America is coming apart at the seams. Greed, corruption, fear, and violence are among our defining qualities. We Christians must confront the fact that we have done a poor job of proclaiming Good News in America. As such, there are two conversations we must have in 2015. This first is, “what is sin?” The second is, “what is the purpose of the church?”
The opening verses of John’s Gospel provide a biblical basis for such conversations. Paraphrasing, they say that “In the beginning was Logos (Word) which was God. Logos became Flesh and went to live among human beings.”
No search for John’s original meaning can fully excavate such an abstraction as logos becoming flesh. What we can do — what we are invited to do — is to be creative with John’s gospel. Despite our saying that “God never changes,” John indicates that changeability is part of God’s nature especially as it relates to human need. If God has a history of changing, surely our definitions of sin and attitudes toward the church should be open to change, too.
1. What is structural sin?
We Christians long have interpreted sin as a personal break with God. Instead of focusing on personal transgressions, however, Christians need to talk about an idea well represented in the Bible – that sin is a structural break with God. The declarations of the Prophets, the Exodus and Resurrection events, Jesus’s disruption in the Temple all point to the idea that structures of sin make complete union with God difficult if not fundamentally impossible. There are at least five structural sins that Christians must address if we are to proclaim Good News in America. They are sins because they deal in death – spiritual, emotional, and bodily – and need to be reckoned as such.
- Fear of gays, lesbians, bi-sexual, transgendered, intersex, and other people who are not “cisgendered”
By cisgendered, I mean people who conform to standard ideas of gender physiology and identity. These fears lead to bullying, isolating, Christian parents condemning their own children, fringe Baptist pastors proclaiming God Hates Fags, attempts to equate homosexuality with pedophilia, suicide, and murder. Homophobia and its variations are sins.
- Factory produced food
Corporately produced chickens, lemons, tomatoes, and many other food items are products of cruelty and exploitation. A typical bowl of ostensibly nourishing homemade chicken soup is made from a chicken which was caged its entire miserable life, processed by vulnerable undocumented workers in an appallingly dangerous industry, and garnished with tomatoes picked by “guest workers” toiling in conditions of servitude, sometimes so doused with pesticides that their babies are born without limbs. Factory food is a sin.
- Free Trade Agreements
FTAs, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement, remove tariffs designed to protect small farmers and other small producers. They are designed to concentrate wealth in the hands of a few corporate owners by forcing small producers into competition with them. Millions around the globe are suffering from an epidemic of globalized worker exploitation associated with FTAs. Looking for decent work, many cross borders illegally and often are robbed of their money, dignity, and lives while in transit. FTAs are sins.
- The militarization of our southern border and inner cities
The militarization of the US / Mexico border began in conjunction with NAFTA. It has caused the deaths of thousands of migrants. The Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act, S. 744, which passed in the US Senate in 2013, the so-called Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill, was to a significant extent a border militarization package. President Obama’s 2014 Executive Actions on Immigration were designed to “crack down on illegal immigration” via further militarization. We glimpsed the militarization of interior cities in the aftermath of the shooting death of Mike Brown in Ferguson, MO. Militarization is a sin.
- The prison industry
Six million people are under correctional supervision in America. The industry preys on poor people, especially poor black men more than ½ of whom go to prison at some point in their lives. For-profit prisons, which exist through contracts with governments, target illegal immigrants. The largest American prison groups, the GEO Group, Inc. and the Corrections Corporation of America, have contracts with the Federal government to house 34,000 immigrant detainees a day. The prison industry is a sin.
2. What is the purpose of the church amidst structural sin?
- Tell truth to power
There is no point in having conversations about structural sin if we do not tell truth about it to our congregations, other faith leaders, community organizers, and politicians. They all wield power. Moreover, we need to tell truth to power in ways that will make systemic change inevitable.
- Create crisis-packed situations
Martin Luther King, Jr. reflected in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail” that resistance to structural sin involves creating “a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation.” Jesus cleansed the Temple because it had become a “hideout for thieves” – part of the Roman Empire’s package of structural sin. Jesus created a situation so crisis packed, it led to his execution.
Not all crisis-packed situations lead to executions. The 1963 Children’s Crusaders in Birmingham, organized by Rev. James Bevel, were met with Sheriff Bull Connor’s police dogs and fire hoses. The crisis-packed situation, broadcast on TV, resulted in the signing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. In 1968, Catholic priests Philip and Daniel Berrigan broke into the offices of the Selective Service in Catonsville, MD and publicly burned draft board records. These and other crisis-packed situations eventually ended the war in Vietnam.
It has been a long time since church leaders created situations so crisis packed they led to ending structural sins. If the church is to proclaim Good News in America, it may be that the time for creating crisis-packed situations is upon us.
The Rev. Ellin Jimmerson, Ph.D., is Minister to the Community at Weatherly Heights Baptist Church in Huntsville, AL and director of the award-winning documentary, “The Second Cooler”, narrated by Martin Sheen. www.thesecondcooler.com Follow Ellin Jimmerson on Twitter: @EllinJimmerson. Facebook: Ellin Jimmerson. Facebook: The Second Cooler Fan Page.
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How about debt based money and usury. The five on your list are very important but the way money is created and distributed by private banks is a far greater systemic sin.
Excellent article and lucky you did not use the phrase “social justice,” which in my experience around most Christians would bring a rain of fire and brimstone down on one’s head. Part of the reason for this, as I see it, is perhaps another “sin” to be added to your list: the marriage of Conservative Christians with politics. I don’t know if this is a worldwide problem or particular to America but it is real and virulent, a true structural spiritual malady. (Of course, many Liberals are also wedded to politics but I am merely addressing how your views might be meet.)
I live in a highly Conservative town. The “sins” you enumerated would quickly fall under the “liberal theology” agenda and as such be the work of the minions of Satan working for the godless commies and socialists to wreck God’s perfect economy of capitalism. Had I not heard these accusations repeated many times, just as presented, I would find my mention of it as an absurd overreaction.
I do not introduce some of the points you made in casual conversations nor openly tout those points as part of my basic belief structure. However, when such issues are being seriously discussed and a biblical response searched for, I will calmly relate how I see things in the light of the Gospel. This has never gone well. If not immediate dismissal as “liberal hogwash,” I am enjoined by a crossfire of attacks by many voicing not just various objections but insinuations of a deeper problem in my faith. In that vain, I wish you God’s protection and authority in having your voice crying in the wilderness heard.
Jerry, thank you for your comments. It’s difficult having an opinion that goes against our cultural grain. One reason I write is that it helps me to express myself without the problems involved in conversations. I wish you the best as you struggle with the “crossfire of attacks”.
Thank you, Cornelius. I agree wholeheartedly — the money / debt / banking structure surely counts as among a structural sin. Stay tuned! I may pursue this.
Thank you for pointing out factory farming. In my opinion by far the greatest moral horror legally sanctioned in the US (the sheer level of conscious pain and suffering is unfathomable) and the “church” barely bats an eyelid. And doing something about it simply means altering purchasing habits.
I beg to differ. America is not coming apart. The Holy Bible says there is nothing new under the sun.
I love your phrase “moral horror legally sanctioned”. Thank you for that and for commenting.