Wanted: Biblical Social Surgeons

Wanted:  Thousands of Biblical Social Surgeons

Both my wife and I have had surgery recently; she for a herniated disc; me, hernia surgery.  Thanks to skilled surgeons, our surgeries were a success.  Correction: thanks to skilled surgical teams---surgeon, anathesiologist, and nurses, our surgeries were successful.  Every one on the team had to function at at high level.

But my wife early on was misdiagnosed with a sciatic nerve problem.  For two months she suffered from deep pain.  While medical diagnosis and surgery is highly skilled and continually improving, social diagnosis of social evils and social surgery is, by comparison, full of erroneous diagnoses and poor quality solutions.

Early on in his ministry (Luke 4:18-30), Jesus precisely identified the two major social evils plaguing Jewish society---internal economic oppression (Luke 4:18) and internal religiously based ethnocentrism (4:25-30).  By sharp contrast, in modern America, white evangelical theologians have largely ignored or downplayed white American ethnocentrism and oppression.  This theological omission has allowed ethnocentrism and oppression to run rampant, unchecked and unchallenged throughout 400 years of American history.  Even today, with some exceptions, the American church is doing little to end enormous economic inequality nor discrimination against all non-white ethnics.

Christian colleges, universities and seminaries need to give high priority to training teams of experts in social diagnosis and social solutions: prophets skilled in analysis/diagnosis; sociologists/social workers to assist in diagnosis and solutions; business persons who create just economic systems.  To my knowledge, there is not a single theologian skilled in oppression analysis.  We may need to create a new discipline---sociotheology---whose primary assignment would be to understand the biblical teaching on oppression and how to apply these insights to American society.

Without these biblical teams, false prophets will rule the day claiming that there is shalom, shalom while in reality idolatry and oppression are running rampant.  American false prophets are claiming freedom, freedom in the absence of justice.  Or exceptionalism, exceptionalism without justice.

Without full recognition and rejection of the past and present American ethnocentrism and oppression, without repentance and restitution by the white American church, the evils of the past will continue into the present and also cloud the future.  Systems of oppression will, when under pressure, simply be redesigned and renamed.  In reality, the oppressed will not be released nor will justice be done on their behalf.