Oppression and injustice happen when a person or a group of people is deprived, usually by law or by force, of basic and equal rights that are allotted to others. Often oppression and injustice use categories of people to afflict their damages. For example, our country was founded and built on laws that allowed for the brutal killing and enslavement of blacks and Native Americans, with many laws explicitly benefiting white people by name. This is oppression and injustice. Refugees are oppressed by something going on in their home country that they are fleeing from in order to save their lives. This is often religious or ethnic persecution and is often related to wars or guerrilla warfare dangers. The oppressed are the ones under the boot of those with power. We get less comfortable talking about oppression and injustice when we start looking at the vast inequities in the United States between whites and people of color. It’s a lot easier to talk about oppression of biblical times and the distant past, but much more uneasy when it’s right under our nose and we may or may not even be aware of it or acknowledge it.
Waking Up to Women’s Oppression Via the #metoo Movement
Posts like this are hard to write. Hard because they are humbling. I started reading through the #metoo posts on Twitter, at the request of some women in my church. It’s hard to organize my thoughts so I’m just going to put them out there: I was wrong. I do a lot of work around […]
Are we to “be subject to the governing authorities” when their laws go against God’s?
Romans 13:1-2, 4-5 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves… For […]
Shane Claiborne, Author & Activist – Episode 29 – #GoPublic against the death penalty, celebrityism as idolatry, speaking the truth in love, and how to engage in being an ordinary radical if your spouse isn’t into it
Noah Filipiak interviews Shane Claiborne about how to engage churches in helping the poor, activism and justice issues. They talk about celebrityism within popular Christianity, about what can be done to stop the death penalty (Shane’s latest book is Executing Grace: How the Death Penalty Killed Jesus and Why It’s Killing Us), and about how […]
Interview with World Relief Haiti Country Director Joseph Bataille
Noah Filipiak interviews World Relief’s Haiti Country Director, Joseph Bataille. Haiti was the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere before the 2010 earthquake and even more so after. All this despite millions and millions of dollars of international aid over the course of decades. Noah and Joseph have a “behind the curtain” conversation about how […]
Why Don’t More Evangelicals Do Justice Ministry?
I’m pretty sure I’m an evangelical. I think what this means is that we believe Jesus and his grace are the only way to heaven, that we want others to know Jesus and that the entire Bible is inerrant and authoritatively from God. If this is what it means, then I am definitely an evangelical. […]