Part II on Theological Malpractice, A Modern Application.

In my opinion, the white American evangelical church has never fully understood nor practiced the extensive biblical teaching about the kingdom of God and closely related concepts such as oppression and justice.

Evangelicals may have repented of personal sin, but not social evil. (Daniel 9).  Their pastors have seldom preached on cosmos---evil social order, social evil.  So, of course, evangelicals have not repented of national social evil.  They are comfortable in their white superiority and white privilege; they may even see it as good and God-ordained.  Self-righteous as their founding fathers, they think America would be much a better nation if all citizens were like them.  Even if their ancestors killed thousands of Indians and enslaved thousands of slaves, that was along time ago and I didn't do it.  But you gladly accepted the benefits---free land and free labor---upon which this nation was built.  These same people ignore current racial profiling, unjust mass incarceration, and the massive racial wealth gap.

There is no comprehensive biblical repentance, no restitution, no repair, no justice, no setting things right, no kingdom of God.  Continued ethnocentrism and oppression, both of which Jesus stressed as fundamental problems, but this teaching has been ignored by most of the American church.  The church is full of people who excel in pointing out the sins of others but who ignore their own evils.

All of this comes awfully close to home.  Iowa's 2 and 24 incarceration problem (2008), is seared in my mind.  Even if, if, Iowa blacks were twice as criminal as whites, we would only have a 2 and 4 incarceration ratio.  Most of my fellow white evangelicals either don't know, don't care, or they actually believe that 2 and 24 proves back inferiority, black criminality.  That blacks are 12 times more criminal than whites.  Of course, if whites believe this, then they don't have to face their own ethnocentrism and oppression, their own racial profiling, their own support of the War on Drugs.  The colonial oppression that began in the 1600s continues on in 2016.

Is the appropriate word hypocrisy for those who neglect justice and the love of God?  Shades of Isaiah 58 where the people of Israel divorced spirituality and justice.  Self-righteous people seldom repent.

The briefly glorious Reconstruction period soon ended; slavery was quickly replaced by neoslavery---segregation, sharecropping, prison gangs, lynching.  Some abolitionists who worked hard to end slavery also pushed for justice---land reform.  But most abolitionists thought freedom was enough so they neglected justice.  Most white churches did not repent, comprehensively, thoroughly, biblically.  They preferred to keep the benefits of white superiority and privilege and do some good at the same time.  This made everything OK.

If the best of the Reconstruction period could have been kept and expanded long term, a totally different chapter of American history could have been written.  Instead, long term, the system of oppression was simply redesigned.  The white church again and again failed to repent, restitute and repair.

As I write in 2016, the white evangelical church still has not repented of its ethnocentrism and oppression, its superiority and privilege.  Half a gospel may be better than none, by why doesn't the American evangelical church, for the first time in American history preach and practice the whole gospel, the kingdom of God as Jubilee justice for the oppressed?  Why not be the first generation to preach and practice the whole Bible they supposedly highly prize?