The Nature of Materialism, The Dangers of Materialism, Materialism in the Church, and Prosperity Theology.  Because the American church has not been taught in depth the biblical principles on money and possessions, most American Christians are easily seduced by the temptation of materialism.  They, like the Pharisees, readily blend the two as natural and normal.  After all, most of their Christian friends are doing so, and their pastor is silent on this evil.

Randy Alcorn is sure to challenge and offend many of his readers.  So also is Susan Thistlethwaite.  Writing from a much different perspective---Bible, kingdom of God and social/Jubilee justice---Susan will equally challenge and offend most American Christians.  But don't be too quick to sneer and scoff at Alcorn and Thistlethwaite.  Hang in there, read carefully; you might learn some important new biblical truth and how to live them out in today's world.  In fact, both authors excel at modern application of biblical truth.

In 1967, after the Civil Rights laws had been passed and four month before his assassination, Martin Luther King referred to his continuing nightmare---"black brothers and sisters perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity."  If King were alive in 2013, he would assert much the same.  Where has the church been since December, 1967 and November, 2013 on the issue of economic inequality and the systems of oppression that drive it?  Rather quiet, largely silent.  So we need to read Randy and Susan who are blunt, direct, no sugarcoating of the hard biblical truth on money, idolatry and materialism.

The kingdom of God, no.6

David Bosch, a NT scholar and a missiologist, also stresses that English translations usually omit the justice meaning of dikaiosune.  He wrote that if a person translated Mt. 6:33 as righteousness that it may mean that in the kingdom of God "the spiritual is more important than the material."  But if 6:33 is translated as justice, it may mean that we are to put "the practice of justice in respect of those who are victims of circumstances and society," ahead of our own desires.

I asked a Haitian, Jean Thomas, who speaks French and is a seminary graduate, how dikaiosune is translated into French.  Jean said as justice; French really doesn't have a word that is the equivalent of the English word righteousness.  The closest the French could come to the concept of righteousness was the word holiness.

Sidney Rooy, in an unpublished manuscript entitled Righteousness and Justice, comments on the discoveries his missionary family made as they read the Bible together in Spanish. Soon we discovered that righteousness and justice are universally translated justicia, our word for justice.  Suddenly the Bible was full of texts about justice.  But why should that surprise us?  
Much later we learned that the English word justice does not occur in the New Testament of the King James Version.  Rather the word righteousness is nearly universally used. . . .  To them [Jesus and the apostles] it was transparently clear that justification, righteousness and justice were integrally part of the same reality [same root word in Greek].

We [Americans], on the other hand, tend to make idea-tight compartments for each.

In response to a letter criticizing Wolterstorff's review of Robert Webber's Evangelicals on the Canterbury Trail, Nicholas Wolterstorff comments: 

The God of the Bible is a God who loves justice.  Injustice is a desecration.  That's obvious in the Old Testament; but it doesn't change when we arrive in the New Testament.  This would be starkly clear to all if our New Testament translators would follow their classical Greek colleagues and translate the frequent occurrences in the New Testament of the Greek words dikaiosune and dikaios with the English words "justice" and "just."

So Greek, Latin, French and  Spanish have only one word for justice/righteousness and the primary meaning or emphasis in these languages is on justice.  But English readers of the NT see righteousness much more often than justice.  So most of us miss the justice emphasis of the kingdom of God.  WANTED: a scholar who will rejusticize the NT and the theology that flows from it.  While she/he is at it, I recommend the same with oppression/injustice.

I conclude with two quotations from Pursuing Justice by Ken Wytsma:

          Justice is rooted in the character of God,
          established in the creation of God,
          mandated in the commands of God,
          present in the kingdom of God,
          affirmed in the teachings of Jesus,
          reflected in the example of Jesus,
          and carried on today by all who are moved and led by the Spirit.

          All people matter to God.
          All people desire dignity.
          All people need community, and community can be woven by justice or torn by injustice.

This is the end of my six-part series on the kingdom of God; "seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . . "

The kingdom of God, no.5

In my last email, the kingdom of God, no.4, I ended with this pleasantly shocking statement from Billy Graham: "I can no longer proclaim the Cross and the Resurrection without proclaiming the whole message of the kingdom which is justice for all."  At the time that Billy Graham wrote this article in Transformation (1989), it was not common that evangelical leaders defined the kingdom of God as justice for all, nor that the kingdom as justice was put on a theological par with the cross and resurrection.  But Graham never explained what caused him to take this new theological position; he did not ever refer to a single scripture verse to back up his statement.  This is pure speculation on my part, but possibly Graham had read Mt. 6:33 in the New English Bible; it reads: "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice. . . ."

A professional Bible translator, Steven Voth, has documented how flawed English translations of the NT are in terms of justice.(The Challenge of Bible Translation, chapter 14 entitled "Justice and/or Righteousness.")  In Spanish, French and Latin translations of the NT, justice occurs around 100 times; in the English NIV, only 16 times.  But then, strangely, Voth uses an OT analysis of sedeq to make his point.  I wish he would have discussed the difference that translating dikaiosune in the Sermon on the Mount as justice (See Joseph Grassi, Informing the Future and my article on Rejusticizing the Sermon on the Mount) instead of righteousness would have made or how we would interpret Romans if translators would have created an injustice/justice axis instead of an unrighteousness/righteousness axis.

The English speaking Christian world generally has a shallow understanding of biblical justice.  Why?  In the KJV, the word justice never occurs in the NT and rarely in the OT.  So for centuries English speaking Christians read a Bible that said little about justice.  The KJV translators mistranslated the Hebrew word mishpat about 100 times; they translated mishpat as justice only once whereas the RSV or NIV translators translated it justice about 100 times.  In the KJV, the famous verse from Amos 5:24 reads: 'Let judgment run down as water. . . . " whereas in the NIV it reads: "Let justice roll on like a river. . . . "  In fairness to the KJV translators, mishpat means both judgment and justice.

So the KJV readers read much about individual righteousness, but little about social justice or Jubilee justice.  Both evangelical theology and practice reflect an overly individualized gospel devoid of a strong social justice emphasis.  The Hebrews, however, thought holistically; individual righteousness and social justice went together like Siamese twins.  They could not be separated and live (See Job 1:1 and 29:7-17).  But much of Western Christian thought compartmentalizes life, thinking that a person can be individually righteous through Jesus Christ even if one remains uninvolved in doing justice.  Not a biblical option.

When it comes to the NT, something similar occurred.  Most English translators have translated the Greek word dikaiosune as righteousness even though a growing number of scholars such as Joseph Grassi, Timothy Keller, Ken Wytsma, Nicholas Wolterstorff, Howard Snyder, Graham Cray and David Bosch insist that dikaiosune means both justice and righteousness or justice/righteousness.

There is one major English translation that captures the strong justice meaning of dikaiosune---the New English Bible translated by British scholars.  In the NEB, Mt. 6:33 refers to "God's kingdom and his justice"  In Romans 14:17. the NEB reads: "The kingdom of God . . .is justice."  Graham Cray in his article in Transformation (1988) entitled, "A Theology of the Kingdom," translated Mt. 5:6 as "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice."  And Mt. 5:10.  Cray comments:  "Much of this is entirely lost to readers of the English Bible, because of the false separation made between righteousness and justice, and because dikaiosune is consistently translated 'righteousness' in English translations, whereas in the Septuagint [Greek translation of the Hebrew OT] it was often used to translate justice."  In summary, Cray states that the agenda of the kingdom of God on earth is justice and the dynamic of the kingdom is the Holy Spirit. 

The kingdom of God, no.4

My conclusion is that Rom. 14:17 beautifully ties the central components of the kingdom of God together.  It brings the key OT concepts of justice and shalom to the NT understanding of the social nature of the kingdom of God.    And Rom. 14:17 ties the kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit together, something that few theologians do.

In summary, then, Isaiah 9:7, Luke 4:18-19 and Rom. 14:17 are all saying the same thing: the kingdom of God here on earth should focus on the special needs of the poor and oppressed by preaching and practicing justice/righteousness which will lead to personal and community shalom.  The above can only be done through the wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth.

With this background, Acts 1:1-8; 8:12; 28:23 & 31 make more sense.  Two themes are highlighted in Acts 1:1-8: the kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit.  After Jesus' resurrection and before his ascension, Jesus spoke of "the kingdom of God" and "the promise of the Father---you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit."  Howard Snyder (A Kingdom Manifesto, 1985) paraphrases Acts 1:6-8 as follows:

His disciples ask, "are you finally going to set up your kingdom?"  Jesus replies, "The time for the full flowering of the new order still remains a mystery to you; it is in God's hands.  But . . . the Holy Spirit will give you the power to live the kingdom now.  So you are to be witnesses of the kingdom and its power from here to the very ends of the earth.

Wait until you are filled and empowered by the Holy Spirit; then you will have the power to incarnate the kingdom of God.  The day of Pentecost soon came when the Spirit was poured out on the church.

What did the church do?  Acts 8:12: "Philip preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ."  Later in Acts 28, Paul spoke to the Jews in Rome "testifying to the kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus Christ from the law of Moses and from the prophets."  Many Jews rejected this message from Paul so he turned to the Gentiles "preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ. . . . "

So the book of Acts is about the empowered church preaching a two-pronged message: personal salvation based on the cross and resurrection, and a second and equally important theme---the kingdom of God as justice and shalom for the poor and oppressed.  The complete gospel includes both personal righteousness and social justice.  Both are absolutely necessary if we are to minister to all of the needs of a person and a community.

Previously I have identified ethnocentrism and oppression as two social evils the church must expose and challenge.  If the church does not address these and other social evils, the church itself may become an agent of ethnocentrism and oppression.  Ethnocentrism is a false sense of ethnic superiority.  Oppression in the OT meant to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and/or kill persons created in the image of God.

Now I would like to examine some examples from church history when the church became an agent of ethnocentrism and oppression.  In these examples, the church usually was faithful in proclaiming the cross and resurrection, sometimes the anointing and filling of the Holy Spirit, but failed to preach and practice the kingdom of God as justice and shalom.

The Puritans attempted to be a godly and biblical people, and in many ways they were.  But they did not understand that justice and shalom applied to all people.  They saw themselves as God's chosen people, chosen to set up a Christian on American shores.  But there was more than a touch of biblical ignorance and arrogance in their sense of chosenness.  After a short period of relative harmony with Native Americans, as Puritan numbers grew and they needed more land, ethnic conflict developed.  Increasingly, Puritans saw the surrounding tribes as heathen standing in the way of God's will.  When large numbers of Indians died of disease, Puritans often saw this as the hand of God eliminating heathen from their midst.  A religiously legitimated ethnocentrism soon led to acts of oppression---the slaughtering of whole villages and the offering of bounties for the scalps of Native Americans.  Incomplete biblical truth---the lack of understanding that the kingdom of God is justice for all---had tragic consequences.  The Puritans who saw themselves as instruments of God became instrument of evil.  They also set in motion the ethnocentric and oppressive pattern that contaminated much of the rest of American history.

Much the same happened in South Africa.  The Afrikaners saw themselves as a people chosen to establish a Christian nation.  During the time that the Afrikaners governed, most Afrikaners attended church.  They zealously kept the Sabbath day holy.  Public TV opened with Bible reading and prayer.  Abortion and pornography were low when compared to the United States.  At the same time that they manifested this religious spirit, they treated their fellow Africans as inferior human beings.  Their ethnocentrism led to vicious and inhuman acts of oppression.  They did not preach nor practice the kingdom of God as justice for all peoples.

In the American South---the Bible Belt---ethnocentrism and oppression ran wild during the eras of slavery and segregation.  Much too often, Christians and churches were a part of the problem.  Only a few stood for justice and shalom for all.

In Rwanda, supposedly the most Christian nation in Africa (8 out of 10 profess to be Christian), ethnic conflict exploded between the Tutsi and Hutu.  The cross and resurrection were preached.  The Holy Spirit was present in a Protestant continuous revival and in a charismatic Catholic revival.  But apparently there was little biblical teaching on the kingdom of God as standing against ethnocentrism and oppression and for justice and shalom.  Some ruthless politicians fanned the existing embers of ethnocentrism which exploded into a forest fire that ravaged the land.  The Christian church had not erected any justice barriers to stop the raging fires of bitterness and hatred.  Christians were killing other Christians.  Serious flaws in the understanding and practice of the gospel can lead to fatal consequences.

One more sad event in American church history needs to be recounted.  John Dawson describes the origins of Pentecostalism in his book Healing America's Wounds:

The [1906] Azusa St. Revival was a modern Pentecost in which the outpoured Spirit broke the barriers to true Christian unity.  Racial division, America's greatest problem, was swept away. The huge dirt-floor barn that housed William Seymor's [Afro American] church attracted scores of ethnic groups from their separate enclaves across Los Angeles. . . .  This sincere and loving man [Parham]---Seymor's friend---was afflicted with the blindness of his generation.  He admired the Ku Klux Klan and believed that the besetting sin of humanity      was racial mixing. . . .  After denouncing Seymor, he continues in his ministry, preaching against racial mixing and proclaiming the baptism of the Holy Spirit. . . .  Pentecostalism divided into
          two groups, one black and one white, between 1908 and 1914.  Glossolalia became the new emphasis. . . .  and God's true purpose went down the memory hole.

A flawed church that preaches and practices a partial vacuum.  Evil floods in to fill that vacuum.  Only a fully biblical church preaching and practicing a comprehensive gospel can do God's will on earth.  In 1989, Billy Graham (Transformation) wrote:  "I can no longer proclaim the Cross and Resurrection without proclaiming the whole message of the kingdom which is justice for all."

The Kingdom of God, no.3

After Jesus was so well received because of his Isaiah 61 sermon in the Nazareth synagogue, the conversation continued.  Jesus moved from preaching good news to the oppressed poor to meddling, or so the Nazareth Jews thought.  To address another type of social evil, Jesus recounted two familiar OT stories.  First, "there were many widows in Israel in the day of Elijah [a time of famine] and Elijah was sent to none of them."  Instead, he was sent to a widow in the land of Sidon.  The second story:  "And there were many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."  After Jesus told these two true stories with his interpretation of them, "all in the synagogue were filled with wrath,"  Then they tried to throw Jesus over a cliff and kill him.  From "all spoke well of him," to "all were filled with wrath," in the space of a few minutes.  Why this sudden change?

The Jews were God's chosen people---chosen to be a servant people who were to bring the Messiah into the world to bless all peoples, Jew and Gentile.  Over the years some of the Jews had corrupted their high calling.  They reinterpreted their calling from being a servant people to being a superior people.  They saw themselves as a superior ethnos---people, nation, culture.  Non-Jews or Gentiles were now regarded as unclean, idolatrous heathen.  God was the God of the Jews alone.  To keep themselves pure, they separated themselves from the unclean Gentiles.  In a word, this distorted sense of superiority is called ethnocentrism.

In these two OT stories that Jesus summarized, he made the point that God made a special effort to reach out to minister to Gentiles.  Jesus was directly exposing and attacking Jewish ethnocentrism.  In the eyes of the biased Jews, Jesus had committed heresy so they tried to kill him on the spot.

In Luke four, then, we find two social evils that the kingdom of God here on earth must confront: 1) the oppression of the poor, and 2) the ethnocentrism of the Jews.  These evils must not only be exposed, but something better must be put in their place.  The oppression of the poor must be replaced by Jubilee justice.  The ethnocentrism against other ethnic groups must be replaced by reconciliation and equality.  At the end of Luke four, Jesus says, "I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to other cities also; for I was sent for this purpose."  Our purpose, our calling today, is also to preach and practice the kingdom of God---the kingdom of justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit.

The third key verse to understanding the kingdom of God is Rom. 14:17.  In the NIV, it reads: "The kingdom of God is . . . righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."  However, the New English Bible translates this verse as: "The kingdom of God is . . . justice, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit."  The Greek word dikiaosune means both justice and righteousness.  The traditional English translation of righteousness is understood by most readers as: "I am made individually righteous through Christ."

My paraphrase of Rom. 14:17 reads: "The kingdom of God is . . . . justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit."  This translation communicates that the kingdom of God includes justice and that shalom is more than inner or spiritual peace.  Shalom also means harmonious social relationships, a total sense of well-being which includes physical health and economic sufficiency.  The individual-in-community experiences justice and shalom (See Perry Yoder's Shalom for an indepth analysis of shalom.)

If a person in community experiences justice and shalom, this is solid ground for authentic joy.  A person receiving only charity may experience a fleeting joy, dependent on a handout each day.

Just as we cannot be born again apart from the Spirit of God, so we cannot experience the fullness of the kingdom of God apart from the Spirit of God.  There is more to the biblical ministry of the Holy Spirit than personal blessing.  The person and power of the Spirit is essential to provide the wisdom and power necessary to destroy ethnocentrism and oppression.  These social evils are deeply embedded in the cultural values and social institutions of our society.  It is more difficult to cast out these demonic values from society that it is to cast an evil spirit from an individual person.

Often ethnocentrism and oppression are cleverly disguised and portrayed as good by mixing them with the religion of society.  Lee Harper said the following about her life in Mississippi: "For injustice ran deep and cloaked itself well among these things that appeared just."  The supposed superiority of Euro Americans is covered by an appeal to out Judeo-Christian heritage.  It takes divine wisdom from the Spirit of truth to sort this out.  Once ethnocentrism and oppression are recognized and exposed, it will still take enormous power to destroy these negative values and replace them with justice and shalom.  Here again the person of the Holy Spirit is crucial.

The Kingdom of God, no.2

Isaiah 9:7, a Messianic prophecy about Jesus and his coming kingdom, asserts that the kingdom will be characterized by justice/righteousness and shalom.  The other Messianic passages in Isaiah also highlight justice; and some of these passages mention the role of the Holy Spirit.  See 11:1-4; 16:5; 28:16-17; 42:1-4. I believe that Luke 4:18-19 is intended to be a summary statement, a mission statement if you will, about the nature of the kingdom of God.  Luke 4:18-19 is quoted from Isaiah 61 and 58:6. 

To understand this passage from Luke, we need to return to Isaiah. In addition to idolatry and immorality, Isaiah was profoundly disturbed by social oppression, by the lack of justice for the poor.  The phrase from Isaiah 58:6, "to set the oppressed free," or "to release the oppressed," is one of several similar statements from chapter 58.  The full chapter describes a supposedly spiritual people---"they seek me daily, they delight to know my ways, they delight to know God, and they fast and pray."  At the same time the Israelites were oppressing their workers and neglecting the poor.  God refused to accept them, to hear their prayers, because of their social sins.  Isaiah teaches that spirituality cannot be divorced from social justice.  My paraphrase of Isaiah 61 highlights what God desires:

The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is on me,

because the Lord has anointed me

to preach good news to the oppressed poor

to proclaim freedom and release to those in bondage

by practicing Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor.

to bestow on the oppressed poor:

a crown of beauty instead of ashes,

the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.

These transformed poor will be called trees of justice.

These transformed poor will rebuild the ruined cities.

For I, the Lord, love justice.

Jesus, by reading from Isaiah 61 and 58:6, describes the heart of his ministry here on earth.  And he himself modeled this type of ministry.  Here is my paraphrase of Luke 4:18-19:

The Spirit of the Lord is on me,

He has anointed me to preach good news to the poor, . . . .

by implementing  a Jubilee justice for the poor.

As Jesus sat down "the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. . . . All spoke well of him."  The Jews from Nazareth had heard very good news and they were positively impressed.  In that synagogue congregation there were most likely some of the oppressed poor Jesus had read about from Isaiah.  They knew what Jubilee justice would like, what it would do for them. Galilee had the best farming land in Palestine (meager by Iowa standards).  But this rich land was full of poor people.  Why?  Over the years cruel and corrupt people had gained control of most of the good land through high interest rates, excessive taxation, poor crops, fraud, or some combination of the above.  So rich Romans or rich Jews or rich Gentiles got control of  the land leaving the masses landless or on poor quality land.  Some of the Jewish owners were absentee landlords from Jerusalem, part of the temple crowd. Judaism at the time of Christ was corrupt through and through.  The leaders and the institutions they controlled were much like they were in the OT at the time of Amos or Isaiah. 

The sacred temple had become a "den of robbers," so Jesus moved in and cleansed it.  In Matthew 23, Jesus uttered very strong words of condemnation to the Jewish religious leaders. Galilee was like a Third World country today---a few rich elite controlling everything and exploiting the masses who were poor.  Under the Jubilee the landless poor would get their land back.  Then they could farm and be self-sufficient.  Charity for the poor was not enough; these landless poor needed justice.  The OT Jubilee was a set of principles and laws designed by God to protect and empower the poor.  The kingdom of God was supposed to be a NT version of the OT Jubilee.

But another type of oppression was occurring in Galilee, and all over Palestine.  Some of the economically oppressed Jews were themselves oppressing others.  How could the powerless poor be oppressors?

Redesigning (vs. eliminating) Systems of Oppression

In my last email essay, I referred to The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander; she excelled in the legal/judicial aspects of mass incarceration and in making historical comparisons.  She noted that we really don't eliminate systems of oppression; we only redesign them.  We move from slavery to legal segregation to mass incarceration.

Bruce Western (Punishment and Inequality in America) excels in sociological analysis and in tying mass incarceration and economic inequality together.  Alexander and Western complement each other.  Next some quotations from Western's final chapter entitled "Conclusions."

* In the last decades of the twentieth century [and up to 2013], mass imprisonment became a fact of American life.  The deep involvement of poor black men in the criminal justice system became normal.  Those drawn into the net of the penal system live differently from the rest of us.  Employment is more insecure, wages are lower.  Families are disrupted as incarceration separates children from their fathers and breaks up couples.  Pervasive incarceration and its effects on economic opportunity and family life have given the penal system a central role in the lives of the urban poor.

* By taking vast numbers of poorly educated young men out of the labor market, economic statistics on wages and employment were artificially improved. . . . The criminal justice system tightly grips the low-wage labor market, hiding inequality behind prison walls and deepening the disadvantage of ex-prisoners after release.

* One in ten young black children had a father in prison or jail by the end of the 1990s.

* Although originally conceived to control the crime and disorder of the inner cities, mass imprisonment has become part of the problem, preventing the full integration of poor urban communities into the American social fabric.

* Here I draw two conclusions.  First, that mass imprisonment has significantly sealed the social immobility of poor blacks.  Second, if we view the effects of the prison boom in the context of causes, mass imprisonment has significantly subtracted from the gains to African American citizenship hard won by the civil rights movement.

* In political campaigns and media portrayals, criminal offenders were regularly personified by poor young black men [leaving the deep impression that such men were inherently a problem].  The racial stain, unlike poverty or school failure, was an unfading deficiency beyond the reach of government reform.

* Through its effects on work and families, incarceration redirects the life course onto a road of lasting disadvantage.  Inspired by beliefs about its permanent inferiority, mass imprisonment cemented the distress of the black underclass.

* What about the future of mass imprisonment?  My analysis suggests it will remain a feature of the regulation of urban poverty in America.  Although increasingly expensive and perhaps a little obsolete in a time of low crime rates, mass imprisonment is likely to be preserved by the political and economic forces that created it.

Now some of my (Noble) observations:  The abolitionits and Emancipation Proclamation---good; the civil rights movement and the abolition of legal segregation--good; the Army and its integrated Afro-Anglo culture---good.  Good, but not biblically good enough.  None of the above identified and addressed American oppression and ethnocentrism, as Jesus did in Luke 4, or to put it another  way, the American trinity of hyperindividualism, hypermaterialism and hyperethnocentrism.

The Army was ahead of the American church, but a fully biblical church would have been ahead of the Army.  The church should have preached and practiced the kingdom of God gospel (to be spelled out in greater detail in coming essays) long before the Army established the Afro-Anglo culture.  The kingdom of God culture goes deeper than the Afro-Anglo culture.

When the British, Puritan colonists packed their suitcases to come to America, along with their Bibles they also packed generous portions of ethnocentrism and oppression which the British had just perfected in a brutal military campaign against the Irish who, by the way, were of the same race.  After arriving in America, the Puritans were soon using their ethnocentrism and oppression against Native Americans, setting in place a genocidal pattern that continued for several hundred years all across the American continent.

American WASPs have never ceased, right up to 2013, this lavish use of ethnocentrism and oppression.  The American church, especially white evangelicals, has largely been silent, seldom preached about these social evils which Jesus specifically addressed at the beginning of His ministry (Luke).

Thomas Hanks (God So Loved the Third World: The Biblical Vocabulary of Oppression) provides this scholarly observation; a Hebrew scholar, Hanks asserts that there are 555 references to oppression in the OT (the whole semantic field):

Anyone who has read much in the theological classics (Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Barth, Berkouwer et. al.) will recognize that the theme of oppression has received little or no attention there.  One might think that the Bible says little about oppression.  Furthermore, one searches in vain for the theme in Bible dictionaries, encyclopedias, and the like.  However, when we strike the rock of a complete Bible concordance, to our great surprise we hit a gusher of texts and terms that deal with oppression.  In short, we find a basic structural category of biblical theology.

Hebrew roots commonly translated in English as oppression have meanings such as : crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill. 

After Hanks book was published (1983 in English, originally printed in Spanish), the revised ISBE did include an significant entry on oppression, but, unfortunately, nothing on oppression in the NT.  We need an urgent effort to create a comprehensive theology of oppression; we can't skip lightly over to oppression and quickly rush to justice.

Jesus called the Jewish temple a "den of robbers," or paraphrased "a system of oppression."  The temple had an immense impact on all of Jewish society in Palestine; it had not only religious impact, but also large political, economic, and social impact.  There was also serious oppression in the agricultural sector (James 5) and widows and orphans were oppressed (James 1).  Then, of course, there was Roman oppression, but, bad as it was at times, Jesus never mentioned Roman oppression; He concentrated on the oppression within, not from without.

Oppression permeated Palestine society; we must remember the extent of oppression as we think about Jesus statement (Luke 4:18) that He had come "to release the oppressed"   And we must remember that again and again he entered the temple and confronted the oppressors there on their own turf.

To be continued as I discuss in some detail what the kingdom of God answer to the above issue should be in future essays

Counter Trends

More on the complex cross-currents and counter-currents in American society.  In my last email, I discussed Army integration and Orlando Patterson's optimistic report on racial progress over the last 50 years.  Reconciliation, community rebuilding and social justice are higher goals than integration, but Patterson, Moskos and Butler inform us that integration can be an important part of the mix.

There is another good news story, a sociological miracle if you will, mostly recently documented by John Perkins and Wayne Gordon in their two books, Leadership Revolution: Developing the Vision and Practice of Freedom and Justice (2012); also Making Neighborhoods Whole: A Handbook for Christian Community Development (2013).  Beginning in Mississippi in the 1960s, CCD has blossomed and spread across the country (CCDA) into hundreds of poor communities---rebuilding them with love and commitment.  John Perkins has told his story and the larger CCD story in 14 books that he has authored, co-authored or edited.

Since my retirement in 1994, for about 20 years I volunteered at the Perkins Center in West Jackson where VOCM has been doing community development since the 1970s, working with youth, rehabbing houses, etc.  An important and sustained effort, but an objective analysis would have to admit that West Jackson has deteriorated faster than VOCM could rebuild it.  Why?

Now we transition to the bad news, to the worst of times, as we examine the exploding racial wealth gap and the exploding mass incarceration of young Black and Hispanic males.  These powerful negative cross-currents in American society exist as the same time as the three good news stories we have previously mentioned.

In the 1990s, a few scholars documented these counter-trends;  Jerome Miller (Search and Destroy) first called attention to the racial profiling behind mass incarceration and the damage being done in the Black community; Melvin Oliver and Thomas Shapiro documented the racial wealth gap (Black Wealth/White Wealth); Kevin Phillips gave us the inside story on the growing gap between rich and poor during the Reagan revolution in his book The Politics of Rich and Poor.  The racial wealth gap story has been updated by Thomas Shapiro (2004) in his book The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality.  See the Brandeis University for Assets and Social Policy for the latest information on the racial wealth gap. The tragic mass incarceration story has been updated by numerous scholars; I will call attention to two of the most recent books, both reflecting excellent scholarship and writing clarity; I call them both masterpieces.  First, The New Jim Crow by the Black lawyer, Michelle Alexander (2010).  Second, Punishment and Inequality in America by white sociologist, Bruce Western (2006).

To summarize The New Jim Crow, I created the following fact sheet:

* The U.S. has 5 percent of the world's population and 25 percent of the world's prison population; obviously something is terribly wrong, gross overuse of the prison system; the church and the public health department should be handling most drug problems, not the prison system.

* The Current War on Drugs began in 1982 so it has been going on tied with racial profiling for 31 years.

* Once you are labeled a felon, the old [Jim Crow] forms of discrimination---employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of right to vote, denial of food stamps . . . are suddenly legal.

* 31 million persons have been arrested for drug offenses since 1982; four out five arrests were for drug possession.

* Marijuana possession accounted for 80 percent of the growth in drug arrests in the 1990s.

* Black, Whites and Hispanics traffic in illegal drugs equally; about 6 percent of each ethnic population use illegal drugs.

* By the end of 2007, more than 7 million Americans were behind bars, on probation or on parole.

* The nationwide incarceration ratio between Blacks and Whites is roughly 25-1.  In some states such as Iowa and Minnesota, it is around 50-1.  In Iowa, around 2% of the population is Afro Americans; 24% of the prison population is Afro American.

* In major cities wracked by the drug war, as many as 80 percent of young African American men now have criminal records and thus are subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives.

* These young men are part of a growing undercaste, permanently locked up and locked out of mainstream society.  If there is a permanent undercaste, is there also a permanent oppressor class?  If so, who is it?

* If law enforcement as aggressively targeted young white males for drug offenses as they do Blacks and Latinos, the prison population would explode five-fold almost overnight.

* "A human rights nightmare is occurring on our watch."  What should the Christian church be doing about it?  God, through Amos 5:24 (The Message), declared "I want justice---oceans of it."

Society, Culture, and Integration

All of us, including scholars and geniuses, including sociologists, have, at best, a partial understanding of society and culture.  All of us see through a glass darkly.  Our partial understanding, our half-truths, mislead as often as they enlighten.  Humility is better than pontificating.  The cross-currents permeating our society are complex and confusing.  This essay will try to make this point.

Society-culture is complex and multifaceted.  A society as large and multifaceted as the U.S. can never be adequately analyzed and described by one scholarly study.  One scholar can study only one segment of society; so it will take several studies to even begin to capture the cross-currents, even counter-currents, that exist at the same time in a society.  Even the following four books only begin the process:  All That We Can Be:  Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way by sociologists Charles Moskos and John Butler (1996); The Ordeal of Integration:  Progress and Resentment in America's Racial Crisis by historical sociologist Orlando Paterson (1997); The Hidden Cost of Being African American: How Wealth Perpetuates Inequality by sociologist Thomas Shapiro (2004); The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by lawyer Michelle Alexander (2010).

In some circles, integration is a bad word.  Some say that integration has been tried and it has failed to bring about harmonious racial or ethnic relations.  Two books suggest that the funeral for integration may have been premature.  All That We Can Be argues that the U.S. Army has been astoundingly successful in promoting integration within its ranks.  The Army is so highly integrated that Moskos and Butler talk of an Afro-Anglo culture permeating all aspects of Army life.  They describe Afro-Anglo culture as a multiracial uniculture that blends the British heritage with the Afro "moral vision, rhetoric, literature, music, and a distinctive Protestant Christianity."

In the 1970s, the Army was plagued by racial strife and conflict, so much so that its viability as a functioning fighting unit was threatened,  In this time of crisis, Army leadership made some bold decisions, and over a period of about 20 years these decisions and actions led to a sociological miracle.  The Army made improved ethnic relations a high priority.  The hired the best experts to design their program, and they did not skimp on the resources devoted to implement the program.  It was a serious and extensive effort, not just high-sounding rhetoric.  What was the result?  Moskos and Butler describe the Army this way:

It is an organization unmatched in its level of racial integration . . . . unmatched in its broad record of black achievement.  It is a world in which the Afro-American heritage is part and parcel of the institutional culture.  It is the only place in American life where whites are routinely bossed around by blacks.

After an extensive discussion of the many ramifications of such an effort at integration, the authors turn to this important question:  Can the successful Army experience be duplicated in civilian society?  The authors answer a resounding, YES!!  The basic principles are transferable (if there is the will to do so); they list and discuss 12 principles on how to do it.  In a major appendix, they urge that the nation commit itself to replicating the Army success in a National Service program for its young men and women.

The Christian church should humbly sit at the feet of the U.S. Army and learn how to operationalize love and respect for fellow ethnic human beings.  Strangely, a military unit that trains people to kill has also trained potential killers how to treat others as equal human beings.  The church which supposedly trains people how to love, not kill, has, for the most part, a record of failure in the area of ethnic harmony and reconciliation.  Tragically, apart from token integration, most of the Christian American church remains highly segregated.

Orlando Patterson, in his book The Ordeal of Integration, also argues that, in spite of an enormous rhetoric to the contrary, integration has been reasonably successful in civilian society.  Not as successful as the Army, of course, but still successful enough to be called a sociological miracle if seen from both a historical and a crosscultural perspective.

For example, the 1940 poverty rate among Afro-Americans was probably around 80 percent, but in the mid-nineties it was 29 percent.  This means that 70 percent of Afro-Americans live above the poverty line.  We hear much about the underclass---the poorest of the poor and a very serious problem.  Yet, according to Paterson, they make up only 3 percent of the total Afro-American population---900,000 out of 34,000,000.  Patterson describes the 70 percent of the population as follows:

hard-working, disproportionately God-fearing, law-abiding group of people who share the same dreams as their fellow citizens, love and cherish the land of their birth with equal fervor, contribute to its cultural, military, and political glory and global triumph out of all proportion to their numbers, and, to every dispassionate observer, are, in their values, habits, ideals, and ways of living, among the most 'American' of Americans.

Patterson also argues that Afro-Americans have moved "from a condition of mass illiteracy fifty years ago" to "median years of schooling and college completion rates higher than those of most European nations."  He also cites data to the effect that Euro-American ethnic attitudes have improved markedly.

If progress has been so significant, why so much negative rhetoric?  Many people do not have a 50 year perspective and therefore do not know how much progress has been made.  And many serious problems do remain.  Patterson describes the present situation as the best of times and the worst of times.  During this time the rate of interracial marriage is increasing; 12 percent of all new marriages by Afro-Americans in 1993 were to Euro-Americans.  A generation ago the rate was about 1 percent.

To be continued. . . .

Luke-Acts

The book of Acts and the gospel of Luke should be regarded as one unit.  Acts opens with a reference to Luke.  For the modern reader, far removed from the original events, it would have been helpful if Luke would have summarized the gospel of Luke, possibly in this way:  4:18-19 is my summary of the essence of the kingdom of God, i.e., the Spirit, the poor, the oppressed and Jubilee justice.  Implied are the rich in contrast to the poor (see the rest of the gospel), the oppressors (the religio-politico-economic Jewish elite) and shalom (if the church does Jubilee justice).  4:25-30 where I address the religious ethnocentrism of Jews against Gentiles; God loves all ethnic groups, nations, equally.  6:24:  Woe to the rich because most rich people oppress the poor.  11:43:  Your claim to be religious is nullified if you neglect justice and the love of God.  16:13-14:  You [especially religious people] cannot serve both God and [unjust] Money.

Now with this background, Acts 1:1-8 can be better understood.  Acts 1:3 [also 8:12; 28:23 & 31] refers to the kingdom of God, but does not define its content so we have to get the characteristics of the kingdom from the gospel (Luke 4:18-19).  There are two major themes in Acts 1:1-8---the kingdom of God and the Holy Spirit.  Acts assumes that both concepts are closely tied together, but the church often treats these concepts separately.  The Holy Spirit is given to the church to enlighten and empower the church to incarnate the kingdom as is described in Luke 4:18-19 and Acts 4:32-35.  In other words, the Spirit anointed church is called to destroy the gap between the rich and poor, between Jews and Gentiles.


The following quotation is from the British pastor/theologian, Grahm Cray.
This is how he summarizes the maning of Luke 4:18-19:

"The age of the Spirit is to be an age of perpetual Jubilee."

Or in my words, "Today's spirit-filled church is called to be a living, massive, perpetual restorer of justice, a justice that releases the oppressed."

The Power of Partnership

In my last blog, I noted the Australian who found large dead zones in the huge Pacific ocean that was very alarming to him a veteran sailor.  We are all aware of the rapid melting of glaciers all over the world and the melting of Artic ice.  Maybe even more alarming is the melting of the Artic tundra which is releasing methane gas which is about 20 times as bad a greenhouse gas as is carbon.   This combination is extremely bad news about climate change.

But now some good news from Memphis reported in the August 2013 Sojourners magazine; see "The Power of Partnership," by Bob Smietana.

The Congregational Health Network began with a simple request from the largest hospital network in Memphis to a group of local pastors: Help us take better care of your people.  Ten years ago, officials at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare were worried that chronic diseases such as hypertension, diabetes, and obesity were threatening the well-being of local residents and sending health-care costs through the roof.. . . . Hospital officials knew something had to change.  They wanted to focus on preventive health care---getting people in to see their doctor long before they were in crisis.  So in Memphis, a city where faith remains a powerful force and more than 60 percent of the population has ties to a religious group, they turned to churches for help. . . .

It begins with preventive measures, such as healthy eating, and goes all the way through to aftercare.  Church members who leave the hospital are tied into a support network when they get back home. . . .

He believes hospital officials now have a better understanding of how other factors, such as crime, unemployment and lack of access to good food, also affect a community's well-being [shalom]. . . .

Mortality in the network went down by half, . . . .Network members also averaged about $8,700 less in hospital costs. . . .

When they sign the covenant to join the network, pastors promise to model good health to their parishioners.

How about church suppers also modeling good nutrition---not high fat, high sugar---in their meals together.