Reading Robert Reich, a “Wee Little Man”

“Zacchaeus Was a Wee Little Man” is a children’s song that those of us who grew up going to Sunday School sang and taught our children to sing. This blog post is about Robert Reich, who is a contemporary “wee little man” and also one of the most articulate political pundits in the U.S. today. (Note that he pronounces his name Rike, rhyming with bike and like.) 

Reich with Clinton in the 1990s

Robert Bernard Reich is a political economist, professor, author, and commentator who served as U.S. Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton (1993~97) and also served in the Ford and Carter administrations. He was named by Time magazine as one of the ten most effective cabinet members of the 20^th century. Next week (on June 24), he will celebrate his 80^th birthday. 

Reich was born with multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, also known as Fairbank’s disease. That is a rare genetic disorder that affects bone growth and results in short stature. Reich stands 4 feet 11 inches tall, so he is 9 or 10 inches shorter than the average White U.S. male of the same age.

As Reich himself explained to NPR in 2023, his shortness is a kind of deformity in which the cartilage at the end of one’s bones that normally adds additional bone during growth simply doesn’t do its job. But that deformity didn’t keep him from doing his job as a professor at Harvard (1981~92), Brandeis (1997~2005), and the University of California, Berkeley, from 2006 to 2023.

Last year Reich published Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, referring both to his stature and to a country that he thinks has fallen short of its ideals.

Every day, I read four political pundits, the posts by Heather Cox Richardson, Reich, Joyce Vance, and Paul Krugman. Richardson usually posts after midnight, so I read her early every morning. Reich usually posts at least once every day, and I generally read one of his articles daily before noon also.  

I don’t know why it is, but so many public intellectuals, such as the ones just mentioned except for Richardson, are Jewish by heritage and identity but not by religious observance. This is clearly the case with Reich. His essays often echo the Hebrew Bible’s twin imperatives of justice and righteousness, such as those found in Isaiah 1:17 and Amos 5:24.

I find the posts by the scholars/commentators just mentioned are more beneficial than the curated articles in The New York Times and/or The Washington Post, of which I have cancelled my subscription as I no longer want to read a newspaper with a billionaire determining its editorial content.

In addition to reading Richardson’s daily newsletters, I also encourage you to read Reich’s Substack posts, which are also available at no charge. As one who is no longer receiving a paycheck from some institution, Reich can (and does) say what he thinks is most important, letting the chips fall where they may. Even though he is a “wee little man,” he certainly stands tall.

Reich’s June 16 Substack post is especially noteworthy. It is titled “Friendly advice I refuse to take.” (I encourage you to click on the link and read the entire article.) Next Wednesday will be Reich’s 80^th birthday, and the “friendly advice” was from an old friend of about the same age. Reich said he “lost it” when his friend told him, “You’ve got to slow down.”

The “wee little man” retorted, “We’re in a national emergency!” So, “That’s exactly why I’m not slowing down!” He goes on to say, “I’m doing what I do because—and as long as—I’m still able to.”

I am about eight years older than Reich, and to be honest, I am thinking about “retiring” in two years when I turn 90. But that is not definite at this point. Maybe I will keep on doing what I am doing, which is mainly writing three blog articles each month, as long as I’m still able to do so.

Gordon Cosby (1918~2013), the co-founder of the Church of the Saviour in Washington, D.C., was widely regarded as one of the most influential pastors of the 20^th century. He is quoted as saying that “a minister never retires; we are simply reassigned to new forms of service.”

For Cosby, vocation was never a job description but a lifelong posture of availability—an openness to whatever work love requires next. Even in his nineties, long after most clergy had stepped away from public ministry, Cosby kept showing up in small, quiet ways: listening, blessing, encouraging, and standing with those on the margins.

So, like Cosby did and Reich is seeking to do, I want to keep on seeking to do good and trying to write well for as long as I am able.

[Note: Research and writing assistance was provided by Claude (Anthropic) A.I.]

A Model for Christians: In Fond Memory of Ron Sider

You may find it hard to believe, but I once was a member of the KKK. Well, not that KKK. Not long after moving to Fukuoka City on the Japanese island of Kyushu, I became a member of the Kyushu Kenkyu Kai (kenkyu = study; kai = meeting).*

A little over ten years later, our KKK’s monthly meeting discussed Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger (1977). That was my introduction to author Ron Sider, and I was one of his many admirers who was saddened by his sudden death in July. 

Ron Sider (1939~2022) in 2019

Ronald James Sider was born in Canada on Sept. 17, 1939. Following the completion of his Ph.D. studies at Yale in 1969, Sider took a position teaching at Messiah College’s Philadelphia campus and then in 1977 became a professor at what is now Eastern University’s Palmer Theological Seminary.

Sider was an Anabaptist, reared in the Brethren in Christ Church in Canada. He was ordained to the Christian ministry by both that Church and by the Mennonites.

Sider had a long and fruitful career as a professor, author, and activist. He published over 30 books and wrote over 100 articles for both religious and secular magazines.

By far, his most widely-read book was Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger. Hailed by Christianity Today as one of the one hundred most influential books in religion in the 20^th century, it has sold over 400,000 copies in nine languages.

Ron Sider was “a model for an evangelical Christianity committed to social justice.” That is how Tish Harrison Warren, an Anglican priest, describes Sider in her Aug. 7 New York Times opinion piece. I heartily agree.

When he was still 34 years old and before moving to Eastern, in 1973 Sider helped convene a group of evangelical Christians in Chicago. They issued “The Chicago Declaration of Evangelical Social Concern.”

Writing about that document in 2012, one author explained that “Sider and his colleagues condemned American militarism, sexism, economic injustice, and President Nixon’s ‘lust for and abuse of power.’”** (Sider and his fellow evangelicals then were quite different from many evangelicals today.)

It was because of “The Chicago Declaration,” which in addition to Sider was signed by over 50 progressive evangelicals, including Art Gish and Jim Wallis as well as James Dunn and Foy Valentine, two Southern Baptists I highly respected, that I was able to long self-identify as an evangelical.

Then, under Sider’s leadership, “The Chicago Declaration” became the founding document for Evangelicals for Social Action, a progressive group organized in 1978. (In 2020 the ESA changed their name to Christians for Social Action.)

I did not agree with all of Sider’s positions, such as his unwavering anti-abortion stance. Nevertheless, I appreciate the emphasis he made in his 1987 book titled Completely Pro-Life: Building a Consistent Stance on Abortion, the Family, Nuclear Weapons, the Poor.

Despite some disagreements, Sider was clearly a model for Christians, especially for those in the evangelical tradition, who take the teachings of Jesus seriously.

Ron Sider was an active Christian model into his 80s. In 2020, his succinct book Speak Your Peace: What the Bible Says about Loving Our Enemies articulated his Anabaptist understanding of Christianity and summarized the biblical case for pacifism and active nonviolence.

Also in 2020, Sider was the editor of The Spiritual Danger of Donald Trump: 30 Evangelical Christians on Justice, Truth, and Moral Integrity. In addition to the Introduction and Afterword, he also authored chapters 8 and 11 of that book.

His last blog post, a 900-word article titled “Advance Both Religious Liberty and LGBTQ Civil Rights,” was made on May 29 before his death of cardiac arrest on July 27.

So, I post this in fond memory of Ron Sider, who as Warren wrote “helped birth a movement and blaze a trail. And though at times it seems that trail has been hidden under Christian political partisanship . . . many Christians are still trying to walk the narrow path he left behind him.”

Thank God for faithful Christian scholars and disciples such as Ron Sider!

_____

* One of my first blog posts, made here on 7/21/09, was titled “James Cone at a KKK Meeting.” Up to this point, there have been only 24 pageviews of it, but many of you would find that brief post about the black liberation theologian to be of interest.

** The words are from Asbury University professor David Swartz’s book  Moral Minority: The Evangelical Left in an Age of Conservatism (2012, 2014).

What about the Pledge of Allegiance—and Its Author?

Perhaps few of you know the name Francis Bellamy, but all of you USAmericans know well the Pledge of Allegiance, which he wrote in 1892. Bellamy died 90 years ago on August 28. 

Bellamy’s Beliefs

Francis Bellamy was born in May 1855, the son of a Baptist minister in New York. After graduating from the University of Rochester and further study at Rochester Theological Seminary, in 1879 Francis was ordained as a minister and became pastor of First Baptist Church of Little Falls, New York.

Before his 30^th birthday, Bellamy moved to Boston, becoming pastor of Dearborn Street Baptist Church. After serving five years there, in 1890 he accepted a call to Boston’s Bethany Baptist Church. But the next year, under pressure, he resigned from that pastorate and left the ministry.

There was tension in the church because of Pastor Bellamy’s political views. In 1889 the Society of Christian Socialists was founded in Boston, and Bellamy was elected to serve as the Society’s vice president. He also wrote for their newspaper, The Dawn.

In the May 1890 issue of that paper, Bellamy urged pastors to become Christian Socialists, defining Christian socialism as “the science of the Golden Rule applied to economic relations.”**

It must be noted that the last decades of the 19^th century was the time of the “robber barons,” a pejorative term typically applied to businessmen who used abusive practices to amass their wealth.” It was a time of bad working conditions for many, child labor, and other exploitative practices.

Provisions such as Social Security and laws restricting the employment and abuse of child workers were not enacted until the 1930s, after Bellamy’s death—but had he lived a few years longer, he no doubt would have been delighted with such “socialistic” advances.

Bellamy’s Pledge

After leaving the pastorate, Bellamy took a job with Youth’s Companion, a Boston-based family magazine with half a million subscribers.

As part of the promotion of the World’s Columbian Exposition to be held in October 1892 in commemoration of the 400^th anniversary of Columbus reaching the Americas—and to bolster the schoolhouse flag movement that Youth’s Companion fervently supported, Bellamy wrote this pledge:

I pledge Allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all.

Over thirty years later, my flag was changed to the flag of the United States of America. That change was made largely to make it clear to immigrant children what flag they were saluting.

The words under God were not added until 1954, sixty-two years after the Pledge was written by an ordained minister without those words. As Baptist historian (and Thinking Friend) Bruce Gourley has explained, Bellamy’s text “intentionally reflected the Baptist heritage of church-state separation.”

Bellamy’s Pledge Now

As I have written previously, as a Christian I am not a fan of any Pledge of Allegiance to a flag or a nation. (You can read what I wrote about that in my 7/5/14 blog post, which has had nearly 1,200 “pageviews.”)

Apart from that, how can we USAmericans affirm that our country is “indivisible.” There seems to be greater polarity (political divisiveness) now than at any time since the Civil War, which ended 27 years before Bellamy wrote the Pledge.

Inexplicably, last week all 212 Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives voted against the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act legislation.

So, not only is there great division among lawmakers, there also seems to be opposition to providing “Liberty and Justice for all.” Among other things, liberty and justice for all surely must make it possible for full voting rights for all citizens.

_____

** Content in the last two paragraphs was taken from Brian Kaylor, “The Baptist Socialist Who Left God Out of the Pledge” (Word&Way, Aug. 24, 2020). 

A Combative and Compassionate “Lily”: The Life of Yuri Kochiyama

Rarely am I moved to tears while watching a movie, but recently seeing Come See the Paradise (1990) brought tears to my eyes, especially when the Kawamura family, including their lovely daughter Lily (who was married to an Irish American), was sent to an internment camp.

I couldn’t help but think about that touching movie when reflecting on the life of Yuri Kochiyama, the real-life woman who, like Lily, was born in California to immigrants from Japan—and yuri is the Japanese word for lily. 

The Crux of “Lily’s” Life

Perhaps few of you have heard of Yuri, the remarkable Japanese American “Lily” born 100 years ago, but hers is an interesting story and one worthy of thoughtful consideration.

On May 19, 1921, Seiichi and Tsuyako Nakahara became the parents of twins, a boy and a girl they named Mary Yuriko. They lived in a relatively affluent White neighborhood, and as a youth Mary attended a Christian church and taught Sunday school classes.

But things drastically changed on December 7 when Mary was 20. Her father, just home from the hospital, was arrested by FBI agents. He died the next month. Shortly after that, Pres. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066 and Mary and her family were sent to an internment camp in Arkansas.

Max Garrott, my friend and esteemed missionary sempai (older colleague) was forced to leave Japan in 1942 and served for a time as a chaplain at the Japanese internment camps in Arkansas. During Passion Week and Easter in 1944, Dr. Garrott preached at the camp where Mary Yuriko was interned.

Perhaps she heard him preach or lead Bible study that week as she continued to be an active Christian even while incarcerated in the Jerome, Arkansas, camp.

While there, she met her future husband, Bill Kochiyama, a nisei (second-generation Japanese American) soldier fighting for the United States. The couple married in 1946 and moved to New York City two years later. There she became widely known as Yuri Kochiyama.

Yuri (“Lily”) died seven years ago, on June 1, 2014, at the age of 93.

The Combative “Lily”

After moving to New York and into public housing there, for the rest of her life Yuri Kochiyama was an activist. She became an outspoken and combative critic of the mistreatment not only of Japanese Americans but of other mistreated minorities living in the U.S.

In 1963 she met Malcomb X and became a combative supporter of his work for racial justice and human rights. When he was assassinated in 1965, the picture of the fallen Black leader in Life magazine shows Yuri crouched in the background, cradling his head.

During the 1960s, Yuri also became a contentious critic of the war in Vietnam and then for decades of what she saw as American “imperialism.”

The Compassionate “Lily”

Five days after her death in June 2014, the White House honored Kochiyama on its website:

Today, we honor the legacy of Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American activist who dedicated her life to the pursuit of social justice, not only for the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community, but all communities of color.

That was an appropriate recognition for the combative and compassionate “Lily.”

Five years ago on what would have been her 95^th birthday, a Google Doodle, which was both praised and criticized, said this about Yuri:

Kochiyama left a legacy of advocacy: for peace, U.S. political prisoners, nuclear disarmament, and reparations for Japanese Americans interned during the war. She was known for her tireless intensity and compassion, and remained committed to speaking out, consciousness-raising, and taking action until her death in 2014.

Here is one of “Lily” Kochiyama’s most quoted statements: 

While we may not agree with all the people and causes Yuri Kochiyama supported, can’t we at least appreciate these words of hers?

_______

** Yuri Kochiyama’s contentious and compassionate life’s work seems to be getting more and more recognition. 

A children’s book titled Rad American Women A – Z was published in 2015, and Yuri was the Y for the 26 women written about in that book.

In 2019 a book was published under the title Can I Get a Witness?: Thirteen Peacemakers, Community-Builders, and Agitators for Faith and Justice. The third chapter, following essays about Cesar Chavez and Howard Thurman, is titled “Setting the Captives Free: Yuri Kochiyama and Her Lifelong Fight against Unjust Imprisonment.”

Needed: Justice, Not (Just) Friendship or Even Money

Just as in 1968, racial tension in the U.S. has been rampant these last few months in 2020, and, again, just like back then, one presidential candidate is calling for LAW AND ORDER. But what is the most pressing need for People of Color, and how can the current unrest best be addressed?  

Are Reparations the Answer?

There have been strong calls by some for the U.S. government to provide reparations to the descendants of Black people who were formerly enslaved. In his long, oft-cited June 2014 piece in The Atlantic, Ta-Nehisi Coates makes a strong appeal for reparations.

If it could have been arranged, this month would have been a fitting time for reparations to be paid, for it was 170 years ago on September 18, 1850, that the Fugitive Slave Act was passed by the U.S. Congress, making the enslavement of Blacks in the South even more secure—and more odious.

Harriet Tubman escaped slavery in 1849, but then her daring work freeing other slaves by means of the Underground Railroad was made even more dangerous and challenging after the Fugitive Slave Act took effect the next year.

But there are many problems with reparations: how could it be satisfactorily determined who is eligible for reparations after all these years, and how could adequate funding be provided? With the massive expenditures on covid-19 relief this year, there is no possibility of funding being provided now, even if there were the will to do so.

Reparations are most likely not the answer to the problem of racial unrest in this country for the foreseeable future—or ever.

Is Friendship the Answer?

There has been much talk over the last sixty years about the need for racial reconciliation and for eliminating the segregation of Blacks and whites.

Near the beginning of “A Segregated Church or a Beloved Community,” the sixth chapter in his 2016 book America’s Original Sin, Jim Wallis recounts how in the 1950s Martin Luther King, Jr., sadly said, “I am [ashamed] and appalled that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in Christian America.”

Then Wallis went on to lament that still now “the racial segregation of US churches is nothing short of scandalous and sinful” (Kindle ed., pp. 97, 98).

While I strongly believe that churches should never be segregated because of unwillingness to accept people of different races/ethnicities and have long regretted not being a part of a church here in the U.S. with a significant number of People of Color, I now think that integration is not the primary goal we whites should seek.

Last month, Jennifer Harvey, a religion professor at Drake University in Iowa, wrote a powerful opinion piece for CNN. While her piece was largely in support of reparations, I was struck by her disparagement of all the work that has been done for “racial reconciliation” and the emphasis in recent years on “diversity and inclusion.”

Harvey insists that “we need to be clear that friendships are never a substitute for justice.”

Thus, while definitely important, friendship/reconciliation is not the primary answer to the problem of racial unrest abroad in the land.

The Need for Justice/Equity

In her highly acclaimed book Caste (2020), Isabel Wilkerson writes, “We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago. But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today” (p. 387).

Accordingly, rather than focusing on reparations for the past, what is needed most now is the creation of a more just, equitable society.

If we whites want to help People of Color (PoC) have better lives in this still-racist society, we need to focus most on legislation and law enforcement that, among other things, combats police brutality against PoC; corrects the inequities in the prison justice system; and eliminates discrimination in housing and discriminatory finance charges for both houses and cars.

To do this we can support various nationwide organizations, such as the ACLU, for example, which urges us to Demand Justice Now.

Is the Pope a “Social Justice Jackass”?

Last month I wrote about Breitbart News referring to Rev. William Barber II as a “social justice jackass.” I thought that was pretty bad. But now Breitbart has even used that inelegant label for Pope Francis!  

The Pope’s Position

Breitbart’s complaint (on 9/19) against the Pope was because of his call for the abolition of life imprisonment. According to a 9/16 National Catholic Report article (here), two days earlier Pope Francis told an audience in St. Peter’s Square that “sentencing someone to life in prison without the possibility of parole is ‘not the solution to problems, but a problem to solve.’”

(Here is the link to that full address to penitentiary police and others.)

Actually, this has been Pope Francis’s position for quite some time. Five years ago, on 10/23/14, he called for the abolition of both the death penalty and life imprisonment. According to this Catholic News Service article, on that date he told representatives of the International Association of Penal Law, “Life imprisonment is a hidden death penalty.”

The Right’s Position

It seems quite clear that the political Right and the so-called Christian Right strongly support both capital punishment and life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for heinous crimes.

In the blog article planned for later this month, I will be writing about being fed up with Christian fundamentalism partly because of their view of capital punishment and two other issues. However, I don’t deal with the matter of life imprisonment in my book on fundamentalism, to which the upcoming blog article will be linked.

The position on both capital punishment and life imprisonment, though, seems to be the same: encouraging harsh retributive justice.

It has been said (here, for example) that there are four purposes of prison: retribution, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation. The author of this linked-to article explains: “Retribution means punishment for crimes against society. Depriving criminals of their freedom is a way of making them pay a debt to society for their crimes.”

According to Breitbart—and most likely most of those who read/support that far-right syndicated news, opinion and commentary website—opposition to strong retributive punishment invites one, even the Pope, to be labeled a “social justice jackass.”  

The Correct Position?

As many of you may not know, my college major was sociology. (I waited until seminary to study the Bible and Christian theology academically.) Criminology was one of the valuable courses I took in pursuit of that major, and it was in that course that I became convinced of the validity, and desirability, of indeterminant sentences.

Among other things, that means that there should never be such a thing as life sentences without the possibility of parole. And, certainly, capital punishment should never be condoned.

While there is some reason for sensible retribution, and more reason for prison used for incapacitation and deterrence, surely the most important purpose of prison is rehabilitation.

Admittedly, rehabilitation—and the proper evaluation of rehabilitation—is not at all easy. And incapacitation, the removal of criminals from society so that they can no longer harm innocent people, is of clear importance for the wellbeing of society in general.

Still, for example, aren’t there many young men (and maybe some women) who committed heinous crimes in the passion of their youthful impetuousness but who learn in ten, or twenty, years the shamefulness and senselessness of those crimes and who would never think of committing such crimes again?

Given the obstinacy of some few, lifetime imprisonment might be required for them. But for most, surely with proper attention given to rehabilitation, there can be an optimal time for release from prison.

So, no, Breitbart, I definitely do not think that Pope Francis is a “social justice jackass”—on this or many other social justice issues.

A Truth Decay Crisis

“Trump Doesn’t Give a Tweet about the Truth” was a title I thought about using for this article—but while it is partly about DJT, this article is more broadly about the crisis of truth-knowing and truth-telling in contemporary society.

Warnings about Truth Decay

Douglas Groothuis, an evangelical Christian, authored a book titled Truth Decay: Defending Christianity Against the Challenges of Postmodernism (2000). Having heard of that book soon after it was published, I thought it was a clever title and that it dealt with important issues.

Not surprisingly, The Social Construction of Reality (1966), the book I wrote about in my 7/25 blog article, is cited in Groothuis’s book. Among other things, postmodernism affirms that reality/truth is socially constructed, and Groothuis (b. 1957) sees that as a problem.

“Truth decay” is not just a concern of conservative Christian theologians, however. Increasingly, it is becoming a serious concern in society at large, particularly in the world of politics.

Early this year, RAND Corporation produced a 324-page report titled “Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life.”

To this point, I haven’t read but just a bit of the RAND report, but my impression is that it is an important study about a real crisis.

Warning about the Death of Truth

I have read the new book by long-time New York Times chief book critic Michiko Kakutani. Her book, released last month, is titled The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump. 

Early in her book, Kakutani (b. 1955) writes that DJT “lies so prolifically and with such velocity that The Washington Post calculated that he’d made 2,140 false or misleading claims during his first year in office” (p.13).

(Update: According to an Aug. 1 Washington Post article, as of July 31, DJT had publicly made 4,229 false or misleading claims.)

In her concluding chapter, Kakutani suggests that “Donald Trump is as much a symptom of the times as he is a dangerous catalyst” (p. 152).

Indeed, before the end of her Introduction, she calls attention to academics in the 1960s who were “promoting the gospel of post-modernism, which argued that there are no universal truths” (p. 18).

While she does not mention Berger and Luckmann, Kakutani decries “the post-Trump cultural landscape, where truth increasingly seems to be in the eye of the beholder, facts are fungible and socially constructed” (p. 43).

But the prevarication so prevalent in present-day society is a problem that cannot be explained simply as something produced by the theories of social construction and postmodernism.

While there are positive (and true!) aspects of social constructionism and postmodernism, there is nothing commendable about the willful telling of untruths for political purposes and/or personal gain.

Heeding the Warnings

Last week, I also read Preaching Truth in the Age of Alternative Facts (2018), a slim book (only 89 pages) by William Brosend, an Episcopal priest and seminary professor.

Consequently, one of many negative results of truth decay is the maintenance, or increase, of social injustice.

So, yes, it seems that DJT—and many of those who support him—abets truth decay by not caring a tweet about either truth or justice.

TTT #6 The Main Characteristic of the Kingdom of God is Shalom

If God’s desire is the realization of the kingdom of God, as I contended in the fifth chapter of Thirty True Things Everyone Needs to Know Now (TTT), there are ample grounds for claiming that the main characteristic of that kingdom is shalom.

What is Shalom?

The Hebrew word shalom, as seen below (and read from right to left), is popularly used as a greeting meaning hello or goodbye—as is the similar term salaam in Arabic. This is an excellent greeting when it includes the desire for all that is encompassed in the original concept of shalom.  

Shalom is generally translated peace, and it certainly means that—but it also includes the idea of harmony, justice, and well-being for all.

The harmony of shalom is all-embracing: it means the harmony of human beings with God (what has popularly been called peace with God), harmony of all individuals and all groups (communities, ethnic groups, and nations) with each other (what is usually referred to as world peace), and harmony among all parts of creation (which we might call ecological peace).

Two of the greatest twentieth-century advocates of shalom were Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. It is noteworthy that they were both assassinated; Jesus, the Prince of Peace, was also executed. Peacemakers are not always popular.

Seekers of shalom often are not appreciated by those who profit from an inequitable status quo; there are always some who enjoy the fruits of injustice. But shalom always requires justice and is possible only where justice is a present reality.

Shalom and Justice

Shalom means societal harmony, and such harmony is possible only where there is social justice, which is quite different from the common idea of punitive justice.

Social justice envisions a society where all the hungry are fed, all the sick are cared for, and everyone is treated with respect. Further, social justice requires that exploitation and all forms of prejudice and discrimination based on race, gender, ethnicity, class, religion, or sexual orientation be eradicated.

Social justice recognizes the inherent equality and worth of all persons. If everyone really has equal value, then there is insufficient justice if some people have too much food to eat while others are starving.

There is also inadequate justice if some people have luxurious houses or multiple dwellings while many people are homeless and living on the streets, sleeping under cardboard boxes.

The lack of justice often leads to violence and at times even to war. For that reason, one of the most important statements of a Pope in the twentieth century was made by Pope Paul VI on New Year’s Day in 1972: “If you want peace, work for justice.”

Probably everyone who hears those words wants peace. But here’s the rub: do we want peace bad enough to work actively for justice?

Waging Peace / Working for Shalom

In the previous chapter, I emphasized that people are called on to work for and also to wait for the coming of the kingdom of God. The same can be said about shalom, the chief characteristic of that kingdom.

Just as the kingdom of God is never going to be completely realized on this earth, at least not by human efforts, neither are we humans ever going to be able to create a world completely characterized by shalom. But that shouldn’t keep us from working earnestly to that end.

In Chapter Six of TTT (see here), I give examples of people/groups who are seeking to wage peace and who are working for shalom—and some examples of how some real progress has been made. 

Does the Old Testament Prophesy the Birth of Jesus?

Forty-five years ago on December 23, 1972, Abraham Joshua Heschel, the eminent Polish-born American rabbi, passed away at the age of 65. He was one of the leading Jewish theologians/philosophers of the 20^th century.

Heschel’s Brilliant Book

Although he was the author of several books, the most notable was The Prophets, published in 1962. That was when I was a financially poor seminary student. But along with Here I Stand, R. Bainton’s book on Luther, Heschel’s book was one of the very few non-textbooks that I bought. I thought then that it was a brilliant book—and I still do.

Recently I looked to see how Heschel interpreted the Old Testament prophecies of the birth of Jesus. I was quite surprised that in the 16-page “Index of Subjects and Names” there are only two brief references to Jesus—and one of those is in a footnote—and nothing listed for Messiah.

Christians, of course, see numerous Old Testament passages as prophecies of Jesus. (This website lists “353 Prophecies Fulfilled in Jesus Christ.”) But Heschel apparently didn’t think a single one of those were prophecies about Jesus. 

Heschel’s Passion for Justice

According to Heschel, one of the main characteristics of the Old Testament prophets was their passion for social justice. In the opening paragraphs of the first chapter of his book, he cites Amos 8:4-6 as an illustration of the prophets’ condemnation of injustice. Then his 11^th chapter is titled simply “Justice.”

Heschel identified with the OT prophets in many ways. In the 1960s, he marched for justice with Martin Luther King, Jr., and his daughter says that he was “close friends” with Christian justice-seekers such as Daniel and Philip Berrigan as well as with William Sloan Coffin when he was the Protestant chaplain at Yale.

Sadly, though, it seems that not only did Heschel not see the birth of Jesus as having been prophesied in the Old Testament, he apparently did not even consider Jesus a Jewish prophet—although Jesus self-identified with the words of the prophet Isaiah at the beginning of his public ministry (see Luke 4:16-21).

In his book How God Became King, N.T. Wright emphasizes that the “fulfillment of Israel’s story” is “in the story of the Messiah” (p. 112). That clearly seems to have been Jesus’ understanding, and it certainly was the early church’s understanding of Jesus. But that was not something Heschel could accept or affirm.

Heschel’s Fate?

In his book Sinners in the Hands of a Loving God, which I introduced (here) earlier this year, Brian Zahnd tells about sitting with his dying father, who could no longer communicate with him. On one occasion in that situation, BZ said he was reading Heschel’s book The Prophets—which I found most interesting.

BZ makes only positive statements about Heschel—such as, “Everything I’ve ever read from Heschel has shown him to be a thoroughly God-saturated soul.”

As he was leaving the hospital that particular night in 2009, though, this question “erupted from some fundamentalist outpost” in his brain: “Is Abraham Joshua Heschel in hell?” BZ concluded that such an idea was “irredeemably ludicrous” (pp. 118-120).

Because of his worldview/faith, Rabbi Heschel could not accept the core beliefs of his Christian friends—or of others who are followers of Jesus Christ, such as BZ or me. But even though he could not acknowledge Christ or the prophecies about him, we can accept/affirm him as one who truly believed in “the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Eph. 3:1).

In this Christmas season, may we all nurture a passion for justice such as Rabbi Heschel—and especially such as Jesus Christ—embraced.

Economic Justice for All

This month’s election was full of ironies. One was that many blue collar voters in the so-called Rust Belt were so worried about their stagnant, or disappearing, wages that they voted for a billionaire who has a history of mistreating workers to be their rescuer.

Another irony is that neither of the presidential candidates made much mention of a major problem in the U.S.: poverty and the lack of what some term “economic justice.” In spite of all that was said from both sides, there was little attention given to the worrisome conjoined twins in contemporary USAmerican society: racial injustice and economic injustice.

The Bishops’ Document

Ten years ago, Diana Hayes gave the annual Romero Lecture in Camden, New Jersey. The title of that significant talk was “The Color of Money: Racism and the Economy.”

Dr. Hayes is an outstanding person: she was the first African-American woman to earn a Pontifical Doctorate in Theology, and until her retirement in 2011 she was Professor of Systematic Theology at Georgetown University.

In her 2006 lecture, included in the book Romero’s Legacy (2007), Hayes introduced “Economic Justice for All: Catholic Social Teaching and the U.S. Economy,” a document the National Conference of Catholic Bishops adopted in November 1986.  

Ten years later the same Conference issued a new document: A Decade after Economic Justice. In the “Introduction” the bishops noted three nations in our midst: one “prospering and producing in a new information age,” one “squeezed by declining real incomes and global economic competition,” and the third “an American underclass.”

My guess is that in this month’s election a majority in the first nation voted for Clinton, a majority in the second nation voted for Trump, and a great many in the third nation didn’t vote at all.

Six moral principles

In the original document issued 30 years ago, the bishops set forth six moral principles—all of which still need to be considered conscientiously today:

Every economic decision and institution must be judged in light of whether it protects or undermines the dignity of the human person.

Human dignity can be realized and protected only in community.

All people have a right to participate in the economic life of society.

All members of society have a special obligation to the poor and vulnerable.

Human rights are the minimum conditions for life in community.

Society as a whole, acting through public and private institutions, has the moral responsibility to enhance human dignity and protect human rights.

Concerning the fifth principle, the bishops quoted Pope John XXIII, who stated that “all people have a right to life, food, clothing, shelter, rest, medical care, education, and employment.” The bishops then explained that this means that “when people are without a chance to earn a living, and must go hungry and homeless, they are being denied basic rights.”

A small step forward?

Given the problem of economic injustice in the nation, the lingering question is, What can be done?

Ten years ago Hayes averred that justice is not being done when a “million or so have slipped into poverty because of our refusal to raise the minimum wage” (p. 87). One presidential candidate did promise to reverse that refusal. Unfortunately, she lost.

Under the new President-elect and Republican Congress, raising the minimum wage doesn’t seem likely to happen, nationwide at least. However, in the Nov. 8 election voters in four states did approve raising the minimum wage—a small step in the right direction.

Then yesterday (Nov. 29) there were widespread strikes and rallies pushing for increasing the minimum wage—perhaps another small step forward in the struggle to create economic justice for all.

Confession: I Am a One-Issue Voter

Don’t be a one-issue voter! That is a common admonition made by people writing or talking about voting.

A one-issue voter, of course, is someone who feels so passionate about a single subject that they are willing to cast their vote based on a candidate’s stand on that issue alone.

For example . . .  

To give an example from long ago, my father was not a highly political person, but he self-identified as a Democrat. Nevertheless, he did not like Franklin Roosevelt. In 1936 my father turned 21 and voted for the first time—but he voted for Republican Alf Landon for one reason and one reason alone: prohibition.

Roosevelt was elected in 1932 partly on the basis of his promise to end prohibition—which did end in 1933. My father thought that was a mistake--and held it against Roosevelt in the 1936 election, and as far as I know in the following two elections as well. That is what it means to be a one-issue voter.

From what I hear, some people are going to vote against Hillary Clinton next Tuesday (or have already done so) mainly because of one issue: abortion. As I wrote in an earlier blog article, many conservative Christians will vote for Donald Trump primarily because they know Clinton will support abortion rights—and would appoint Supreme Court justices who would do the same.

“Pro-life” should mean far more than “anti-abortion,” but some think that voting in opposition to all abortion is more important than anything else when casting one’s ballot.

In my case . . .

But why do I now identify as a one-issue voter?

While working on the sermon I preached last Sunday (Oct. 30) at the Rosedale Congregational (UCC) Church (in Kansas City, Kan.) I decided that, alas, I am one.

I used the alternate Old Testament reading from the lectionary, Isaiah 1:10-18, and titled my sermon “Seek Justice,” taking those words from verse 17. 

In my sermon I also used one of the most important verses from the New Testament, which in one version is translated, “Seek ye therefore first the kingdom of God, and his justice, and all these things shall be added unto you.” (Douay-Rheims, 1582, 1899)

Writing about the Kingdom of God as God’s reign, Stephen C. Mott translates that verse, “First of all seek the Reign and its justice” (Biblical Ethics and Social Change, 1982, p. 104).

It was my reflection on this verse, and the emphasis on justice in Amos 5 as well as in Isaiah 1, that led me to the conclusion that the candidate (or Party) most aligned with justice should be the one I vote for.

What this means

First, it is important to note that justice in the Bible is most usually not about punitive (criminal) justice or about restorative justice, a rather new and important emphasis. In the Bible justice is usually what can be called “distributive justice” and is often, rightfully, called “social justice” and includes racial justice and economic justice, among other types.

Thus, voting on the one issue of justice means voting for candidates most likely to work against oppression of people because of race, class, or gender.

So, here’s how I plan to vote on Nov. 8—and how I urge you to vote if you haven’t already: I will vote for the candidates who seem most likely to oppose oppression in order for there to be justice for women, for people of color, for LGBT people, for economically poor people, for American Indians, and for immigrants. 

Celebrating World Communion Sunday

While some of you have no connection with, and perhaps little interest in, this topic, many Christians around the world will participate in a World Communion Sunday service on October 2. This is a yearly, and meaningful, observance of a great number of churches around the world.

Introducing WCS

World Communion Sunday (WCS) is widely observed each year on the first Sunday of October, largely for the purpose of promoting Christian unity and ecumenical cooperation.

WCS dates back to 1933 when Hugh T. Kerr, a Presbyterian pastor, began the observance. Three years later it was endorsed by Presbyterian churches across the country. Then in 1940, the Federal Council of Churches (now the National Council of Churches), endorsed WCS and began to promote it worldwide.

I can’t remember when I first heard of WCS, but it has been fairly recently. I certainly don’t remember hearing of it before going to Japan 50 years ago. Few Southern Baptist churches then, and I assume few SBC churches even now, were/are inclined to participate in such an observance. 

Romero’s Legacy

Catholics, of course, do not observe WCS either. But all Christians (and others) can learn valuable lessons from the life and legacy of El Salvadorian Catholic Archbishop Oscar Romero, who was assassinated while serving the Eucharist in 1980, and from people like John P. Hogan, who is the co-editor of a book about Romero’s legacy.

About a year ago I read the thought-provoking book co-edited by Hogan: Romero’s Legacy: The Call to Peace and Justice (2007). It contains the “Romero Lectures” presented in Camden, N.J., from 2001 through 2007.

Since reading “The Eucharist and Social Justice,” the 2002 Romero Lecture given by Hogan, I have planned to write this article. Today, a week before World Communion Sunday, seems to be a good time to post it.

In the lecture he gave, Hogan cited these words from St. Augustine: “We eat the body of Christ to become the body of Christ.” In the Catholic sense, as well as in the catholic sense, the body of Christ is worldwide and includes all who are followers of Jesus—including many who are poor and powerless.

Discerning the Body

Hogan went on to interpret the meaning of Paul’s warning about participating in Communion without discerning the body (see 1 Cor. 11:28-31) as not adequately seeing and understanding the needs of many within the worldwide church.

“We cannot claim to be . . . Christian, the body of Christ, and support structures and systems that keep people poor and powerless,” he said (p. 29). Communion, therefore, is not “an interior retreat,” a “spiritual” thing we do for our own edification. It is, rather, a call to solidarity with all segments of the universal Church—especially with those who are poor, marginalized, and mistreated.

So, for those of us who participate in World Communion Sunday next week—and I am happy now to be a member of a church that does observe WCS each year—let us remember with gratitude that we do so as part of a worldwide fellowship of believers in Jesus Christ.

But let’s remember not just the geographical meaning of this observance. Let’s also, and especially, remember those belonging to the body of Christ who are literally poor and lacking adequate food, those who are persecuted because of their Christian beliefs, those who are discriminated against (because of their skin color, their sexual orientation, or whatever), and all who suffer because of injustice.

May World Communion Sunday help us discern, and respond more adequately to, the needs in the worldwide body of Christ.

William Barber's Revival

Most of us who were Southern Baptists 50 years ago, and earlier, were very familiar with what were usually called revival meetings. Perhaps that was especially true in rural and small town churches, and it was probably much the same in several other denominations as well. 

In my boyhood and early ministry, “revivals” were primarily evangelistic meetings, although they also emphasized renewed Christian commitment among those who were already believers. An outside preacher was usually brought in for the revival services, which often lasted eight days and sometimes longer. 

“The Revival”

There is, however, a different sort of revival now taking place. It is a “national tour” being conducted under the name “The Revival: Time for a Moral Revolution of Values.” Currently, “The Revival” is scheduled for 20 stops between April 2016 and January 2017. It will be in Kansas City on Sept. 19, the 10th stop of the tour, and in Ferguson/Florissant, Missouri, on Sept. 27. 

(For those of you in the Kansas City area, here is the link to information about The Revival to be at St. James United Methodist Church next Mon. evening. For those of you not in or from the Kansas City area, St. James is the church where U.S. Representative Emanuel Cleaver II was the previous pastor and where Rep. Cleaver’s son serves as pastor now.)

The other speakers at The Revival are Traci Blackmon, pastor of Christ the King United Church in Christ in Florissant, Mo.; Simone Campbell of “Nuns on the Bus” fame; and James Forbes, emeritus pastor of the historic Riverside Church in New York City.

Rev. William Barber

Although Rev. William Barber, Jr., the leader of The Revival claims that it is neither Democratic nor Republican, liberal nor conservative, some of you likely saw him give a stirring 10-minute speech at the Democratic National Convention on July 28. (Here is the link to a YouTube video of that powerful talk.)

Since 1993 Barber (b. 1963) has been pastor of the Greenleaf Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Goldsboro, North Carolina. He has also been the head of the North Carolina NAACP since 2006. Not long after assuming the latter position, he began the Forward Together Movement, mainly in opposition to Tea Party activities in N.C. 

Barber has also been the main leader of the Moral Monday Movement, a grassroots movement that began in 2013. That was mainly a series of peaceful protests against the politics of the N.C. government and the new governor, Pat McCrory. (I wrote briefly about “Moral Mondays” in a 9/30/13 article.) 

From the beginning, among other dissatisfactions, Moral Monday protesters were especially unhappy with new restrictions in voting rights, the cutting of social programs, changes in tax legislation, and the repeal of the Racial Justice Act.

Higher Ground Moral Declaration 

Barber has authored a book about the Moral Monday rallies. It was published in 2014 under the title Forward Together: A Moral Message for the Nation. I have enjoyed reading it this month. 

More recently Barber has initiated the Call to Action for a Moral Agenda, asking people to sign the Higher Ground Moral Declaration (which I have done, and which you also could sign after opening this link). The Revival is part of that initiative seeking to redefine morality in American politics. 

According to their press release, The Revival national tour “challenges leaders of faith and moral courage to be more vocally opposed to harmful policies that disproportionately impact the poor, people who are ill, children, immigrants, communities of color, and religious minorities." 

That sounds good and important to me.