Social Reconciliation

This picture is from the Iraq Study Group! Scary to "think".

These three men are making universal policy in regard to Iraq, yet none of them speak any dialect of Arabic, nor are any of them Iraqi, and I am only assuming, but I am probably confident that they do not have a firm grasp of Iraqi or Muslim history. How can we in the church learn from these three men? Hopefully, in many ways.

I haven't posted in a while, but it does not mean that I am not attempting to "think through"(Oh, the wonderful Enlightenment) various theologies and existential realities, which deeply affect the elite classes who already possess the means and wealth to be able to determine their destinies. In case you were wondering, my theology will not challenge what the dominant culture has always thought, because I still think that we should continue to build upon the foundation that those who have, should be given more, and if they are not given more, we should develop new ways by which they can gain more. We have continued to sustain the already existent systems through new theologies which have perpetuated the elite to travel and speak and teach, because as long as we are not developing ways by which those who have never had anything, will maybe have these same opportunities to participate in the social systems, we have to believe simply that, "Hard work pays!" This means that after all is said and done, we believe that humans either make "good or bad" personal choices and their lives reflect either of these choices. We in Seminary want to "have our cake and eat it too" because if poor humans are not gaining opportunities through what we are preaching, then are we simply preaching to the elite? Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that the German church was a "Bourgeois church", and has systematically pushed the poor and working class out and was full of the artisans and elite classes. If we had a board meeting in our church, would the faces around the table look the same as the one pictured above? If they do, then how the hell can we look down our noses at others, when we are doing the same thing?!

After all Jesus did say in Matthew 25:29, "For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. I love to proof-text, it always works out well for me. In this verse, Jesus meant the rich and powerful of course, because like us they valued "hard work" and the poor will have even what they have taken away from them, since having abundance is a sign of God's blessing and provision, based upon that hard work, right?

If Jesus was around today, oh wait, the resurrection of Jesus and the giving of the Spirit, means that the ministry of Christ is being brought forth in the earth today, right? Who would Jesus address in terms of people putting burdens on other people today? Those darn fundamentalists from the Bible Belt, those darn Dispensationalists, those darn patriarchal perpetrators of male dominance! Isn't fundamentalism developing doctrines, which we believe are "fundamental" to our faith, then promoting them universally? Aren't we all fundamentalists, then? If I do not hold any of the above mentioned gross distortions of theology, then I am safe from God's judgment, because of course Jesus doesn't mean me, he always means them, when he addressed the religious leaders, because I possess a theology of intelligence, a theology which promotes equality, (as long as I am the one promoting the so-called equality), but the point of this entire blog is to demonstrate that if we hold an elite theology, then we are perpetuating the system of inequality all over again, because without developing theology to address the past injustices in which theology was developed to maintain power and control over other people, how can we in Seminary look at anyone else and think we are "right and they are wrong". We who say, "But my theology which has come down through the generations and is a theology of tradition, and please never forget, "It is a theology of Northern Europe!" Can I get some whiteness, oops I mean witness." I actually had a professor at Fuller say, "I don't know why God chose to reveal theology to Europe, but that is what he did!"

When we look around our churches, I sometimes think that the people who maintain power and control in these churches are the same people who would have been powerful outside of the church, which scares me. I believe that we need to seriously deconstruct the fact that our churches and theologies are not developing us to care for others through service, to lay aside power, and participate with the reconciliation of people with opportunities which they have never had before. Wouldn't it be great to see the poor get educated through scholarships which churches provide, instead of building large buildings. Instead of adding a "Wing to the already large Library", we develop a program whereby poor students obtain opportunities to go to college, get free tutoring from graduate students, and this program is also integrated into the School of Theology and Psychology, so that these students and their families can receive free counseling. Just a thought.

Crime and Violence...

Crime and Violence....

A topic which makes us all wonder what we should do? The answer over the past two decades for most Americans and most Evangelical Christians for that matter has been to isolate ourselves further and further away from where we believe crime and violence will strike, yet we are seeing violence more and more in "our" neighborhoods and in "our" lives and it simply can not be ignored any longer. The LA Times will immediately label any and all violence as "gang related", as they again did this morning, when the LAPD shot and killed a "suspect" (key word), then the paper this morning labeled him as a "gang member". I am in no way justifying the fact that the suspect shot at officers, but the prevailing opinion is, "Kill the gang members and we will live in a safe city." The Christian community is silent about this phenomena of demonizing someone who was just killed, in order to justify the actions of the people who shot him. I know that the police have a difficult job as it was difficult when I did the job, but this labeling of people has to stop, because it makes the person into an object, not a subject who had a family, feelings, interests, and was created in God's image.
Through my studying of sociology, the labeling of people by dominant society has always happened, but we can not ignore the cities any longer.

William Julius Wilson, as sociologist at Harvard and previously The University of Chicago, has written a book entitled; When Work Disappears and has traced the lineage, post World War II, by detailing, a historical study into the economic collapse of inner city neighborhoods in the U.S., between 1950 and 1990, but focusing mainly on 1970-1990, in hopes of looking at ways to bring economic revitalization back to the inner city.

Wilson has detailed how, “outmigration” of higher income families, predominantly middle class and working class black families from ghetto neighborhoods into mainstream society, has caused a definitive disjunction of social cohesion in neighborhood, where people used to form social networks at church, community organizations, schools...after the working poor left, the unemployed poor where left to "fend for themselves." He also points to the fact that unemployed poor are slightly different from the working poor in these same neighborhoods, in that the working poor have greater opportunity to attain economic stability, whereas the unemployed remain trapped within a greater cycle of poverty. Once this “social buffer” between the unemployed poor and the working class poor was removed after the middle and working class families “out-migrate”, and social organizations which once gave structure to inner city life also disappeared, unemployment would continue to increase, through the enlargement of ghetto areas in cities, by people simply leaving those areas.

Statistically, this premise of “outmigration” had been developing through the years, post World War II, but culminated between 1970 and 1990. In the years after WWII the federal government had “redlined” mortgages for homeowners in certain inner city neighborhoods, but favored mortgages for suburban neighborhoods, attracting families to leave the inner cities in favor of the suburbs. “It trapped mainly blacks and certain European immigrants in the inner cities.” The suburbs had greater use of land at this time, therefore many suburban planners made use of lenient zoning restrictions, through “tract housing”, making it difficult for “inner city racial minorities to penetrate.”

How then do we as Christians created jobs, or how do we reconcile the marginalized with the opportunities afforded to the rest of us? This is a difficult question, which I am wanting study and know in a deeper way. The above mentioned statements from Wilson's book was a paper which I wrote at Fuller Seminary about the economic revitalization of cities and how jobs need to be created in cities allowing people opportunities to work. God Bless.