Introduction to blog book: Is Justice a Joke?

Is the biblical promise of justice a joke? (The Message, Habakkuk, chapter 1). Is justice always the loser? (CEV). Is justice always perverted? (RSV). The Old Testament prophet Habakkuk thought so. So does the black American lawyer, Michelle Alexander (2010). And the black journalist, Ta-Nehisi Coates (June 2014). Also the black lawyer/activist, Randall Robinson (2007), An Unbroken [Haitian] Agony.

In "Christian" America, is the promise of justice a joke? A Native American Habakkuk would likely agree that the promise of justice is hollow. So would an Afro American Habakkuk, a Mexican American Habakkuk, a Chinese American Habakkuk, a Japanese America Habakkuk, a Hawaiian American Habakkuk, a Filipino American Habakkuk, a Korean American Habakkuk. In spite of a large Christian presence in America, justice was far too often perverted. Spirituality was divorced from the doing of Jubilee justice; therefore, ethnocentrism and oppression were left unchecked and unchallenged so they run rampant. But worse than this, religion was often perverted to legitimate oppression.

In her ground-breaking book, The New Jim Crow, Michelle Alexander argues that America does not really end systems of oppression; it merely redesigns them---in both the North and South.

This is how the front page of The Atlantic ("The Case for Reparations," The Atlantic, June 2014) sums up Ta-Nehisi Coates' thesis:

"250 years of slavery.
90 years of Jim Crow.
60 years of separate but equal.
35 years of state sanctioned redlining.
Until we reckon with [repent]the compounding moral debts of our ancestors, America will never be whole."
Coates documents his argument in both Mississippi and Chicago---the new Mississippi.

This is my summary of Coates' thesis and how the church should respond:

"Until the American church understands both oppression and justice, until the white church repents of its arrogance, ethnocentrism and oppression and engages in the restitution that biblical justice requires, we cannot have shalom in our families, communities and our nation. The beautiful phrase "with liberty and justice for all," will only be hollow hypocrisy."

To Habakkuk, injustice ran so deep and so wide that it appeared to him that God had gone on a deistic vacation. The supposedly just God was AWOL. Habakkuk demanded an answer from God. God did answer Habakkuk (my paraphrase):

"I will take care of this huge injustice problem in due time. I do know what is going on; I am not sleeping on the job. In the meantime, I have a marching order for you, and the church. Continue to live righteously, continue to do justice, even in the midst of massive injustice. Do this by faith, that, in my sovereign wisdom, I will act and bring the unrepentant oppressor to judgment. The choice for us all is: do justice or face judgment. I, God, love justice; therefore I call my people to engage in works of justice."

Is justice a joke in these United States of America? Unfortunately, the answer is a resounding, YES! From its colonial beginnings down to the present. Why? Primarily because of the catastrophic heresies in the white evangelical church in terms of failing to preach and practice a comprehensive kingdom of God gospel with a focus on justice for the oppressed poor. To put it simply, we have been plagued with a gospel that promotes a spirituality without justice; or a gospel that weds spirituality and injustice. See Isaiah 58 and its New Testament counterpart, the Sermon on the Mount.

You demand evidence for these strong words?

1. Cite me a single white American evangelical theologian who has written a book on the extensive biblical teaching on oppression.

2. Cite me a single white American evangelical theologian who has written a book on poverty who has included a chapter on the biblical teaching on oppression.

3. Cite me a single white American theologian who had thoroughly rejusticized the New Testament.

4. Two revered Protestant spiritual giants, Jonathan Edwards and A.W. Tozer, promoted a spirituality without justice; both are social heretics.

5. The supposedly biblical Puritans paid money for the scalps of Indians; and they praised God when disease wiped out Native Americans.

6. The supposedly Christian founding fathers made Native Americans, Afro Americans, women and the poor second class citizens.

7. Many Christians supported the near genocide of Indians and the stealing of their land.

8. Many Christians supported the unjust Mexican American was and the settlement which took nearly half of Mexico's land.

9. A praying U.S. president conquered the Philippines, killing roughly a million Filipinos who resisted "God's Will." (The Philippine Reader).

I have briefly described the rampant oppression which has characterized much of American history ( just 5 minutes ago, I read this headline : "Investigation: ATF drug stings targeted minorities: 91% of those locked up were racial or ethnic minorities," July 21, 2014, USA Today.) and the tragic results. But what was/is the cause. The gospel of Luke can help us with this dilemma.

In Luke, Jesus highlights the oppressed poor in his ministry, but in his teaching, Jesus spends more time identifying and confronting the religious rich as the primary cause of poverty. For Jesus, the religious rich are THE social problem, not the poor; the poor have many problems, but they are NOT the social problem. Based on the larger context, Jesus' "Woe to the rich" statement could well have been "Woe to the religious rich!" The religious rich ran the Temple as a "den of robbers"; the religious rich were condemned as a people who neglected justice and the love of God.

Justice is a joke because the religious rich are in control; these religious rich are the oppressors. The religious rich in America co-opt the church, the only social institution in America that could, if it would, release the oppressed from the grips of the rich and then do Jubilee justice. When the church is seduced by the rich and preaches a toothless justice gospel, all hope is lost. And then the rich oppressors praise God; their only potential opposition has been silenced. Religious piety is only good if it is tied to Jubilee justice; this rarely happens in America, and when it does,it only goes halfway.

Centuries of ethnocentrism and oppression in America have produced physical, psychological and social death---from individual deaths to genocide, broken spirits, and damaged cultural values and social institutions---on a large scale; therefore, justice has been and still is a joke. When justice is broken, people are crushed. Systems of oppression such as unjust mass incarceration and the unjust racial wealth gap continue today unabated. As Michelle Alexander asserts, in America we really don't end systems of oppression, we merely redesign them.

Social evil is much more than racism that discriminates:

It is pirates who plunder---lives, land, resources.
It is tyrants who terrorize---destroy families and communities.
It is law that legalizes robbery.
It is ethnocentrism that legitimates oppression.
It is perverted religion that sanctifies all of the above.

White privilege is built upon white plunder.
Theological bankruptcy permits pirates who plunder.
Among the pirates are the Puritans, the Supreme Court, the criminal justice system, banks and real estate brokers and some pastors/churches.

Is Justice a Joke? It is in a nation where white mainland pirates plundered all non-whites; then these white pirates built an Arch to celebrate.

Bibliography

* The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century by Forrest Wood, Northeastern University Press, 1990. "The central thesis of this book is that Christianity has been fundamentally racist in its ideology, organization and practice."

* Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Oxford University Press, 2000. Evangelicals themselves are preserving the racial chasm with an individualistic theology which ignores the biblical teaching on oppression and justice, assert these two professional Christian sociologists.

* "Puritans, Indians, and the Concept of Race," by G.E. Thomas in The New England Quarterly, March, 1975. "The record of Puritan attitudes, goals, and behavior in every major interaction with Indians reveals a continued harshness, brutality, and ethnocentric bias which had fatal consequences for Indians as a race." And, tragically, the Puritan example set the pattern for the rest of American history.

* Facing West: The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building by Richard Drinnon, New American Library, 1980. "From the first Puritan confrontation with Native Americans to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, there have been two constants in American policy and purpose. One is a racism that perceives [all] non-whites as at once childlike inferiors and murderous savages. The other is a hunger for new land and economic markets over which to exert control . . . these factors have interwoven, strengthening the other."

* The Wars of America: Christian Views edited by Ronald Wells. George Marsden, one of the eight professional Christian historians writing the book, declares that the American Revolution was not a just war because the British tyranny was not bad enough to justify a violent revolution. Nor were many of America's wars, yet many Christians enthusiastically supported these unjust wars.

* Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans by Ronald Takaki, Penguin Books, 1989. "A personal and social history of the thousands of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian immigrants to the U.S. Their contributions to this country's development were immense, especially in the West and Hawaii, but they experienced disgraceful ethnocentrism and oppression."

* Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Cost of Economic Power by Gene Dattel. "Cotton and Race in the Making of America is about money and the uses and abuse of power. Because of its connection with race, cotton is uniquely tainted in American history. . . . Once we begin following the money trail, we realize that it leads to the heart and soul of America."