The Church and Societal Forces of Injustice
“Slavery was upheld by three sectors of society: religious, economic, and political.” —Tom Skinner in How black is the Gospel (1971)
One of the ongoing discussions among church leaders is the role of the church in regards to the formation, influence, and regulation of the societies in which they serve. Many believe that churches are to promote the highest ethical standards and leverage its many privileges to encourage its surrounding society to embrace those same standards. Others believe the church is a vendor of religious products that seeks to enhance the lives of its adherents, without any responsibility to those outside of its body. I believe that the answer is clearly spelled out in Scripture, embodied by Jesus Christ, and promoted by the early Church.
Historically, it is important to understand the duplicitous role of the church in both bringing about justice and promoting injustice. In contemporary history, three separate systems of values combine to form “approved” societal practices and culture. Religious systems (whether faith-based or civil) often grant moral authority. Economic systems prioritize means of production and access to resources. Lastly, political systems establish power dynamics including the establishment and implementation of rules. These systems interact in a way that creates a synergy each aiming toward the best interest of its citizens. However, in the United States, these systems are actually prioritized so that religious and political systems simply seek to promote the economic priorities.
Historically, almost every manner of violence including war and genocide has been justified economically. Wiping out entire indigenous nations for their land and resources is not morally justifiable, however government entities (political) deemed it (through legislating) legal in order to support the prosperity of the United States, specifically its corporations. The church, under the guise of “missions” were co-opted by imperial forces and were complicit in the brutal destruction, violence, and theft against Indigenous people. This pattern was begun with the Spanish destruction in the Caribbean and Central American regions
American Black chattel slavery was a horrific system of brutality that ended in 1865 after about 200 years of existence in the the “New World”. The First documented Africans to come to the North American continent (1619) were not enslaved, or indentured servants. Indentured servitude was common place, particularly for agricultural societies built upon small farms. As larger farms developed, the need for cheap labor outstripped the supply of indentured servants and the trans-Atlantic slave trade began. The cruelty of chattel slavery was not isolated to what happened in America, but began with the violent capture, separation, transport, objectification that began in Africa. By the late seventeenth century, laws were written in Virginia specifying that Black people were to be slaves in perpetuity. Resistance on behalf of some Virginian clergy on the ethics of enslaving other Christian people was first met with statutes not to baptize Black people, but later changed to allow baptizing of Black people, with the provision that it does not affect their status as slaves.
Eventually, Black people were objectified and understood as property (the meaning of Chattel). Slavery became political and religiously sanctioned dehumanization for the purpose of profit. Many churches taught that slavery of Black people was Biblically sanctioned via the curse of Ham. Over an 80 year period beginning in 1619, Black people went from colonists to perpetually enslaved people. Supported by churches, codified by law politically, all to serve the economic engine of the United States. Many Americans did prosper, but the wealth was accumulated by the exploitation of Black lives, and the theft of Indigenous land. So economic profit, informed religious and political practices.
This persisted throughout the nineteenth century as Slavery resisted abolition. No argument of the immorality of slavery could overcome the tremendous profit gained. The lifestyle produced for white slave-holding communities is often romanticized by those who idealize the antebellum South, without regard for the misery, brutality and violence against Black and Indigenous people.
In the civil rights era, Martin Luther King Jr and others, understood that a movement to revolutionize society needed to be based upon a moral conviction (religious), using economic pressure (strikes, work slowing, sit-ins, etc) to inform the political reality (laws, statutes). In this protest, the nation’s economics was manipulated by the civil rights movement for just laws.
“It has been said that you can’t pass a law to make one man love another. However, most of the ills of our society do not call for love but for justice. It is at the point where a man needs justice that laws must be passed.” Tom Skinner (1971)
In 2021, we find that our systems of religion, politics, and economics are once again subject to the whims of profiteers. CEO’s of multinational corporations make a thousand times more than the average worker. Those same workers are often paid less than a livable wage. Food insecurity is rising while income to Farmers is at the highest rate in nearly a decade. Churches, afraid of being labeled as Marxist/Woke/Liberal/Progressive (which is apparently worse than being disobedient to Jesus), refuse to take a stand against greed, and supports political systems that have contempt for the poor, the alien, and the marginalized.
In the same way, the Church, afraid of being outside the circle of political power, refuses to be anti-racist, anti-patriarchal, and anti-sexist, so it allows itself to be co-opted. What a change from the initiation and baptism ceremony in the early church (See Patterson, The Forgotten Creed) where the community was a sign and symbol of revolution to the hierarchies and “isms” of the surrounding society:
“All who have been baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ
There is neither Jew nor Greek:
There is neighbor slave nor free;
No is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Also found in Galatians 3:28)”
The church was to revolutionize the existing social order that was divided ethnically, socially, politically and by gender. As stated by Martin Luther King JR, the church is to be the thermostat, not the thermometer. The community itself is to embody this and demonstrate Kingdom priorities
Yet, study after study reveals the prevailing political and economic/social constructs inform communities of faith. In other words, often our political and cultural preferred narratives often dictate church practices and even the worship. Over time, we (churches) have sacralized capitalism and political power. Instead of leveraging our economic and political privilege to transform the world to promote human flourishing, we have yielded our Jesus-appointed authority to protect our privilege over against sacrificially loving our neighbor. The American creed (opportunity for life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness) has been redesigned in a selfish narrative where our success has more to do with our personal wealth and national consumption than compassion for neighbors and justice for all.
Dominique Gilliard (Subversive Witness) writes “Christians are called to acknowledge privilege because it is real and doing so liberates us from its power. Confronting and addressing privilege liberates us to live into our created purposes, fully and freely.” Privilege is best understood as a hierarchical access to resources. Those resources can be financial, educational, social, vocational, or cultural. Some privilege is earned and some is simply granted. All forms of privilege are intersectional. For example, my maleness grants me some privilege (access to resources) that our society consciously and unconsciously shares. My Blackness eliminates some of the accessibility. My educational background may increase it, political persuasions may decrease it, all depending on the context and what is being accessed.
It is important to understand that your church community has privilege. Individual members have privilege and collectively the church has privilege. Some have more than others, but that those privileges should be leveraged to bless the community, not protected at all cost. Some privileges should be renounced in order for other in the community to be blessed. Scripture reads “Don’t do anything for selfish purposes, but with humility think of others as better than yourselves. Instead of each person watching out for their own good, watch out for what is better for others.” (Phil 2:3-4) Privilege has a way of disguising itself as needs that are deserved over and against tools to bless others. Some privilege can’t be leveraged but must be renounced as they are based upon racist, sexist, and xenophobic values.
A familiar 1000 member congregation, located in an urban context, paying no property tax and having a 3 million dollars budget, and worshiping in a 20 million dollar facility has numerous privileges. Yet, in its immediate neighborhood are people struggling economically who have a number of individual and systemic obstacles toward accessing the same resources (educational, financial, jobs). When Jesus spoke of loving our neighbors, he was serious. This congregation has a number of ways of partnering with those in its immediate context using its privilege. Churches have used their privilege to build or buy affordable housing, support local schools, provide scholarships, develop transitional program and training, open their facility for community use, provide legal services, advocacy services and promote cultural competency. All of those ministries are leveraged privileges that a church may possess, for the betterment of their neighbors and community.
While those ministries mentioned meet immediate needs, they often ignore the people and the processes that led thousands of others into the similar conditions. Without attention to systems, its like using buckets to stop a leaky dam. For example, I pastored a church where the immediate neighborhood had a large housing insecure (homeless) population. One approach is to provide meals, create and support larger shelters and affordable housing. The other approach is to develop relationships with our neighbors and hear their stories and experiences. In working collaboratively to confront systems of injustice and inequity, we are guided by our neighbors. In the case of the church I pastored, we began to recognize that there was a tremendous need and demand for mental health care. This allowed us to advocate for more accessible mental health care and facilitate a conference to help other churches begin to champion mental health care. The stories of our neighbors and members who struggle with mental health concerns sensitized our entire community to the systems of discrimination and the effect of ableism. We become aware of the dysfunction of the American health care system and its devaluation of people with mental health concerns and that allowed political advocacy to promote accessible mental health care in ongoing health care system reform.
In this way the Church wields its moral authority through its economic and political privilege. Political and economic systems are leveraged to bless our neighbors. Sin is understood as personal and systemic and the church recognizes that Jesus came to confront and deal with sin (I John 2:2). It is difficult for many American churches to understand the systemic expression of sin because of our hyper-individualistic understanding of faith. Yet the Bible understands both the personal and the communal aspects of sin.
It is essential to understand that identifying, leveraging and even relinquishing privilege is incomplete unless it is paired with naming, confronting, and renouncing systems of sin in order to move toward a vision of justice and peace-making.
Professor Grace Ji-Sun Kim (Intersectional Theology, 2018) challenges us:
“Christians must relinquish their individual privilege and work toward the dismantling of systems of oppression. Christians can no longer ignore racism, sexism, heterosexist, classism, ableism, and ageism. We need to name these interlocking systems of oppressions as sin and move toward reimagining a community that can live out intersectional theology.”
May we disentangle our historic subordination to the political and economic systems and follow Jesus to live out our calling to be liberated people, in transformed relationships, demonstrating and declaring a new reality
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