Though their book is clearly grounded in both the Old and New Testaments, I wish Alexia and Peter would have explained in greater detail how a NT faith requires a love and justice oriented social movement. Though not usually interpreted in this way, I believe that the Sermon on the Mount is consistent with the Isaiah Messianic passages. If dikaiosune is translated justice (as it is in Spanish, French, Italian and Latin translations), then the Sermon has two themes---the kingdom of God and justice. "Seek first God's kingdom and his justice" (6:33) and "hunger and thirst after justice" (5:5). Jesus came to fulfill the Law and the Prophets which were built upon love and justice. In chapter 7, we are urged to be doers---doers of love and justice.
The book of James is also consistent with the Messianic passages and the Sermon. Pure religion gives highest priority to the oppressed poor, to combining faith and works of justice on behalf of the poor.
According to Alexia and Peter, the following Christian institutions are now teaching faith-rooted organizing: Auburn Seminary, Biola University, Claremont School of Theology, Covenant Theological Seminary, Denver Seminary, Fuller Theological Seminary, Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, New York Theological Seminary, Seattle School of Theology and Psychology, Talbot Seminary at Biola University, Union Theological Seminary (especially the Poverty Initiative) and Vanguard University. One of these schools/seminaries needs to create a NT theology of society with the same urgency that the Manhattan Project built the atomic bomb.
Most of you received a recent email from me with a chart of America's Social Inequalities which described how extensive and damaging America's social evils have been. I do not know of any NT theology that adequately wrestles with these social evils, that helps us understand them and how these deadly systems work. Neither do we have a NT theology of social justice, of a kingdom of God justice that incarnates Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor.
After citing seemingly dozens of inspiring and successful examples of church-rooted organizing, the authors make this sobering observation:
Rev. James M. Lawson Jr. says that we do not have a movement for justice in the United States. Many people in many places and times are working for justice, but our communities and our society are still unjust and unhealthy in many ways. [think lack of immigration reform, mass incarceration, economic inequality, gender inequality, etc.] . . . . We do not have a movement for justice, Lawson tells us. Rather, we have the seeds of a movement.
This is why we need a crash effort to create a NT theology of society to support Alexia and Peter's fine book on organizing through the church.
A quotation from Faith-Rooted Organizing:
The church has, unfortunately, been complicit in perpetuating some societal lies [evils]. . . . . The church's complicity manifests in its repetition of societal lies or its silence in the face of them, ignoring the Scriptures.
If the church does not have a comprehensive NT theology of society covering social evil and social justice, two things happen: 1) a social vacuum is created into which social evils and systems of oppression rush to fill, and 2) worse yet, the biblically illiterate church too often buys into an evil ideology and then becomes a part of ethnocentrism and oppression, legitimating or participating or tolerating social evil.
Michelle Alexander, author of the New Jim Crow, is calling for a social movement to eliminate both mass incarceration and the racism/ethnocentrism behind it. Faith-Rooted Organizing is just the book to inform and assist the church if it wishes to be a part of this justice movement.
No comments:
Post a Comment