Yesterday, I sent some quotations from Spencer Perkins---his report on a trip to South Africa in 1989, prior to Mandela's release from prison. My rereading provoked some anger, some deep disappointment about the biblical depth of white American evangelicalism.
Some of the closest disciples of John Perkins seem to be highlighting the message of reconciliation, but, in comparison, minimizing justice. They have a good NT theology of reconciliation, but the lack a NT theology of justice. So even in 2014, evangelicals still have a long ways to go in spite of hundreds of Christian colleges, universities and seminaries. What's wrong? Are we stuck in the Middle Ages?
In modern America, Tim Keller and Ken Wytsma are two of the best white writers on justice; but strangely, judged by their books, they seem to be unaware of the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males, and the unjust massive racial wealth gap swirling around them in society. Michelle Alexander asserts that in America, contrary to what we are usually taught, as a nation we really don't destroy systems of oppression; we merely redesign them. Slavery was replaced by neoslavery---segregation, sharecropping, incarceration. Legal segregation was replaced by mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap. Mass incarceration, prison, is close to slavery; the racial wealth gap is close to sharecropping with low wages and poverty.
In the midst of all this, evangelicals still don't have an adequate NT theology of social evil---ethnocentrism and oppression. Nor do they have a NT theology of justice---love, reconciliation, Jubilee justice, shalom, all related to the Spirit-filled church and the kingdom of God.
Any volunteers?
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