Just Discipleship, Michael J. Rhodes (foreword by Brent A. Strawn). Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.

Summary: A study both of what the Bible means by justice and how we become people who practice justice.

Michael J. Rhodes grew up in a conservative, white suburban congregation. They believed the Bible and tried to live out its teaching. And then they invited John Perkins to speak. His use of biblical passages on justice that invited them into a deeper discipleship stretched Rhodes vision. What he heard from Perkins was neither a liberal agenda or “woke” but “the Bible tells me so.” That led to trips to see these truths in action in urban Baltimore, and eventually to living in urban south Memphis. And then it led him to doctoral studies of biblical texts on justice and an effort to bring biblical theology and praxis together. This book is a distillation of that work. In it he seeks to do three things: 1) to carefully read the biblical texts related to justice; 2) to bring biblical texts into dialogue with what theologians say about ethical discipleship; and 3) to imagine what moral discipleship might look like today.

Rhodes begins by summarizing the justice story of scripture, one in which God brings justice to victory in Jesus after both humanity and Israel fail to be a royal, priestly family, and in which Jesus brings justice to victory by establishing a people who do justice by forming a people of God and inviting all humanity to join in. He then lays out how people are formed as just disciples in community: through story, through the promotion of a certain kind of character, through formative practices cultivating virtue, and through politics in the sense of church structures and policies aligned with just discipleship. This occurs in a cultural context with a continuum of responses ranging from rejection to cooption, with adaptation and collaboration in between. Ultimately, this formation occurs in the context of God’s reign over all creation.

Having laid this groundwork, he proceeds to consider how we become just disciples. He looks at the feasts of Deuteronomy which brought people of various economic strata together and how we do justice in the economic segregation of our neighborhoods. He considers the justice songs of the Psalms and considers how we sing and pray in our churches, He turns to wisdom teaching of Proverbs and the plight of low wage workers and forms of racism and classism in our society. Finally, 1 John is examined focusing on the imitation of Jesus and how justice-oriented discipleship is both received as gift and embraced as God-ordained task.

He then explores how churches become outposts reflecting God’s just kingdom rule.He considers two cases. The first is the biblical idea of Jubilee in which debts are cancelled, property is restored and slaves freed. Rhodes, drawing on Chris Wright’s idea of not treating these texts as blueprints but rather paradigms, weighs the possibility of churches voluntarily pursuing reparations for past injustices related to Black slavery and unjust tratment, citing the example of Virginia Theological Seminary. He did not discuss this but I could see similar applications in some contexts with indigenous peoples of North America. Rhodes also considers the case of Paul’s teaching with the Corinthians about the Lord’s table and the breaking down of societal distinctions in our church practice and governance.

The last part of the book looks at political engagement, looking beyond our common appeals to Romans 13 and Revelation and our subjection to political powers to our engagement with them. Rhodes draws a fascinating contrast between the model of Joseph in Egypt and Daniel in Babylon. While both were people of faith and integrity, Joseph acted alone and used his position to consolidate Pharoah’s (and his own) power, enslaved Egypt, and afforded benefit to his own family. Rhodes even raises the intriguing and plausible idea that this may have contributed to the animus against, and enslavement of Israel subsequently. By contrast, Daniel acted in community, working to challenge Nebuchadnezzar’s pretensions to godhood, making God and not himself great and arguably humanizing Nebuchadnezzar in his rule. He served where this did not involves assimilation, while refusing to collaborate when this compromised the worship of God. Rhodes thus sees Daniel as offering a better paradigm for our bolitical engagement.

Rhodes offers us a fresh look at both biblical passages and church practice. I’d never thought about the contrast between Joseph and Daniel. Nor had I thought about how feasting and singing might form just disciples. He gives numerous examples both from his own church in south Memphis (before taking a faculty appointment in New Zealand) and other congregations. Grounding his discussions of just discipleship and justice issues in a probing examination of biblical text, he sidesteps the criticism that this is just a Christian version of critical race theory. While he addresses political engagement without the church becoming entangled in a particular brand of politics the stronger appeal for me is that he shows what the church as its own polis and in its own congregational life can do. And he shows how just discipleship is just discipleship–it is what we signed up for when we decided to follow Jesus.

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