America on the Brink

Introduction There is a debate today about the church’s role in society. Some leaders argue that Christian leaders should not address social and political issues. They also argue that social justice work is antagonistic to the work of the gospel. To them, social and political issues detract attention from the core mission of the church which should be saving souls and nurturing spirituality – worship, prayer, and Scripture reading. On the other side of the spectrum are leaders who argue that God cares for more than souls and personal piety. God cares about bodies and the entirety of the world. They also argue that Scripture gives a lot of attention to injustice and human suffering. One of the most unfortunate products of this debate has been the need to frame this as an “either or” proposition. Why can’t we do both? Why are both aspects not important? Christian leaders can attend to eternal, spiritual, and social issues because they all intersect with human life. Why is that difficult or controversial? I am surprised that we are still having this debate, especially given the problematic history of Christianity in this country. Black people were legally enslaved in this country for over two hundred years, and this was largely done with the sanction of the church. Sanction came in two forms – defending slavery as God ordained and arguing the church should not weigh in on the issue because it is political. The same thing happened in the Jim Crow era. Churches were arguing it is God’s will to separate the races and then there were masses of Christians practicing silence because segregation was a “political” issue. These Christians believed that God did not care about the dehumanizing, exploitative, and violent systems of slavery and segregation that African Americans suffered under for over three hundred years. The only reason systems of slavery and segregation were upended was because God raised up small groups of Christians and people of other and no faith to do it. It is a shameful fact of history that many today have not learned from yet. It is beyond me why leaders employ the same theology that history has shown to be wrong? God calls us to attend to all these matters, including social and political issues. God does this because God loves the world, not just heaven, and God cares about all people. Stories in the Bible repeatedly teach us these dual truths. In one story, God hears blood that was violently shed crying out to him and another story tells us that God hears the cries of the enslaved as they are whipped by taskmasters. When God came to earth in the person of Jesus, the gospels record stories that lift up the plight of people who were robbed and left destitute, people who were hungry, thirsty, naked, and imprisoned. The stories show that God made what we call “social” and “political” issues spiritual issues. This means that we cannot neglect our responsibility to preach a holistic gospel.

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