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.

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Development

4 April 2023

5 min read

Don't patronise: what the R20 means for development

The R20 meeting at the G20 global summit sheds light on development. Christopher Wadibia makes the case for a change in perception.

Chris Wadibia

Chris Wadibia is an academic advising on faith-based challenges. His research includes political Pentecostalism, global Christianity, and development.

Swami Govinda Dev Giri Maharaj, Dr. Valeria Martano, and Archbishop Henry Ndukuba, are greeted by R20 founder Yahya Cholil Staquf.

G20religion.org

God is dead,' wrote Friedrich Nietzsche in 1882, in an effort to argue that every European imagination, community, and enterprise developed by faith in the Christian God would inevitably degenerate relative to Europe's dwindling commitment to belief in the former. Nietzsche's argument preceded the once popular secularisation thesis. The view that societies would increasingly adopt non-religious values and institutions as they modernise influenced global development discourse in the 20th century following World War II.

However, in 2023, a year that marks more than 140 years since Nietzsche first popularised the atheistical three-word phrase ‘God is dead’, anyone familiar with the mechanics and forces driving the modern global development project would point out that faith-aligned actors play a pivotal, and even in some cases, unrivalled role. These actors promote growth, progress, and development globally, especially in the Global South.

Albeit, Nietzsche once argued that Europe's declining belief in the Christian God signaled God's death, the fact that at least 85% of the world's over eight billion people claim some form of faith. Couple that with the reality that faith actors deliver the majority of local development services in many regions across the globe, and the suggestions is that God has risen from the grave and traded European burial clothes for globalised vocational attire. Far from being dead, God is alive and more engaged in developing the earth than ever before.

Aside from state and private-sector investment, since the second half of the 20th century, the faith sector, comprised of thousands of actors, has become increasingly responsible for developing the modern world. A recent study on faith-aligned impact investment, completed by researchers at Oxford University's Said Business School, showed that four of the world's most influential religious groups (Christianity, Islam, Dharmic, and Judaism) collectively hold at least $5 trillion in net assets. The study linked this $5 trillion in assets to faith-aligned investment in addressing social and climate-oriented challenges globally.

The study, which analysed over 360 distinctive organisations, attributed over $260 billion to Christian-aligned capital. Given the difficulty of securing accurate data on the total assets and capital held by the world's many thousands of churches and Christian organisations, it should be acknowledged that this estimate sits far below the real net assets in Christendom that have been invested into global development. However, a key takeaway from this study is that Christian-aligned capital remains a game-changing force in the global development sector. After all, those organisations serve the approximately 2.4bn Christians alive today.

'The R20's mission was grand but straightforward: fill the gap in world leadership that stresses politics and economics rather than faith and spirituality.'

In November 2022, two weeks before the G20 summit in Bali which brought together the leaders of the 20 countries with the world's biggest economies, another gathering took place in Indonesia that attracted less publicity. For the first time ever, the R20 (the G20 Religious Forum) united leaders from the major religions of the G20 countries whose heads of state would flock to Bali a few weeks later. The R20's mission was grand but straightforward: fill the gap in world leadership that stresses politics and economics rather than faith and spirituality as resources to provide solutions to pressing global challenges.

One of the R20's more high profile speakers was Archbishop Henry Ndukuba, who currently serves as Anglican Primate for the Church of Nigeria. In his speech, Ndukuba cited the violent persecution of Christians and liberal Muslims in the majority Muslim region of Northern Nigeria. The R20's goal of elevating faith and spirituality in the hierarchy of resources that can be enlisted to engage with global issues should be viewed as noble. However, in practice, the concept of the world's major faith communities petitioning global peace and development stakeholders to be recognised as legitimate contributors to the sacred project of redeeming the brokenness of the world reeks of obsequious servility.

Moreover, this unequal power relation fatefully overlooks the substantial contributions to peace and development made every day across the world by faith actors. Many of the world's major faith traditions share the vision of developing the world into a place devoid of disease, poverty, and suffering. The global faith and spirituality sector is truly not without its imperfections, but for centuries this multi-faith comity has invested immense resources into making earth look more like heaven. It does so by leveraging faith as a conduit to gather assets that aid in the deeply holy process of chiseling away at the degenerative evils and satanic forces plaguing the world until all that remains is the latter's Edenic base.

The time has come for the world's faith actors to stop begging secular state actors to recognise them as stakeholders committed to promoting global peace and development. Getting on with the heavenly work of building God's cosmos, in anticipation of the New Creation, requires faith that God will provide the right people, ideas, and resources and that secular state actors should be viewed as partners instead of patrons in this divine enterprise.

'The work we do in the present, then, gains its full significance from the eventual design in which it is meant to belong.'

N.T. Wright

Secular state actors should better understand what is driving those faith actors and the desire to balance the partnership. In his influential book Surprised by Hope, NT Wright argues that continuities will exist between Christian work completed in service to God in the present age and the eternal life that God's people will enjoy in the New Creation. Wright reasons,

'The work we do in the present, then, gains its full significance from the eventual design in which it is meant to belong. Applied to the mission of the church, this means that we must work in the present for the advance signs of that eventual state of affairs when God is ‘all in all’, when his kingdom has come and his will is done ‘on earth as in heaven’.'

Every day a faith actor funds a school, hospital, or social development project somewhere in the world. They see these projects function in God's ongoing programme of redeeming the world by means of the intellects and imaginations of themselves and those who benefit. In their eyes, all are made in God's own image. In a world where they see sin's footprints manifest by way of suffering, violence, and destruction, every actor inspired by the faith in their heart to challenge the existence of the former should recognise that the impulse to build a better world is a nudge from heaven foreshadowing the New Eden to come.