From What Hath Justice to Do with Righteousness?
T his book aims to train the eyes of the American Christian in the United States to read anew the intersection between justice and righteousness. While I believe we have a straight eye on the vertical dimension of righteousness, we have a wandering eye on the horizontal dimension of justice. This book proposes a more biblical worldview concerning our perennial climate of race and injustice in our world. It reaffirms our foreparents in the fight for civil rights and the dual necessity of protest and prayer. It indicts the complacent and complicit voices that claim a high view of Scripture in conservative churches and challenges easy dismissals from those in progressive churches. We do not need a new Jesus. We need a clearer lens through which to view the beautiful face of Christ. We do not need to be suspicious of our Bibles. We need to train our eyes to read them aright. The greatest contradiction throughout the history of American Christianity is that many of those who profess right doctrine about God are the ones who are most opposed to social justice in his name. It happens far too often. The evangelical headlines read as though some of the leaders of White conservative Protestant Christianity either do not understand the intersection of racism, theological interpretation of Scripture, and history, or they couldn’t care less. I write to give voice to the Black experience in America. I represent a large group of Black Christians who still have a high view of Jesus Christ, who believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God, and who—as a result—do not believe that any party has the right to unquestioned allegiance. Giving voice to Black theological reflection will give tested insight to a more exhaustive Christian worldview that will speak to our time. The proposition of this book is that we who are concerned about the intersection of righteousness and justice need to pay closer attention to the biblically faithful, culturally marginalized theologies of non-White American Christian traditions, including those who have been told they were of little value by the evangelical establishment.
You ask me, What hath justice to do with righteousness? My short answer is everything. Absolutely, everything.
—adapted from the introduction
SOCIAL ISSUES
4
Made with FlippingBook interactive PDF creator