In my last post entitled, “Will the real Justice please stand up?” I made this claim. “There are many layers to understanding the drama in the church, which is why I want to dedicate a whole post to it. It’s essential to see that the issues are not, primarily, about Biblical versus Social Justice. What we’re seeing is less about justice and more about defending individual culpability over corporate responsibility and vice versa. Truthfully, the AEC doesn't have a strong track record of justice, either biblical or social, making the current debacle somewhat childish.” I stand by those words and I intend to make good on the promise of describing the reasons for the tension in the American Evangelical Church. Over the next two posts, my hope is to offer a fresher perspective on the American Evangelical Church’s (AEC) issues with one another. To do that, it is important to remember two things:
Jesus is the application of Justice!
American History is also American Church History!
It is essential that these two truths remain in the backdrop of everything written in this post. Mainly because they are neglected truths that need to be remembered to understand the racial dilemma we are experiencing today. This is primarily due to the emphasis on the national identity thatI I described in the previous post (Will the real Justice please stand up?). The national identity of being an American suffers no fools, and it does not like resistance.
The absolute truth of the American Dream, giving way to the national identity as the sole (and soul) purpose of one’s life, has captivated many, even in the church. Identities like Christian nationalism and white supremacy both submit to the national identity of being an American. This is problematic, to say the least; especially for those in the American Evangelical Church (AEC). Not because people love their country. I love America. I don’t want to live anywhere else. It’s not a sin to love your country. The problem is when your love for the national identity of being an American is more distinct then your love for those who also identify with Christ. This is the legacy of the AEC, and is what this post will try to clarify via history, thought, and actions. As always, the first place to begin when discussing anything Christian is Jesus.
Jesus is the application of Justice!
With all of the conversations swirling around the difference between biblical and social justice, you would expect to hear more statements about Jesus being the application of Justice. You will undoubtedly hear that the Justice of God was poured out on Jesus at the cross. Rarely, however, is the emphasis on Jesus being the embodiment of justice, and its perfect fulfillment, brought to the forefront of the discourse on justice. In fact, more ink, effort, and trust is given to atheists, and secular philosophers, to help us understand what biblical justice is than exegeted texts of scripture from theologians, particularly proponents of biblical justice. Important for any conversation on what biblical justice is, and is not, lies the biblical reality that Jesus is the application of justice. But what does this mean?
The Apostle John, in chapter 8 of his gospel, details an intense back and forth between Jesus and some of the Jews. After being told by the Jews, “You aren’t fifty years old yet, and you’ve seen Abraham?” Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, before Abraham was, I am." Jesus is emphatically saying that he is God. If that is true (which it is), then implicit in that claim is Jesus is the God of justice. Justice is fundamentally a part of who God is. Deuteronomy 10:17–18 (CSB): For the Lord your God is the God of gods and Lord of lords, the great, mighty, and awe-inspiring God, showing no partiality and taking no bribe. 18 He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the resident alien, giving him food and clothing.” This still doesn’t fully explain how Jesus is the application of justice. We need to explore further.
The most popular sermon that Jesus taught was the Sermon on the Mount. In that sermon Jesus said, “Don’t think that I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.” Jesus says that he is here to fulfill (interpret and obey the law accurately) the law. The Law was given to the nation of Israel to obey God, but they could not do it perfectly. The standard of moral rightness from God was the same as his person, perfect. The Law of God must be obeyed in the character of the one who gave the Law. Therefore to keep the law it must be done perfectly. Since no one was capable of doing that Jesus came to do it. The Law consisted of statements like this, “Deuteronomy 16:19–20: Do not deny justice or show partiality to anyone. Do not accept a bribe, for it blinds the eyes of the wise and twists the words of the righteous. 20 Pursue justice and justice alone, so that you will live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you.”
Lastly, though there are many more examples that speak to justice as something Jesus applied, we see Jesus addressing the Pharisees on the lack of character they had as a collective whole, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! You pay a tenth of mint, dill, and cumin, and yet you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy, and faithfulness. These things should have been done without neglecting the others.” Jesus is admonishing the Pharisees for neglecting their duties. Among the many observations Jesus brought up, neglecting justice was one of them. The pharisees did not care about justice the way God had intended so justice was a part of what Jesus had to perfectly fulfill. But how should we understand this?
In the book, “The Crucifixion, Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ,” author Fleming Rutledge give some helpful insight about the word justice. “Righteousness, as in the righteousness of God,” does not mean what we typically think it means.... To our contemporary ears, “righteousness” is a stuffy word connoting adherence to a set of moral codes or strictures.... The meaning of the word “righteousness “in Hebrew, however, is a world away from one idea of legalism or moralism. When we read in the Old Testament that God is just and righteous, this does not refer to a threatening abstract quality that God has over against us. It is much more like a verb than a noun, because it refers to the power of God to make right what has been wrong... This is the real meaning of Paul’s use of dikaiosis (the Greek word translated in English as justice), traditionally translated “justification,” but better translated rectification (“rectify,” from Latin rectus [right] + ficare [to make]. Rectification (Oxford English Dictionary: the action of putting something right) is the only English word that covers the bases. It is better than “justification” because the verb “rectify”—to make right—is closer to the English word “righteousness” than is the verb “justify.”
That’s a mouthful but also an important point. The righteousness of God is not just an ontological moral distinction from all other creatures. And justice is not something exclusively reserved for Jesus on the cross. The righteousness of God is the powerful action of God making things right. It is the “rectification of God “ that is often descrobed in the Old Testament, and what was fulfilled in the New Testament. In imitation of God, his people are commanded to do justice. Doing justice is righting wrongs for people. “Again ‘righteousness’ has the character of a verb rather than a noun,” states author Fleming Rutledge. Justice is often translated righteousness in the NT, based on the Greek word grouping, Dikaois. Righteousness, then, is like a verb, rather than a description of God’s moral character ( more on the specifics of this in the next post). This is partly why words like: opress, needy, poor and justice exist in the OT. It is a genuine concern to God. One in which he will actively do something about; as well as command his people participate in. In the CSB translation there are 510 references to these commonly used words:
Oppress (past and present forms) 137
Needy 49
Poor 173
Justice 151
These all intersect to display a narrative that God cares about the suffering of people. It also shows that he is going to do justice/rectify those who fit the categories above; and on the cross, and in his earthly ministry he accomplished both. Jesus wouldn’t have been allowed to go to the cross had he not done everything perfectly. Jesus rectified perfectly what needed to be done by him. However, Jesus never said the buck stops with him. And this is where many people get confused about what Jesus did and didn’t do. Arguments like, “Jesus never said anything about homosexuality,” or “Jesus never told his disciples to overthrow Rome,” misunderstand the distinction between Jesus’ role and ours.
In his last evening before the Crucifixion, Jesus shared some intimate last words with his disciples. And they in turn shared them with us. John, in his gospel, informs us that Jesus said to them, "Truly I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do. And he will do even greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.“ There are many interpretations of what Jesus meant by believers doing “greater works” than him. Most of us read that and think, “Yeah right!” How could we ever do greater works than Jesus? We immediately go to scenes of Jesus feeding 5,000 with five loaves and two fish; or Him casting out a legion of demons into pigs. This, again, is confusion about Jesus’ role and our role in the world. There are a few things we can gather from what he said, and also from the development of the ones who believed in hm after he went to be with the Father.
First thing to note is that when Jesus references "he" who believes in him, he's not necessarily thinking of one person doing greater works than himself. The idea is more plural than singular. Similar to God calling Israel, a multitude of men and women, his son. "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son," Hosea tells us. Just like man is sometimes meaning mankind, the "he" that believes in Jesus is not an individual but a collective of people. And this collective of people will do greater works than what Jesus did. What those greater works are Jesus did not say, but in the next post we will look deeper into what scripture shows about Jesus' role and ours.
The confidence that the “he” who will do greater works is plural is that Jesus references him going to the Father. Which is not just his death and resurrection but the giving of Holy Spirit at Pentecost. What Jesus was eluding to was the Holy Spirit's activity in a number of people that will follow the Spirit's leading ; this group of people will collectively do greater works than Jesus because they will reach more people. This group of people is none other than the church.
American History is also American Church History
From the beginning of the establishment of the church in Acts 2:41-47, we see Jesus' words coming to fruition. "So those who accepted his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand people were added to them. 42 They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, to the fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer. 43 Everyone was filled with awe, and many wonders and signs were being performed through the apostles. 44 Now all the believers were together and held all things in common. 45 They sold their possessions and property and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 Every day they devoted themselves to meeting together in the temple, and broke bread from house to house. They ate their food with joyful and sincere hearts, 47 praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. Every day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved." The phrase "enjoying the favor of all people" is indicative of the impending fruit that will come from those people, in particular those who believe the message and pass it on to future generations. We could go to Rome in the 4th century, or Wittenberg, Germany in the 16th century to see the impact of the church as proof of Jesus' statement. Both of those would be amazing endeavors, but our focus is the church in America and its four hundred year social experiment in helping establish a nation from the ground up.
In the last few years there has been a considerable push to emphasize that America started in 1776 not 1619, which is true. But the racial tension that has escalated over the last seven or eight years, seemingly, makes the emphasis on America's founding appear to be a way to separate from Slavery as an American institution before 1776. An easy way to settle this matter is to think of slavery prior to the founding of America as “”Mid-North American Continental Chattel Slavery,” documented to have started in 1619 in Jamestown, Virginia. With that in mind, the emphasis of the rest of this post will be the actual war that founded America. Many of us are familiar with its most popular name "The American Revolution." But the other name for that war is what I want to focus on.
In"Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America 1773-1783," Ambrose Serle, secretary to British General Howe in New York City, wrote to the British Secretary of State in 1776, explaining to him that the American Revolution was ultimately a "religious war." Edward Tatum, Jr., who wrote the introduction to Serle’s diary, The American Journal of Ambrose Serle, Secretary to Lord Howe; 1776-1778, put Serle’s observations of the American Revolution in these terms: "Serle was no ordinary observer but one whose training and philosophy gave point to his opinions and coherence to his judgments. In addition, his unique position as a civilian in intimate association with Lord Howe afforded him an unusual opportunity to see more than one aspect of a complicated situation."
Ambrose Serle called "The American Revolution" a religious war, and he wasn't the only one. In fact, King George and his associates nicknamed the war "The Presbyterian rebellion." In the colonial period, the label “Presbyterian” was a much more ambiguous designation than it is at present. Used broadly as a synonym for a Calvinist, a dissenter, a Congregationalist, or a republican, essentially anyone who forsook the Church of England; the term was used as a demagogic tool to inflame popular passions. Similar to the way "Christians"was initially used as s slur., “Presbyterian” was used to instill hatred towards those who bore that name, even if they had not chosen that name for themselves.
King George in, Diary and Letters of His Excellency Thomas Hutchinson 1774, when hearing about the resistance in the “New England,” (America) was quoted to have said, "are they not Presbyterians?" This was after hearing from a loyalist in New York who wrote, "Believe me, the Presbyterians have been the chief and principal instruments in all these flaming measures, and they always do and ever will act against Government, from that restless and turbulent anti-monarchical spirit which has always distinguished them every where." This was written in their publication, "Extract of a Letter to a Gentleman in London, from New York, May 31, 1774.” The idea of "The Presbyterian Rebellion" was not just an English denigration. Americans 50 years later understood that religion played as important of a role as any in the American Revolution.
In 1815 President John Adams' grandson Charles Francis Adams, wrote a memoir of his grandfather entitled, "The Works of John Adams, Second President of The United States." In it, he quotes John Adams reflecting on the "American Revolution."...The apprehension of the Episcopacy contributed 50 years ago, as much as any other calls, to arouse the attention, not only of the inquiring mind, but of the common people, and urge them to close thinking on the constitutional authority of the parliament over the colonies? This nevertheless, was a fact as certain as any in the history of North America.” In other words, John Adam’s recognizes that religion (Episcopacy) not just taxation/government (Parliament) was as much of a driving force as any in establishing America as a nation.
Lastly, one officer high up in the war efforts wrote to England in 1780 as follows: “All the pretext of resistance to the imposition of illegal taxes was in the beginning nothing more than a mask, a trumped-up reason. The plan for that rebellion is laid older and deeper, and was conceived and hatched chiefly in the New England provinces. Since this sort of people are mostly Presbyterians and Puritans, thus for a long time—in accord with their religious tenets—all secular authority, but especially the name and power of a king, has been a thorn in their eye.” (Pettingill, Letters from America, 229). For the English, the “American Revolution” was simply the Calvinistic Catastrophe. It was less about taxes and more about an application of reformed theology that men were willing to kill other men for the freedom to act on such “biblical”impulses.
Why is this important? If for no other reason the irony. When taken into account of these Christian inspired doctrines of liberty and justice, it appears that those who were supposed to do greater works than Jesus committed greater sin than Pharaoh. Pharaoh never justified the enslavement of Israel as acceptable to the God of Israel in the way the church used the Bible to justify slavery as acceptable to the Lord of the Chiurch. Even in more modern times, apart from the Crusades, you will be hard pressed to find the church justifying such heinous sins as chattel slavery and the unjust laws ofJim Crow. American History is American Church History.
The biblical foundation for those “Presbyterians” to go to war because of the injustices of England ,and the Tyranny of King George, did not translate to the injustices of slavery and Jim Crow. Many reading this world not disagree with these truths. But consistently state that those things happened a long time ago. “Why do you keep bringing up the past?” For one, it’s biblical.
In the Bible, there are multiple occasions where God will remind the Israelites of his saving them, bringing them out of Egypt. This happened often during difficult times when it didn’t look like God was protecting his people. This reminder, that would come from a prophet or angel of the Lord, was intended for Israel to remember what God had done for them; to give them confidence that God, in their present circumstances, would act on their behalf as he did when he brought them out of Egypt. “Judges 6:7–10: When the Israelites cried out to him because of Midian, 8 the Lord sent a prophet to them. He said to them, “This is what the Lord God of Israel says: ‘I brought you out of Egypt and out of the place of slavery. 9 I rescued you from the power of Egypt and the power of all who oppressed you. I drove them out before you and gave you their land. 10 I said to you: I am the Lord your God. Do not fear the gods of the Amorites whose land you live in.”
The reality is, that we are all historical people and history affects the present . So much so that we go back to history to find comfort. Israel went back to the exodus.But by the time Jesus arrived in Galilee significant damage had been done, and not because of the Romans. The lack of character of God‘s people, whether it be kings, or prophets, did not demonstrate the goodness of God historically, and the consequences lasted for generations to come. Jesus didn’t need to focus on the Romans. The problem was the Jews and the historical consequences that followed their disobedience over the generations.
Christians have the Cross and that is our ultimate source of hope. We look back to cross to gain confidence for the present day struggles we face as believers. The reason why is we are historical people by design. Many of our comforts come from faithfulness that has been done historically by God and the church. However, when we look back in history, and see our church leaders, who are, in many ways, like kings and prophets of the Old Testament, affecting the way people view God, primarily because of their sinfulness, we see a destructive force for generations to come. In America, when we look at the AEC, and some of the most influential leaders in the church, past and present, whose stances on slavery, particularly American church fathers like Cotton Mathers (Before America but in the continent), Jonathan Edward’s, and George Whitfield, were so detrimental, they led a lot of people astray.
If not astray in terms of their view of slavery, it led people astray towards their view of Africans who would become African-Americans. It helped create a pathology of thinking about an ethnicity in such negative terms, that ethnicity would have to go above and beyond anything to be seen as equals. To say that the history of slavery and Jim Crow are simply things of the past is to deny on one level what it means to be human, and biblical. We are historical people by design, and commanded by God to look to others' example in scripture (Hebrews 11) and in the church (1 Timothy 3 & Titus 1), to gain confidence in grace of God. We look to the past to learn from it because we don't know the future. And the present is harder to evaluate accurately because we are experiencing it. The present is always moving and changing. The past is still. Its actions are known; therefore it is easier to evaluate. And frankly, we live in the past more than we think. If someone asks you, "How was your day?" your feelings may describe the present but the details are already in the past. The past helps us make sense of the present. It's why "we live in it" from time to time.
Now someone will say Paul thought differently. No he didn’t. In Philippians chapter 3, when Paul said he was forgetting what lies behind, he was talking about forgetting the historical confidence that he had in salvation, via keeping the Mosaic Law. He was speaking soteriologically not psychologically. Paul understood the ethnic reality of who Israel was and he understood the realities of ethnicity in general, which is why he used his Roman citizenship to his advantage. The Bible doesn’t tell us to forget who we are and where we’re from. It tells us to be identified with with Christ and to stay in the situations we were already in (1 Corinthians 7:17-24). In the next post I will be more specific from the scriptures as to why this is true.
What I think is difficult for most people to understand is black people aren’t focusing on slavery and Jim Crow in and of itself. We don’t want to think about slavery, because it reminds us of how we were treated; no one wants to think that way, not the Jews or any people that have been enslaved. It’s not so much that we are fascinated by slavery and Jim Crow but we are looking at the consequences of those realities in the present; it’s not an unwillingness to let go of the institution of slavery and Jim Crow. Most black people care about the reverberating consequences of those things; or rather the traumatic imprint that those things have created, which, for whatever reason, seems to be largely misunderstood by many people.
Over the years I’ve heard people take pride in their great great grandparents coming to America and having nothing, not even speaking English. Ben Shapiro said this of his great grandparents, only to highlight that they made something of themselves, for him it was significant. That history, that ancestry.com style of understanding ones history shapes who you are today. Everyone is connected to their history. For black people, the further we go back in time, there’s much to be disappointed about. While there are many things to celebrate, there is more that causes shame, hurt, and anger. Our history has consequences for the present, and many people of color, despite some measurable progress, still feel the sting of those consequences. And it’s not that these consequences are somewhat easy to get over as some suggest, that it is comedy, to the point of jest, to make the assertion that people want to stay connected to the degradation of their history. It's almost as if people are court jesters amusing themselves at the notion that people are playing the victim when discussing the contemporary consequences of historical sins like slavery and Jim Crow.
The reality is, in America we celebrate historical moments and remember tragedies all of the time. For example: July 4, Independence Day, the American revolution, 9/11 "Never Forget," wars and the veterans that fought in them, plagues, recessions, political decisions, and shows like VH1 “Where are they now?” People remember and celebrate the confederacy even though they were traitors to America. The list goes on. But when it comes to black people, the expectation seems like our list should omit slavery and Jim Crow. To which I would ask, what other moments from the past help us understand today, besides those two time periods of American history? All of us are affected by historical realities, and our country has done a significant job at celebrating some things and denigrating others. For a lot of black people when we look at American history it’s not that we're obsessed with historical oppression, it’s because we're disappointed at the consequences of that oppression that are impacting our country today; which created a pathology, a negative view of black people, that is causing the majority of the racial turmoil we are facing.
Now that Jesus being the application of justice and American history being American church history, has been somewhat established; in the next two posts we will get very specific as to why these two historical entities are still causing so much trouble today.
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