Racial Justice Sunday
Richard Reddie, Director for Justice and Inclusion at Churches Together in Britain and Ireland
I am the Director for Justice and Inclusion for Churches Together in Britain and Ireland. And as befits my role, I am very interested in the subject of justice. While the Bible does not directly address the topic of racial justice, it has a lot to say about justice per se. Did you know that from a purely statistical perspective, there are 130 references to justice in both the Old Testament and the New Testament? Figures reveal that 115 of these are in the Old Testament – 30 of which are in the Book of Isaiah, while Psalms mentions the word, in one form or another, on 17 occasions. Equally, of the 15 mentions in the New Testament, five of these occur in the Gospel of Luke. However, some academics have pointed out that the Greek word dikaiosunê, which appears hundreds of times in the New Testament, and is translated in Latin or the Romance languages (Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, etc) as “justice”, is translated as “righteousness” in English. So, if we follow that contention, then the New Testament is replete with this term.
As Christians, we are familiar with the phrase, ‘Our God is a God of justice’. In response to this, the question we need to ask ourselves is whether we love justice as much as God does? We know how Jesus responded to unjust practices that were sinful - he opposed them in a demonstrable way. I would argue that anything that denies the very source of humanity, the image of God in humankind, is a sin. Equally, anything that 'destroys God’s likeness in every person and thus repudiates God the Creator, is also sinful'. All human beings are 'living icons of God and worthy of respect and dignity, so when we fail to treat others with this respect, we insult God, who is the Creator'. As such, something such as racism is sinful because, among other issues, it assumes all are not equal before God and are not part of God’s family; it is contrary to biblical teaching and denies basic justice and human dignity. All who perpetrate it are guilty of sinful behaviour, and all who fail to challenge it in church and/or society are guilty of condoning or colluding with sinful behaviour.
I believe we should display more righteous anger when it comes to matters of justice. It is said that 'Justice is love in action', while the American academic Professor Cornel West argues that 'Justice is what love looks like in public'. Iif you love people, like God does, you should love justice, because what we describe as 'justice issues' invariably involve people.
We must recognise that justice is everyone’s business, and when it comes to racial justice, it is unfinished business. We need to be committed to being changemakers, people who stand up for racial justice, and stand against racism, bigotry and prejudice, Racial Justice Sunday is an excellent occasion to either remember this, or start this work!