Change Is The Conservative Church's Kryptonite

Almost a month ago, a statement written by John MacArthur and friends spoke against the Church's involvement in promoting social justice was reviewed in this blog (click here for that blogpost and there for the statement by MacArthur and friends). But others chimed in too. And one of those challenges, a brief one, was written by Jemar Tisby (click here for a bio) from The Witness: A Black Christian Collection (click here for his article).

We should note here that John MacArthur, the theologian who opposes the idea of the Church promoting social justice, is White. Jemar Tisby is Black and is favor of the Church pursuing social justice. And here we should note that race most likely has something to do with the different responses. That's at least partially true because since MacArthur's White, he still enjoys a privileged place in America. On the other hand, Blacks are still struggling to fully escape the marginalization that the Civil Rights Movement tried to eliminate.  It's not that the Civil Rights Movement initiated no significant changes, it did. But there still exists quite a bit of race-based marginalization for Blacks to overcome especially in today's age where both ideological and racial tribalism reign perhaps as strongly as ever.

In other words, race-based marginalization is not a daily reality for White theologians, like John MacArthur, who live a privileged life; it is, however, all too real for Blacks either directly or through incidents that are forced on friends and/or family.

But there is a another factor that is involved here. That factor is that answering the call to work for social justice is not part of the traditions of many a conservative denomination. And just like the saying in Pennsylvania Dutch country that goes, 'If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much,' so for conservatives, especially religiously conservative ones, their sentiment goes along with the following: if it ain't in tradition, it gets no recognition. That is because of the nature of conservatism, many conservatives have almost a phobia to change because they feel that even small changes eventually severs them from the past.

So how does Tisby challenge MacArthur's opposition to Church involvement in social justice. Tisby, like a conservative draws on the past. However, the past that Tisby draws on is much more recent than MacArthur's past and it was never accepted as part of Church tradition. Thus it gets no recognition. Tisby draws on the Chicago Declaration Of Evangelical Social Concern (click here for the declaration). That declaration is more of confession of sin and failure for not having applied the Gospel and the Scriptures to the social and corporate sins of the day.

Tisby divides up the Chicago Declaration into 4 parts with each part represented by no more than 2 sentences. The first part is the confession of the Church's failure to speak out against the injustices of the day despite what God demands of us. The second part speaks against racism. The third part speaks against the suffering caused by an unjust distribution of the world's resources. And the fourth part. The last part speaks against merging Christianity with nationalism and patriotism.

Tisby's purpose is to answer MacArthur's conservative resistance to change by drawing from the past rather than providing his own challenges. And to an extent, two conservative denominations had at least partially pre-emptively acted in support of Tisby's position. Both the PCA and the SBC have in the past couple of years adopted resolutions that publicly denounce both past participation in racism and resistance against the Civil Rights Movement.

On the other hand, Church history points out the horrors and consequences of the Church not speaking out against social injustice. For in the pre-revolutionary times of the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions, the most dominant branch of the Church sided with wealth and power. An apparent immediate result for those respective branches was that they were unnecessarily counted with the enemy when the revolutions came. A more invisible result was that the Church missed many opportunities to preach repentance to those who used their positions of privilege to exploit the less fortunate.

Tisby's response to MacArthur is important is an important read as his the reference he cited. For those who either have little time or who are highly distracted, Tisby's article, as well as the declaration he works from, is short and very accessible. And his response is recommended by this blog.