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https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/june-web-only/george-floyd-protests-racism-nation-on-fire-needs-spirit.html







A Nation on Fire Needs the Flames of the Spirit










As racism tears the country apart, the message of Pentecost can help the church find its voice.


This weekend, churches around the globe gathered virtually to celebrate Pentecost, that miraculous moment when tongues of fire descended on the followers of Christ and the gospel was heard in the varied languages of the world. Pentecost is the miracle that follows another miracle (the Ascension), which occurs in the aftermath of a wonder (the Resurrection).

In contrast to Christ’s disciples, we experienced Pentecost this year in the aftermath of a woe, following a trauma, in the context of a tragedy. The protests and riots of Minneapolis (and so many other cities) follow the death of George Floyd, who was choked to death while handcuffed and pleading for his life. For nine minutes, a police officer kept his knee on Floyd’s neck while the man called for his mother. This occurred in the wake of the killings of Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery. And all this takes place within the wider context of a global pandemic that has killed 100,000 people. It feels more like we are in the middle of an extended Lent rather than the end of Eastertide.

Some will assume that I’m bringing politics into the church. They’ll wonder why I’m not upset about black-on-black crime, or the breakdown of the black family, or abortion, or looting, or whatever topic that helps us avoid looking at the thing itself. That “thing” is the 400-year history of racial trauma and oppression still plaguing blacks in this country.

What do protests, riots, and police brutality have to do with Pentecost and the passage in Acts 2:1–21? Does the death of the Messiah for our sins have anything to do with how we approach the flames of Minneapolis? Does the church have something to say, or will we be discipled by Fox News on the one hand and MSNBC on the other? As our country is divided, what do the words of Scripture mean right now?

There is no other world in which to talk about Jesus than a world in which black men can have their necks stepped on for nine minutes. That is to say: The only way to answer these questions is to look at the words of Scripture with the burning cities as our interpretive backdrop.

Here’s what God’s Word tells us.

First, the gospel brings us together.
Acts 2:1–21 opens with the followers of Jesus gathered in one place. It is amazing to think that at one point in history, all the Christians in the world could fit into one room. Despite what the history books will tell you, Christianity is not some state-sponsored religion of terror created by Constantine to keep the populous in check. It began humbly with a ragtag group of 120 mostly regular folks who had encountered the living God.

Among them were women like Mary, the mother of Jesus, who came from rural peasant stock, and people like Matthew, the former tax collector. The two of them could not be more different. Matthew collaborated with the oppressors of Israel and extorted money from people to line his pockets. Folks like Mary were the victims of such atrocities.

What kind of church has room for both the oppressed and former oppressors? The Christian church. What united that early church? Their shared convictions about Jesus.

What unites us as a church now? What would this unity look like today for the family of George Floyd? What would it mean for us to be together with them? What would it mean to be alongside the black community in the United States, which over the years has experienced kidnapping, slavery, the injustice of the Jim Crow era, and the litany of contemporary sufferings that mark our lives now?

It would mean that, as an act of love, the church says, “It should not have to be this way, and I will spend my life beside yours testifying to the values that the Christian tradition places on your black life.”

The church has the power to make this statement because the same Spirit falls upon everyone in the room. There is not one Holy Spirit that enables women to declare the word of God and another for men. There is not one Spirit that gives words to the rich and others to the poor. There is not one Holy Spirit that allows us to speak to African peoples and another that allows us to speak to Asians or Europeans. The one Spirit sends the one gospel to varied peoples of the earth.

The gospel’s work through the Spirit arises from our common status as image bearers. We are all fallen and in need of God’s grace. Any ideology that functionally or verbally denies that common status is a heresy. And anyone who can’t see that the heresy of racial bias infects some Christians in this land does so in the face of overwhelming facts.

Second, the gospel moves us out.
The gospel drew the early disciples outside of their own culture to speak and do life with people who were very different from themselves. Everyone at Pentecost was Jewish, but that Judaism had been moved into the varied languages and communities of the Roman Empire. The first thing that the gospel did was to bring people together under the lordship of Christ.

If the gospel draws us into a shared space to hear the mighty works of God, why aren’t we together anymore? And what would it mean for the watching world to see a Christianity that is actually together, spiritually and practically?

Black Christians can deal with people who have no reason support us. We can deal with secular racists. What is heartbreaking and exhausting is to find ourselves fighting for our right to exist and then find that the enemy is our brother. As the Psalms say, “It is not enemies who taunt me—I could bear that; but it is you, my equal, my companion, my familiar friend, with whom I kept pleasant company; we walked in the house of God” (Ps. 55:12–14, NRSV).

Our life together, if we are to be together, can’t come at the expense of our freedom. We shouldn’t have to fight our brothers and sisters to obtain it.

Here again, the story of Pentecost provides insight. As the nations are being drawn together, there are two responses: One group says in so many words, “They are just drunk” (Acts 2:13). The other asks, “What does this mean?” (Acts 2:12). One group refuses to acknowledge what is going on and draws upon their known experience to dismiss the work of God. The other asks a deeper question: What is God up to in their midst?

Peter addresses the first group with a sentence or two but takes more time to address the question of meaning. He tells the crowd that they are experiencing the Spirit promised in Joel 2:28–32. The prophet Joel claims that when God redeems his people, he will redeem men and women, young and old, rich and poor. Peter wants to remind the early church that the universal gift of the Spirit is a testimony to the universal saving power of the gospel.

In other words, the form of Pentecost—women, men, rich, and poor declaring the mighty works of God—supports the theology of Pentecost—the idea that the gospel is for everyone.

That held true for the early church. It also holds true for the American church of the 21st century.

Today, some people look at the black demands for justice and can only reach for a political explanation. These critics respond by saying, “They are just Democrats trying to ruin the church,” or “They are really theological liberals beholden to Marxism.” But maybe those are ways to avoid looking at the thing itself. What are black, Latino, and Asian brothers and sisters really saying when they call for justice? What does it mean? And what is God up to? He is drawing diverse people together and then moving us into new gospel spaces by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Third, the gospel gives us hope in the coming kingdom.
I am convinced that the hope for this country is found not in any election or political party. Votes matter, but neither the Democratic party nor the Republican party will save us. What we need is a Spirit-filled Christianity big enough to draw different people together.

This unity involves two things. First, we have to recognize that the problem is not just “out there.” It’s in our hearts. The problem isn’t just that racists exist in the world. The problem is that we all in various ways live in rebellion against God and his will for us. The gospel demands a decision from each of us about our own sins. One of Jesus’s oft-repeated messages was, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 4:17).

He calls us to repent personally for our sins. Why? Because—and here’s the second point—the kingdom of God is coming. This kingdom is depicted in Jesus’ first sermon, in which he proclaimed good news to the poor and liberty to the captives (Luke 4:16–21). Jesus came to save sinners, but those saved sinners now bear witness in their lives to God’s kingdom vision. We know that this kingdom is coming because Christ is risen. Peter says it this way: “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36).

Who controls the future? Who unfurls history according to his purpose? The one who is the Lion and the Lamb at the same time (Rev. 5:5–6). The one who embodies both justice and mercy.

We the American church have a message for a country and a world on fire: There is a God who loves you and died that you might know him. This love is sufficient to gather the divided peoples of the world, even when all the politicians and philosophers fail. There is a God of justice who sees and acts on behalf of the beleaguered peoples of the world, people like George Floyd. There is a king and kingdom. And he has given us his Spirit to make him known to the ends of the earth.













Esau McCaulley is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, and the author of the forthcoming book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (IVP Academic).

This piece was adapted from a sermon preached at Anglican Church of the Redeemer in Greensboro, North Carolina on May 31.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2020/june/liberty-university-african-american-alumni-jerry-falwell-jr.html






African American Alumni Call on Jerry Falwell Jr. to Step Down









Thirty-five faith leaders who went to Liberty University released a letter criticizing the college president's rhetoric, including his recent blackface mask tweet.


Nearly three dozen black alumni of Liberty University denounced school President Jerry Falwell Jr. on Monday, suggesting he step down after he mocked Virginia’s mask-wearing requirement by invoking the blackface scandal that engulfed the state’s governor last year.

In a letter to Falwell, 35 faith leaders and former student-athletes told Falwell that his past comments “have repeatedly violated and misrepresented” Christian principles. They said they would stop urging students to attend Liberty, would no longer donate to the university, and would urge fellow people of faith to avoid speaking at the school unless Falwell changes his behavior or steps aside.

“You have belittled staff, students and parents, you have defended inappropriate behaviors of politicians, encouraged violence, and disrespected people of other faiths,” they wrote, advising Falwell that “your heart is in politics more than Christian academia or ministry.”

Falwell, a stalwart backer of President Donald Trump, is the son of the late evangelist Jerry Falwell, whose legacy the alumni invoked in imploring the younger Falwell to “stop this infantile behavior.”

In response, Falwell said his comment about the blackface scandal was made in defense of Liberty students, including minorities, who would be affected by tuition assistance cuts proposed by Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat. Falwell said his involvement in politics was the spirit of Jesus Christ, “who was not silent about the establishment political folks of his era.”

“All they need to do is read the Gospels—Jesus got involved in politics,” Falwell said in an interview.

Last week, Northam issued an order that masks be worn inside all retail stores, while using public transportation, or in any other indoor place where people congregate. The next day, Falwell tweeted that he was “adamantly opposed” to the mask mandate “until I decided to design my own.” With it, he posted a picture of a mask bearing a racist photo that appeared on Northam’s medical yearbook page and—when made public last year—sparked a scandal that nearly forced him from office. The photo showed a person in blackface and another in a Ku Klux Klan costume.

Monday’s letter was signed by more than 30 former students at Liberty, one of the nation’s biggest Christian universities, including pastors with churches in Virginia, Tennessee, and Michigan. Among the signatories were Latasha Morrison, who graduated from Liberty in 2013 and is the founder of a racial reconciliation network called Be the Bridge, as well as current pro football player Walt Aikens and former pro football player Eric Green.

“While your tweet may have been in jest about Virginia’s Governor, it made light of our nation’s painful history of slavery and racism,” the alumni wrote to Falwell. They described the tweet as “a microcosm of the past several years of divisive rhetoric” that falls short of their faith’s ideals.

The leading signatories were pastors Chris Williamson, of Strong Tower Bible Church in Tennessee, and Eric Carroll, of the Ascension Church RVA, who graduated from Liberty in the early ‘90s and helped organize the letter. Williamson and his wife—writer Dorena Williamson, who also signed—are the son-in-law and daughter of the vice chairman of Liberty’s board of trustees, Virginia pastor Allen McFarland.

The rebuke came after an online instructor for Liberty, a black pastor who also teaches at Ithaca College, announced his resignation online in response to the tweet. According to a screenshot posted of his resignation email, the instructor wrote, “I cannot remain part of an institution whose senior leader would engage in such actions at any time, but then to have the unmitigated gall to do so at a time when black communities are once again grieving over recent incidents of racial violence.”

The alumni who wrote Monday’s letter also lauded their experience at the university and offered to meet with Falwell to “provide counsel on ways for LU to best move forward” if he stays in office.




The Virginia General Assembly in March passed a budget for the 2021-2022 biennium that eliminates a tuition assistance grant for online students at private colleges such as Liberty. Existing students are grandfathered in, said Laura Osberger, spokeswoman for the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia.

“The governor’s intent was to harm Liberty, and to harm minority students and to harm low income students,” Falwell said, linking the cuts to his tweet by saying that as a result, “people needed to be reminded of (Northam’s) racist past.”

Northam initially said he was in the yearbook photo and then denied it the next day, while acknowledging that he did wear blackface to a dance party that same year. He faced swift, widespread calls to resign, but he resisted, saying he instead wanted to help heal the state’s lingering racial wounds and devote the rest of his term to promoting racial equality.[/size]

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/june-web-only/david-taylor-bailey-sing-songs-of-injustice-psalms.html







Singing the Songs of Injustice








Biblical, angry, congregational worship can help transform our hearts and churches.


While many nonviolent protests and some destructive riots took place over the past week in reaction to George Floyd’s death, churches have responded in various ways—marching peacefully, holding prayer vigils, and addressing racial injustice from their pulpits. David Bailey, director of the reconciliation ministry Arrabon and founder of Urban Doxology, and David Taylor, associate professor of theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, believe there is another way churches can respond: in worship. But not just any kind of congregational singing. Bailey and Taylor are specifically passionate about offering a biblical outlet for anger through singing the psalms.

David Taylor (DT): How do you feel about what has happened over the past couple of weeks?

David Bailey (DB): Former pastor and Native American activist Mark Charles says, “the temperature of race relations in America is always at a simmer and every so often there is an event that turns it to a boiling point.” As a black man living in America, so many decisions in my life are influenced by fear. When I jog, I go to a gym, so I don’t end up like Ahmaud Arbery. I never put myself in a position where it could be one white woman’s word against mine so that I don’t end up in a situation like Emmett Till or Amy Cooper in Central Park. This reality is often a private matter, but when racial disparity is in the news it causes a mixed feeling of vulnerability, relief that more people are aware, embarrassment that you don’t have as much control over your life as white Americans do, and anger that it is this way.

James Baldwin said that “to be a negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all of the time.” I don’t think black Americans are walking around in a constant state of rage, because you have to live your life. He is articulating the reality of the constant simmer and how it is something that can’t be ignored even when you want to ignore it.

As a pastor who shepherds people through the realities of race, class, and culture in our country, I’m constantly discipling people through complicated emotions of fear, shame, grief, and anger. In order for me to help others, I’ve had to learn how to attend to my own soul care. I’ve had to learn to lean into the book of Psalms that acknowledges an unjust world and gives language to express fear, grief, and even rage before the Lord. God has given us the psalms to be an “anger school” for us and I’ve discovered that when we skip class, we aren’t emotionally equipped to deal with difficult stuff we’re experiencing now.

DB: As a professional Christian, how have you learned to deal with anger in a godly way?

DT: It’s scary and embarrassing to admit you have an anger problem. You still have to keep confessing and asking for help. But it’s also deeply reassuring to discover in the psalms both permission and help to be angry at the right things—like cancer, domestic abuse, ecological disasters, and the experience of a global pandemic, or like the racism and injustice that we’ve witnessed recently.

As the psalms see it, the difference between a right and a wrong response to anger is a humble heart and a hardened heart. A humble heart is honest to God about one’s feelings; a hardened heart wants only to exact an eye for an eye. A humble heart entrusts one’s enemies to God; a hardened heart demonizes one’s enemies. A humble heart is angry before the face of God and in the presence of the community; a hardened heart hides from God and perpetually finds the community wanting. The psalms always invite us to choose a humble heart.

The extraordinary gift of the psalms is that they show us how to pray angry prayers without being overcome by our anger, how to hate without sinning (to borrow from Saint Paul’s language), or, as Eugene Peterson once put it, how to “cuss without cussing.” To pray these angry psalms is to trust that Jesus prays these same prayers for us, and by his Spirit does something much better than “managing” our anger: he sets our hearts free to love our enemy in a way that we never imagined possible.

DB: In the New Testament, Paul says, “we don’t wrestle against flesh and blood,” but there is a very real and physical reality of racial harm as people “wrestle against flesh and blood.” How should we think about enemies at a time like this?

DT: Evil infects the human heart and people do bad, cruel, and dehumanizing things to one another. Women get gang-raped, the elderly fall victim to scams, workers are cheated out of their pension, a child is lost to a drunk driver, a pastor abuses his authority, a man is profiled because of his skin color, a Christian is persecuted because of her faith, millions are displaced from their homes. One could call this “the challenges of life.” Yet for the psalmist, reality demands that we use the language of “enemy” to describe things truthfully. Its purpose is to remind us that the violent and sinful ways of human beings—including our own violent, sinful ways—need to be named so that God can step in and do something about it.

Psalm 139 is the paradigmatic psalm on this account. In verses 19-22 we find an instance of quintessentially angry “enemy” prayer. “Kill the wicked”? Hating “those who hate you”? A “perfect hatred”? Can we really say this as followers of Jesus? But soon after this imprecation, the psalmist prays a prayer of relinquishment: “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts…” (vs. 23-24).

Praying against one’s enemies is most emphatically not a license to do violence to others; nor is it an invitation to indulge our irresponsible desires to call anybody we do not like an enemy. It is instead a way to get us to talk to God. Its goal is healing, not self-gratification. What the psalmist longs for is God’s vindication. The psalms, then, don’t deny our anger at being wronged, but they do deny us the right to take vengeance into our own hands (Rom. 12:18–20).

DB: In 2008, my wife and I were part of a church planting team in Richmond, Va. committed to the values of reconciliation, community development, and racial diversity with the vision of living in the community for 40 years to see what God would do. The aspirations of our church vision were awesome! The reality of putting these practices into play has been painful. Just like most things of value, it comes at a cost. One of the costs was that our college-educated planting team was suddenly entrenched in the lives of our urban poor brothers and sisters, and “their” problems became “our” problems. Very soon into the journey, we realized that we were not smart enough to “fix the system” and most of us were ill-equipped for the longevity of this endeavor. Out of desperation, we stumbled into the practice of lament.

We introduced lament in our Sunday gatherings when a young man we were mentoring went to jail or there was a murder in our neighborhood—but it was a Saturday night in the summer of 2013 when the verdict of the Trayvon Martin trial came out. The heaviness of the verdict was palpable in our congregation. For our church, not addressing the trial would be the pastoral equivalent of not saying something the Sunday after the tragic 9/11 event. We held a worship service with the theme of lament, where we allowed people to say whatever was on their heart, unfiltered.

As a leader, there is a temptation to control the public prayer life out of fear that something would be said that would cause division. We’ve found the opposite to be true. Allowing people to express their heart before God built intimacy with one another in ways that a well-crafted sermon or prayer can’t do. Since then we’ve always practice public lament services in response to tragedies.

DT: Are there examples of songs or spoken word hip hop pieces that might capture the connection between justice/injustice and songs of anger/imprecation—especially as it relates to what’s happening in our society right now?

DB: Ten summers ago, we started the Urban Doxology songwriting internship out of the need for language to express both the horizontal aspects of what it means be a Christian and the vertical aspects of Christian worship. Because so much of the Christian publishing and worship resourcing decisions are marketed to the suburban consumer, there is a significant lack of worship resources for churches in the urban context engaging with people of poorer socioeconomic backgrounds. I noticed that there were a lot of songs about loving God, but not a lot of songs about loving our neighbors, so we decided to write the worship songs that are missing.

We began to write from the Old Testament because it has some of the best vision for justice and articulation of calling out injustice. We paraphrased Isaiah 58 in a spoken word format. We wrote a call to worship to love our neighbor and for God “to heal our land, meet the need, set the captives free.” Most recently in response to Ahmaud Arbery, we released a song called “God Not Guns” that is a lament of anger and despair based on Psalm 10 that describes the same exact scenario of Arbery’s murder.

If we don’t address injustice inside the church, then “we will forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club,” as Martin Luther King, Jr. said. We are seeing some of the fruit of that with the mass exodus of young people in the church. As pastors and Christian leaders who address issues of injustice inside the church, but don’t provide people with the tools to deal with the emotional weight of dealing with injustice, there is a level of irresponsible leadership we are engaging in as leaders.

Loving God and loving our neighbor, proclaiming the kingdom of God and prophetically calling out the ways of Babylon, repenting of personal sin and systemic sin is what God calls every Christian to do no matter your tradition. This is what makes the church relevant to society at any age.

DB: You’ve written that these curse or anger psalms ultimately lead to healing. That seems like a surprising outcome. What do you mean by it?

DT: Let me answer it by using Psalm 137 as an example. While the first two sections of the psalm have generated vast numbers of musical and poetic settings—“By the rivers of Babylon we sat and wept” and “How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land?”—the third section—“Dash the babies against the rocks”—has been removed from worship contexts throughout church history.

But we’re wrong to do so, argues the Croatian-born theologian Miroslav Volf, who insists that psalms such as these should remain within our devotional practice. “Such psalms,” he writes, “may point to a way out of slavery to revenge and into the freedom of forgiveness.” For most of us, that’s easier said than done. Yet Christian practices that are devoid of the psalmist’s visceral and even violent language leave us vulnerable to theologies and pastoral practices that are incapable of dealing with the anger that so easily leads to violence in public and in the privacy of our homes.

It is never easy to know how to incorporate a psalm like 137 or 88 or 109 into our corporate worship. But it is important to remember that the Holy Spirit, as the author of Scripture, keeps these psalms in the Bible for good reason. They lead us to Jesus. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer says: “The imprecatory psalm leads to the cross of Jesus and to the love of God which forgives enemies. I cannot forgive the enemies of God out of my own resources. Only the crucified Christ can do that, and I through him.”

DB: How do you feel churches should deal with this level of pain, disappointment, anger, and rage? What should church leaders do? How can they pray or sing the “angry psalms”?

DT: That’s not an easy answer and Christians have struggled with this question for centuries. But I can think of a few examples that might offer a way forward. There’s a wonderful hymnal, called Psalms for All Seasons, that includes a responsorial setting for Psalm 137. The congregation sings a refrain, drawn from Psalm 137:1 while an individual reads the three parts of the psalm, in turn. This allows the people to sing the words “from the heart,” without being asked to sing the dreadful words about “dashing babies,” which would seem inappropriate. Another way to read this curse psalm is for a poet to offer a personal response to the text or to have a spoken word artist sing an interpretation of the psalm in light of the news of the day, with the congregation invited to sing the refrain at specific intervals.

DT: If a church wanted to try something out with this kind of song or prayer, where would they start? How could they do it carefully, constructively, and in faithful and fruitful ways?

DB: First, it’s important for church leaders to understand that we are in some dire times. Navigating through calm waters is a different type of leadership than navigating through turbulent waters. In turbulent times, you can’t lead with moderation. You have to create “brave spaces” and sometimes they don’t feel like “safe spaces.” In 1831, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison articulated the type of leadership we need in this moment:

I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as Truth, and as uncompromising as Justice. On this subject I do not wish to think, or speak, or write, with moderation. No! No! Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen—but urge me not to use moderation in a cause like the present. … I will not retreat a single inch—and I will be heard.

The type of leadership needed in these times is the courage to create brave spaces for people to be raw before God. When people are raw before God, their faith moves beyond moderation towards transformation. I want to encourage people to use one of these resources mentioned in this conversation and make room for the Holy Spirit to do what the Holy Spirit does.












David M. Bailey is a public theologian and the founder and executive director of Arrabon; an organization that builds reconciling communities in the midst of a digital, diverse and divided world.

W. David O. Taylor is associate professor of theology & culture at Fuller Theological Seminary and the author of Open and Unafraid: The Psalms as a Guide to Life (Thomas Nelson). He tweets @wdavidotaylor.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2020/june/why-i-protest-and-you-should-too.html







Pro ALL Life: Why I Protest and Encourage You to Do So Too












I've marched for life like lots of evangelicals. I encourage you to march for black lives as well. Protests are part of who we are.


I’m convinced that Christians need to speak out and to protest at times. And the reality is, all Christians believe this about certain issues. For example, it does not seem controversial when we march for life. But it does seem controversial when we march for racial justice, and I think it’s worth exploring why.

Earlier this week, I marched in the Bronzeville neighborhood of Chicago to join thousands of others in a peaceful protest led by African American faith leaders.

Yesterday, my family and I participated in a lament walk in Wheaton. I tweeted at the time, "At the Wheaton lament walk with my family. Communities all over the country are coming together to mourn and work for justice. I’ve never seen a group like this in Wheaton. It’s encouraging." And I meant it.

Now, mind you, I am doing more than protesting—things like partnering churches together and giving to help impacted communities, but I’m also headed out again right now to be a part of a local protest.

I think protesting matters.

Let me explain.

Our Heritage

As Protestants, protest is a part of our faith heritage. That’s part of why we are called Protestants.

Martin Luther protested abuses in the Catholic Church with his 95 Theses. When he was given a papal bull from Pope Leo X calling him to recant, Luther burned it in protest. He was called a heretic and worse, yet he stood on his convictions. Indeed, we draw Protestantism from those who followed Luther in “protest” after he broke from the Catholic Church at the Diet of Worms in 1529.

Also, as a specific strain within Protestant Christianity, evangelicals have long history of protest. We draw our theological heritage from English Puritans who dissented from the Church of England.

As Americans, it is part of our civic heritage (one which we often venerate in textbooks and through holidays. The one that sticks out in our national conscience is the Boston Tea Party, one of the earliest protests of the American Revolution which rallied people against the oppressive tyranny of King George.

And as Evangelicals, we are people defined in part by our heritage of revival, reform, and renewal. We are at our best when we are calling ourselves, our churches, and our communities to resist both dead orthodoxy and empty moralism. At our core, we are supposed to be people who work to protest spiritual lethargy.

Christians have also protested moral wrongs throughout the years.

Most recently, evangelicals and other Christians have consistently—and against considerable public pressure—protested abortion, including participation in a major national March for Life every year.

Our Call

Far from a recent evolution, modern evangelicalism was born out of a rejection of isolationism of fundamentalism. Carl F.H. Henry’s The Uneasy Conscience of Fundamentalism drew attention to the ways theological conservative Protestants in America had lost sight of the social dimensions of the gospel. Later, in his book A Plea for Evangelical Demonstration, Henry would focus more practically on the issue of public protest in calling evangelicals to take seriously our faith:

This is a call for authentic evangelical protest. A sensitive Christian conscience must openly confront enduring and intractable social injustices. Biblically concerned Christians need not forego a moment of open identification with those of other faiths and alien views in protesting what all together recognize to be unjust."[1]

As Peter Heltzel rightly observed, this was “Henry on fire for lasting social change as a vital expression of our gospel witness.” Drawing a clear parallel to Martin Luther King’s famous exhortation to moderate clergy that "injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere,” Henry pleaded for Christians to protest “what all together recognize to be unjust.”[2]

With unrelenting surgical precision, Henry repeatedly honed in not only on the systemic nature of evil but also on the necessity of a public response by the people of God. The result was an unavoidable call to evangelicals to see the call to protest as intimately and unavoidably connected to their faith.

Our Current Situation

Over the past two weeks, we have witnessed countless marches and demonstrations to protest not only the killing of George Floyd, but also the broader issue of systemic racism., Following other tragic reports of African American deaths in the recent past, Floyd’s death seems to be a tipping point in waking people to action.

But there is a difference it seems between the protests over the past two weeks and the litany of those I just noted above. The difference in these recent protests is that some conservatives (often evangelicals) seem intent upon focusing on other issues so as to bypass the heart of the matter.

It’s worth addressing their argument.

Even as evidence of violence and prejudice mounts and the pleas from their brothers and sisters of color intensify, their social media feeds instead focus on the riots and looting. Tying the protests and riots together, some are trying to dismiss the former by way of the latter.

Here’s the challenge: You can simultaneously speak out against systemic racism and looting and violence. Evangelicals sometimes struggle with the former but demand the latter. Followers of Jesus must do both.

Faith Leaders March

The faith leaders I marched with for justice in Chicago modeled this duality. Walking through the streets, they called out victims by name while proclaiming that black lives do matter.

I’m aware of concerns surrounding the BLM movement (and have published about those concerns here) but that doesn’t negate the significance of the phrase. We should be ashamed we have reached a place where so many in the African American community believe their lives do not matter to us. Regardless of politics, it marks a tragic failure on our part to live out scripture’s imperative to be known for our love.

Moreover, as we marched through Bronzeville for justice and fairness, leaders of that condemned the destructiveness of rioting and looting not only on the goals of the protest but in the very communities we were trying shine lights upon.

No Christian affirms a violent riot but this is the straw man some are using. Yet consider how this same tactic is used against us when applied to other protests. When extremists bomb an abortion clinic and kill an abortion doctor, we are defensive when others try to use the incident to tar the entire pro-life movement. Even as we join in condemning this violence as antithetical to the movement, it can quickly become a talking point to label the movement as violent, hypocritical, and self-defeating.

As we ask for others to avoid straw man tactics to silence our protests, we must resist the same temptation to silence others.

Behind the Protesting

One of the disappointing facts of debates over the nature of protests is that the underlying message can get lost. Yet the reality is that the act of protesting itself is not the issue. Indeed, for too many, focusing on the protests can often be a smokescreen to avoid dealing with the harsh reality.

Instead, we get endless debates of protesting the right way. If only African Americans (and others seeking justice) would protest the right way, then we would understand and deal with the problem, we hear. Well, I can’t think of a righter way than a peaceful protest walking through Bronzeville in a march led by African American pastors.

It must not be lost that so many of these marches are saturated in the gospel and lead by gospel ministers. Indeed, David Neff reminds us that one of the most prominent civil rights song, "We Shall Overcome," was adapted by Peter Seeger from Louise Shropshire's "If My Jesus Wills (I'll Overcome)." That so many white people see only the looting fringe and not their brothers and sisters in Christ speaks to centuries of oppression must be bridged.

It's my hope and prayer that the church today will be building bridges rather than burning them. Otherwise, something far worse than property will be destroyed.

Standing and Marching for Lives that Matter

For me, I stand with the unborn who’ve been ignored. It’s interesting to see so many throw that back up on social media to me, yet I wonder if they’ve joined us at the national March for Life or even the Chicago march.

Many people have tweeted back at me mentioning abortion in the last couple weeks. I’m glad that are concerned for the innocent unborn. I’ve not tweeted back to ask how many have joined us for such marches for life. Tweets are easy— action is hard. I hope they will.

I assure you, it was pretty cold in Chicago when I spoke at that Chicago march. And yet, I saw Anglican Bishop Stewart Ruch there. And I saw him again this week. I tweeted, “I saw Anglican Bishop @StewartRuch at the faith leaders March on Tuesday AND we regularly see one another at pro-life marches. I love his consistency.”

This weekend, many of your African American brothers and sisters need to know you care. I was invited first by James Meeks—Meeks is an evangelical pastor who is a trustee of Moody Bible Institute and grad student in our Wheaton College graduate program. How could I not stand by my brother in Christ when he asked me to stand with him against injustice and stand by him in his community’s pain.

I was surprised that James Meeks insisted I join him at the front of the march—that’s me at the middle holing the Y and James holding the D. (It’s blurry in the article picture at the top, but here we are together—and I am glad to be by his side.)

I did not want to be up front, but he and Charlie Dates explained to me that it is important that white allies be present and evident. So I listened to them.

Lots of evangelical pastors where there that day, and I was glad to be a part of it. You might consider joining such a peaceful event in your own area this weekend yourself, because protesting is what we Protestants have been doing since day one.

Don’t let the fringe voices on Twitter keep you from standing for justice with your neighbor.

You already probably knew that the unborn need your voice. Well, so do your African American brothers and sisters who have been born into a world where they wonder if their lives really do matter.










Endnotes

[1] Carl F. H. Henry, A Plea for Evangelical Demonstration (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1971), 13.

[2] Peter Goodwin Heltzel, Jesus and Justice: Evangelicals, Race, and American Politics, 86.

Ed Stetzer is executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, serves as a dean at Wheaton College, and publishes church leadership resources through Mission Group. The Exchange Team contributed to this article.

https://www.christianitytoday.com/pastors/2020/spring/preach-double-edged-sermon.html







Preach a Double-Edged Sermon










The message you prepare for your congregation is also meant for you.


A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul. And he that doth not feed on and thrive in the digestion of the food which he provides for others will scarce make it savoury unto them; yea, he knows not but that the food he hath provided may be poison, unless he have really tasted of it himself. If the word doth not dwell with power in us, it will not pass with power from us.
— John Owen, from The True Nature of a Gospel Church and Its Government

When I graduated from seminary, I braced myself for the worst. I had heard my fair share of ministry horror stories, but, to my surprise, ministry in my first pastorate was a joy. Eager to apply all I had learned, I was busy and active in the church: teaching Sunday school, orchestrating Awana, reforming the church’s finances, and so on.

But the real surprise came not at potlucks, men’s breakfasts, or other church activities; it came in the quiet recesses of my study. As I prepared sermon after sermon, I began to notice that my messages moved beyond people’s heads and penetrated their hearts most often when those messages had first taken root within my own soul. My congregation could tell the difference, and, in time, so could I.

I began to learn from experience that an accurate or well-researched sermon was a long way off from a sermon I had wrestled with, wept over, and carried into the pulpit like a fire that could not be put out. I first had to do the internal work of preaching my sermon to myself before I preached it to my people. It was 17th-century Puritan John Owen who first said, “A man preacheth that sermon only well unto others which preacheth itself in his own soul.” Owen was an influential leader in his time, writing theological texts, serving as Oliver Cromwell’s personal chaplain, and delivering sermons before the British Parliament. But Owen not only preached on England’s national stage; he also pastored local congregations.

Owen is a model to preachers today for many reasons: his gifted rhetoric, his insight into the biblical text, and his ability to move from theological mountaintops to the common terrain of the average Christian. But what sets him apart as an influence in my own ministry is his recognition that his first duty as a pastor was to feed his flock the Word—and to do so, he first had to feed himself.

The importance of preaching the Word to oneself was a topic Owen returned to frequently. In an ordination sermon called “The Duty of a Pastor,” he preached from Jeremiah 3:15: “And I will give you pastors according to mine heart, which shall feed you with knowledge and understanding” (KJV). With all his emphasis on the importance of feeding the flock through proclaiming the Scriptures, Owen stressed the absolute impossibility of this task if pastors do not begin with themselves. Owen observed, “We must labour ourselves to have a thorough knowledge of these mysteries, or we shall be useless to a great part of the church.”

If we enter the pulpit without our souls first having been transformed by the very gospel we intend to share, we will not help our congregations. In fact, we may do harm to those we intend to serve. Owen went so far as to compare messages that hadn’t moved the preacher to “poison,” for unless a pastor “finds the power of it in his own heart, he cannot have any ground of confidence that it will have power in the hearts of others.”

I admit, this is easier said than done. Not every sermon will feel like a fire that cannot be put out. Not every sermon will come from the heart or at least feel like it’s from the heart. I am the first to confess that some Sundays the Word of God hasn’t penetrated my heart as I intended. Perhaps it’s sin. Perhaps it’s distraction. Or perhaps it’s just plain fatigue.

Further, your sermons will not always affect your people in the same way they have affected you. Perhaps that’s due to the people’s sin. Perhaps they are distracted. Or perhaps they, too, are fatigued.

Owen’s prescription for this pastoral reality is not a quick-fix pill; it is a routine, a habit of ministry life. It is the internal work that happens far away from the external actions of ministry: church events, committee meetings, upfront teaching, and leadership. It is a habit that takes time, practice, and, most of all, the grace and power of the Holy Spirit working in and through the Word in our lives over the long haul. Just as nothing aids a Christian’s growth like a lifetime of formation under the preached Word, so too nothing can be substituted for a lifetime of exhortation to one’s own soul.

To truly receive this exhortation week in and week out, we preachers must intentionally become receivers. We must choose to listen attentively and patiently to the Word and the Spirit. Owen knew that, which is why he finished his ordination sermon by reminding his new ordinand that prayer is the pastor’s best friend. Every pastor is to cultivate what Owen calls a “spirit of prayer.”

But the prayer that fills the pastor’s study during sermon preparation is not for the pastor alone. Rather, Owen taught, the pastor is to pray for the congregation. “The more we pray for our people,” said Owen, “the better shall we be instructed what to preach to them.” How right Owen is. As I look back on my years in pastoral ministry, the sermons that flew off the runway with the greatest conviction were those paved with prayers not only for myself but especially for my people.

Pastor, preach the sermon before the sermon. Preach to yourself. Prayerfully receive the instruction and conviction that comes from the Word of God. Then preach to your people. And perhaps, over a lifetime of ministry, your people will be transformed alongside you.












Matthew Barrett is associate professor of Christian theology at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, executive editor of Credo Magazine, and host of Credo Podcast. His most recent book is None Greater: The Undomesticated Attributes of God(Baker Books).

https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2020/june-web-only/george-floyd-racism-justice-god-who-conquered-death.html







I Have Only One Hope for Racial Justice: A God Who Conquered Death










Christians coming to terms with racism need to be re-enchanted by the Resurrection.


The entire globe is convulsing with social unrest and protests. Almost every day, I wake up to an endless stream of news that tempts me to despair. I look at the persistent racism and systemic oppression that mars our society, and I see no hope that things will change. I see political leaders failing to unify and not divide the country, and my trust in the system falters. I look at a church that so often views everything through the lens of a particular political party and not the gospel, and I feel downcast.

I take some small comfort in knowing that white Christians are stepping up to participate in public protests, analyze their organizations, and make room for change. But nonetheless, I’m still left with questions: Are black Christians seeing a momentary spike in sympathy, or is something deeper at work? Is a significant segment of the white evangelical church ready to join the fight for justice, or will the coming weeks and months see a return to the status quo? What will happen when there isn’t a steady stream of videos showcasing the undeniable face of black suffering?

There is an even more urgent question than whether white evangelicals participate in this movement. Our ultimate aim is not to secure allies; it is to secure freedom. With that in mind, can we really hope to slay or at least deeply wound the monster of racism that is so deeply imbedded in American culture?

In the context of this question, I sometimes go looking and praying for a sign. I need some signal that God has not abandoned us to human vice, that it is possible, in the words of Samwise Gamgee, for “everything sad … to come untrue.” I want to find room for hope when the reasons for it seem in short supply.

Where does my hope come from? Not from the usual places. Not from the fact that we’ve added more faces to our marches. My trust goes much deeper—to the Resurrection, and the way in which it reconfigures our spiritual imagination. God has a long history of giving his people a belief in the seemingly impossible.

Scripture reminds me of this story.

In the Gospels, the Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign that they might trust him. Instead of some trick or miracle that might comfort them in the moment, Jesus points toward something greater. He says to them, “For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matt. 12:40).

When the disciples on the road to Emmaus say, “We had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel,” Jesus reminds them that it is necessary for the Messiah to “suffer these things and then enter his glory” (Luke 24:21, 26).

In both responses, Jesus points to the Resurrection. He knows that what his people need is not some small signal of God’s presence that can be dismissed as a coincidence. What we need is a sign of his victory. The feeding of the 5,000 or the walking on water is great, but if it can all be unraveled by death, then what is the point? If the Roman Empire has the ability to stop Jesus, then what is to keep the current empires from stopping us?

We need a hope big enough to overcome death itself. The Resurrection, then, is not a mere sign. It is a hermeneutical key that unlocks the mystery of God’s purposes. It is the power that overcomes principalities.

As I survey the history of race relations in America, I see this truth in play.

My ancestors knew that, in order to secure their freedom, slavery had to bend to the will of God and be destroyed. They knew that the Jim Crow era, despite its oppression, was not more comprehensive in its power than the Resurrection. We introduced Jim and Jane Crow to a Resurrection-empowered hope, and the civil rights movement was born. Similarly, what evidence do we have that today’s racial divisions can be defeated and that our societal sickness is not unto death? Our answer is the same: the empty tomb and the risen Christ.

Instead of looking for more signs, we need to be re-enchanted by the Resurrection. Instead of looking at the problems facing the church and the world through the lens of our Twitter feeds, we need to remember that Christ is risen and rules over all. His power applies to all of our enigmas. Racism and systemic oppression are not more difficult to overcome than death. And our hope for a transformed society comes directly from the risen Lord.

Let me be clear. This doesn’t mean that God is our genie and that we can rush into any arena assuming that he will rescue us from any folly or grant every request. It doesn’t mean that Christians can never feel discouragement. Here’s what it means: Our limited imaginations do not form the boundaries of what God can do. Humans have limited power; we can maim and kill or be killed. We can make promises of social unity that we often lack the power to actualize. But a God who has defeated death—and called to himself a people who understand the full scope of his victory—is unstoppable.

That belief in an unstoppable God is precisely what made the early church so difficult to control. It made them dangerous.

After the birth of the church, “Christians became a nation within a nation, a new oikoumene or universal commonwealth that spanned the known world, crossing traditional cultural barriers,” writes Gerald L. Sittser, author of Resilient Faith: How the Early Christian “Third Way” Changed the World. “Their primary loyalty was to fellow believers, not nation or race or tribe or party or class.”

How do we regain that vision today? How do we claim a resurrected Christ as our reason for hope?

I must confess that much of my life has been spent doubting the Resurrection. I don’t question whether it occurred—I am convinced that the tomb remains empty. But I do often wonder whether the world is truly a different place. Things seems to go on as they always have: The rich exploit the poor. Evil triumphs over good. Going low appears to be much more profitable than going high. Racism sweeps our land, and the weakest among us suffer the most.

As I watch the news these days, I see genuine expressions of sympathy for the black situation in America. But I don’t simply want people to feel sorry for us. I want freedom. And in my best moments, I remember where that hope for freedom resides. It resides in the God who conquered death. Although the full fruition of that freedom will not come on this side of heaven, nonetheless, I am not forbidden the beginnings of it here and now. By desiring freedom now, I am not turning America into the kingdom. I am demanding the right to live and love and work as a free black child of God.

The defeat of death is God’s great triumph. It reshapes the Christian imagination, forever obliterating the limits we place upon our Creator. As the protests press on, then, I pray today and every day that we remember the Resurrection, when the entire cosmos became something different. We have yet to realize the full scope of that change.











Esau McCaulley is a priest in the Anglican Church in North America, an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College, and the author of the forthcoming book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope (IVP Academic).

Speaking Out is Christianity Today’s guest opinion column and (unlike an editorial) does not necessarily represent the opinion of the publication.