Justice in An Unjust World, Part 2

Chapter Two:  Christian Complicity

Oppression in and of itself is a horror.  But it becomes a double horror when Christians become part of the system of oppression and then rationalize their participation as the will go God.  Christians should be part of the answer, not part of the problem.  But again and again in American history, Christians such as the Puritans have either been silent about oppression or been participants in oppression.  At times Christians have even created a twisted theology to rationalize their oppression, i.e., a theology of slavery.  Lebacqz comments:

"Christian views toward poverty have been ambivalent.  On the one hand, poverty is seen as a curse, a punishment from God.  On the other hand, poverty is seen as a special state given by God for some reason.  In either case, however, the result is the same:  the poor are made to feel that they are to blame for their poverty and that nothing can or should be done about it.  Mark 14:7 ("The poor you will always have with you") is used to keep the poor in their place and diffuse efforts to better their conditions. . . . poverty and the plight of the poor have taken a back seat to the protection of the property rights of the rich."

Theology regarding the poor and oppressed has often been shallow and based on distorted proof texts.

The Puritans claimed to be a biblical people chosen by God to set up a Christian nation.  Their sense of chosenness quickly degenerated into an arrogant ethnocentrism when they began to treat Indians as Canaanites to be destroyed.  Puritans killed whole villages---men, women and children; they paid money for the scalps of Indians.  Their religiously based ethnocentrism led to acts of oppression.  Puritans thought they were doing the will of God.

A summary comment by Lebacqz:

"The church itself often does not practice what it preaches.  It preaches equality, love, and justice, but it practices inequality, exclusion, and discrimination.  The greatest challenge for the African women, declares one church member, is in the church itself."

Chapter Three:  On Ethical Method in an Unjust World

Lebacqz warns about ethical theory which wittingly or unwittingly supports the oppressors
by failing to see the brutal realities of oppression.  She says that two noted writers on justice, John Rawls and Robert Nozick, both fail to take "current injustices as a beginning place for deriving a theory of justice."

"Both Rawls and Nozick reveal certain Western liberal biases.  For example, both operate on an individualistic understanding of human nature that does not cohere with the collective understanding of many cultures.  Both ignore class analysis and the conflictual elements that such analysis would bring.  Neither attends to the differences between oppressor and oppressed and to the possible implications of this difference for a theory of justice.

"Hence, the logic in both theories tends in fact to support the [oppressive] status quo.  This support is demonstrated clearly in the affirmation each gives to modern capitalist systems."

To correct past theological and philosophical errors, we need to adopt an 'epistemological privilege' to see and interpret the Scriptures from the standpoint of the poor and oppressed.  Any attempt to create universal principles must be relevant to the historical realities of a specific oppressed people, be relevant to the quality of social relationships, be relevant to the doing of justice.  If these things are not done, "scholarship can be a tool of oppression."  Scholarship can and should be a "tool of liberation" from oppression, of finding effective ways to do justice.

Next blog, Part 3