Give beauty for ashes and the oil of joy for mourning
Give a garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness
Make us trees of righteousness, plantings of God.
(Isa. 61:1–3; Luke 4:18, 19 adapted from KJV)
These priorities must also be the priorities of an oppression-free Christian community. How can we be the church of Jesus unless we reflect the ministry of Jesus? Is the church a radical incarnation of the ministry of Jesus or a private social club? It is crucial in the formation of community that those who were and are oppressed seek to overcome the theological millstones tied around their necks. It is equally important to eschew pejorative assumptions toward others in community who are different to avoid passing on the sickness of oppressive theology. This inherited oppression leads to stereotyping for the purpose of gaining power or advantage.
Donald Chinula, using Martin Luther King Jr.’s notion of the “beloved community,” asserts that oppression manifested as an unjust use of authority or advantage “seeks its own advantage at the expense of the oppressed and strives to perpetuate itself.”16 Stereotyping allows the oppressor to stand apart from the oppressed and categorize and pigeonhole a group of people. This oppression is particularly insidious when the Bible is used to defend it. Chinula says, “Women are oppressed because they happen to be women. This is invidious stereotyping. It is the perpetuation of a belief that a person or a group possesses characteristics or qualities that typify that group, and the use of that belief against its members.”17 This cycle of naming and blaming marginalized people has historically been the biblically based justification of the violence perpetrated against individuals, races, and nations.
The principal message that goes out from the church of Jesus Christ should declare, “Freedom in Christ is freedom in life—all are welcome at the table.”
INTIMACY WITH GOD
Creating community with and among marginalized people who have been alienated from the Christian community must include encouragement to seek an intimate relationship with God. An assurance of relationship with God provides the security to interpret critically the scriptures and traditions that have alienated so many for so long. People on the edge must be encouraged to form a concept of a loving God who desires to have intimate relationship with his/her creation. This must precede a historical/critical analysis of Scripture. Having a secure location in God makes it permissible to question those passages of Scripture that have traditionally brought terror. A woman minister, a SGL person, or the progeny of slaves cannot be a biblical literalist. It would be entirely too difficult to explain away all of the texts that do not support her personhood and her call. Where, then, is the place of the Bible in the life of the marginalized church? My position is best explained by a response from an unnamed slave who, when she was told that the Bible said she was to be a slave, answered, “Not my Bible; I tore dat page out!”
True spiritual liberation is the Spirit of God working in our spirits, revealing God to us. There is a danger in making the Bible God, instead of seeing the Bible as writings that point to God. According to Gomes, when we seek to interpret the Bible we should be careful of these things:
Bibliolatry or the worship of the Bible, making of it an object of veneration and ascribing to it the glory due to God. Literalism or the worship of the text in which the letter is given, is an inappropriate superiority over the spirit, and culturism or the worship of the culture, in which the Bible is forced to conform to the norms of the prevailing culture.18
As to the issue of culturism, in this country we often hear “God is the God of our America. We are the people God loves most. Let’s get America back to God.” It is as though we have an exclusive right to God. In our nation, what is called Christianity is often Americanism. “God must prefer my country because I do.” With this thinking, we can close the borders to aliens, oppress minorities, justify foreign wars, continue manifest destiny, or whatever because “God is our God and prefers us.” In his discourse about “nation worship,” Kater asks the question, “Is it really appropriate to consider ourselves the Chosen People and the successor among the nations, of God’s Promised Land? Is it not more a sign of that pride that the Bible considers a temptation?”19
Certain political parties and special interest groups think God belongs to them. You can hear language about God coupled with everything from the political agenda of the religious right to the gun lobby. Similarly, African Americans and other minorities sometimes feel God loves us much more than anyone else and that we are sanctified by our history of suffering.
Making God the sole property of certain nations and cultures leads us to making God the sole property of denominations, each one claiming sole proprietorship of the truth. Within the Christian church, we teach baptism in Jesus’ name, in the names of the trinity as well as for adults only, for children only, by immersion, by sprinkling, as necessary for salvation, and as a prerequisite for the gift of the Holy Spirit. Who is right?
Turf wars abound for ownership of the “real word” of God. The division this causes is amazing. God is not exclusively the God of any nation, or any denomination. Nations are formed to facilitate the needs of their citizens. Christian denominations are set up to facilitate the work of the church on earth. People—individuals, not buildings or institutions—are called to be a habitation for the Spirit of God. It is intimacy with God that emboldens people in their quest to extricate life-giving principles from the Bible.
I would like to argue for one other reason to encourage people to seek intimacy with God as a prerequisite to a critical study of Scripture. I call it preconceived interpretation.
PRECONCEIVED INTERPRETATION
Most people who have been impacted by society and the traditions of the church will go to the Bible reasonably sure of what it says about major issues, without a critical analysis of what the Bible does say. We have been taught historically that God is for this and against that, and we approach Scripture expecting to find those passages that defend the culturally accepted position. A historical/cultural understanding of what God “requires” is very difficult to uproot.
Historically and culturally accepted views that have been defended with Scripture include teachings against interracial marriage, against women ministers, against SGL people, against working mothers, and more. The Bible has also been used to defend war, slavery, and the death penalty. These beliefs are the foundation of our nation, our culture, and many of our faith communities. It takes a great deal of security for a theologically abused person to come to the study of Scripture seeking to understand the times, context, politics, culture, religion, and social norms represented by the thousands of years of history in the Bible.
Learning new ways to look at Scripture, no matter how liberating, can be a threat to one’s foundation. Learning also involves unlearning deeply rooted principles. This is particularly challenging for people who have already suffered great loss. The security to meet this challenge comes from understanding that we know and are known by God.
CULTURAL IDENTITY AND VULNERABILITY
There is a concern that must be addressed here and a question that I am often asked. “If we resist the result of oppression sickness that was handed down to us and made us feel rejected by the church and just barely received by God, if we dispel that defeatist thinking, will we retain the atmosphere, style, sound, and feel of the church as we know it?” In my experience, I have found it is quite possible to have the style, sound, and feel of the Metho-Bapti-Costal church without the oppression perpetuated by some in these traditions.
The preaching, the song, and the dance are media through which the Spirit moves; they are ours, and they should remain. God can move through any culture. When Mercy Amba Oduyoye, a Ghanaian womanist theologian, was challenged in a class I took from her about the church in Africa demonstrating too much traditional African spirituality, she said, “The Owner of the