After reading Jim Wallis' America's Original Sin, especially chapter four on Repentance, I have concluded that Billy Graham, and thousands of other white American evangelical pastors/churches have in the past and are in the present, preaching and practicing half of the biblical gospel---or cheap grace.
Ironically Billy Graham and most white evangelicals believe the Bible is inerrant, divinely inspired and authoritative. So why do they ignore or only lightly touch so many important biblical truths? Evangelicals are 100 percent faithful to the cross, the resurrection, and justification by faith. But they only preach and practice about 10 percent of the kingdom of God gospel.
Around age 70, Billy Graham wrote something rather remarkable about the kingdom of God: "I have been preaching the cross and the resurrection all my life. Now I realize I also should have been preaching the kingdom of God which is justice for all." But, to my knowledge, he did little to follow through except that he integrated his evangelistic meetings and promoted giving to some charities in his meetings.
What is the kingdom of God gospel? It might be summarized concisely in the following way:
* To love God is to do justice.
* Liberty and justice for all.
* Jubilee justice for the oppressed poor
* Release for the oppressed poor.
* Incarnation of justice and shalom in the power and wisdom of the Holy Spirit.
To do the above requires an in-depth biblical knowledge of the following concepts:
* The 555 references to oppression in the Hebrew OT.
* The 100 references to justice in the NT---Spanish, French, Latin Vulgate, etc.
* The extensive teaching about ethnocentrism in the NT.
* The concept of Jubilee justice, the Sabbath year.
* The Spirit and the Kingdom of God
* Reconciliation in the NT.
Next, Jim Wallis on Repentance.
Biblical repentance requires fruit, not just feeling sorry for our sins. Zaccheus engaged in restitution; restitution repairs some of the damage oppression has done to the oppressed. Restitution is part of releasing the oppressed.
In America, we have never fully repented of ethnocentrism and oppression, Indian genocide and African enslavement, white superiority and white privilege. Instead of repenting, we enjoy the fruits of our ethnocentrism and oppression.
Jim Wallis calls upon the church to repent---to fully turn away from all our social evils and to fully implement the kingdom of God. Reform is not enough; revolutionary transformation is required. The American church must give highest priority to implementing the kingdom of God as Sabbath Year/Jubilee Year justice. According to Wallis, the American church has not come close to biblical repentance.
From the Conclusion of Punishment and Inequality in America by Bruce Western:
"In the last decades of the twentieth century [beginning during the Reagan decade], mass imprisonment became a fact of American life. The deep involvement of poor black men [racial profiling] in the criminal justice system became normal. Those drawn into the net of the penal system live differently from the rest of us. Employment is more insecure, wages are lower. Families are disrupted as incarceration separates children from their fathers and breaks up couples. Pervasive incarceration and its effects on economic opportunity and family life have given the penal system a central role in the lives of the urban poor. [A system of oppression par excellence]."
Where was/is the American church in all of this social evil? AWOL?
Reformed philosopher/theologian, Hendrik Hart, is deeply troubled by the failure of his denomination to root out racism and do justice. The following excerpts are from his article in the Christian Scholar's Review, "The Just Shall Live: Reformational Reflections in Public Justice and Racist Attitudes."
Hart asserts that Calvinists do not understand their key Reformational verse, Hab. 2:4. In the midst of massive injustice, continue to live righteously and do justice, by faith; faith that the sovereign God of the universe will act justly in due time.l
"But public justice biblically understood would have our justice be sacrificial, would be the privileged extending their privileges to the poor, the weak, the ill, the hungry, the oppressed."
"In summary: a biblical concept of public justice calls for affirmative action by the government and its citizens. The government is called to promote a shift in the balance of power, to make the powerful more vulnerable by legislation and to use the law for making the newly available power accessible for the vulnerable."
"Racism is religious rebellion at the core. It is a sin against the first and second commandments, against the heart of all commandments. . . . I do not recognize God in my neighbor of a different race. . . . It also denies that person that person a proper place in the universe."
"Justice not only gives people of other races their due, but requires our conversion and repentance."
"If the civil rights machinery is there but the will and attitude of justice is lacking in whites, blacks are bound to become even more frustrated than in the past."
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