{"id":473,"date":"2014-08-24T00:14:00","date_gmt":"2014-08-24T00:14:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/08\/ferguson-as-christological-challenge-rethinking-jesus-in-an-unjust-society.html"},"modified":"2014-08-24T00:14:00","modified_gmt":"2014-08-24T00:14:00","slug":"ferguson-as-christological-challenge-rethinking-jesus-in-an-unjust-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/08\/ferguson-as-christological-challenge-rethinking-jesus-in-an-unjust-society.html","title":{"rendered":"Ferguson as Christological Challenge: Rethinking Jesus in an Unjust Society"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
Racism and state-sponsored violence nullify another sun-kissed life in America. Innards,\u00a0as the Black Youth Project laments<\/a>, cover boulevards across the land. Law enforcement divisions\u00a0spin truth into fiction<\/a>. Red herring press releases abound and critiques of deadly force are\u00a0misconstrued as resentment of police officers<\/a>. Part of our democratic dilemma is that law enforcement personnel too often shoot first, draft talking points next, and then grudgingly investigate after residents organize for equal justice under the law. Meanwhile, from sea to shining sea, black folks are being brutalized, stripped naked, executed, maimed \u2014 in a word, crucified \u2014 on the asphalt of our suburban settings and central city cores.<\/span><\/div>\n
As a millennial minister of Jesus Christ, I fear that our ideas about the\u00a0Master of misphat<\/a>\u00a0cannot sustain the leadership our times demand. Theology alone doesn\u2019t undergird social movements or faith, but without coherent reasons \u2014 including transcendent rationales \u2014 both movements and faith fizzle out. Outraged tweets and incendiary Instagram pictures aside, the Jesus of most Christian sermons would not be in Ferguson, but inside the corridors of a storefront congregation or suburban megachurch calling saints to praise through pain, worship through worry, and utter positive confessions \u2014 above all, speak life! \u2014 into the atmosphere of America. Praise is always due God, but praise unhinged from protest in this hour dishonors God and disfigures those who do the praising. When the ever-present wounds of racism are this open, worshipping the Lord in spirit\u00a0and<\/em>\u00a0truth means confronting the bitter reality that America has spoken of\u00a0New Deals<\/a>,\u00a0Fair Deals<\/a>, and\u00a0Square Deals<\/a>, but never implemented an equitable deal for people of color. The Christological consensus of American Christendom \u2014 and its corollary ecclesial equation \u2014 is that our Savior changes persons that, in turn, change the world. No sense of institutional iniquity or social sin here, just an excessively voluntarist, volitional account of discipleship and good works. This Christology does not resemble the Jesus of the Gospels or Paul\u2019s epistles, is politically untenable, sociologically flat-footed, and inadvertently anoints hierarchies of power, wealth, and opportunity. Further, this self-help Savior is a privatized pardoner of individual indiscretions and secret sins \u2014 not the Righteous Reconciler, Palestinian prophet, and cosmic Lord of the New Testament. Let us bury the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>-bestselling, life coach Jesus, along with the ecclesiology of egoism it implies.<\/span><\/div>\n
Read the rest here<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Racism and state-sponsored violence nullify another sun-kissed life in America. Innards,\u00a0as the Black Youth Project laments, cover boulevards across the land. Law enforcement divisions\u00a0spin truth into fiction. Red herring press releases abound and critiques of deadly force are\u00a0misconstrued as resentment of police officers. Part of our democratic dilemma is that law enforcement personnel too often […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFerguson as Christological Challenge: Rethinking Jesus in an Unjust Society<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Racism and state-sponsored violence nullify another sun-kissed life in America. 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