Resources to Dig Deeper on Justice

I received this email from one of our members:

Thank you for the justice sermon series which was thought provoking & convicting. It wet my appetite for more & biblical justice is something I want to study further as I wrestle with how to apply it to my life. However, I don’t know where to begin. Do you have suggestions for books or studies that would be along the same lines as your sermon series?

There is way too much to my answer, so if you follow what I’ve bolded you’ll get a good sampling of resources on justice and race.

Here are a few general resources that I think are biblically grounded, strike the right tone, and they are fair with those with whom they disagree:

  • A two-part podcast episode called “The Gospel and Social Justice” by Russell Moore on the “Signposts with Russell Moore” podcast from Sept. 7 and 12, 2018.

  • The Bible Project guys have an audio podcast and they spent 4 episodes hour-long episodes discussing their justice video. The podcast is called “BibleProject” and the episodes are from 2017 (October 9, 17, 23, and December 18). This is great for deep dive, short of reading Keller’s book below.

  • “Justice in the Bible” by Timothy Keller - This is an online article from Gospel In Life

  • Generous Justice: How God's Grace Makes Us Just by Tim Keller

If you want to take an even deeper dive, here are some of the things I’ve been listening to, watching, and reading that have helped shape my attitude and informed me on justice and oftentimes on race. I don’t always agree with these, but I’m thankful for their perspective (and sometimes frustrated at the same time).

  • Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth: 12 Questions Christians Should Ask About Social Justice by Thaddeus J. Williams. This is a long book and very detailed. My biggest frustration with this book is how little it delves into the biblical call for justice. It affirms it over and over again, but it’s really mostly a critique of unbiblical approaches to justice. And sometimes I think he strays into somewhat one-sided apologetics for law enforcement, capitalism, etc. Many of the things he says need to be part of the discussion, but he doesn’t present the other side’s response to his response often enough. It might be better to access his perspective through some of his articles and interviews: “Social Justice: Breakup or Breakthrough?” by Thaddeus Williams and this interview on the GospelBound podcast, Social Justice: Heresy or Necessary?.

  • The “Holy Post - Race in America” video produced by Phil Vischer (the creator of VeggieTales has been seen by 1.5 million people. Personally, I don't think that’s enough.

  • I love listening to the “Church Politics” podcast hosted by two of the founders of the (&) Campaign. These guys are really helpful when it comes to treating people they disagree with fairly. If you’re on the political right, it will take some getting use to. You simply won’t be use to hearing the application of a Christian worldview coming from the center-left. If you’re on the political left and you like it with the right is bashed, it will take some getting use to. But it’s worth it, in my mind. I don’t always agree with their solutions to justice problems, but I absolutely love these guys.

  • I heard a series of conversations that helped me to understand the experience of many of my black Christian brothers and sisters. These were from a variety of podcasts, but I felt privileged to be able to hear these conversations. I felt like a fly on the wall, getting to hear conversations I don’t normally get to be a part of. Here are some of the conversations in the order I’d recommend listening to them:

    • On “The Disrupters: Change What Is” podcast (note the “e” in “disrupters”) the conversation between Esau McCaulley and Lecrae on Sept. 24, 2020 broke my heart, Esau’s conversation with Jamar Tisby on April 13, 2020 was frustrating and heartbreaking all at once, and his conversation with Justin Giboney on Oct. 1, 2020 was a salve on the pain.

    • For some more salve, follow this with Russell Moore’s interview of Esau McCaulley on his “Signposts with Russell Moore” podcast (March 17, 2021).

    • Then follow this with Mike Cosper’s interview with Doug Logan on reformed theology in the urban context in Cosper’s Cultivated podcast. This is where so many things began to fall in place for me personally.

My journey has also been helped by several voices on tone and approach to these kinds of subjects. That may have been the greatest value of listening to “The Church Politics” podcast with Justin Giboney and Chris Butler. But here are some others.

  • I’ve mentioned often the impact of the book by Arthur Brooks called Love Your Enemies. If you don’t want to read the whole book, you’ll get Brook’s biggest ideas and stories from a simply fascinating interview he gave to Ben Shapiro. Whether you love or hate Shapiro you need to see him in this interview. I wish Shapiro would have changed his tone and general approach as a result of this interview, but that doesn’t seem to have happened. This is gold. Watch it here: “Arthur Brooks | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 41”

  • A great introduction to the work of Tim Muehlhoff and Rick Langer’s work on winsome ways of disagreeing with our Christian brothers and sister is an interview with Muehlhoff by Preston Sprinkle on the “Theology in the Raw” podcast (March 22, 2021). They also have a whole podcast series on this subject if you want to go deeper. This is where I got the Bonhoeffer story.

Other influences for me have been books our bookclub has read on race. Reading Jamar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism was hugely important for me. Tisby leans into some theories and definitions that I wish he used more critically, but the book’s basic premise is solid and convicting. I was also deeply impacted by watching the PBS documentary on redlining in MN (“Jim Crow of the North”). And the “Racist Church” episode on the “Undeceptions with John Dickson” podcast is badly named (in my opinion) but powerful.

This is way, way too much, I know. But if I could recommend one experience only, it’s the series of conversations I listed above.

Enjoy!

Photo by Gayatri Malhotra on Unsplash