Politics, the Church, and Jesus’ Restorative Justice

Slides of a presentation given to the 2022 Reconstruction class. The introduction features John Winthrop vs. Roger Williams to highlight the debate over freedom of religious Conscience vs. Christendom. The presentation highlights Christian accomplishments in health and hospitals, education and schools, land ownership and economic justice, and criminal justice reform.

Christian Restorative Justice: Economic Justice and Christian Heresy in the United States: How Restorative and Distributive Justice Take Priority Over Meritocratic-Retributive Justice

Slides to a presentation on how early Christian leaders read Genesis 1 as God providing land and wealth for all, but how Protestant heretic John Locke - the father of classical liberalism and “meritocracy” - argued that more “productive” people could take land from less “productive” people. The majority of white American evangelicals follow John Locke’s heretical views about wealth.

Michael Sandel, Why We Shouldn’t Trust Markets With Our Civic Life. TED Talk, Oct 7, 2013.

Watch this 14 minute video where Harvard professor Michael Sandel argues that key aspects of civic life should be democratically governed and not up for sale: “In the past three decades, the US has drifted from a market economy to a market society; it's fair to say that an American's experience of shared civic life depends on how much money they have. Three key examples: access to education, access to justice, political influence. In a talk and audience discussion, Sandel asks us to think honestly on this question: In our current democracy, is too much for sale?”

Whose Justice? (undergraduate version) or Whose Justice? (law school version)

Check out the slides of this evangelistic conversation starter. Consider showing both Christians and non-Christians the questions it brings up, and discussing your responses to them. Here are instructions on how to talk about the questions it raises, especially with non-Christians.

Human Dignity: Does Every Individual Matter?

An essay; 30 minute read. Science, philosophy, existentialism, other religions, and double-predestination-based theologies mean that some human beings do not matter. Only a fully Trinitarian theology with a medical substitutionary atonement can provide an adequate foundation.

Christian Faith, Not Secularism, as the Basis for Political Pluralism and Economic Progressivism

A brief outline explaining from both biblical texts and early church precedent why Christian faith leads to a political posture of human rights without theocracy. There is a vision for relational obligations, and principled respect for other religions.

Basil the Great, John Chrysostom, Augustine, What Did the Early Church Say About Economic Justice?  Plough, Sep 14, 2017.

An article highlighting three very significant Christian leaders, who are representative of the early Christian tradition as a whole. A 5 - 10 minute read.

Ambrose of Milan, On Naboth. Beneath the Ninth Station blog.

Milan was the Wall Street of the Roman Empire, and Ambrose, bishop of Milan, delivered a magisterial critique of the concentration of wealth and power at the landowners and officials. A 30 minute read.