Quick Ques-tee-in: What do the Epistles Have to Say About Racism and Justice? (Special Guest Rick Morris with Stanford Gibson, and Peter Nittler)

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What do the Epistles have to say about race, racism, and justice? It’s an interesting question, and as we see from this conversation from Rick Morris, they weirdly have both nothing to say directly, but tons to say when we really hear them.

You won’t find the word “race” or “racism” in the Scriptures; but Rick helps us see that concepts like unity in Christ, the corrosiveness of unjust and arbitrary power dynamics, and the call to pursue justice for the marginalized are deeply Biblical, and deeply relevant to our response to these questions today.

Conversations and arguments on this topic are circling all-around, if you’ve ever wondered where someone would enter into those conversations starting from a Biblical POV, or just wondered what the Scriptures might have to say about something so important to us, you’ll eat this conversation up!

Enjoy the podcast!

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what we now call ‘racism’ is not simply, for Christians, a failure to obey one or other moral standard … for example… that we should love our neighbour as ourselves. It is deeper even than that. It is a failure of vocation… The church of the anointed Jesus, was designed from the start to be a worldwide family… Rejecting racism and embracing the diversity of Jesus’ family ought to be as obvious as praying the Lord’s Prayer, celebrating the Eucharist, or reading the four Gospels. It isn’t just an extra ‘rule’ we’re supposed to keep. It is constitutive of who we are.

NT Wright, Undermining Racism

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Get in touch with Peter: [e-mail]

Get in touch with Rick: [e-mail]

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Resources Mentioned:

Stamped from the Beginning, Ibram Kendi

Reading While Black, Esau McCaulley

Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, Jennifer L. Eberhardt

Bible Project Podcast “The Powerful and Not Powerful”

Reading Romans Backwards, Scot McKnight