Justice

Review: The Anti-Greed Gospel

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Cover image of "The Anti-Greed Gospel" by Malcolm Foley

The Anti-Greed Gospel, Malcolm Foley. Brazos Press (ISBN: 9781587436307) 2025.

Summary: Argues that greed is the root of racism and calls the church to economic solidarity, anti-violence, and truth-telling.

We often think that hate and ignorance are at the root of racism. And certainly we can come up with examples of hate and ignorance. But Malcolm Foley argues in The Anti-Greed Gospel that the love of money is the root of the evil of racism. He shows how racism both arose and persisted after the abolition of slavery for economic reasons. The effort to subject one people by another was first and foremost about economic advantage.

Foley introduces his argument through showing that economic reasons (coveting) led to breaking other commands of God including bearing false witness, theft, and murder. He shows how unfettered capitalism and racism are intertwined in the economic growth of our nation through slavery. Then in post-reconstruction America, he traces the rise of lynching as a tool of economic subjugation. He argues that the tendrils of greed that eventuate in lynching undermined the witness of Christians like Francis Grimke and Atticus Haygood. The former eventually embraced violent resistance; the latter a kind of cynical paternalism. By contrast, he offers the example of Ida B. Wells, whose truth-telling exposed the roots of racialized greed and whose resistance sought justice through legal means.

The example of Wells provides the transition to the second part of Foley’s argument. He explores what the church can do. First, he argues for economic solidarity between Christians across racial lines such that we strive toward the Acts ideal of “no needy among us.” Then he contends for love rather than violence as we seek remedies for greed. For example, love resists practices like property appraisals that keep people in poverty. Love also opposes wars, which often rely upon minorities disproportionately to fight the battles while draining resources from domestic programs. Thirdly, he argues for prophetic truth-telling amid the culture of racial lies. Finally, he stresses the importance of creativity as we cast vision for a kingdom that is not of this world.

First for one criticism. Indisputably, in the American context, greed found expression through a form of racist capitalism. But I would argue that greed is an evil that finds expression in every economic system. In every economic system we can see classes or racial groups who are exploited for the economic gain of others. What this demonstrates is that Foley’s thesis that racism is rooted in greed has cross-cultural validity. I wonder if the association of “racialized capitalism” throughout the book weakens the focus on the root cause of greed.

That said, Foley’s thesis helps explain the persistence of racism. It also clarifies both the danger to the church of the “tendrils” of greed upon its life and the way it addresses racism. It is more than just relationships across racial lines. Whether society follows or not, finding ways to express economic solidarity, practice loving resistance, and engage in prophetic truth telling are more substantive alternatives than saying “let’s be friends.” It also seems to me that the challenge of creativity is to transcend our polarities and political binaries while not losing contact with earthly realities. We need to cast alternative visions people understand and find compelling.

Malcolm Foley is a young leader who is a scholar-pastor, and well-positioned to implement the recommendations he makes in this book. I look forward to hearing more from him!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: The Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us to Have

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Cover image of "The Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us to Have" by Regina V. Cates

The Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us to Have, Regina V. Cates, foreword by Paula Stone Williams. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802884107) 2025.

Summary: A pastor imagines what Jesus would want to talk about with Christians in the present moment.

Regina V. Cates invites us to imagine Jesus in conversation with his followers today. She believes he would talk about the abuses of power toward the marginalized and how the church ought love these “neighbors.” Cates thinks he would have a problem with our dogmatic judgementalism toward the “other.” Divisive and corrupt political leadership would deeply disturb him. Jesus would wade into issues we don’t talk about in polite society: sexuality, racism, abortion, toxic masculinity, and more.

Then Cates proceeds to have that conversation in a hard-hitting series of chapters addressing different topics. She pulls no punches, beginning on LGBTQIA+ issues and the church. Cates gets personal, sharing her own painful journey of realizing she was lesbian from an early age in a fundamentalist church. She was sexually assaulted by a sitter and later by a counselor her parents took her to in an effort to “change” her. She was told all such persons are going to hell. No one saw her as a person to be loved. She recounts her own experience of emotional healing in an Inipi sweat lodge. In subsequent chapters, she challenges what she sees as the dogmatism that undergirds what she understands as ancient and misinterpreted texts. She argues that to be religious and moral are two different things.

She describes her remarkable relationship with Byll, an atheist who is one of the kindest people she has met, and who showed her loving acceptance. Then she challenges the “better than arrogance of Christians, challenging us to get ego out of the way. However, all relationships are not like this. Rather, there are times when we must discern when to turn the other cheek and when to responsibly stand up.

She moves on to address other hot-button issues. For example, she argues that “men of quality respect women’s equality” and bluntly addresses sexism and patriarchy and toxic masculinity in the church. This includes male responsibility in matters of sex. She also challenges the church’s complicity in racism and all the ways we try to deny this is a problem. Nor does she mince words about political corruption and our need for leaders of integrity.

Finally, she explores what it means to be a church that embraces all members of the human family. This includes becoming places that create secure settings for the healing of trauma. Ultimately, this means becoming places where we love as Jesus loved.

While I would respectfully differ with the author in my understanding of some biblical texts concerning human sexuality, it broke my heart to read of her experiences in her fundamentalist church. No interpretation of scripture or dogma requires or justifies how the church treated her or what they taught.

Likewise, it saddens me that so many former fundamentalists and evangelicals are writing books like this. In a way, it makes the author’s point that there is a conversation Jesus wants us to have. For example, I grieve that so many men have treated women so badly. As Cates observes, true partnership in ministry does not diminish men. Rather, such men are the real superheroes.

Finally, is this the book to read about the real conversation the church needs to have? While there is much I would affirm in this book, it felt like I’d read this book before and for me, it did not break new ground. That said, this book certainly could spark needed conversations for those open and honest and secure enough with each other to have them.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Justice and Rights

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Cover image of "Justice and Rights" edited by Terence C. Halliday and K. K. Yeo

Justice and Rights, Edited by Terence C. Halliday and K.K. Yeo. Langham Publishing (ISBN: 9781786410023) 2024.

Summary: Nicholas Wolterstorff in an inter-disciplinary conversation on the salience of justice and rights in Christian scholarship.

This work represents the inaugural volume in the Cross-Disciplinary Encounters with Theology series, developed in partnership with the Global Faculty Initiative. This initiative brings a global mix of scholars into dialogue “on key themes of the Christian faith, including justice and rights, created order, and the virtues.”

The plan of the work is for an outstanding scholar, in this case philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff, to offer a framework on the theme in a “theological brief.” Then, in the second part of the book, contributors who are part of the 80+ member Global Faculty Initiative contribute response briefs reflecting their disciplinary insights, concerns, and questions. These range from a paragraph to a short paper in length. These are broken in six subsections: Justice Debates, Society and History, Law and Society, International and Global Justice, Justice in Biological, Physical, and Medical Sciences, and Justice and the Academy. Finally, Wolterstorff offers a concluding response, one in which he modifies his views at one point.

Wolterstorff, interacting with the extensive biblical material on justice proposes two forms of justice. First order justice is simply giving each person his due. Second order justice are all those measures taken when first order justice is not practiced. The idea of each person’s due, or right means that Wolterstorff grounds his theory of justice in rights, which include both non-conferred and conferred rights, the former inherent in our embodied human life. Wolterstorff frames an argument for the importance of rights and then discusses justice in the academy. Finally, he surveys the disciplines considering how justice might relate to fields as diverse as history and gender studies to architecture and engineering. He leaves scholars with questions they might consider for each of their disciplines and for their academic institutions.

In what follows, I will highlight a few of the scholar’s responses in each of the parts of the middle section of the book.

Justice Debates. Fr. Thomas Joseph White, O.P. leads off the discussion with a marvelously concise summary of Thomist thought on justice with trenchant observations on justice in the academy. Two other responses were noteworthy for me. One was Oliver O’Donovan’s difference with Wolterstorff on the existence of “first order” justice. The other was argument for love superseding justice for Christians with Osam Temple offering the most extensive articulation.

Society and History. John Coffey leads off with an essay on the role of history in telling the story of justice and injustice. Peter Sloman discusses polices of distribution as they relate to justice. Ian Robert Davis, an architect, offers remarkably practical implications of doing justice in reducing the risk of harm from disasters.

Law and Society. The two opening briefs stood out for me. Christopher Marshall assesses the restorative justice movement and some of the dangers when such solutions are institutionalized. Nicholas Aroney’s “Justice, Judgment, and the Virtue of Law” explores the grounding of rights. He also discusses such matters as Kuyper’s sphere sovereignty and the idea of subsidiarity.

International and Global Justice. Donald Hay and Gordon Menzies get into the challenging area of economic justice in climate change, particularly in fixing the costs of remediation. Given the global character of many problems, Terence C. Halliday argues for Transnational Legal Orders.

Justice in Biological, Physical, and Medical Sciences. Ian Hutchinson, a nuclear scientist, explores what justice in science means, including the just treatment of nature. Tyler VanderWeele offers a thought-provoking exploration of justice in public health, particularly the right to the “highest attainable standard of health.”

Justice in the Academy. Dinesha Samaratne offers a challenging perspective from the global south on the matter of academic publishing. For example, he highlights the injustices that prevent Global South scholars from publishing in leading journals. On a somewhat related note, Carlos Miguel Gomez raises questions of epistemic justice, particularly the exclusion of traditional or indigenous knowledge.

I should note that there were many other valuable contributions in each of these parts.

One of the remarkable qualities of this work is the gracious quality of the interaction, even where scholars differed from Wolterstorff. And his response was equally gracious. He corrects his own reading of Aristotle and Ulpian on justice. He expands his outline of a biblical concept of justice. Then he addresses his focus on justice, which seemed to exclude other aspects of the moral life. Finally, Wolterstorff addresses those uneasy about his assertion of rights talk and amplifies his discussion of natural rights and duties.

This is an outstanding compendium on the theme of justice and rights from a Christian perspective. It models gracious interdisciplinary dialogue at a high intellectual level. It includes a global mix of scholars from every continent. And it consciously seeks to ground all of this thinking in a biblical Christian framework. I look forward to future volumes in this series!

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Review: Resurrecting Justice

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Resurrecting Justice: Reading Romans for the Life of the World, Douglas Harink. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2020.

Summary: An invitation to read Romans as a treatise on justice in our relationship with God, in the church, and in society.

Douglas Harink contends that in Christian discussions of justice, we have overlooked Romans, turning instead to the law, the prophets, and the gospels. A key reason for this is how we typically translate dikaiosynē. Usually, in Romans, it is rendered as “righteous” or “righteousness. The same word also may be translated as “justice” and Harink offers a reading of Romans using this translation. In doing so, he moves Christian discussions of justice from culture-shaped discussions with a veneer of Christianity to a distinctive, God-shaped justice profoundly shaped by the suffering, death, and resurrection of the incarnate Son.

One feature of this reading is not only to substitute justice for instances of righteousness, but to translate reveal as “apocalypse” and instead of speaking of Christ, to use “Messiah” and to refer to followers as “messianics.” He also elaborates the cultural understanding of words often used in Romans such as “lord,” “son of God,” “gospel,” “coming,” “savior” and other terms. One particularly significant one is faith, translating pistis. Like other contemporary commentators, he uses terms like loyalty, allegiance and faithfulness. This poses a challenge because the unfamiliar or redefined terminology involves a kind of “code-switching,” being mindful of Harink’s definitions throughout. There is a glossary at the back of the book to help with this purpose.

Against the backdrop in which the “gospel” is the glorious rule of Rome, he shows how Paul’s thesis is that the gospel is God’s saving power revealed (apocalypsed) for all who believe, both Jews and Greek through the crucified one, that the just will live by faith. Harink goes on to show how both Gentile nations have been under captivity to idolatrous political and philosophic systems and Jews to the law. The justice of God is revealed not in conflict between Jew and Gentile, but through the love of God revealed in the death of the son who liberates both from captivity to the power of sin, but reveals his power to work in those who trust in him through the resurrection. This is a justice that crucifies human control for the power of the Spirit, that begins to undo the bondage of creation, and that will triumph through all adversity, inseparable from the love of God in Christ. This will ultimately be justice for all Israel, now divided.

The conclusion of Romans deals with how the people of the Messiah live as a result of the justice revealed. One of the distinctive aspects of this reading is its understand of Romans 13:1-10. Harink calls for what he calls “messianic anarchy.” By this he does not mean lawlessness, but the recognition that the archys, the powers that be are ‘over’ us and we are ‘under’ and submitting to those powers is not upholding the state but simply not resisting the “overs” but recognizing that we are ‘under.’ We are not for or against them. They exist, they may sometimes do good things, but they are not the justice of God.

He also shows how the table instructions of Romans 14 reflect the justice of God, the solidarity between Jew and Gentile. Even the concluding greetings reflect the solidarity Paul has with Jew and Gentile, women and men.

Harink’s work presses out how the saving justice of God in the work of Christ transforms personal, church, and political relationships. Along the way in his reading, he offers questions for reflection. He shows that the work of Christ not only “justices” us with God but transforms human relationships as we live in “messianic time,” the already-not yet time” where we live in love of God and neighbor. Harink writes:

“We live in an age–probably not really unlike others–in which our gaze is constantly drawn to the ruling powers; not only the political ones but also all those powers–technology, the economy, the media, the crowd–that would grab our attention and call us to celebrate their glory and greatness. It is hard not to believe that they, rather than the lowly, have inherited the earth. It seems obvious. But the whole of the letter to the Romans draws our gaze elsewhere–to the justice of God in the crucified and risen Messiah Jesus and the power of life in the Spirit.”

Harink, p. 188.

The main question I have as I read this book is to understand how Christ’s saving work is accomplished. He speaks of the obedience of Christ, human and divine as conquering the Adamic sovereignty that is at the heart of sin, revealing the justice of God. It seem that this is an act that saves by divine fiat rather than the just one standing in our place, the obedient dying for the rebellious. As compelling as this reading is, and I do believe there is much to commend it in its understanding of the justice of God revealed in Christ and how we live under this, like many contemporary works, it seems this evades the idea of substitution. I do not believe this reading must dispense with substitution, which magnifies the obedience of the Son, and the justice and love of the Father. Perhaps this reading is just reframing. The alternate language certainly offers a fresh look at Romans. But new readings deserve careful reading, and with new insights, we must be certain that we have sacrificed old truths.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Good* White Racist

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good white racist

Good* White Racist, Kerry Connelly (Foreword by Michael W. Waters). Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2020.

Summary: Explores how whites may be complicit with a system of racism while being well-intentioned and how white efforts to sustain a sense of “goodness” help perpetuate racial divides.

Kerry Connelly opens this book with admitting that she is a racist. A good white racist. She’s not a white supremacist. She thinks racism is evil. She is a Christian who loves Jesus. Yet the very desire to think ourselves good, she would argue, prevents us from seeing the ways we are complicit with the history and systems of racism in the United States. Often, she acknowledges, that, paradoxically, it is our attempts to defend our goodness, that keep us from leaning into the hard work of understanding our complicity, and the even harder work of discerning what it means to “pursue justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God.” Her appeal in this book is that we would be the good people we want to be and lean into that hard work rather than keep defending our goodness.

She begins by walking us through our national self-perception of goodness, at least among whites. We don’t even notice that it is “white.” She looks at the construction of “whiteness” that we are often not conscious of, and how, over time, many ethnic minorities assimilated into whiteness, or otherwise were set apart as inferior. She unpacks the tactics of gaslighting: denial and detraction, distraction, disclaiming, and disappearing. She discusses the power of language, and how whites may not use the “N-word,” regardless of the use of it by others. She looks at the assumptions built into our education system, from the “discovery” of America onward. She looks at common justifications (often a form of distraction) such as “I don’t see race–I’m colorblind.” She explores our tendency to call the police when we see blacks in “white” spaces when all they are doing is living their lives while black (I had a colleague who found herself staring down the barrel of a policeman’s gun because she was watering a neighbor’s lawn while the neighbor was out of town, and had the police called on her). She explores how this plays out in white churches, including the large white evangelical church she left after the 2016 election. She concludes with the work we must do, beginning with the five stages of grief, and the personal, interpersonal, and collective work that must be done to oppose racism.

This is a challenging book to read. The content is challenging as is the writing style. Connelly may be “good” but she is not “nice.” She can be blunt, and what one reviewer calls “snarky.” She is liberal with her use of profanity, but contends that if we are offended more by the profanity than the profane injustices about which she is writing, we’ve just offered exhibit one of what is the problem. Here is one sample:

I also know this isn’t easy. God knows it’s not easy for me every time I discover another racist thought floating around my head or realize another way I’m complicit in the system. I know that I’ve probably already made you a little uncomfortable, if not outright pissed off. That’s okay. Let’s just sit with that a hot second. Because honestly, our discomfort is not the problem. It’s our absolute refusal to roll around in that discomfort that’s the problem. It’s the fact that we’d rather run from the room screaming “I’m good! I’m good! I swear to God I’m good!” than actually sit and practice a little bit of honest self-reflection (p. 6).

If you want to remain comfortable, don’t read this book. “Doing the work” is just not comfortable. Period. It just doesn’t feel good to realize that you are not as good as you thought, or are complicit with injustices that have deprived many of our citizens of equal protection under our laws or an equally enjoyed life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But if we do not begin here, we will not begin at all.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher via LibraryThing. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Becoming a Just Church

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Becoming a Just Church, Adam L. Gustine. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2019.

Summary: Develops the idea that the pursuit of justice for Christians begins in and flows out of their communities as they learn to practice God’s shalom in every aspect of their church life.

There is a great deal of discussion about the pursuit of justice, particularly in public settings in some Christian circles. The problem is that these conversations are often “echo chambers” preaching to the converted while significant portions of the church is either indifferent or even hostile to these conversations. They are relegated to “justice teams” or even forced to begin their own “parachurch” organizations. Some question their gospel fidelity. Adam Gustine thinks this won’t change until justice, which he equates with the shalom of God, the wholeness of life shared by all of God’s people, flows through and out of the life of our local congregations.

The first part of his book develops an ecclesiology for justice, a way to think about justice in the church. The four chapters in this section first of all focus on what it means to be “the people of God,” thinking in terms of “we” rather than “I” and practicing justice, not as an outreach strategy, but as a way of loving God and one’s neighbor. Gustine challenges us to think as exiles in American culture rather than natives and that the church is meant to be a prophetic alternative to the American way of life. That alternative way of life is a mañana way of life that allows a vision of God’s future for his people to shape the way we live in the present, kind of like demonstration garden plots. Finally, along the lines of gardening, he invites the church to pursue the flourishing of the physical communities in which we are situated. Perhaps the challenge here to our commuter, big box model of “doing” church, is that he envisions a parish model in a particular place where we worship and live.

Part two of the book then looks at the practice of justice in the warp and woof of congregational life. First of all, Gustine talks about what it means to be a church that includes and empowers the “low ground” people in a “high ground” world (referring to the reality that in most places, those who have means and power live above flood-prone low ground areas where the poor live). He challenges us to radical hospitality that welcomes the “other,” whoever that may be in our setting, talking about the food pantry “guests” who had a hard time truly sensing they were full participants in his church. He believes that the practice of justice must be integral to our discipleship efforts, and critical to this is helping people to gain awareness of their own social location, and think of the kingdom implications of their particular place in society. Finally he contends that justice ought shape worship, moving us beyond the “Pleasantville” of “just praising the Lord” to confession, repentance, and lament, expressions rarely heard in most white evangelical contexts, but much more common elsewhere.

The book concludes with a conversation on power, a critical issue in the practice of justice in churches. He engages with Juliet Liu and Brandon Green, two other pastors of churches who have joined him in the pursuit of “just church.” Then in his epilogue, acknowledging that he hasn’t discussed “public justice,” Gustine briefly gestures toward some of the tangible ways the pursuit of public justice in his own South Bend, Indiana community has flowed out of his congregational life.

Gustine puts his finger on an important issue, that we put “doing” before “being” far too often, in this case the “doing” of public justice without “being” just communities, places where the kingdom is setting things to rights across the cultural barriers of class, and gender, and ethnicity and status in our own communities. Indeed, we often are trying to care for a community as disparate collections of individuals, a bunch of “I’s” doing our own justice “thing” rather than a “we,” a people.

Currently, the evangelical church is deeply divided about justice, often along secular political lines justified by a veneer of scriptures we hurl at one another. Sometimes, these divisions even find their way into local congregations. Becoming a Just Church offers a path for a church to come together as a “third way” people, not beholden to political and theological outlooks of the left or the right. Discussion questions allow for group use and the author has also developed a companion Just Church Vision Retreat set of resources that church leadership teams may use in conjunction with the book (information about this pops up when you visit the publisher’s website for the book).

Gustine mentions the lament of Carl F. H. Henry over nascent evangelicalism’s neglect of justice back in 1947 when he wrote The Uneasy Conscience of Modern Fundamentalism (reviewed here). Seventy years later, we are still wrestling with an evangelicalism deeply divided around issues of justice. Might it be that the practices Gustine commends, pursued in local congregations, offer a way forward? Finding that way forward seems crucial to me–I’m not sure the American church has another seventy years to fritter away.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Welcoming Justice

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welcoming justice

Welcoming Justice (expanded edition), Charles Marsh and John M. Perkins. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018 (original edition 2009).

Summary: A renewed call for the church to pursue Martin Luther King, Jr.’s vision of a “beloved community” even in a day of increased white nationalism and polarization.

When this book was first published in 2009, the first African-American president had been elected. Nine years later, the vision of “beloved community” that appeared to be on the horizon, now feels like a distant memory. Charles Marsh, in his new preface acknowledges the current circumstances in the events in his home town of Charlottesville where Heather Heyer, simply standing in solidarity against the demonstrations of white nationalists, died when struck by a vehicle driven into the crowd by a white nationalist from Ohio.

Yet Marsh, and his co-author, John M. Perkins, a leader in Christian community development work, have not given up on the vision of Dr. King. Both believe that despite appearances, there is a movement of God afoot toward “beloved community. In alternating chapters, the two authors share why they are still hopeful, and what they believe needs to happen.

Marsh leads off with the contention that the Civil Rights movement lost its vision and cohesion as a movement when it lost its connection to a church-based and gospel based vision of “beloved community.” At the same time, he sees movements, like that which Perkins has led at Voice of Calvary, continuing this gospel-based vision in its focus on relocation, redistribution, and reconciliation. Perkins, however, contends that the church, to realize such a vision, needs to give up its captivities to culture which has so divided it. He makes the fascinating observation that the neglect of outreach to a white underclass has made them open to the counterfeit community of the Klan. The challenge is to forsake the dividing lines of our captivities to reach out across those lines in the power of Christ.

Marsh then writes of the need for true conversion in our lives, a conversion that is always personal, even as it has social implications. He movingly recounts his first encounter with Perkins as a student staying with his segregationist grandmother. Perkins answer came not in an argument of what was wrong with segregation, but to send a gift of blueberries from his garden as his gift to her. Marsh in reflection writes:

“The existence of a compelling Christian witness in our time does not depend on our access to the White House, the size of our churches or the cultural relevance of our pastors. It depends, instead, on our ability to sing better songs in our lives. True conversion is always personal, but it is never sole about the individual who experiences God’s love and knows the good news of salvation. True conversion is about learning to sing songs in which our life harmonizes with others’–even the lives of those least like us–and swells into a joyful and irresistible chorus” (p. 78).

Perkins responds with stories of the young men and women he has the joy of working with, and the hope this gives him for awakening. He doesn’t speak of programs but of loving people, those of his own community, and those who come to learn, and then go and pursue a vision of community development across the country. Marsh in turn writes about the inner life of silent embrace of the gospel of the kingdom that sustains the practice of peace over the long haul. Perkins writes the final chapter calling for a re-building of our cities, interrupting the brokenness of our cities as churches re-assert their own love of the places and people to which they are called, forming the character of their young.

The question I had as I read this in the light of the present time is how Marsh and Perkins can be so hopeful. I think the difference between them and writers like Ta-Nehisi Coates (whose Between the World and Me I reviewed yesterday) comes down to the former’s belief in the gospel of the kingdom. Perkins knows the violence against blacks as well, or perhaps even better than Coates, growing up in Mississippi. He was beaten and thrown in jail unjustly by police. Perkins has experienced the power of the love of God in his own life, and devoted a life to loving his place and pursuing reconciliation. What he and Marsh describe seems to be illustrative of the parable of the mustard seed, where small, seemingly insignificant efforts, like Perkin’s work in Mendenhall, not only bring local healing and reconciliation, but spawn movements of people committed to King’s vision of the beloved community. Perhaps the real question is not how Marsh and Perkins can be so hopeful, but will we forsake our cultural captivities and join them in their hope and embrace God’s movement toward “beloved community?”

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Healing Our Broken Humanity

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Healing our Broken Humanity

Healing Our Broken World, Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill (Foreword by Willie James Jennings). Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2018.

Summary: In a world with deep racial, gender, national, and political divides, the authors propose nine formative practices churches can pursue enabling the church to have a healing presence in the world.

We live in the midst of a world with terrible brokenness, pretty much wherever we look. Hostility between ethnic and racial groups. Violence against women. Gun violence. Political discord. Relational brokenness. The deep ache so many who sense that life just isn’t the way it is supposed to be. Often our churches, even when they seem to be thriving, reflect the wider divides and brokenness of the surrounding society.

Grace Ji-Sun Kim and Graham Hill have seen all this in their respective communities but are not in despair. Out of their experience of working with various church groups, they believe there are nine practices that both offer a roadmap for transformation, and enable God’s people to be a transformative presence in the world. These are:

1. Reimagine Church as the new humanity in Jesus Christ
2. Renew Lament through corporate expressions of deep regret and sorrow.
3. Repent Together of white cultural captivity, and racial and gender injustice, and our complicity.
4. Relinquish Power by giving up our own righteousness, status, privilege, selfish ambition, self interests, vain conceit, and personal gain.
5. Restore Justice to those who have been denied justice.
6. Reactivate Hospitality by rejecting division and exclusion, and welcoming all kinds of people into the household of God.
7. Reinforce Agency by supporting people’s ability to make free, independent, and unfettered actions and choices.
8. Reconcile Relationships through repentance, forgiveness, justice and partnership.
9. Recover Life Together as a transformed community that lives out the vision of the Sermon on the Mount.

Willie James Jennings, in his Foreward, emphasizes the importance of implementing these practices in diverse communities. He writes, “The crucial matter today for Christian discipleship is not what you practice but who you practice with.” In the practical suggestions Kim and Hill offer, the practices themselves take people into the diverse community Jennings commends. In “reimagining church” groups using this book are encouraged to serve other groups in your community and visit Christians from different racial and ethnic backgrounds. In “renewing lament” groups are encouraged to gather for nights of shared lament with a mix of genders, ages, and ethnicities. In “repenting together,” groups are encouraged to spend time among the marginalized, and then reflect on what the Spirit is convicting them to repent of, and then form accountability groups to act in ways that express changed hearts, In the chapter on “relinquishing power,” the authors challenge people to stop organizing all-white male slates of speakers or panels at conferences and other events.

Each chapter grounds these transformative practices in biblical principles illustrated from the authors’ personal ministry experiences. Each chapter concludes with a number of practical suggestions that might be implemented by a small group working together. These include both study and action items. I would observe that this is not a chapter-a-week book for groups to read. If a group seriously engages each chapter, they probably need to take a month to several months on the action steps in each chapter. Often the action steps direct to other readings or studies.

That makes the questions at the end of the book for groups a bit puzzling. They seem to assume a single week of discussion on each chapter. The “nine practices accountability form” in the second appendix suggests that groups might study through the nine and begin to shape their lives around the various practices. My sense is that a group that is serious about pursuing these practices and living them out ought to think in terms of a year to several years of working together.

Actually, that could be quite an experience that moves far beyond socializing, a dip into scripture, and prayers that life would “go smoothly” that characterize many small groups. The challenge to lament is likely foreign to most in majority culture, but common among ethnic minorities. Practicing hospitality that goes beyond those “like us” would be transformative in many communities. Finding ways to seek and advocate justice, particularly for those who may not be part of our communities, will open us up to people we might not otherwise meet. The subtitle of this book speaks of “revitalizing the church and renewing the world.” These practices have the potential to do just that, if we dare.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: Infinite Hope

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Infinite Hope

Infinite Hope, Anthony Graves. Boston: Beacon Press, 2018.

Summary: A first person account of an innocent black man wrongly found guilty of murder, leading to eighteen years in prison and twelve on death row until he was found innocent and released.

A terrible murder has taken place. Six people have been brutally murdered, and then set on fire in an attempt to destroy the evidence. A distant connection arrested for the murder implicates you as his collaborator, even though he barely knows you. You have an alibi, spending the time with your girlfriend, and among family, miles away from the murder scene. You are arrested, read your Miranda rights, but refuse an attorney because you think this is all a bad misunderstanding that can be cleared up by simply telling the truth. You are subjected to intense questioning, kept in prison without bond, monitored by prison guards, and other prisoners for making incriminating statements. The district attorney intimidates the murderer to testify against you even though he has previously admitted that this was a lie. Your alibi is intimidated with the threat of criminal charges. Crucial evidence is withheld from the defense team. You are convicted of murder, and sentenced to be put to death by the state of Texas. You spend twelve years on death row, and eighteen behind bars.

If you read Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson (review) and still weren’t convinced that stories like Walter McMillian’s was an exception, or cannot happen in America, perhaps this story of Anthony Graves might persuade you. In this book, Graves narrates the story from the side of the falsely accused, describing his arrest, trial, conviction and sentencing, the ordeal of living on death row, and how he was finally exonerated and his subsequent activism. It is an honest, raw account. He describes his increasing sense of desperation as he realizes that telling the truth isn’t enough, that the prosecutor (eventually charge with prosecutorial misconduct) will not stop at anything to convict him, and the agonizing wait for the jury’s verdict and sentence. He describes deplorable prison conditions, the unlikely friendships, and a brutal murder on death row. He recounts prison protests, and lockdowns, and periods of solitary confinement, and the terrible struggle to keep up hope. Twice he was given execution dates. He recounts the heartbreak of watching his sons grow up and not be able to be there for them.

He challenges us to grapple with the realities of living on death row:

“Like most Americans, I hadn’t given much thought to death row before my arrest. The writer and anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean famously said that support for the death penalty is a mile wide but only an inch thick. She meant that the death penalty’s many supporters rarely investigate the basis of their own beliefs. As I walked into Ellis One Unit, I didn’t know what to think. People typically focus on the death part of a death penalty sentence. What they don’t tell you is that life on death row is a torture all its own. I had no idea that I’d be living in a six-by-nine-foot cage, or that I’d do my business in a steel toilet in plain view of male and female officers alike” (p. 112).

There are also the people who keep on believing and fighting, from overseas correspondents to Nicole Casarez, part of his legal team who doggedly investigated his case as a journalism teacher and former corporate lawyer. A mother who never stopped praying and encouraging him. And finally, when his conviction is overturned, a new prosecutor, Kelly Siegler, who has the integrity to listen to her investigators, who told her that Graves was innocent.

Graves recounts his own growth, as he writes the memoirs that form the basis of this book, as he reads extensively from the prison library (he includes a list of formative books for him at the end of the book), and watches fellow prisoners go to their deaths. He becomes a legal expert on his own case, which forms him into the advocate he is now for criminal justice reform through the Anthony Graves Foundation.

Graves writes of others he believed to be innocent, and his case is certainly among a growing list of those under death sentences who have been exonerated. Surprisingly, Graves doesn’t make a big deal of his race, although racial bias is clearly evident in the narrative of his experience. Yet his case raises questions of how many innocent people have gone to their deaths. Given the number of such cases, and the racial bias in many of these cases, one has to ask whether, in the matter of death sentences, there is equal justice for all, and if not, in Bryan Stevenson’s words, “Do we deserve to kill?”

As important as these questions are, it is also important to note, and end on, the determination of Anthony Graves, his family, attorneys, and friends. Corrupt officials took away his liberty but they did not take away his hope. That hope for exoneration, for justice turned a young man trying to figure out his life into an advocate for justice for others. That hope led him to confront, at his disbarment hearing, the prosecutor who wrongly tried to have him executed, and forgive him. That hope gave us this raw and yet grace-filled narrative of wrongful conviction, life on death row, and vindication. Infinite hope, indeed.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

Review: The Myth of Equality

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the myth of equality

The Myth of Equality, Ken Wytsma. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2017.

Summary: A white pastor explores the reality of white privilege from the perspectives of both American history and the gospel of the kingdom and how white Christians might pursue justice.

We all like to believe the best about ourselves.Most of us want to believe we are a society where everyone is equal. Most of us would like to believe racism and racial injustices are a thing of the past. And most of us, if we are white, squirm a bit when we hear the phrase “white privilege.” I can imagine some who are reading this composing arguments as you read for what you want to say in the comments section.

Ken Wytsma is a white pastor who believes Christians need to have honest conversations about these matters if we are to contribute to healing the racial divides within our churches and society. He speaks of a conversation with a young, white landscaper who has worked hard to build his business and didn’t think he’d enjoyed privilege. Wytsma recounts their dialogue:

“I asked him in what part of town he did most of his work.

‘In the suburbs,’ he said,

I then asked where, specifically, he did his work.

‘Mostly in people’s backyards,’ he answered.

I asked him when he did most of his work.

‘Well, during the day, of course,’ he quickly retorted.

I asked if I could pose one more question, and he said yes. So I asked him how he got most of his business.

He responded, ‘I put flyers in people’s doors and sometimes knock at houses where I think there’s a particular opportunity I can offer them.’

Having gathered all this information about his business and how his work functions, I asked, ‘If you were a young man of color in those mostly white suburbs, is it possible you would be received differently by some of the potential clients?’

. . .

He nodded, and I could see from the look on his face that he finally understood white privilege. White privilege doesn’t mean your life isn’t hard. It means that if you are a person of color, simply by virtue of that, your life might be harder.”  (pp. 25-26)

Wytsma’s book is broken into three parts. The first, titled “The Story of Race” explores the history of race in America through several historical lenses. He considers the history of immigration and the emergence of white supremacy. He steps back into European history and explores the roots of racism in Shakespeare, philosophy, colonization, and post-conquest treatment of Native Americans. He explores the history of slavery in the U.S., and the failed post-Civil War effort of Reconstruction succeeded by the rise of Jim Crow, disenfranchisement, political strategies of the Republican party to win the White south, and the war on drugs. The concluding chapter in this section is on the Great Migration to northern and western cities, and how redlining practices shaped these cities long after they were outlawed. He mentions the FHA/HOLC maps from the 1930’s that “graded” neighborhoods for the purpose of granting loans, with “D” areas in red, and deemed uncreditworthy. (Here is the map of my hometown of Youngstown; I grew up in a “C” or yellow area, but it was still part of the “white west side” and indeed, most Blacks lived in the “red” areas of town).

Part two focuses on theology as Wytsma considers “Equality and the Kingdom of God.” He speaks tellingly of all the “off limit” subjects in our “authentic” churches and how they reveal our conflicted loyalties between “empire” and “the kingdom of God.” He explores our truncated gospel, and how we leave out justice, not realizing that “justice,” “righteousness” and “justify” derive from the same words. To be in right relationship or justified with God and to be in right or just relation with neighbor are part of one gospel of the kingdom. He discusses what he calls our “salvation-industrial” complex that reduces salvation to how many have prayed a “sinner’s prayer,” a metric that can translate into enhanced donations for a ministry. This becomes a very individualized experience that fails to reckon with what it means to be incorporated into a new humanity that transcends all human-made divisions and national boundaries.

In Part Three, Wytsma outlines how we begin to address white privilege. He describes how implicit racial bias can shape our thinking, whether in an interview or a police stop.and how this may be overcome. He challenges our Christian conference complex that is often pervaded by white speakers from the platform, and other ways we simply don’t recognize people of other ethnicities and give them a place at the table, or even yield the table (or podium) to them. Finally he speaks of the steps we may take to open ourselves to the other, and even find ourselves in the other–listening and learning, lamenting, confessing, and laying down our privilege to raise up others.

What I appreciate throughout the book is that the point is not shaming or laying guilt but helping us understand and wake up to something to which we may have been oblivious. Wytsma helps us follow his own journey of understanding. Along the way, he helped me see that to attempt to deny or defend privilege is to carry a heavy burden, and one that isolates me from the manifold riches of a diverse community of believers. Recognizing privilege, honestly facing and lamenting the way it has hurt others, and laying it down as a gift to others, to bless others and share that privilege with them is liberating.

We are also facing a major demographic challenge as a nation, in which people of color will be in the numerical majority by 2050. It is one that faces white Christians with a challenge and an opportunity. Will we try to hang onto something of which others are desperately seeking a share, or will we both enrich, and allow ourselves to be enriched by brothers and sisters whose skin color is darker than ours? Instead of fearing what we might lose, might we consider both what we may give and gain?