Comments on: After SVS 2010: Jared Boyd, Naming Injustice: Doing Theology That Does Something

By: Pastoralia – Tales from the future of Christendom » New Series: Dialoging With The Society of Vineyard Scholars

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 03:11:52 +0000

[...] 3/16 – Ryan McAnally-Linz: “The Problem of the Contested Center” 3/17 – Jared Boyd: Naming Injustice: “Doing Theology That Does Something” 3/18 – Jonathan Rutz: “The Case For Creation Care as a Defining Paradigm For the [...]

By: David Kushner

David Kushner — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 20:28:31 +0000

I really enjoyed your paper and believe that theologians, pastors and church-folk, in general need to be made aware of the power of speech. Speech is not inert; it creates realities. Too often pastors and congregants view the speech of church as a catalyst which will hopefully motivate someone else to create a new situation and reality. One of the very keen insights of Brueggemann is that the church embodies an alternate community to the world around us. Speech itself is fundamental to that, and the words spoken form and shape the existence of this community. Speaking the names of injustice gives form and reality to these things, which otherwise could remain in the realm of the cerebrum.

The biblical view of the efficacy of speech *as an act* is often overlooked by students of scripture. God of course creates via speech. The Patriarchs bless and curse and this speech has implicit within it the ability to define and create a reality. The prophets speak both as a means of making visible and real the suffering of the voiceless, but also as a means of expressing the realities of the ‘alternative community of faith’–this both calls that alternative vision into being and similarly critiques the present situation by virtue of contrast. Real Prophetic speech is ultimately generative.

So I have blathered, but then there is speech and there is speech… so you are right that an awareness on the part the pastor, theologian, whomever, that their words are reality forming is paramount. My question is: Without reducing this to some sort of magical view of words, how does the substantive nature of speech get communicated in the Body? It is indeed a different worldview than that which we as moderns inhabit, where only physical things are real.

By: Jared Boyd

Jared Boyd — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 18:58:19 +0000

Orion,
First–steve brown and I were talking about you last night—we were talking about something we thought you might have some helpful input on.

As for the distinction you are making above—I think you’re right on. In fact, I think your project which pursues a more robust ontology of “justice” is the work upon which the “naming” of injustice can stand. As we develop the more robust understanding of what God’s Justice look’s like, it seems we’ll find more places in which it could get fleshed out.

By: Orion Edgar

Orion Edgar — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:03:52 +0000

Jared, I found your paper really compelling, and it’s really interesting to hear how it relates to and arose out of the ‘primary project’, as it were. When I first read your paper it seemed to me that we were saying opposite things: I was saying ‘we need a clearer general picture of justice’ and you were saying ‘we need to stop talking about justice in general and get down to dealing with specific injustices’. But as I thought about, I realised that there was a question about the role of language here: that I was arguing that we need a more deeply internalised, extra-verbal conception of justice, such as the temple as microcosm of creation presents. And you are saying, I think, that we need to use our words not in a way that just amounts to ‘talk’, but in a way that gets taken up into the bigger project of God’s purposes. Is that right?

By: ramon

ramon — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:23:15 +0000

Jared-This is very relevant to me in two ways as I have been upwardly mobile the last few years and have noticed that my diet has changed. I have moved from urban to suburban and noticed that I eat fresh produce, go to the farmer’s market, and do other environmentally and health conscious things just because of where I now live and work. One day while shopping at a less expensive store for groceries I started thinking-this stuff is bad for you but right now it’s a tough month for us financially so let’s just get what we can afford. Then I thought this is a tough month for us but for some this is a tough year, a tough decade, a tough life. How can you take care of yourself without access to the resources that you need?

Also now that I have moved to a less suburban/almost urban environment on the outskirts of the main city and our church has moved to an urban environment with a lower socioeconomic demographic I have been looking for ways in which we can embody the gospel for the community. Naming injustice is a great way to begin exploring that.

Blessings

By: Jared Boyd

Jared Boyd — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 16:12:33 +0000

Steve—
I think the more we preach on and embrace the reality that the work of the kingdom (inaugurated in the resurrection) is a work of “new creation,” then the less push back there will be. At the risk of overstating, I think we have actually received a very incomplete “gospel” in the US in the past 100 years.

I see the work that you are doing with human trafficking and the work that I and others are doing in the area of food and poverty, as a central outworking of the “good news” of the kingdom where Jesus reigns. That is, bringing God’s rule into every area of his creation is the work of the “good news.”

I don’t think that this stuff is just “related to” the gospel. I think it is right in the center of where Jesus life was pushing.

As for your question regarding push-back: The work of Justice Gardens as a non-profit organization has grown out of the desire of folks in our church to see the poor in our city have the same access to fresh produce that we do at our local farmer’s market. So in that regard, I have not received any push back from our community. However, the work of Justice Gardens is more in the public sphere than it is in the sphere of the church. Jesus-followers are the volunteers of Justice Gardens, but it really isn’t an official “ministry” in our church. It’s just what the people in our church do.

By: steven hamilton

steven hamilton — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 13:32:02 +0000

jared, this is really timely, especially considering some of the inflammatory rhetoric that has been bandied about lately about the heresy of ‘social justice’ in the church corrupting the ‘gospel’:
http://gaddabout.blogspot.com/2010/03/glenn-beck-and-social-justice.html

i think the robust engagement of theology vis-a-vis biblical justice, as i mentioned on matt self’s blog, i’ve seen the and dealt with the ‘push-back’ and the hermeneutic of suspicion in terms of liberalism and social gospel, so, again i think your work here is so timely.

i think theological depth and language have been important in my own speech acts in these endeavors, since i am involved at several levels in a ministry of justice with ‘Justice Response’ (http://www.vineyardusa.org/site/task-forces/justice-response), which is social justice for sure, although i prefer the term biblical justice to ground it a bit better and fill it out with the interconnections between social-environmental-economic justice as witnessed in scripture, especially in the Prophets. at various venues and awareness events on human trafficking, i was speaking about the Church joining the father in fighting against human trafficking, and i got significant push-back on the social justice-social gospel, liberlism thing. to which i could respond in earnest and try to fill out the biblical mandate for justice, but they refused to listen, and it left me thinking “how do they not get that this is related to the gospel, but certainly not the whole gospel?”

i think, especially with environmental justice and creation care, there is even more push-back. as director of justice gardens, have you had this knd of push-back? and how have you responded yourself?