Did the Prophets Teach Us to Protest?

Abstract

If we pay attention to biblical prophets, we can hear in their messages a calling to seek out the liberation of the downtrodden and oppressed. Despite the common tendency to interpret biblical prophets as predictors of the future, their focus was not on the future but their present social and political environments. That means their messages are not straightforward treatises on theology. They are not universalized “truths”. They are messages that call us to be attentive to those who are downtrodden. Their prophetic critique can be read as a call to recognize the humanity in others and to be willing to enter into relational dialogue with them.

1. Introduction

We need to expand the civil-rights struggle to a higher level–to the level of human rights.

(Malcolm X, “The Ballot or the Bullet”, cited in Wright 2009, p. 545)

Let not the oppressed be turned away in humiliation (Ps 74:21). For Yahweh will contend against the ones who steal their livelihood. (Pr 22:23)1

The truth is, we believe in decency so much–we feel the Rule or Law pressing us so–that we cannot bear to face the fact that we are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility.

(Lewis 1956, p. 19)

As George Foster Pierce, slave owner, Methodist bishop, and onetime president of Emory University, once bellowed, “God is always the same; and the Bible, while it records the actions of men, is really the history of God” (Cited in Byrd 2020, p. 146). Such is the argument of those who maintain that the Bible means the same thing to all people. This unchangeable nature given to divine revelation is wed to biblical interpretation and the meanings it reveals. Such that to challenge a presumed traditional interpretation of the Bible, as understood by U.S. Evangelicals, is to challenge its very authenticity as divine revelation. If one needs to know what a wolf in the sheep’s clothing of biblical interpretation looks like, it is that.

George Foster Pierce is, however, a historical example of a much larger issue that continues to impact people. In what follows, I will focus on how biblical interpretation has affected social relations in the United States. Some preliminary questions are these: How have dominant traditions of biblical interpretation defined moral responsibility? How often are conversations about changing dominant traditions for the benefit of the downtrodden avoided by those in positions of cultural authority? What if dominant traditions read biblical texts, such as the prophetic books, as challenges to rethink hierarchies of authority rooted in interpretation and the inequalities upon which they are based? What I am discussing is a strategy of relational dialogue, or discourse, which can be defined as it relates to biblical interpretation in the following way.

A strategy of relational discourse embraces an evolving nature of meaning behind primary symbols, characters, and ideas within the Bible. … It permits individuals from different positions, from margin to mainstream, from grass roots to ivory tower, to have equal voice, to be heard but also to listen. It means contributing to a conversation about oppression by engaging the voices of ‘others’ while also contributing one’s own. … It means recognizing how differences strengthen the conversation that should consume us all: in all our love, our hate, our differences, our passions, our prejudices, our greed, we are human.

(Cataldo 2019, p. 143)

Relational dialogue, of which I think prophetic critique is a strong component, should challenge the traditions of the dominant majority to elevate the voices of those marginalized, downtrodden, or oppressed. Why? Because a U.S. culture that is predominantly Christian is still struggling with inequality, hate, and oppression among communities within its own cultural borders. The Christian concept of imago Dei is, at heart, a reflection of the human condition. It is not the reflection of a specific group. It highlights the dignity of all people and the attentiveness we must all have in our interpretations of the Bible and theological doctrines for the well-being of each other.

Interpretation is the lifeblood of the religious attempt to make sense of the world. It is the process by which meanings and experiences are categorized along a spectrum, when it comes to biblical interpretation, of categories and expectations that preserve the status quo of the religious community. In other words, it helps us make sense of the world and our purposes in it. However, while that resonates with communities in dominant social positions, what about those marginalized? If one does nothing, does one avoid perpetuating the idea that their purpose is merely to be marginal?

While my discussion below is advanced with the hope for a general strategy appropriate for diverse situations, its articulation finds strength in specificity. For that reason, I look for points of connection between two specific groups: the biblical prophets and voices from the Black community in the United States. This selection is not arbitrary. There is, to a certain degree, something correct in what Dwight Hopkins wrote: “The ongoing problem and the creative challenge of the twenty-first century will be greatly impacted by what happens to the African American poor. With this group in Northern American society, we discover the coming together of the racial, class, and gender foundations upon which the United States was built” (Hopkins 2008, p. 12. However, we should also note that what Hopkins identifies as “northern American” focuses on the United States). Understanding that, Hopkins maintains, reveals a strategy for deconstructing the “fundamental hidden criterion in social interactions” that limits the changes a cultural majority tolerates (Hopkins 2008, p. 13). I agree. That is one reason why protests such as those for Black Lives Matter have been gaining more attention and support in the United States. Furthermore, they are joined by members of minority and majority communities alike. Both recognize the need for and demand change. To be aware of that I need only listen to the voices marching in my own hometown as I write this, with the echoes of their impassioned cries ringing in my ears (Cf. Buursma 2022).

The strategy of critique, relational dialogue with an emphasis on prophetic critique, offers us a model by which to continue to demand change. After all, the term “prophecy”, as Joseph Blenkinsopp pointed out, includes social activism and enlightening the public in the prophet’s function (Blenkinsopp 1996, p. 27). To that point, it might provide a motivation for dialogues that seek to elevate the dignities of those who have been “othered”. Moreover, one in which everyone, majority and minority alike, will listen and be willing to change. Then will Zechariah’s admonition be achievable:

Do not oppress any widow, orphan, immigrant, or poor person. Do not esteem injury against one’s brother.

(Zech 7:10)

2. We Must Speak

Some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak … is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.

(Martin Luther King, Jr.)

As I write this, Black Lives Matter has largely disappeared from media headlines, Russia has invaded Ukraine, the MeToo Movement has become yesterday’s concern, and LGBTQIA+ concerns for equality remain unresolved.2 Suffering, in various forms, continues to bear down upon the downtrodden, while publicly voiced concerns are measured, fad-ish, and negligent of any long-term commitment to institutional change. As Rev. Joel Osteen encouraged, for example,

Don’t get talked out of your dream. Don’t let doubt, what you don’t see happening, how unlikely it is, keep you from believing for what God promised. When thoughts tell you, there’s no way, it’s been too long, Just say, no thanks. I know my right times are coming.

(Osteen 2022)

Black Lives Matter was necessary for the 21st century because the dominant majority waited, while some ignored, for some other force to create change on behalf of the dignity of the marginalized. With prevailing attitudes like that, along with the foundational ideology that Christians are the real oppressed (see again John 15:18–21), it is hard not to conclude that an overwhelming emphasis in biblical interpretation on the idea that God promised me something, rather than one upon God promising you something, is one reason change is slow-coming. Such a perspective must be subject to prophetic critique.

I do not mean to say that majority groups do not have their own forms of suffering. Nor am I privatizing suffering to any group. Instead, I am focusing on a particular type of suffering that results from disenfranchisement. Simply acknowledging such suffering is not enough. Social groups have a propensity for reframing issues in ways that acknowledge, in generalized terms, the issues but do not commit to long-term change. The acknowledgment must lead to awareness and to commitment. Change, as Hopkins encourages, would be to answer the “divine calling for healthy community” by removing “the force of habit that privileges one race, and establishes social relations where all races own, control, and distribute God’s resources communally” (Hopkins 2008, p. 14).

In the United States, a majority of its population claims some affiliation with Christianity (cf. Pew Research Center 2015; Pew Research Center 2018). Given that, if the Bible is the primary means by which the dominant majority understands, or even defines, morality, what does it say about the cultural disenfranchisement of marginalized peoples? At what point, if we are Christians, should we read the Bible not to affirm our own positions before an abstract notion of the Divine but as a challenge for ourselves to change cultural values and practices that keep others on the margins? Rex Mason was certainly correct when he wrote that the prophets were some of the Bible’s greatest critics of those who perpetuated marginalization in society (Cf. Mason 1997, pp. 92–93). His phrase, “prophetic subversion”, referred to the same idea I am assuming about the prophets here: The prophets challenge those in power within the establishment who abuse their power and disenfranchise others (Mason 1997, p. 92).

3. Speaking of Change

Thus, Yahweh of Hosts, god of Israel, says, “Change your ways and I will settle you in this place”.

(Jer 7:3)

If we read the passage above from the perspective of the dominant majority, we would read it as a call to return to a more conservative morality against the profanity of a “secular world”. If we read it from a minority perspective, however, we would see it as a call for social change, for the dismantling of institutions and principalities that perpetuate inequality and oppression. It would be a mistake to see those differences based on any misinterpretation of a fixed meaning, as a textual foundationalist might argue. The differences are a product of different readings strategies. However, that is also the very heart of the problem. In the name of preserving the status quo, protecting a sense of universal meaning, and guarding against the threat of change, rigid biblical interpretation by the majority has justified a range of historical and social ills: slavery, war, oppression, discrimination, and more. Along the way, change gradually became a threat associated with liberalism and its emphasis on diversity. Now it is common to be rejected as “liberal” or “leftist”, or even advancing a diabolical agenda, as one advocates for greater awareness of inequality and the need for diversity.

Harriet Harris was certainly correct, if not colorful, when she wrote in her abstract that Protestant fundamentalists believed that if the Bible were flawed, Christianity would collapse and that the possibility of multiple meanings would shake the foundation of belief (Harris 2008). James Cone, Xolani Kacela, and many liberation scholars criticize the existence of that very assumption within dominant traditions of Christianity. The interpretive traditions upon which that foundation is based cater to a particular majority. Since the historical moment that the early Church fathers began seeking uniformity in doctrine and interpretation, which was solidified when the Church became a political authority in Western Europe, interpretation has been regulated by those in authority in the ecclesial structure. The Protestant Reformation did not free the world from that. In fact, with its rejection of tradition and institutional authority, as practiced by the Catholic Church and, to a lesser extent, the Orthodox Church, it became even more paranoid about the standardization of interpretation. That was, and still is, the very premise behind study Bibles, of which the Scofield Reference Bible (1909, revised in 1917), a version of the King James text and published only 46 years after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, was not only the first but was also obvious in its intent. How often we forget it was written by a man who served in the Confederate Army, who was a heavy drinker who abandoned his wife and daughters, the former who later divorced him, who was accused of bribe-taking and forgery? That study Bible, which set the groundwork for the Fundamentalist-become-Evangelical movement in the 19th–20th centuries C.E., contained no condemnation of the role that White Christian landowners played in the perpetuation of slavery.

What happened instead was an interpretive tradition that excused the Bible. Take, for example, Eph 6:5: “Slaves, love your masters…”. Translators opted to translate the Greek doulos as “servant” to differentiate it from the 18th- to 19th-century practice of slavery. The BDAG notes that this interchangeability in the translation of the Greek term “servant” for “slave” is restricted to the biblical translation and motivated by early American times, in which slavery was practiced (BDAG 260).3 In that way, even Christians holding an ideological position against slavery in the United States could preserve their belief in the objectivity of the Bible. They could do so without challenging the tradition of interpretation or the cultural value frameworks it supported that helped bolster the institution of slavery.

As human beings, we cannot afford to overlook that excusing biblical translation ignores the historical realities of the authors, the communities, and their prejudices and serves only to protect the status quo of religious doctrine and tradition. Take, for example, a passage from Exodus: “If a man strikes his male or female slave with a club and he or she dies from the blow, he will be punished. However, if the slave gets up after a day or more, the man will not be punished because the slave is his money” (21:2). Or the passage a couple of verses later that states if a man destroys the eye of his slave or knocks out the slave’s teeth, the slave is free to go (Ex 21:26–27). I have lost count of the times I have heard interpreters explain these passages as evidence that slaves were fairly treated because there were “laws” about how masters should treat their slaves. In response to that, I say the Torah was never the law in the legal sense before the rise of rabbinic Judaism; or even after, when one recognizes that Halakah is not interchangeable with Torah. The prophets reminded us of that frequently as they chastised social and political leaders, who symbolized their kingdoms, for not following the conditions of a Yahwistic law, which was really a Deuteronomic Code, which was likely an abridged version of some of what was later redacted into the Torah, or something else entirely (cf. Isa 30:9; Jer 9:13; 44:10; Hos 8:1, 12; Mal 2:8). However, even more important is the implication of such verses: it was acceptable to beat one’s slaves. Just do not kill them or knock off body parts. And any term limits on slavery? That was only for the Israelites who found themselves in debt servitude. It is past time that we acknowledge that the strategies by which interpreters seek to preserve the sacredness of biblical interpretation must be themselves subjected to question. They must be so that we can open new avenues of change.

To read the prophetic texts as patterns of challenge, we must see criticisms of fractured human relationships and cultures in them. With that, the voices of minorities must be included in the telling of the human story. They must influence the traditions of biblical interpretation in ways that challenge the conventional normative. Otherwise, we cannot acknowledge the dignity and identity of individuals, such as Palestinian Mitri Raheb, who claims,

Knowing the diverse identities that the people of the land had to undergo tells me that with my current identity I am not at an end. My identity is still in process. And I am not just an object but a subject how has a say in how identity is shaped and how history develops. This was the fascinating message of the prophets: people have a voice in how the story, their story, continues and unfolds.

(Raheb 2014, p. 20)

That message is fascinating if we can effectively adopt the prophetic message as a criticism of oppression. To focus on the prophets merely as foretelling Jesus or speaking primarily to “God’s community”, which every majority sees itself in, is to miss the potential critique and to restrict access to it by those outside the majority. The Bible, which Theophus Smith described as a “conjuring object” for this reason, is a point of symbolic intersection upon which communities build identities (Smith 1995, pp. 3–16). If we accept that as a suitable approach to the prophetic texts, which I think it is—even the dominant tradition is determined by the intersection of those in power—we do not need to change the Bible. We must reassess how its interpretation is the foundation for collective identity and the boundaries that separate communities in our world. We must be vigilant about how interpretations keep the downtrodden in the social and political categories that confine them. It is time, to borrow from Hosea, that we stop “loving” our raisin cakes while ignoring the suffering of others (Hos 3:1).4 “Learn to promote goodness. Seek justice! Correct the ruthless! Govern the orphan! Strive for the widow” (Isa 1:17)! In other words, we must seek out what is good for the downtrodden. Not what is good for those in positions of relative comfort. We must heed the call of Amos not to be those who trample on the heads of the needy, a term that can refer equally to economic, social, and political status (Amos 2:6–8).

While biblical texts may offer us strategies, they are not without their own sins. Like our own communities, exclusion and prejudice exist within those of their authors and editors too. To ignore that is to allow for such prejudices to be institutionalized within the religious tradition. My hypothetical protestor might dismiss that possibility as absurd, overly generalized, and calumny. However, that dismissal is one of ignorance; it refuses to acknowledge the evidence of the texts themselves. Texts, such as Ezra-Nehemiah (cf. Ezra 10:10–18; Neh 13:26–30), focus on community building by initially excluding foreigners (but compare the more inclusive possibility in Ezra 6:21, which nevertheless demands expressed allegiance to Yahweh and Israel, symbols of the majority, for acceptance). Most sociologists recognize that the process happens through distinction, with a preliminary step being the recognition that insiders differ from outsiders. That emphasis has been fatefully celebrated as the foundation of monotheistic traditions. In their hands, the Bible has been used to justify social and political actions that preserve boundaries between insiders and outsiders. Nevertheless, while the characteristics of what constitutes an “insider” evolve with changing social circumstances and groups, the dominant majority always sees itself in biblical definitions of the idea. When texts such as Joshua and Judges talk about divinely legitimated genocide, the biblical faithful tend not to be offended because they are actions taken to preserve the group of insiders, which in this case is God’s elect community. I have not infrequently heard justifications along the line of, “Well, the Bible says the Canaanites were sinful and God was punishing them” (cf. Lyons 2012; Currid 2016). To that, I say it is not convincing. Despite my skepticism, dominant interpretations of events that threaten the group of insiders, such as the so-called exile, become the foundation for definitions of God’s “elect community” (cf. Deut 30:4). Or what about the flood story (Gen 6:9–8:22), in which men, women, children, and animals were annihilated? Were they all sinful? Jews and Christians celebrate that story not for the death of the innocent, of which there would have been many, but because one family was saved based on one man’s presumed faith. How easy it is to theologically justify violence and oppression when it fits one’s own aims! Those ideas are part of the reason people can make claims, as Michael Flynn does in the following quote, that many do not question, even though they are categorically false.

Then you take two other documents, our Constitution and, for those who study, the Bible, and you look at those two documents because there’s so much … The Constitution and the Bible, those two documents are the fulfillment of the promises in the Bill of Rights and the Ten Commandments. That is what gives us our ability to be able to be this free, I mean, just unbelievable country that we are. But it’s fragile.

(see the video hosted at Mantyla 2022b)

Compare Flynn’s comment with that of James Harris:

The time has passed for us to be excited about a few reaching great altitudes. It is time now for the masses to experience what the Constitution has failed to provide Black people in a nation they have made possible with blood, sweat, and tears. … Preaching is our opportunity to move life forward for Black people. Our preaching holds the possibility of creating a new world.

(Harris 2020, p. 158)

So, again, the question is, do the prophetic texts offer us something of benefit with which we might engage change for ongoing circumstances? Some have found that operating outside any religious tradition, as an implicit challenge, perhaps, to be the best strategy. Beginning in 2013, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi called for social change, which developed into a movement after the acquittal of George Zimmerman for shooting Trayvon Martin. “Black Lives Matter is an ideological and political intervention in the world where Black lives are systematically and intentionally targeted for demise. It is an affirmation of Black folks’ humanity, our contributions to this society, and our resilience in the face of deadly oppression” (Black Lives Matter n.d.). If one were to ask why would such a movement that should find overwhelming support from Bible-believing communities choose to function outside of those communities, one would be asking the right question. Could it be that the founders, who are Black women, are also members of an LGBTQIA+ community (see also Mohamed et al. 2021)?

To be clear, I am not trying to say anything new about Black experience. Rather, the scholars who dedicate their research there have said much already. My focus is on identifying a reading strategy that directs our focus toward change. Because when I walk outside my office door, I enter a world in which prejudice and inequalities against minorities agonizingly demand change. Racism, xenophobia, homophobia, and gender inequalities still exist in churches. The theologies and interpretive traditions that govern them have not changed adequately to respond to newer, or newly exposed, oppressions in the world. Instead, one hears more often the romanticized notion of Christians being an oppressed minority (particularly from White U.S. Christians; and this ideological position is behind even Osteen’s claim that “your right times are coming”). The suffering of Christ becomes the model that must be followed in demonstration of one’s commitment to God. Passages such as Isa 53:1–12, which refer to a “suffering servant”, are interpreted as depictions of Christ and subsequently the model attitude for the believing community. Christians, who become the body of Christ after Jesus’ crucifixion (and resurrection), take over the role of “suffering” against the powers of Satan for the sake of the Gospel. Phrases such as “we are in this world not of it” only serve to reinforce beliefs that being a perpetually “exiled” people is cause for spiritual suffering. What a difference that is from James Cone’s interpretation of Christ’s suffering! He compared the cross to the lynching tree, where lifeless Black bodies hung in a grotesque reminder of what Christ’s body should be committed to changing: the suffering of the downtrodden and oppressed (Cone 2011). Suffering, for him, was not some romanticized idea of progressing toward glory. Suffering was holding on to one’s life and dignity against the imminent threat of an oppressive status quo.

In the more common narrative, Christians become, in contest with the powers and principalities of the world, the central subjects in need of liberation (Pearcey 2004). U.S. Christianity is shaped even further by the belief that God designed the United States as a place where Christians can worship freely. Consequently, many conservatives also believe that means that Christianity should be the basis by which are defined the morals and norms of the nation (cf. Schaeffer 1982, pp. 31–39). Disagreement with those assumptions is frequently seen as a threat. As Francis Schaeffer noted, for example, “The humanists push for ‘freedom,’ but having now Christian consensus to contain it, that ‘freedom’ leads to chaos or to slavery under the state (or under an elite)” (Schaeffer 1982, p. 29). What Schaeffer would include under “humanists” are those who challenge traditional interpretive traditions of the Bible that do not address the inequalities under which minorities suffer.

For a more colorful example, note the tirade of Rev. Shane Vaughn, founder of First Harvest Ministries in Mississippi, against Black Lives Matter, for example,

You demon spirit, called BLM! I curse you in the name of Yeshua, the messiah, for what you have done in the United States of America. You Nephilim! Demon spirit! Shut down your demands. America will not succeed, or accede, to your tyranny. We will not surrender to your demands. Why? Because no demand they ever make will satisfy their demon minds. God bless America, the greatest nation on the planet earth. And we will never, ever surrender.

(a copy of the video sermon has been saved at Mantyla 2022a)

Vaughn also takes aim at pro-choice and LGBTQIA+ communities, blaming them and support for them for the COVID-19 variants as God’s punishment (Fink 2021). I am confident that many readers would dismiss Vaughn as a rather extreme example. His rhetoric is extreme, I grant, but his attitude is more common than many would like to admit. More importantly, it is the silence of those who disagree with him about real oppression that should also be condemned. In a general sense, that was a point that James Cone argued well when he saw parallels between the crucified Christ and lynched black bodies (cf. Cone 2000, p. 735).

4. Speaking about Suffering

Listen to this, you heifers … oppressors of the poor, crushers of the needy, the ones who say … “bring us drinks”!

(Amos 4:1)

Despite the hardships, despite intense segregation, God’s created intention for racial harmony based on justice within each person, race, and among all races still holds true even today.

(Hopkins 2008, p. 14)

Certainly, there are some passages in the Bible about mutual respect and loving one’s neighbor. However, if one looks closely at those passages, they do not prohibit prejudice. In Mark 12:33, for instance, the passage about loving one’s neighbor as oneself, the term translated as “neighbor” (Greek plaesion) is not universal. It refers to someone who lives in close proximity and is ethnically and culturally similar, or (possibly) part of the “in group.” Thus, it would be easy to justify prejudice against those of “out groups” based on the statement attributed to Jesus. Even Jesus calls a Canaanite woman, who is already marred with an ethnic identity condemned by the full weight of the Tanakh, a “dog” (Matt 15:26). How far are we from this: “Jedge Clements, the man dat keep law and order, say he wouldn’t burn a dog ‘live, so he lef’. But dey sho burn dat nigger ’live for I seed him atter he wuz burned up” (Federal Writers’ Project and Library of Congress 2006, p. 47)? Moreover, if the parallel sounds offensive, we need only recall the historical connection between Ham and Canaan and Canaan’s curse to be the slave of Shem’s descendants, which includes Israel and Judah (Gen 9:24–27). While Ham is not explicitly stated to be Black in the Genesis passage, the ethnicities later attributed to him, especially through dominant interpretations, tend to be of darker complexion.5

Take, for example, the statement by Rev. E. W. Warren,

“Hear, O Heavens, give ear, O Earth, for it is the Lord that speaketh.” This quotation was made by Mr. T. with solemn emphasis, then turning to Genesis ix:25, he read, “Cursed be Canaan [i.e., Ham]; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren, and he said Blessed be the Lord God of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japhet and he shall dwell in the tents: of Shem and Canaan shall be his servant.” Here, Nellie, is the origin of slavery, it comes directly from God through His servant Noah.

(Warren 1864, pp. 8–9)

Even an ex-slave, Charlie Aarons, interpreted divine will behind slavery, which was undoubtedly the consequence of his exposure to White Christianity.

According to what was issued out in the Bible, there was a time for slavery, people had to be punished for their sin, and then there was a time for it not to be, and the Lord opened a good view to Mr. Lincoln, and he promoted a good idea.

(Federal Writers’ Project and Library of Congress 2006, p. 5)

My point is that prejudice is not hard to find in the Bible, nor in its traditions of interpretation and among its interpreters. Furthermore, if dominant, or dominating, traditions do not, in the spirit of the prophets, change how they read the Bible and adopt ways that challenge traditional interpretations and those who benefit from them, then they risk perpetuating such prejudices in ways that prevent mutual understanding. Kacela puts this idea in terms of Black Liberation Theology.

Black liberation theologians are angry at the constructs of God created by the White Church that minimized the Black religious experience that emerged out of “the context of suffering”.

(Kacela 2005, p. 205)

The suffering that is not re-appropriated by a dominant culture but acknowledged in its own right can become the basis of relational dialogue. It must be acknowledged as the unique experience of a particular community. Re-appropriating the legacies of that suffering, as one can see in the following example of Bryan Fischer, ignores, or rather, muzzles, the struggles of others. He made the following statement after New Mexico’s Supreme Court unanimously decided that a wedding photographer who refused services to a same-sex couple violated the State’s anti-discrimination law.

Essentially what this court has done and what the Obama administration has done with this abortifacient mandate is that they have turned Christians into Dred Scott. … So to me this looks like Jim Crow is alive and well, we’ve got Jim Crow laws right back in operation, Christians are the new blacks.

(Fischer 2013, emphasis mine)

Fischer’s comment is an example that re-appropriates the history and suffering of African American communities. To make his claim, he appeals to the fairly common Christian theme (among U.S. Evangelicals) that Christians are an oppressed minority in a world that is not defined by Christian ethics, values, and moralities. Moreover, he reinterprets the pain of segregation as the experience of Christians as God’s elect community.

It is an assumption to which even scholars are not immune. Take, for example, Teresa Hornsby, “Hosea 1–3 is enigmatic with its pervasive stirrings of sexuality mingled with the Sacred, the conflation of violence and eroticism, the pairing of God’s anger and tenderness” (Hornsby 1999, p. 115). Interpreting the text under the assumption of a shared understanding of “sacred” and “God” does not avoid imposing the definitions of those ideas celebrated within dominant traditions of interpretation. As the late Philip Davies put it, “Stories are never innocent of point of view, plot, ideology, or cultural values. We tell our stories of the past in a historical context, looking at the past from a particular point: the present. We cannot be objective, neutral observers. … Our views of the past are also affected by our geographical, political, and social locations” (Davies 2008, p. 11). It is time to read the critique of the prophets against tradition as a challenge to the contentedness of the dominant majority and the status quo, in which the sins of the past have not been fully rectified. That is what the prophets did in their times. Reading the biblical prophets should compel us to action, to response, to invested concern in the dignities of others. “The prophetic is an action. It is also a performance” (Ellis 2014, p. 16). In all of that, according to Cone, it entails advocation of the stories of those suffering.

Black suffering needs radical and creative voices, prophetic advocates who can tell brutal and beautiful stories of how oppressed black people survived with a measure of dignity when they were not meant to.

(Cone 2011, location 2831)

5. Who Is the Minority?

White supremacy caused you to take Jesus, a man with hair like lamb’s wool and feet like burnished brass and make him White. So that you could worship him because you could never see yourself honoring somebody black because of the state of your mind. You see, you, you really need help. You’ll be all right. You’ll be all right. Now, now, now, you painted the Last Supper, everybody there white.

(Louis Farrakhan cited in Wright 2009, p. 690)

In the past, when I described biblical and cultural norms in the United States as traditionally favoring a White, able, Christian heteronormative, I was called a “White hater” by those who did not understand that “White” means more than just physical appearance. Nor did they understand that critically analyzing that normative is not meant to throw the baby out with the manger. It is a mode of interpretation. Furthermore, interpretation, which reinforces the institution and hierarchies of power, must be an evolving thing. Many of the majority who benefit from that normative do not want to hear that meaning cannot be static or that it could evolve to accommodate different perspectives. However, meaning and interpretation must be given to what Anthony Pinn refers to as “performative diversity”. This acknowledges difference as a marker of strength; it requires “producing an organic system of symbols and signs that draws from the sensibilities of a wide-ranging group of participants”. The way to do that, he offers, is to create situations in which adherents see themselves, minority as well as the majority, reflected in social, political, or other ideological beliefs, movements, and values (Pinn 2015, pp. 122–23). When minority communities cannot do so, when they accept without protest for themselves a predefined status and value determined by a majority culture, their identities are rooted in their (passive) subordination.

There is an even greater danger, one that has enjoyed pride of place in biblical traditions. As Robert Karen argues, such dichotomization between insider and outsider, good and evil, among others, is the foundation of monotheism (Karen 2003; see also Schwartz 1997). It is rooted in the social statement, rooted as it is in assumptions about fixed boundaries, “I am not you”, which not only expresses individual consciousness but also becomes the basis for defining boundaries between insider and outsider. It is part of an inherent defensive mechanism. When we encounter communities that challenge us or the boundaries within which we are culturally comfortable, we come face to face with prejudices, the limits of values, and the frayed edges of meaning frameworks. That is what James Cone meant when he wrote,

I am still struggling with the Christian faith, arguing with its interpreters, past and present in White and Black communities. That is the only way I can make it my own. As long as the Christian faith is connected with White supremacy and other horrendous evils, I must struggle with it or reject it as the work of evil White men.

(Cone 2000, p. 735)

Reinterpreting those boundaries and categories is threatening. It entails a re-assessment of ideological foundations upon which collective identity rests. “To go against the order of society”, Peter Berger reminds us, “is always to risk plunging into anomy” (Berger 1990, p. 39). As members of a group, we know ourselves because of our distinction from others. Those differences become, in a manner of speaking, “sacred”. That sense of the idea is found in Hosea’s critique, I would argue. The sacredness of Yahweh, and the expectation that it entails, is inseparable from the distinction of the people. That is the sentiment that permeates much of the prophetic works in the Bible. That above any strictly theological sentiment. The prophets were, in that sense, early nationalists. The fidelity called for by Yahweh almost always entailed attention to social and political boundaries, an idea that works such as Ezra-Nehemiah takes to an extreme degree (cf. Ezra 10:1–18). Moreover, Hosea’s emphasis on covenant was, as J. A. Dearman observed, not for any religious institution but to highlight the need for a shared “contract” as the basis for social identity (Dearman 2010, pp. 51–52). When interpreters make these issues ones of biblical theology, they universalize historical prejudice against outsiders. The expression of that in the 19th and 20th centuries is what precisely the theorists I am analyzing here (e.g., Cone, Pinn, and Kacela) are getting at.

The tendency to universalize and absolutize is a protective measure against change. Change threatens instability, especially for religions such as Christianity, whose identity is rooted in the belief that revelation, which is not tangible, does not change. Dan Hahn and Naomi Wiesner made that argument when they wrote about Christian fundamentalists,

Thus, the movement is driven to Christianize others to bring the objective world into alignment with their own subjective preferences. They cannot accept the world as it is; they are driven by their fear of social change and sense of impotence. Threatened by the existing social order, their response is fearfulness. The things that they fear most in themselves are projected onto others. In order to assure themselves against behaving in an unacceptable way, they need to identify an ‘enemy’ and claim it is that enemy, instead, that wishes to behave in the unacceptable way.6

We are not the people who were the intended audiences of the biblical authors. Nationalist ideals of American culture had no bearing on how those authors defined God. Reliance upon interpretations with a fixed nature only reinforces traditional institutions of power and assumptions about our own hierarchies vis-à-vis a divine plan for an eventual eternal monarchy. Moreover, the assumption that meaning is fixed in the Bible is one reason many Christians continue to read the Bible as though they are an oppressed minority. Christians, according to Colson, must fight against the powers and principalities that threaten to mold the world into a form that is not consistent with the dominant Christian image for it:

Where does today’s hostility toward Christians leave us? Basically where the church has always been: at odds with the world. … But we must defend the truth lovingly, winsomely, letting others see in all we do the excellence of Him, who has called us from darkness into light. This is no easy task. It is daunting and sometimes frightening. For though the forces that rise against us in these closing years of the century are civilized–after all, we don’t have a Nero or a Ceaucescu seeking to stamp us out–their hostility to the Truth is no less real.

(Colson and Vaughn 1990, p. xii)

Colson interprets any refusal to conform to Christian ideals as hostility. That the world refuses to conform itself to Christian ideals? That others challenge the assumption that biblical ideals are the foundation of a moral society? Prophetic critique should illuminate the dignity and welfare of the downtrodden, not reaffirm the comfort of those well-positioned in culture. It should challenge the dominant traditions, even those of religious tradition, that pass by, such as the priest and Levite of Luke 10:30–37, comfortable in their own social, economic, and political positions. Possibly in different terms, it should call to question interpretations that focus on the political victory of the dominant community. That is the motivation behind Hosea’s criticism of priests, who represent the dominant religious tradition of their society (cf. Hos 4:4, 6–7, 9; 5:1; 6:9; 10:5). “The company of priests is like a marauding band …” (Hos 6:9). What if “priest” in that passage could symbolize leaders of modern Christian churches? Or even those who benefit from traditional interpretations and resist change?

Colson illustrates how the perspective of White Christianity shaped dominant interpretations of the 19th and 20th centuries. The struggle of Christianity against oppression, as defined within those interpretations, becomes universalized as one against good and evil. Moreover, we know such interpretive traditions are defined from the perspective of the majority because they do not address the immanent struggles of minority communities. For instance,

If you wait to find God in church, Celie, she say, that’s who is bound to show up, cause that’s where he live.

How come? I ast.

Cause that’s the one that’s in the white folks’ white bible.

Shug! I say. God wrote the bible, white folks had nothing to do with it.

How come he look just like them, then? she say. Only bigger? And a heap more hair. How come the bible just like everything else they make, all about them doing on thing and another, and all the colored folks doing is gitting cursed?

(Alice Walker, The Color Purple, cited in Wright 2009, p. 627)

Prophetic critique, as I am defining it, demands that we read the Bible as a challenge to change dominant interpretations and assumptions. It seeks an interpretative strategy that pursues the voice of those downtrodden by institutions and systems that benefit a majority comfortable in its own position. Furthermore, it stands in opposition to those dedicated to preserving the status quo when it marginalizes others (see also Blenkinsopp 1996, p. 35). Can we not find a model for such a challenge in passages such as Hos 4:4–10; 5:1–5? In addition, the accusation in Amos that Israel will be judged because it has become “the ones who trample the dust from the ground into the head of the poor and who turn aside the way of the destitute” (Amos 2:7). To be sure, this need is a developing one. From the time of freeing slaves in the United States, the challenges of immigrants, women’s suffrage, and civil rights, which today include LGBTQIA+ communities, many have challenged the states of affairs that reinforce inequality. However, until the dominant traditions of interpretation change to meet those needs, minority communities will always exist on the margins. When will that change be apparent? When statements such as the following are no longer necessary.

She say, Miss Celie, you better hush. God might hear you. Let ’im her me, I say. If he ever listened to poor colored women the world would be a different place, I can tell you.

(Alice Walker, The Color Purple, cited in Wright 2009, p. 626)

6. Anger as an Outcry

Did you ever imagine after all the Civil Rights Era, and everything that’s happened in our country, how we ended racism, and ended all these problems, but now it’s back in the form of education.

(Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, video posted on Edwards 2022)

We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.

(Martin Luther King, Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail, cited in Wright 2009, p. 519)

Moving away from the margin demands that minority communities be heard. That their suffering not be re-appropriated, but that it be recognized. Failure to listen and failure to allow dominant traditions to be challenged can only result in perpetuating inequalities. Anger exists in communities dissatisfied with the existing life circumstances and the status quo. It reflects dissatisfaction and the failed expectations of something more. In that, anger can be productive. It highlights points of disconnect that define motivations behind anger. Even in the realm of theology:

I could barely contain my rage whenever I read [white theologians’] books or found myself in their presence. They were so condescending and arrogant in the way they talked about black theology, always communicating the impression that it was not genuine theology, because it was too emotional and anti-intellectual. Furthermore, it did not deal with the “proper” subject matter of theology–namely, the rational justification of religious belief in a scientific and technological world that has no use for God. … I kept thinking about my mother and father (and all the poor blacks they symbolized in African-American history and culture) in order to keep my theological vocation clearly focused and my immediate purpose sharply defined.

(Cone 2010, locations 176–185)

When anger is triggered, one may find intersections in which things are out of balance. We often speak the truth in anger because anger projects us past polite civility. It leapfrogs into demanding that one can identify the raw nature of the problem. As Kacela writes, for instance, “[a]fter all, anger is an emotion with which all persons can identify. Anger incites people into action. Anger frustrates the status quo. Anger motivates people to change” (Kacela 2005, p. 202). When channeled appropriately, it can identify areas of needed change and connect people toward that change. Anger can be productive. Again, from Kacela:

God has given human beings anger as a gift to be used in a just and liberating manner. A more liberating and holistic approach to Black theology appropriates this gift and makes deliberate strides to integrate, not limit, anger, and recognizes that “God intentionally placed emotion alongside of and integrally related to reason [and] at the center of human life”.

(Kacela 2005, p. 210)

As a liberating tool, anger expresses emotions and frustrations that are otherwise marginalized from the public sphere. Hosea, for instance, challenged the kingdom’s aristocracy for the defeat of the kingdom. “Hear this, priests! Pay attention, house of Israel! Listen, royal house! Judgment is coming for you because you were a trap for Mizpah and a net spread over Tabor” (Hos 5:1).7 The call put those leaders in focus, and in the context of the kingdom’s defeat, it implicated them. From this point on in the text the accusations become more political (cf. Andersen and Freedman 1980, p. 383). While Mizpah and Tabor are a puzzle in terms of why those particular locations are named, it is clear they are meant, as James Mays puts it, “to call to mind some case or situation in which the responsible leaders perverted their office” (Mays 1969, pp. 80–81). However, as Hosea also looks to the possibility of renewal—Lo-Ammi, for example, may become Ammi (cf. Hos 2:1 [2:3 HB])—anger, as a liberating tool, looks beyond its expression. It identifies an offense and the possibility for reconciliation, which emphasizes a subject’s accountability in restoring a relationship. There may be an inherent recognition in Hosea’s call that while the aristocratic leaders held material power—it’s hard not to hear the anachronistic sigh of Marx here—they were fewer than those over whom they held authority. While Hosea does not address the oppressed directly, he challenges those whose decisions led to the oppression of the kingdom by a foreign power. Likewise, Amos is, as Mason put it, “wholly subversive of those in power” (Mason 1997, p. 107). To add to this, “[I]f there is to be a future for the oppressed ‘poor’ and ‘righteous,’ there is certainly to be none for the political and ecclesiastical establishment” (Mason 1997, p. 107). Interpreters often see Amos’s critique being the oppression of the economically destitute. It is, but that is not the sum of it. Amos challenged those in power (cf. 2:6–8). Those they oppressed were not only those who lived in squalor but included those they subordinated for their own social-economic benefit and position (cf. 2:12).

Similarly, Hosea challenges the aristocratic leaders by accusing them of waywardness, denoting a deviation from their responsibility to the nation (cf. Hos 14:4). He criticized the status quo and its resistance to necessary change. “And it was pride in the person of Israel that responded…” (Hos 5:5). We should not desire change for the sake of deconstruction, chaos, or instability labels that have defined modern protest movements, for example. One should desire change for improvement. One need not look far to find that sentiment in other prophets: “Make your ways and actions good … and you will be relieved of the misery coming for you” (Jer 26:13).

As a more modern parallel, protesters underline, in most cases, though there are always exceptions to the rule, some areas of needed social or political improvement. As Stokely Carmichael put it, “We won’t fight to save the present society … We are just going to work, in the way we see fit, and on goals we define, not for civil rights but for all our human rights” (cited in Wright 2009, p. 574). The diminishment of anger does not mean that the reasons for the anger have diminished. Sometimes reconciliation is still necessary. In all cases, reconciliation demands responsibility. One cannot have reconciliation without change, which expects something relinquished on the parts of the involved parties. Hosea’s wilderness description, in which the woman loses everything in order to become part of a renewed relationship with Yahweh, offers a way of understanding reconciliation in practice.

Any reconciliation between oppressors and oppressed, as social classes, presupposes the liberation of the oppressed, a liberation forged by themselves through their own revolutionary praxis.

(Paulo Freire, foreword in J. H. Cone 2010)

Angry speech de-centers conventional understanding. When it is conducted in the spirit of relational dialogue or prophetic critique, it demands an appropriate response to what a situation or community needs. Nevertheless, we have to listen. Frequently, recalcitrance and unwillingness to listen are signs of anxiety or fear. Listening requires change. Change threatens anomy (cf. Berger 1990). That fear, of course, the dominant majority often internalizes. In addition, perhaps it is also that fear that encourages White silence on the part of many, about which James Cone writes,

It seems that there is nothing Black people can say or do that will wake White theologians out of their slumber. But we must keep trying to shake them out of their indifference to “one of the most shameful scandals of modern Christianity”. No one, absolutely no one can be a representative of Jesus and treat others as subhuman. There can be no compromise on this point. Any theology that does not fight White supremacy with all its intellectual strength cancels its Christian identity. This is where I stand. I invite Black Catholic theologians (and Whites too) to let the world know where they stand theologically. I am sure we could have a very fruitful dialogue.

(Cone 2000, p. 737)

As liberation theologies remind us, interpretation for the benefit of the downtrodden must make sense within the context of the experiences of the downtrodden community. If that demands that we pay attention to the perspective of the minority, if that demands that we listen to perspectives other than our own, then that is what our response should be. That is where the wilderness experience for Hosea becomes fruitful (Hos 2:14–15). In that being passed through the wilderness experience, perhaps we will listen. Moreover, in that way, perhaps the metaphors of the children, who were negatively named only to be positively renamed, embody and represent a future in which more communities have seats at the table. Perhaps that is ideal, but the interpretation is the lifeblood of the religious attempt to make sense of the world (as Berger 1990 notes of religion). Interpretation is the language and meaning system imposed upon experiences to define order, including the cultural laws and expectations that support the community and its social world. It fashions the categories by which we understand each other. However, that also means that interpretation should not be the product of a majority community alone and that where it serves the aims of the status quo, it must be subject to critique. That minority communities chafe beneath dominant traditions in theology and interpretation demands that we reassess the limits and expectations placed around interpretations. The existence of such canonized inequalities is why James Cone writes, “I am still struggling with the Christian faith, arguing with its interpreters, past and present in White and Black communities. That is the only way I can make it my own. As long as the Christian faith is connected with White supremacy and other horrendous evils, I must struggle with it or reject it as the work of evil White men” (Cone 2000, p. 735).

Inequalities lead to anger. Not simply because there is no access to power but because the contribution of the minority community to the status quo is often limited to the experiences afforded under the constraints of inequalities. Powerless, it must define itself according to the categories culturally legitimated by the dominant majority.

That is why relationships with power, as Cone also reminds us, preserve cultural inequalities. Relationships, he bemoans, can sometimes be manifest in silence.

I have been writing about this silence for 30 years but White theologians still refuse to talk about White supremacy as a theological problem. They act as if they do not see racial oppression or hear the Black cries for justice. They must think either that racism is not a serious problem or that it is outside of the realm of theological discourse.

(Cone 2000, p. 732)

What would the prophets say about religious traditions that have been silent about the oppression of minorities? Moreover, that religious traditions, in fact, have been more vocal about the loss of social influence by the majority? The voice of the downtrodden should not be pushed outside the realm of public biblical discourse. Can we not hear that inferred in Isaiah: “The downtrodden will increase their joy in Yahweh, and the poor of humanity will rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. (Isa 29:19)”? Reading the prophets as models of critique should encourage us to be critical of those communities that ignore the plight of the downtrodden, even if—especially if—we belong to those communities. It should resist upholding the dominant Christian community as the embodiment of suffering or resist dismissing changes to its own social hierarchies as suffering and persecution. It should challenge that community, calling on it to assess how it perpetuates the suffering of others, either by ignoring their cries or re-appropriating their experiences. After all, “A true full humanity includes us all, such that to be human is to see one’s humanity in the other” (Hopkins 2008, p. 18).

Where, then, do we go from here to find that humanity? While this study has focused primarily on Black experience in the United States, paying heed to prophetic critique as a style of protest calls us to be attentive to struggles beyond that particular context. Protests have been occurring around the world for a variety of reasons. The following are different cultural examples that relate, in the spirit of this article, to minority experiences in struggles against a dominant majority, whether in terms of social, political, economic, or ethnic issues. In Portugal, the death of George Floyd in the United States sparked protests against police brutality in that country (June 2020). In Spain, rising prices for fuel, food, and energy have led to protests among those for whom the cost of living was increasingly too high (March 2022), as has happened in Morocco (February 2022). In the United Kingdom, the death of Sarah Everard gave a face to violence-against-women protests (March 2021), and the death of George Floyd sparked protests against police brutality and racism in the U.K. (June 2020), the latter which was paralleled in Germany. Groups in Nigeria protested police brutality (October 2020). In Ethiopia, the murder of 23 ethnic minorities led to protests against ethnic violence (September 2018). In Oman, massive layoffs and new taxes sparked economic protests (May 2021). Iran saw a water shortage that led to protests (July 2021). In Israel, the decision to evict six Palestinian families from their homes in East Jerusalem contributed to ongoing protests against Israel’s treatment of Palestinians (May 2021). In India, the harassment of a Muslim woman by Hindu men helped spark a protest against a ban on wearing headscarves in an educational setting (January 2022). The takeover by the Taliban in Afghanistan has led to anti-Taliban protests (August 2021). In Australia, the allegation made by Brittany Higgins of rape led to protests against widespread sexual harassment of women (February 2021). George Floyd’s death also led to protests there for racial equality (June 2020). In Indonesia, racist remarks by military officers and nationalist militia sparked protests of racism against Papuan citizens (August 2019), followed by protests against a new criminal code that would violate the rights of women, religious minorities, and LGBTQIA+ groups (September 2019). If, as Malcolm X called for, we expand the discussion of civil rights to one of human rights, these are issues and insecurities that should demand our attention. In addition, if, as Isaiah pleaded, we should seek justice, correct the ruthless, and we should pay attention to the needs of the widow and orphan (cf. 1:17), then we must listen to the cries of those represented by such protests. If, as Amos warned, the well-being of the economic, social, and political downtrodden must be attended to (cf. 2:6–8), then our listening should command within ourselves a response.

Prophetic critique, as an aspect of relational dialogue, does not intend to replace one perspective with another. It reminds us—how we often so quickly forget in the comfort of our paneled houses! (cf. Hag 1:4)—of the downtrodden at our own city gates, in our ghettos, and beyond (cf. Amos 5:12). It reminds us to listen.