Thread by @martyduren

A thread about the *recent* elevation of justice (esp related to race) as a gospel issue:

Over the past couple of weeks, high-profile white evangelical pastors have preached strong sermons on race and justice. With these sermons (and convos around them) have come 1/

confessions to having overlooked the importance of justice as a part of the gospel of Christ. Confessions have come in sermons, articles, and social media. One pastor confessed to have preached a "truncated" gospel. 2/

While there has been pushback from some who continue to insist racial reconciliation is not an issue related to the gospel of Christ, support for these confessions has been deep and wide. That's good. Here's the problem: 3/

Black pastors have been preaching justice as part-and-parcel of the gospel for a long, long time. They preached it during slavery days. They preached it during Reconstruction. They preached it after Reconstruction. They preached it during Jim Crow. 4/

They preached it during the Civil Rights era. They preached it after the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts. They have preached it since and to this very day. The problem isn't simply that many white preachers preached a truncated gospel. 5/

The problem is we didn't listen to the gospel as it was being preached all around us. Historically, too many didn't preach *the* gospel because they were busy preaching *our* gospel, a gospel that conformed to our culture, preferences, and comfort. 6/

Many white American pastors didn't preach against injustice because they'd never faced it and were not willing to listen to those who had and are. Our black brothers have—literally—for centuries been telling us these things are so. We *chose* not to listen to them. 7/

*White pastors* helped place the roadblocks. *White pastors* chose a truncated (and sometimes outright false) gospel. *White pastors* had the luxury of a "repent and believe" gospel that omitted or obfuscated the practical outworking of unity in Christ, 8/

brotherhood and sisterhood, equality, the obliteration of man-made categories, the breaking down of dividing walls, and the resulting peace in Christ. Too many white pastors were not willing to pursue peace with black brothers and sisters because it could cost them 9/

"peace" at home, at work, or at church.

But, ask yourself: what kind of "gospel" supports and protects chattel slavery, averts its eyes to the division of families, the rape of enslaved women, flogging human beings, 10/

the sale of mixed-race offspring produced by slave-owners, murder, manipulation, plunder, and man-stealing? That's the gospel of Christ?

I am thankful more people are more fully appreciating the gospel and its implications, and that the conversation is expanding. 11/

But, we should be honest that it shouldn't have taken us this long, and that it was not the Spirit of God that caused ears to be dull to hearing the messengers he placed around us.12/12