As I read the September 13, 2017 issue of CC which contained legitimate and needed editorials and articles condemning white supremacy, I was both impressed and depressed. Impressed because CC stance was correct and uncompromising; depressed because it was a tad self-righteous---like the North's emphasis on the evil Southern Confederate flag. Seldom does the North face up to its own equal evil in being home to the home of most of the slave trade.
Seldom does the American church----evangelical or mainline, Presbyterian or Pentecostal, Mennonite or Methodist---honestly face its own enormous failures both in theology and practice. As a sociologist, I suspect that most of the white clergy pictured courageously protesting against white supremacy, went home to white privilege. From protest to privilege; from united in protest on the streets to segregated in privilege at home.
But our failure runs much deeper. Is it a conspiracy of white privilege, a conspiracy of willful ignorance, or just plain massive biblical ignorance?
Most white church leaders are brilliant and well educated so why have they after 400 years not yet provided a good biblical theology of oppression. Oppression that crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves and kills persons/peoples created in the image of God. After all, there are 555 references to oppression and its synonyms in the OT, according to Hebrew scholar Thomas Hanks.
Why have white church leaders after 400 years not yet produced a NT theology of justice? According to Nicholas Wolterstorff, there are 300 dik-stems with meanings of just, justice and justify in the NT. There is not a single reference to justice in the KJV of the NT, and few in the OT. Wolterstorff asserts that the English NT has been "dejusticized. Who will rejusticize the English NT?
There is little white theology that ties the Spirit, the kingdom of God and justice together as a unit as Isaiah does in his six Messianic passages beginning with 9:7 and ending with 61:1-4. Why has the Holy Spirit been divorced from the kingdom as justice---as Jubilee justice?
These enormous theological failures have left a huge ethical/social vacuum in American society into which rushed white supremacy, whether glaring or quiet.
In my opinion, these theological sins of omission though not as obviously glaring as the sin of white supremacy, a sin of commission, are much worse than the sins of commission that have been in the headlines recently. I hope a future issue of CC will be devoted to "Denouncing the theological failures of the white church."
In Luke 11:42, Jesus scorches the Pharisees for "neglecting justice and the love of God." Biblical justice is an act of love. Both justice and love are action words---do justice, do love. You are not loving if you are not doing justice. Warm feelings of love must become actions of justice.
Amos 5:21-24 scorched the Israelites for empty worship, spirituality without justice. God wants justice to flood the land, to wash away ethnocentrism and oppression. Trickles of justice, fragments of justice are not adequate to "release the oppressed," (Luke 4:18). Jubilee style justice is required (Luke 4:19).
What the white American church is now doing is not working. Doing the same old thing is not the answer. Possibly a good way to keep the Sabbath Day holy would be to do justice. How about after Communion, after worship, everyone over ten is fed a large bowl of chili, given a hammer, and as a group the church spends the next four hours building a Habitat for Humanity house. Bring in a portable swing set, put up a portable plastic fence to keep the kids corralled.
The "old folks" who can't work could sing songs of justice set to the tune of Amazing Grace every hour on the hour during a 10 minute break. They could write their own verses and then sing them to the Habitat crew. Some sample verses:
Amazing justice, how sweet the sound
to the ears of the oppressed.
When floods of justice cover the land
Then the oppressed will be blessed.
From oppressed to blessed,
love and justice combine.
To create, shalom sublime.
A hurricane named oppression
has ravaged this land for years.
The church must lead with justice and love
to take away the tears.
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