As I followed protesters along the National Mall after the non-indictment of New York City police officer Daniel Pantaleo, I was particularly struck by the comments of one black gentleman named Houston. Putting down a sign that said “Boycott Christmas,” he took a speaker, called for quiet, and, in the midst of the crowd, began to preach:
“We must move on to that new day in which justice will roll down like water, and righteousness like a mighty stream. It is time for black and whites to take hand and hand and move this nation beyond the pitiful historical dilemma … So black and white together, we must move on to where even the stones will shout out, ‘It’s time for America to be one.’”
“Amen,” someone shouted.
Amen, indeed.
Drawing on Amos 5:24 and Luke 19:40, Houston had brought the riches of a deep biblical tradition to bear on our contemporary political struggle. Like the early Christians, he called not only for justice but also for reconciliation between races. His faith had inspired him to act.
Or so I thought.
After Houston put the microphone down, I eagerly approached him and asked if he could share what he might have to say to Christians this Christmas. He replied:
“Well, unfortunately we know that Christmas is not really based on Christ. My humble estimation is that oftentimes Christianity is a tool to suppress people. It’s a way to control them. It’s a way to not solve their problems, but make them figure that when they die, somehow – which I don’t know anybody who came back to report It —they going to get salvation. We have to throw off the chains that keep our mind enslaved. It’s time for us to really figure out how we’re going to solve the problem here, now on earth.”
I was crestfallen. Even as Houston excited a crowd with a gripping vision of biblical justice, he denounced Christianity’s oppressive otherworldliness. He lamented minds enslaved by chains. What had begun sounding like a rousing Martin Luther King Jr. sermon ended in an exasperated indictment of Christian faith. Did Houston not know how heavily his vision of contemporary justice drew upon a much older vision of shalom? I should’ve asked. Maybe he did know. After all, perhaps Houston was simply trying to criticize a certain kind of Christian faith.
Because he really had nailed it in some ways. He had exposed that old dualism between the then-and-there, otherworldly salvation and the here-and-now, this-worldly justice. The same dualism Martin Luther King Jr. decried in “Letter From Birmingham Jail” when he wrote, “I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.” These critiques resonate deeply with me. I yearn to see a Christianity focused on the here-and-now and the then-and-there in the kingdom inaugurated by the declaration that Jesus is Lord (and therefore Caesar is not!). But somehow I still felt disheartened.
I couldn’t help but wonder, how have Christians managed to get it so wrong that Amos’ and Jesus’ cries for justice have been so divorced from our contemporary expression of faith that people do not even recognize their source? Clearly there are still protesters, just like in the 60s and 70s, who find themselves captivated by a vision of shalom, but fail to see that vision manifested in Christian practice.
But before we start pointing fingers and screaming Left Behind and fundamentalism, I’d like to direct our frustration toward a different end: How can we continue to cultivate a Christianity that does not abandon the body to cultivate the soul, but neither abandons the soul to improve the body? And how can we put into practice such a non-dualistic faith?
I think it is only in the answer to that question that we will be able to say what contribution the voice of Christian faith will make in our contemporary quest for racial justice.
Ryan Stewart is Online Assistant for Sojourners.
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