A Few Thoughts on Re-envisioning Evangelical Christian Politics. (By Mark Hershey)

Friends,

I want to share with you an awesome 39 min sermon on multi-racial churches, inner city ministry, social justice, racism, and the desperate need for change in American churches... all rolled into one. I watched it last night and the speaker, Soong Cha Rah from North Park Theological Seminary, covered a lot of different issues and brought up some great discussion starters. His sermon is called: "Freedom to all Captives and Pardon to all Prisoners"

Just one quote:

"There are 90+ passages on looking after the orphan, widow, and illegal alien. There are 0 passages on the right to bear arms. Why are there more Christians who are members of the NRA than Christians who would like to see immigration reforms."

Okay, make that two:

"We need to understand that racism is not just an individual issue. It is corporate. We can argue against that saying, ‘I’ve never owned a slave. I didn't take any land from the native Americans... I'm not a racist’ ... but you have benefited from an economic system that was built on free land stolen from the Native community and free labor kidnapped from Africa. Now if you're an economist, and you get free land and free labor, you know that you better have a booming economy. America was given free land and free labor and built an economic system.... and today we are still benefiting from that unjust corporate system....so we have the responsibility today of that unjust corporate system because we are still benefiting from it."

With these two quotes, I also want to say that Soong Cha Rah isn't just a deconstructionist, but he does offer some solutions and encouragement. Here is a link to the lecture. Check it out. Post your comments. Let's chat.

Audio Podcast:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/Uywi07AudioPodcast

Video Podcast:
Go to iTunes Store and type "uywi07" - Click on "Freedom to all Captives and Pardon to all Prisoners" to download for free.

Mark Hershey is a first year Masters of Divinity Student at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.