The Wanderings of a Theological Vagabond

Book Review: The Justice Project

I highly recommend to anyone concerned with faith’s intersection with the public sphere.  With that said, I do not think that any review I can write will do this book justice (pun intended).  Nevertheless, I will try to encapsulate this excellent book and my thoughts on it.

Edited by Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla, and Ashley Bunting Seeber, The Justice Project, is a compilation of essays on the topic of justice (big surprise, I know).  These essays are arranged by topic: God, Scriptures, the USA, the World, the Church, and Final Conclusions.  Each of the essays are written at around six pages, which makes them quick reads and easily digestible.  Moreover, as we have come to expect from Emerging Church books, these essays have been constructed for the average reader.  There is a no overblown vocabulary, full of political and theological jargon.  The complexity of these essays comes in their application, rather than in their reading.  Lastly, this volume has intentionally reached across ethnic, geographical, and especially across liberal/ conservative lines.  Although this book has articles by the Emergent mainstays Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and Samir Selmanovic, The Justice Project also includes articles from multiple members of Willow Creek Community Church (Including Lyne Hybels).  The Justice Project laudably models the type of egalitarian (liberal and conservative) community it hopes to create.

A specific gem of an essay in this book is “My Name is Legion for We Are Many: Exorcism as Racial Justice” by Anthony Smith.  The essay fascinating argues that “Mista Charley,” the structural racism that exists via apathy in America, needs to be exorcized as a “national demon.”  Here is a brief quotation, playing on the Legion passage from Mark 5:

“We stand in an imperial graveyard.  Our body politic has habits that render it nearly impossible to get at the deep terrain of racial privilege, dominance, and vast economic iniquities that persist along racial lines.  We scream in privileged agony, cut ourselves off from the painful history of others, and are unable to be chained to a profound practice of repentance.  What would it look like to be clothed and in our right minds again?… We wouldn’t attribute our success  solely to our “work ethic” and “rugged individualism,” but would see the racial dynamics that play into the success of some and the struggle of others” (Smith, 106).

This book has both challenged my complicity in theologies and structures of injustice, while making me believe that change is possible.  This is the kind of book that I will read over and over again.

This review was also posted over at ViralBloggers.com

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