Release the Oppressed of Haiti

Release the Oppressed of Haiti

In Luke 4, Jesus declared that one of his top priorities was "to release the oppressed, to set the oppressed free."  For the past 50 years, I have been trying to figure what this phrase really means.  Recently, I have concluded that generations of oppression---for Haiti, 500 years---causes mass individual, family and cultural PTSD.  See book Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome.

The OT has 555 references to oppression and its synonyms (see Thomas Hanks), but in American theology, there is almost no theology of oppression.  The Hebrew words for oppression mean crush, humiliate, animalize, impoverish, enslave and kill.

Haitians have experienced 500 years of brutal oppression---from crushed to killed all of the time.  Both Protestants and Catholics have failed to release the Haitian oppressed.  A lot of band aids, but little Jubilee justice surgery.

Why have both mission churches and Haitian churches failed to deliver the oppressed, to incarnate kingdom justice among the oppressed poor?  What was missing?  No biblical theology of oppression; shallow biblical theology of NT justice; not a good present and social theology of the kingdom of God.

John Lewis, noted civil rights leader; as a teenager, he heard one sermon that turned his life around.  Over the radio, he heard Martin Luther King preach on the kingdom of God, a kingdom of justice here on this earth.  Then Lewis was trained for about four months in non-violent social change.  From then on, he became a member of an elite special forces unit in the civil rights movement.  Though often beaten and jailed, Lewis never stopped in his pursuit of civil rights and justice.

I am looking for 8 people of similar caliber to become partners with Darwin and Leola, Paul and Janet who themselves have made a long term commitment to two Haitian Christian Community Development leaders, Joab and Sheslair.

For more, google "Lowell Noble's Writings."