Public Justice
On Power He was a man who had stumbled into a little bit of power and seized it with both hands. She’d known that within the first few hours of his arrival, when he’d chosen the best room and gathered up the warmest blankets for his bed, when he’d taken all the pillows in the […]
Whoever suffers from the malady of being unable to endure any injustice, must never look out of the window, but stay in his room with the door shut. He would also do well, perhaps, to throw away his mirror. —Johann Gottfried Seume1 The very term “social justice” is experienced as a phrase of legitimacy among some Left-leaning […]
It’s been eight years since I wrote Christless Christianity, and things don’t seem to have much improved out there. Evangelicals on the right fawn over Donald Trump as the “defender of the faith” (apparently meaning the Christian faith). After a couple generations of being gripped by the fear of man more than the fear of […]
Like it or not, our present lives cannot escape what is trending. Whether it is a kitten on a piano or a drone strike in Iraq, our smartphones bombard us with trends. Many of these last as long as a snowflake on a warm windshield, tickling us briefly only to melt away. One of these […]
In a polarized age, even ideas that used to be held in common can become flash points of distraction and disagreement. Chief among those new areas of division in our own era is the topic of justice. Justice is a theme on which the Bible has much to say, and yet friends—who love the Bible […]
You can almost create the scene from memory, having seen it played out so many times for so many different reasons. A crime is committed. The guilty one takes to the airwaves to issue a mea culpa. The crowd surges forward, intent on enacting swift and unmerciful justice. But no amount of public shaming, isolation, […]
Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that […]
I had an extraordinary experience in my junior year of college when I was a student at the International Institute of Human Rights in Strasbourg, France. Already enthralled by the world-affirming aspects of Reformation theology, I was amazed at the cultural impact of the Reformation. While the rise of “universal human rights” theory cannot be […]
Remember, "distinction without separation." Although the Great Commission itself does not include social justice as part of the church's mandate, "teaching everything I have commanded" includes the New Testament's moral instruction as essential to that substance that the church communicates in making disciples. Although Scripture does not tell us which causes or political candidates to […]
Analyzing the Social Political Activism of the Black Church in Light of the Two-Kingdoms Motif
Let me begin by attempting to explain what I mean by "the black church" as it will be used in this article. Throughout, what I will be referring to is that entity, regardless of denomination or theological underpinning, that defines its purpose according to the ethos and pathos of the first black congregations in the […]
At a crucial point in Generous Justice, Tim Keller asks us to "imagine a sequel to the Good Samaritan parable": "The months go by and every time he makes his trip from Jerusalem to Jericho he finds another man in the road, beaten and robbed. Finally the Samaritan says, 'How do we stop the violence?' […]
"What Is the Mission of the Church? Making Sense of Social Justice, Shalom, and the Great Commission" by Kevin DeYoung and Greg Gilbert
Michael Horton Dialogues with Kevin DeYoung Horton: Do you think there is a connection between the Em-ergent movement and the people who have been involved with the trend of broadening out the gospel and the mission of the church to include all sorts of things’the horizontal human-centered emphasis we see in treatments of the gospel […]
In this issue we shift gears in our tour through the consecutive phrases of Matthew 28:18-20 in order to take up an important discussion of the gospel and social justice. This is a timely topic, as many readers know, and we are eager to help Reformation-minded Christians discern the difference between the Great Commission given […]
