America's Unpardonable Sin?

I have recently decided that there is a second unpardonable sin---the near total failure of the white American church to stop oppression and do justice in behalf of the millions of oppressed poor.  Biblically, oppression is a form of violence that crushes the poor and often it creates PTSD (Exodus 6:9).   Most of the American church either neglects justice (a sin of omission) or participates in oppression (sin of commission).

Theologically, there is almost no literature on the extensive (555 OT references) biblical teaching on oppression.  Rarely is the theme of oppression preached about from the American pulpit.  Wolterstorff asserts that the English NT has been dejusticized.  Result: oppression has run rampant in American society throughout our history including 2015.

In my home state of Iowa, we have a 2 and 24 problem---the worst incarceration ratio in the nation.
Two percent of Iowa's population is black; 24 percent of Iowa's prison population is black.  At least 20 of the 24 percent of this high black incarceration is due to white oppression enacted through the criminal justice system, not to excessive black crime as is commonly believed.  This high rate of oppression is what is truly criminal, evil, sinful; an unpardonable sin because there is no repentance by whites.

When will the white church repent, restitute and repair the extensive damage done to the oppressed.? Why are American systems of oppression never fully eliminated, only redesigned?  (Read The New Jim Crow).  It may be time for America to pray a Daniel 9 type prayer.

Daniel was as holy and righteous a person who has ever lived so he wasn't confessing his own personal sin.  But as a citizen of the nation of Israel, he was identifying with the sins of Israel as if they were his own.  And maybe they were.  We cannot claim the rights and blessings of citizenship and then deny our responsibility for the sins of our nation.  "Great and awesome God, . . . we have been wicked and rebelled. . . . . . . . . "

Here is my Americanized version of Daniel's prayer:  "Great and awesome God, we have sinned greatly in your sight.  Instead of repenting of our national sins of ethnocentrism and oppression, we have self-righteously rationalized them away.  We have called ethnocentrism, American exceptionalism.  We have neglected justice and the love of God.  We have loved money as a substitute for God.

Our national sins are piled high; we deserve judgment, doom, perdition.  If you will forgive us by your grace, we pledge to repair the damage done.  For more, see blog       "Lowell Noble's Writings."