How reconciliation underpins acts of reparation

The case for reparations is criticised for looking too much to the past. Anthony Reddie argues that the ancient roots of reconciliation are vital for today’s debate.

Anthony Reddie

Anthony Reddie is Professor of Black Theology at the University of Oxford, and Director of the Oxford Centre for Religion and Culture.

A diagram plan of a slave ship showing hundreds of body outlines.

Diagram of the ship ‘Brookes’ from Regulated slave trade: reprinted from the evidence of Robert Stokes. (London, 1849)

Lambeth Palace Library.

Reconciliation is the key theological motif that runs through the scriptures and across Christian Tradition - Reconciliation between God and humankind, reconciliation between human beings across the cultural, social, political, ethnic and economic divide, reconciliation between our warring selves within us.

Paul’s writings form the earliest documented texts in the New Testament canon. His writings are full of references to God’s reconciling work in Christ on the cross. This theme, however, needs to be read in terms of Jewish thought. This will correct the over-spiritualising of this in Christian practice.

To make sense of the notion of reconciliation one also must understand the Jewish antecedents that inform Paul’s writing, given Paul himself was a Jewish man. In the Hebrew scriptures and in Jewish thought, atonement and salvation are collective and corporate concepts. This is very different to much of what constitutes post-Reformation Evangelical Protestantism where the emphasis is on individual salvation in Christ, by grace, through faith.

The Hebrew Bible traditions of the Sabbath and Jubilee were moments for system re-set and dismantling inequalities which had accrued.

Essentially, being in right-standing with God necessitated that one should be in right relationships with others. In fact, one could argue that it appears to be the case that one cannot be in a right relationship with God unless you were doing right by the other. The above can be seen in the Old Testament book of Leviticus. The early verses of its sixth chapter clearly state the notion of restorative justice for that which was wrongly taken and used, which is described as a “sin against God”.

One can also see this concept or formula evident within the book of Deuteronomy 15:12–18. The key is verse 12 which states:

“If any of you buy Israelites as slaves, you must set free after six years. And don’t just tell them they are free to leave – give them sheep and goats and a supply of grain and wine.”

As Peter Cruchley’s work on the Zacchaeus Tax campaign has shown, the Hebrew Bible traditions of the Sabbath and Jubilee were moments for system re-set and dismantling inequalities which had accrued. They were moments of breaking the cycling, ongoing basis of debt and economic enslavement. It’s worth reminding ourselves that not one penny has been given to any of the descendants of enslaved Africans for the wrong done to them and yet Christian communities in the West still want to talk about redemption that is affirmed by their Judeo-Christian roots!

Understanding the scriptures in their historical context enables Christians to discern a theological pattern for using money and other resources for enacting restorative justice. Modern interpretive theories on how we read biblical texts take full account of the fact that the New Testament was written within the context of the Roman Empire, where the Emperor claimed divine honours which faithful Jews could not affirm. Today’s reader must recognise that the context in which ALL of the New Testament canon was composed was one that echoed to the restrictive strains of colonialism and cries for justice against oppression. Judea, in which Jesus’ ministry was largely located, was an occupied colony of the Roman Empire.

Contemporary scholars have shown that in the Jewish tradition, issues of reconciliation, redemption and salvation have a corporate ad a collective dimension to them as well as an individualistic one.

Scholars such William R. Hertzog II have shown the extent to which wealth in the Roman Province of Palestine was always connected with economic exploitation. So, when Jesus challenges the ‘Rich Young Ruler’ to follow him, he says this in knowledge that the young man’s accumulation of wealth was not amassed in a neutral context. The reason why this encounter is so compact is because both the Rich Young Ruler and those first hearers knew the expectation of how he should behave.

The Three Cs (commerce, civilisation and Christianity) were the underlying rationale on which the British Empire was based. The Three Cs were coined by David Livingstone (a London Missionary Society ‘Old Boy’) in Oxford in 1857. The exporting of Christianity via the European missionary agencies in the eighteen and nineteenth centuries was largely undertaken under the aegis of empire and colonialism. Christian mission, therefore, has had a difficult relationship with non-White bodies or the ‘subaltern’ for centuries as they are the ‘other’ and have been exploited for economic gain. There was no ethic of equality between missionaries and the ‘natives’.

One can see that Jesus’ teachings around wealth and its relationship to discipleship and living the “Jesus way” has political and economic implications. Scholars such as Musa W. Dube, Catherine Keller, Michael Nausner and Mayra Rivera, have all shown the similarities between first-century Palestine, the slave epoch of the sixteenth to eighteenthcenturies, the eras of colonialism and our present globalized, postcolonial context. Each context is based upon imperialistic/colonial expansion, capital accumulation, forced labour and exploitation of the poor by the rich.

Pharaohs on Both Sides of the Blood-Red Waters is the title of a 2017 book by the famed anti-apartheid activist and scholar Allan Boesak, who reflects on the contemporary ‘Black Lives Matter Movement’ largely in the US and post-Apartheid South Africa. In this context he speaks of the corporate reality of ‘Cheap Grace’ as outlined by the famous German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The West has attempted transformation WITHOUT sacrifice or restorative justice. Bonhoeffer chided Western Christians for wanting to have discipleship without radical commitment to God’s word, and forgiveness and redemption without struggle and sacrifice. Boesak reminds us that there is no redemption without the cross. Reconciliation must cost us something!

Due to the influence of post-Reformation Evangelicalism, we have largely interpreted Jesus’ words in a purely individualistic way. Contemporary scholars have shown that in the Jewish tradition, issues of reconciliation, redemption and salvation have a corporate and a collective dimension to them as well as an individualistic one.

I believe that institutions like the Church of England can set a prophetic lead to other Christian institutions, and beyond it, to other civic bodies and indeed governments. ‘Cheap Grace’ NEVER leads to redemption and reconciliation. Without restorative justice there is no reconciliation, and the mission of Christ is diminished.

Review

Comment

Politics

6 February 2024

4 min read

Truth decay: lying will destroy us

The British way of doing things extends to more than an unwritten constitution. Simon Burton-Jones argues it includes how we lie.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A Pinnochio figure stands on a window sill beside some net curtains.

Milk Chan on Unsplash.

"Why are things so ***t?"

This was the question veteran journalist Gavin Esler was asked as he walked down a Devon street one day by a member of the public who recognised him. It was a very British kind of question, crudely expressing a common underlying feeling. Esler has set out to answer it in his book: Britain Is Better Than This. It isn’t a pretty picture and will be contested. When a government has been in power for thirteen years, blame for the current state of affairs is hard to refute. There are some who do, but not many these days.

Gavin Esler’s previous book, How Britain Ends, looked at the demise of the Union, propelled by Brexit. Esler himself was a member of Change UK, so his position as a remainer is well documented. Scotland’s vote to remain contrasted sharply with an English nationalist vote to leave. Northern Ireland’s fragile peace was put greatly at risk by deepening the divide between the island’s north and south. As a political movement, the Conservative and Unionist Party seemed to defy their name.

Telling fibs in politics is as old as politics, but he and others identify newly organised patterns of lying; untruths being told as a deliberate strategy.

Britain Is Better Than This exposes the lack of a codified constitution as a developing risk. The UK’s deliberately vague and amorphous unwritten constitution has often been a source of its proud exceptionalism. We do it differently because we can, and we pull it off. Esler notes the almost sacred tones in which this is expressed. It is a mystery, using rarefied, opaque language similar to eucharistic liturgy to inspire reverential awe. But when the constitution is essentially unwritten, commentators rather than judges take precedence as interpreters. And there is elasticity: the constitution is what those with power say it is at any given moment. The Crown, the government and the State seem to be used interchangeably, according to the need. If this has worked in the past, it is because of Britain’s ‘good chap’ theory of government, so called because whatever uncertainty may prevail, decent, well-educated, public-spirited people can be relied upon to make it work.

Esler’s point is that the cracks are showing, and more people are poking their fingers through the holes to make them bigger. The Queen’s proroguing of Parliament in 2019 at the request of Boris Johnson was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court, showing the system can rectify issues, but it also demonstrated the risk of future, unscrupulous leaders exploiting those cracks. Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempted curtailing of judicial power in favour of executive authority has set a model which others may follow. Esler’s case for a written constitution and also for electoral reform to introduce fairer systems of proportional representation are not panaceas and he while he recognises this, he prefers them.

As a journalist he is on assured ground in the assessment of what the Rand Corporation has termed truth decay: the growing ascendency of the lie in public debate. Telling fibs in politics is as old as politics, but he and others identify newly organised patterns of lying; untruths being told as a deliberate strategy. This is murky territory for the democratic world. Across global, digital media, we disagree more about facts, blur fact and opinion, prefer personal experience to facts and trust historic sources of information less. Esler’s wants to see media literacy taught more effectively, as Nordic countries do. Deep fake technology is only going to make judgments harder. Courses and syllabuses with a ‘media’ prefix are still considered unserious in some circles, but without this kind of literacy, Britons may become prey for some ugly predators.

We have an uneasy, open marriage with the truth in public and in private (where research shows we all lie far more than we realise).

In 2020, the Edelman Trust Barometer put the UK in twenty-seventh place out of twenty-eight OECD nations for trust in democratic institutions; only Russia lay below. Britain’s mythical capacity for ‘muddling through’ is based in part on our ability to ignore bad news until we can do so no longer; kicking the can down the road may be a truer expression. Gavin Esler has done us all a favour by showing what is at stake. The book’s opening question: Why are things so ***t?, however, only takes us so far. By the end we may know why. What we are able to do about it is the defining question.

In 1998, Jonathan Freedland’s book Bring Home The Revolution struck a nerve. The UK was transitioning from a tired government to a younger, more energetic one; the tech revolution was taking off, millennial optimism was off the leash. Freedland believed the time was right for the UK to become a republic with a written constitution like the USA. A lot has happened since then, and where Freedland’s book captured the hopefulness of the time, Esler’s feels more like a lament; a cry for a better world in the face of the facts.

His implicit call for us to live in truth (as the late Czech president Vaclav Havel would put it) carries most conviction. We have an uneasy, open marriage with the truth in public and in private (where research shows we all lie far more than we realise). The traction of ‘my truth’ rather than, more accurately, ‘my story’ may show how close we have come to a precipice. My truth does not set me free. If we believe the truth sets us free, we also get what David Foster Wallace meant when he observed: 'the truth will set you free, but not until it has finished with you'. Words Christ perhaps left unsaid. Big ideological changes are not afoot in Britain today, but culture is formed of a million daily interactions, where the glue of trust sticks and the power of imitation prevails. Telling porkies when others don’t becomes a tougher gig.