From Lydia Bean, Friends of Justice board member:

We don’t usually get all theological on this blog—we try to keep it relevant to people from all faiths and no faith—but I was inspired at church today to write a post about the Bible and justice.

At church today, my pastor started a four-part sermon series on the book of Philemon. During the service, I started reading Paul’s letter to Philemon with new eyes. This book of the Bible is a one-page personal letter from the apostle Paul to a fellow Christian named Philemon. Paul is writing on behalf of a slave named Onesimus, who ran away from Philemon and then developed a close relationship with Paul. Paul is writing Philemon to ask him to take Onesimus back into his household—not as a slave, but as a free man.

Growing up, I didn’t like the book of Philemon, because it seemed like Paul was asking nicely for Philemon to free his slave—as if freeing a slave was just an act of charity, rather than non-negotiable obedience to God’s standards of justice. During slavery, this letter was twisted by southern white Christians to show that the early church had made its peace with slavery, that owning human beings as property was consistent with Christian discipleship, as long as you treated your slaves with paternalistic kindness. How should Christians today read the book of Philemon in the United States, in a country with a painful history of slavery?

Philemon has a whole different meaning for me now, after fighting with Friends of Justice to end the legacy of slavery in the United States in the criminal justice system. I think that Paul is laying out a template for how Christians should hold fellow Christians accountable for acting justly. Friends of Justice uses an approach very much like Paul’s, whenever we launch a narrative-based campaign to pressure public officials to give equal justice to poor people of color.

Paul writes,
To Philemon, our dear friend and co-worker…When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ…For this reason, though I am bold enough in Christ to command you to do your duty, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love…Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I say.

This is a very strange request—Paul is asking Philemon to do the right thing out of love, but he is also clear that Philemon’s “voluntary” compliance is also mandatory for someone who claims to be a follower of Christ. Friends of Justice makes this strange kind of request all the time. Before our Executive Director, Alan Bean, started organizing in Jena, Louisiana, he went around to local pastors and public officials and told them that they had a duty to treat the “Jena 6” with fairness and consideration, not to throw their lives away in an evidence-free show trial. My father, Alan Bean, is also a Baptist minister, so he also took the opportunity to ask these local leaders to do the right thing as Christians. He explained that it would be better for Jena as a community if the local officials would voluntarily recognize that justice was not being done, if they took moral leadership in the situation. Otherwise, Friends of Justice would be forced to bring in national and international media to publicize this miscarriage of justice—and that would inevitably embarrass the town and brand them as racists. The leadership of Friends of Justice takes no delight in embarrassing people—we know it takes a personal toll on public officials to have their work scrutinized by the national media.  We would rather give them an opportunity to do the right thing voluntarily.

But unfortunately, no one has ever taken us up on our offer to voluntarily do the right thing. We can’t be naïve about power: people who are abusing their power rarely give anything up without a struggle. Jena got branded as the most racist town in America because Jena’s local leaders chose not to recognize their moral responsibilities, and so people of color across the country had to hold them accountable. Still, I think it’s important for Friends of Justice to always invite people to do the right thing voluntarily, out of respect for the Constitution, out of love for their country’s best ideals—and if they are Christians, out of obedience to Christ. Our goal is not to humiliate them, our goal is to achieve justice in a way that shows love for enemies.
I think this combination of justice and love is the hallmark of a Christian approach to organizing for justice. Unlike Paul, we are blessed to live in a democracy, where we can hold our leaders accountable for their actions in nonviolent ways. But at the same time, we have to guard our hearts, so we don’t become consumed with anger and self-righteousness as we hold people accountable. It’s a delicate balance.

And now we’re in a presidential race where one party is running the first African-American candidate, and the other party has become closely linked to white evangelical Christianity–but not black evangelical Christianity. How should Christians fight to overcome the legacy of slavery in the United States?  Especially when American Christianity itself has become corrupted by slavery, split down racial lines, fractured between North and South, and shaped by the backlash against the Civil Rights movement?

The Apostle Paul knew something about a church divided along lines of race, ethnicity, power, and wealth. And he knew that unless the church challenged each other to act justly, they couldn’t model an alternative ethic within their larger culture, and they couldn’t achieve the mission of the church.  Paul saw that Philemon was shepherding a growing Christian community, that he was a loving man, that he was living a fruitful life, but that wasn’t enough. Philemon needed to have his worldview transformed, so that he could recognize Onesimus as a brother and no longer a slave. Philemon couldn’t be effective in sharing his faith until he had fully grasped “all the good that we may do for Christ.” Without justice, all our talk of love and community becomes hollow.

Here’s my prayer for my fellow Christians in the United States during this election season:
“When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. I pray that the sharing of your faith may become effective when you perceive all the good that we may do for Christ.”