Is Justice a Joke?

I am at the brainstorming stage on a new book to my knowledge has never been written in the history of the Christian church, but one that is badly needed.  Key themes would be: ethnocentrism and oppression, justice, shalom and reconciliation; also the relationship between the Holy Spirit and the kingdom of God.  While grounded in the OT, the major focus would be on the NT.  I need a black and a woman co-authors or contributors.

Working title:  Justice a Joke?

Is the promise of justice a joke, a cruel hoax? [The Message, Habakkuk, chapter one].  Is justice always the loser? [CEV].  Is justice always perverted? [RSV].  The OT prophet Habakkuk thought so.

In America, is the promise of justice a joke?  A Native American Habakkuk would likely agree that the promise is hollow.  So would an Afro American Habakkuk, a Mexican American Habakkuk, a Chinese American Habakkuk, a Japanese American Habakkuk, a Hawaiian American Habakkuk, a Filipino Habakkuk.  In spite of a large Christian presence in America, justice was far too often perverted.  Spirituality is divorced from the doing of Jubilee justice; therefore, ethnocentrism and oppression are unchecked and unchallenged so they run rampant.  But worse than this, religion is often perverted to legitimate oppression.

To Habakkuk, injustice ran so deep and so wide that it appeared to him that God had gone on a deistic vacation.  The supposedly just God was AWOL.  Habakkuk demand an answer from God.  God did answer Habakkuk [my paraphrase]:

"I will take care of this huge injustice problem in due time.  I do know what is going on; I am not sleeping on the job.  In the meantime, I have a marching order for you [and the church].  Continue to live righteously and doing justice, even in the midst of massive injustice.  Do this by faith, that in my sovereign wisdom, I will act and bring the unrepentant oppressor to judgment.  The choice for all is:
do justice or face judgment.  I, God, love justice; therefore I call my people to engage in works of justice."

Is justice a joke in these United States of America?  Unfortunately, the answer is resounding, YES!  From its colonial beginnings down to the present.  Why?  Primarily because of the catastrophic heresies in the the white evangelical church in terms of failing to preach and practice a comprehensive kingdom of God gospel with a focus on justice for the oppressed poor.  To put it simply, we have been plagued with a gospel that promotes a spirituality without justice; or a gsopel that weds spirituality and justice.  [See Isaiah 58 and its NT counterpart, The Sermon on the Mount].

You demand evidence for these strong words?

1. Cite me a single white American evangelical theologian who has written a book on the extensive biblical teaching on oppression.
2. Cite me a single white American evangelical theologian who has written a book on poverty who has included a chapter on the biblical teaching on oppression.
3. Cite me a single white American evangelical theologian who has thoroughly rejusticized the NT.
4. Two Protestant spiritual giants, Jonathan Edwards and A.W. Tozer, promoted a spirituality without justice; both are social heretics.
5. The supposedly biblical Puritans paid money for the scalps of Indians; and they praised God when disease wiped out Native Americans.
6. The supposedly Christian founding fathers made Native Americans, Afro American.  Women and the poor, second-class citizens.
7. Many Christians supported the near genocide of Indians and the stealing of their land.
8. Many Christians supported the unjust Mexican American war and the settlement which took nearly half of Mexico's land.
9. A praying U.S. president conquered the Philippines, killing roughly a million Filipinos who resisted "God's will." [The Philippine Reader]

I have briefly described the rampant oppression which has characterized much of American history and the tragic results.  But what was/is the cause?  The gospel of Luke can help us with this dilemma.

In Luke, Jesus highlights the oppressed poor in his ministry, but in his teaching, Jesus spends more time identifying and confronting the religious rich as the primary cause.  For Jesus, the religious rich are THE social problem, not the poor; the poor have many problems but they are NOT THE social problem.  Based on the larger context, Jesus' "Woe to the rich" statement could well have been said, "Woe to the religious rich!"  The religious rich ran the Temple as a "den of robbers", the religious rich were condemned as a people who neglected justice and the love of God.

Justice is a joke because the religious rich are in control; these religious rich are the oppressors.  The religious rich in America co-opt the church, the only institution in America that could, if it would, release the oppressed from the grips of the rich and then do Jubilee justice.  When the church is seduced by the rich and preaches a toothless justice gospel, all hope is lost.  And then the rich oppressors praise God; their only potential opposition has been silenced.  Religious piety is only good if it is tied to Jubilee justice; this rarely happens in America and when it does, it only goes halfway.

Centuries of ethnocentrism and oppression in America have produced physical, psychological and social death on a large scale; therefor justice is a joke.  When justice is broken, people are crushed.  Systems of oppression such as mass incarceration and the racial wealth gap continue unabated.

Bibliography

*The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America from the Colonial Era to the Twentieth Century by Forrest Wood, Northeastern University Press, 1990.  "The central thesis of this book is that Christianity has been fundamentally racist in its ideology, organization and practice."

*Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Oxford University Press, 2000.  Evangelicals, themselves, are preserving the racial chasm with an individualistic; theology which ignores the biblical teaching on oppression and justice, assert these two professional Christian sociologists.

*Puritans, Indians, and the Concept of Race", by G.E. Thomas in The New England Quarterly, March 1975.  "The record of Puritan attitudes, goals, and behavior in every major interaction with Indians reveals a continued harshness brutality, and ethnocentric bias which had fatal consequences for Indians as a race."  And, tragically, the Puritan example set the pattern for the rest of American history.

*Facing West:  The Metaphysics of Indian-Hating and Empire Building by Richard Drinnon, New American Library, 1980.  "From the first Puritan confrontation with Native Americans to the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, there have been two constants in American policy and purpose.  One is a racism that perceives [all[ non-whites as at once childlike inferiors and murderous savages.  The other is a hunger for new land and economic markets over which to exert control. . . . these factors have interwoven, strengthening the other."

*The Wars of America:  Christian Views edited by Ronald Wells.  George Marsden, one of the eight professional Christian historians, declares that the American Revolution was not a just war because the British tyranny was not bad enough to justify a violet revolution.  Nor were many of America's wars, yet many Christians enthusiastically supported these unjust wars.

*Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans by Ronald Takaki, Penguin Books, 1989.  "A personal and social history of the thousands of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, Indian, Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian immigrants to the U.S.  Their contributions to this country's development were immense, especially in the West and Hawaii, but they experienced disgraceful ethnocentrism and oppression."

*Cotton and Race in the Making of America: The Human Cost of Economic Power by Gene Dattel.  "Cotton and Race in the Making of America is about money and the uses and abuse of power.  Because of its connection with race, cotton is uniquely tainted in American history. . . . Once we begin following the money trail, we realize that it leads to the heart and sole of America."