Oppression, Jubilee Justice and Shalom

Why are white American evangelicals fully biblical in inspiration, but selectively biblical in theology? The NT gospel is two-pronged so why do American evangelicals preach a one-pronged gospel?

The full NT gospel is about both Jesus and the kingdom of God (Acts 8:12; 28:23; 28:31). The NT gospel is about personal transformation and social transformation, about personal reconciliation and social reconciliation, about personal justification and Jubilee justice. White American evangelicals are very strong on the personal transformation gospel based on the cross and the resurrection, but very weak on the social transformation gospel tied to the kingdom of God. So this essay will highlight the key biblical concepts tied to the kingdom of God gospel: oppression, Jubilee justice and shalom; also ethnocentrism and reconciliation.

How do we understand and implement the kingdom of God gospel which Romans 14:17 (Noble paraphrase) summarizes as "justice, shalom and joy in the Holy Spirit?" Jesus sums it up in Luke 4:18-19 (oppression, Jubilee justice and shalom) and in Luke 4:25-30 (ethnocentrism, equality and reconciliation).

Luke 4:18-19---from oppression to Jubilee justice

1. incredibly good news for the oppressed poor
2. releasing the oppressed poor from their systems of oppression
3. replacing the systems of oppression with Jubilee justice (year of the Lord's favor)
4. when Jubilee justice is implemented, a community/society experiences a measure of shalom

Luke 4:25-30; also Eph.2 and Gal. 3:28---from ethnocentrism to reconciliation

1. the arrogant sense of religious and ethnic superiority held by the Jews created the ethnocentric division between Jew and Gentile
2. God's grace and love is equally available to the despised Gentiles
3. the cross breaks down the ethnic divisions, hostility, and reconciles Jew and Gentile in one body. Eph. 2:1-10---personal reconciliation based on the cross; 2:11-22---social reconciliation based on the cross.

The gospel aims at revolutionary transformation, not just reform. Reforms are good, but not good enough. Contrary to popular opinion, neither the abolitionist movement nor the civil rights movement were revolutionary enough; therefore they were soon followed by new systems of oppression.

On a continuum, oppression is on one end of the line and shalom at the other end; Jubilee justice is in the middle of the continuum with one arrow pointing toward oppression and another arrow pointing toward shalom. Oppression, Jubilee justice and shalom can be studied as individuals concepts to begin with, but a comprehensive kingdom of God theology requires that they be treated as a social package, as a unit.

No white American evangelical theologian that I know of has studied oppression/injustice in the NT. Little has been done on justice in the NT; the NT desperately needs to be rejusticized. There is little scholarship on shalom in the NT. End result: white evangelicals neglect justice and the love of God. To get started, I suggest that you read Perry Yoder's Shalom and Willard Swartley's Covenant of Peace.

Both the abolitionist and the civil rights movements achieved one dimension of biblical justice---freedom from a specific systems of oppression, slavery and segregation. Tremendous accomplishments, but neither movement abolished the underlying ethnocentrism/racism; many white abolitionists were racist as was Lincoln. A second failure. Jubilee justice requires not only freedom from oppression but also access to enough creation resources (a plot of land) so that individuals, families and communities can have self-sufficiency/well-being/shalom. Neither movement was able to destroy or limit the American trinity; in large part this was because most of the white evangelical church was silent or an active participant in oppression and ethnocentrism.

For total Jubilee justice, in an agricultural society, land reform (40 acres and a mule) must accompany freedom; in an industrial society, _______________ must accompany freedom; in a high tech society, ______________ must accompany freedom. An historical example of what could and should have been. After Grant conquered Vickburg, by military order, he initiated economic justice. He took over the Jefferson Davis plantation, leased it to freed slaves, loaned them supplies to put in a crop. The ex-slaves worked hard and skillfully, produced a good crop, paid off the loan, and made a profit. Grant was impressed so he doubled the program the next year. Same success. Given half a chance, freed slaves quickly achieved a degree of self-sufficiency. But this Jubilee justice type program did not last long because after the War was over, as an act of reconciliation, the plantation was given back to the Davis family. Understandable, but I think justice for blacks should have been given higher priority than reconciliation between northern and southern whites. Dwight L. Moody also made the same mistake; he put reconciliation between northern and southern Christians before Jubilee justice for freed black slaves.

The successful just combination between freedom and economic justice ended in part because the church pulled back after freedom was obtained; it did not push equally hard for Jubilee justice. Freedom without justice is shallow, hollow.

Even today white American evangelicals have little understanding of the extensive biblical teaching on oppression both in the OT and the NT. I once asked a seminary prof to do a literature search for me on the biblical teaching on oppression; he found no such evangelical theological literature; neither have I. This is one reason why the American church is so shallow in its understanding and action on social problems, why most Christians and churches know little about and are doing little to end the unjust mass incarceration of young black and Latino males nor the 20-1 racial wealth gap. These evils are thriving in 2014.

Also no white evangelical theologian has rejusticized the NT leaving the church with a shallow understanding of the biblical teaching on oppression and justice. So inspite of some nice-sounding rhetoric on shalom theology, oppressors are beating the church hands down. Evangelical pastors, scholars, theologians, where are you? Standing on the sidelines?? Are you continuing to send out missionaries with a flawed, incomplete gospel?

In 1990, I wrote an article entitled "A Sociologist Looks at Oppression and Shalom." With a few revisions, I now quote from that article:

The Lord said to Moses, Say to Aaron and his sons, Thus you shall bless the people of Israel; you shall say to them, The Lord bless you and keep you: The Lord make his face to shine upon you, and be gracious to you: The Lord lift up his countenance upon you, and give you peace [shalom].

Here the blessing of God is the grace of God resting upon his obedient people granting them shalom. Shalom is a rich word meaning more than peace; it carries a sense of wholeness, completeness, harmony. Shalom is a total sense of well-being for not only individuals but also for a community, a people walking with God together. The blessing of shalom carries a sense of well-being in all of life---good health, economic necessities, social harmony and spiritually. The people blessed with shalom experienced authentic joy in life.

It is rather obvious why a true prophet of God would preach and promote shalom. But, according to Jeremiah, the false prophets also proclaimed shalom; Jeremiah 6:14 and 8:11 state: "They have healed the wound of my people lightly, saying 'Peace, peace,' when there was no peace." Or 'shalom, shalom,' when there was no shalom."

If there was no shalom, what was there? Again and again the prophets thundered that there was religious idolatry and social oppression; social oppression was often a consequence of religious idolatry. In Jeremiah 6:13 and 8:10, we hear oppression described: "Because from the least to the greatest everyone is greedy for unjust gain; from prophet to priest everyone deals falsely." Or Jeremiah 5:26-28: "For wicked men are found among my people . . . Therefore they have become great and rich, they have grown fat and sleek. They know no bounds in deeds of wickedness; they judge not with justice the cause of the fatherless, to make it prosper, and they do not defend the rights of the needy."

In talking about Jerusalem, the supposed city of shalom, Jeremiah (6:6) declares: "this is the city which must be punished; there is nothing but oppression within her." In 7:6 he calls on Israel not to "oppress the alien, the fatherless or the widow. . . . " Jeremiah 9:6: "Heaping oppression upon oppression, and deceit upon deceit, they refuse to know me, says the Lord." Oppression is the opposite of shalom and the absence of justice; oppression and shalom are polar opposites. What is oppression and what does oppression do? Oppression occurs when people in power and authority, usually through social institutions, misuse that power and authority cruelly and unjustly to crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill persons created in the image of God.

In contrast shalom occurs when a community, a people of God, are walking in covenant with God and neighbors according to the standards of justice and righteousness Oppression crushes people; justice release the crushed ones. Oppression humiliates persons; justice affirms persons. Oppression animalizes people; justice humanizes people. Oppression impoverishes people; justice prospers (necessities of life) people. Oppression enslaves persons; justice liberates persons. Oppression kills; only justice beyond this life can provide shalom for these persons.

English speaking evangelicals have written very little on the biblical concept of oppression. Until the 1980s there was very little of substance on oppression in standard bible dictionaries and encyclopedias. The only semi-thorough (nothing from the NT) article on oppression is found in the revised (1986) International Standard Bible Encyclopedia with a total of 222 lines; the 1929 ISBE article consisted of a brief, shallow 30 lines. The 1986 ISBE entry on oppression drew heavily from research done by Thomas Hanks and Elsa Tamez, Spanish speaking evangelicals. The norm, however, is no listing of oppression, as in The Illustrated Bible Dictionary (1980) published by InterVarsity Press; this dictionary lists Ophrah, Oracle, Orchard and Ordination, but nothing on the 555 references to oppression (Hebrew roots).

A question: Why this lack of scholarly research on biblical oppression by white American evangelicals? Have our theologians come primarily from the white middle class? Do they lack exposure to, sensitivity to, the experience of being oppressed? Do they read their Bible through white middle class cultural lenses? Strangely, even their limited awareness of oppression may have been forced upon evangelicals by black theologians and liberation theologians. Even in 2014, I still sense a lack of biblical knowledge by white North American evangelicals.

In 1983, Thomas Hanks, a North American evangelical teaching at the Latin American Biblical Seminary in Costa Rica, published in English God So Loved the Third World; The Biblical Vocabulary of Oppression. In 1982 the English translation of Elsa Tamez's Bible of the Oppressed appeared. Tamez was an evangelical colleague of Hanks. We should all be immensely grateful for these quality analyses of the biblical concept of oppression.

Tamez states that "there is an almost complete absence of the theme of oppression in European and North American biblical theology." Hanks asserts: "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. . . . 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.

After a thorough study of the Hebrew roots for oppression, Hanks concludes: "Oppression is a fundamental structural category of biblical theology, as in evidenced by the large number of Hebrew roots denoting it (10 basic roots, 20 in all); the frequency of their occurrence (555 times); the basic theological character of many texts that speak of it (Gen. 15; Exod. 1-5; Ps. 72,103,146; Isa. 8-9,42,53,58, etc.); and the significance of oppression in Israel's great creedal confession (Deut. 26:5-9).

In my judgment, unless a Christian has a profound understanding of the horror of oppression, a Christian is unlikely to develop a passionate and informed concern for social justice, Jubilee justice. The American church has little biblical understanding of oppression; the church has done little to execute justice on behalf of the oppressed poor. Some charity, yes, but not always well-informed; some reform, yes; but little transformational Jubilee justice.

Perry Yoder, an OT scholar and author of Shalom, says the major thesis of his book is that shalom "is squarely against injustice and oppression. Indeed, we shall argue that shalom demands a transforming of unjust social and economic orders." In order to achieve shalom, Christians must "do justice," "execute justice," "pursue justice," and "give justice." Yoder adds that "God's justice sets things right, it is a liberating justice."


When Jesus spoke about Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor in the Nazareth synagogue, it is no wonder that "all spoke well of him." Would that the American church would do the same! Will we be well known for stopping oppression, doing justice; then experiencing shalom and celebrating with authentic joy---all in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.