The demonic kingdom or the divine kingdom?

The demonic kingdom is characterized by oppression and ethnocentrism; the divine kingdom is characterized by justice.  In American throughout its history, the demonic kingdom has been winning hands down.  Why?  The white American church has no biblically based theology of oppression and it has only a weak biblically based theology of justice.  Therefore, the white American church has participated in or allows the oppression of American Indians -- Genocide: The extermination of people and cultures, and Indian land theft.  Also the multi-century enslavement of blacks to go on unchecked and largely unchallenged.

There is no clear and sharp biblical definition of oppression -- that oppression crushes, humiliates, animalizes, impoverishes, enslaves, and kills people created in the image of God.  Also, there is no in-depth understanding of how systems of oppression are created, maintained and redesigned.

There is little understanding of the kingdom of God as justice that releases the oppressed.  There is little grounding of the kingdom of God in Isaiah's Messianic Passages that calls the Spirit-filled church to do justice.

From 1994-2010, I volunteered at the Perkin's Center in Jackson, Mississippi.  John Perkins created Christian Community Development; a good applied version of the kingdom of God as justice that releases the oppressed by empowering the poor.

Over the years, hundreds of white volunteers came down to the Perkin's Center for a week to learn from John Perkins.  I asked hundreds of these volunteers, the cream of the crop from the churches, to write down a one sentence definition of the kingdom of God.  Essentially, they all flunked; nearly all definitions were all future and spiritually oriented.  Few were present and social oriented with a strong justice emphasis.

I have attended ten national CCDA conferences.  None of the CCDA leaders have grounded their understanding of the kingdom of God in Isaiah's messianic passages.  As a result, CCDA practice was not carefully grounded in biblical theology.

Next, a reference to Isaiah 10:1-2:

"Woe to the rich who make unjust laws, who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of the rights, to withhold justice from the oppressed, to treat the widows and fatherless as prey."

This verse from Isaiah not only concisely summarizes the social problems in Isaiah's time, it also perfectly applies to New Testament times where oppression of the poor by the rich was widespread to the times of America's founding fathers where oppression of the poor by the rich was widespread and in 2018, the oppression of the poor is still widespread.  The Messianic Passages of Isaiah would apply to the time of our founding fathers and to American in 2018.

Let us go back to our founding father, Thomas Jefferson, and look at him in more detail.  Thomas Jefferson was like many of the founding fathers; a rich, white, male, slave-holding elite.  In other words, our founding fathers were not angels.  To look at Thomas Jefferson in more detail, I call him a multiple oppressor, one who does not deserve a monument.  How was he a multiple oppressor?

1.  He owned and exploited as many as 260 slaves.
2.  He had slave offspring -- meaning he raped one or more slave women.
3.  He supported the Indian Removal Act  -- meaning the elimination of all Indians east of the  
     Mississippi.  Jefferson did not carry this out, President Jackson actually removed many of the
     Indians in the famous Trail of Tears.
4. Jefferson sent Lewis and Clark on a mission of exploitation which quickly led to the near
     extermination of Indian peoples and cultures west of the Mississippi.
5.  Jefferson supported French slave-holding oppressors, not Haitian slaves.

Conclusion:  Multiple oppressors do not deserve glorification in the pages of American history.  They should be obliterated from the pages of history and certainly no monuments should be built in their name.

In the last thirty years, in America, who can we trust to tell the truth, not a sanitized version of the truth?  God has raised up a number of secular prophets, sociologist Robert Bellah, author of Habits of the Heart [1985]; Bellah sounds like a secular Amos.  The messages about oppression and justice are the same as in Amos, even if there is no reference to God.  The same with politician/statesman, Kevin Phillips, author of The Politics of the Rich and Poor. [1990]
The same with secular social worker, Jerome Miller and his book Search and Destroy [1990s].
Political scientist, Pearson, in his book Winner Take all Politics. But my favorite 2018 article, by a secular philosopher, with an Amos type message can be found in the June, 2018 Atlantic, where Matthew Stewart, himself a member of the top 10 percent, criticizes the top 10 percent as a predatory group that rigs the politic and economic systems against the middle class and the poor.

Modern American Christians have no excuse for not knowing and obeying the truth; the truth about oppression and justice comes crystal clear from the scriptures.  But if you won't hear the scriptures, read above any of the secular prophets and you will get the same biting truth warning, in essence, repent, do justice, or face judgment.

P.S. Watch for a blistering book from Intervarsity Press which will be coming out in January, 2019, entitled Twelve Lies.  It explains the widely believed lies in American history where half truths are repeated as whole truths, where lies are repeated again and again until they take on aura of truth.