Customer Reviews

The Justice Project

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The Justice Project is the latest offering from the Emergent group.

It is a book of essays that all deal with biblical justice and our world today.

With contributers like Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, Joseph Myers, and Doug Pagitt you know you'll find something that connects with you.

Broken down to 5 sections, you'll read essays that deal with:

The God of Justice - how we see God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit work out justice.
The Book of Justice - the justice we find in Scripture
Justice in the U.S.A. - the history of justice (native Americans), up to the "values voters"
A Just World - moving outside our national borders to bring justice to the world and within our "burbs"
A Just Church - how we can epitomize justice.

Too many people have complained that religion is America has become too politicized with the Religious Right's involvement and obvious collapse, and now with a seemingly growing number of Liberal Christians rising behind the star power of President Obama.

This book removes all areas of complaint and brings out what God has called His people to do with regards to justice in our world.

Let's stop the name calling and get to work..


This book was provided for review by BakerBooks Publishing.

I highly recommend The Justice Project to anyone concerned with faith's intersection with the public sphere. With that said, I do not think that any review I can write will do this book justice (pun intended). Nevertheless, I will try to encapsulate this excellent book and my thoughts on it.

Edited by Brian McLaren, Elisa Padilla, and Ashley Bunting Seeber, The Justice Project, is a compilation of essays on the topic of justice (big surprise, I know). The essays are collected according to their topics: God, Scriptures, the USA, the World, the Church, and Final Conclusions. Each of the essays are written at around six pages, making them each quick and easily digestible. Moreover, as we have come to expect from Emerging Church books, these essays have been constructed for the average reader. There is a no overblown vocabulary full of political and theological jargon. The complexity of these essays comes in their application, rather than in their reading. Lastly, this volume has intentionally reached across ethnic, geographical, and especially across liberal/ conservative lines. Although this book has articles by the Emergent mainstays Brian McLaren, Tony Jones, and Samir Selmanovic, The Justice Project also includes articles from multiple members of Willow Creek Community Church (Including Lyne Hybels). The Justice Project laudably models the type of egalitarian community it hopes to create.

A specific Gem of an essay in this book is "My Name is Legion for We Are Many: Exorcism as Racial Justice" by Anthony Smith. The essay fascinating argues that "Mista Charley," the structural racism that exists via apathy in America, needs to be exorcized as a "national demon." Here is a brief quotation, playing on the Legion passage from Mark 5:

"We stand in an imperial graveyard. Our body politic has habits that render it nearly impossible to get at the deep terrain of racial privilege, dominance, and vast economic iniquities that persist along racial lines. We scream in privileged agony, cut ourselves off from the painful history of others, and are unable to be chained to a profound practice of repentance. What would it look like to be clothed and in our right minds again?... We wouldn't attribute our success solely to our "work ethic" and "rugged individualism," but would see the racial dynamics that play into the success of some and the struggle of others" (Smith, 106).

This book has both challenged my complicity in theologies and structures of injustice, while making me believe that change is possible. This is the kind of book that I will read over and over again.

The Justice Project is a collection of essays devoted to understanding social justice issues. There are over thirty chapters dealing with issues as diverse as urban poverty, justice for Native Peoples in the U.S., reading the Bible justly, and racial justice among many others.
I appreciate the conversational rather than adversarial tone used in these essays. You will hear from liberals, and conservatives, you will hear from evangelical, mainline, and emerging believers, you will hear from seasoned voices whose names we all recognize and you will hear from the next generation of Christian thinkers that will amaze you with their passion and intellect.

The Justice Project, which is edited by Brian Mclaren and Company was an exciting release by Bakerbooks and Emergent Village. The book is broken down into many small chapters by authors like Tony Jones, Peggy Campolo, Rene Padilla and Lynne Hybels. The chapters are almost too short. None is really long enough to flesh out a topic.

My other issue with the book is how one-sided it is. The editors/author bashed certain branches of Christianity while conveniently forgetting the social justice contributions of the Salvation Army in the UK and America, John Wesley and his contributions in the UK, and the list could go on. The list could go.

This book has some potential and raises some good questions- but it completely misses a cloud of witnesses who have already been on the scene when it comes to social justice.

This anthology touches on nearly everything unjust, and everything that Christians should work to ameliorate and end. While comprehensive in its breadth, it lacks depth, though this is not a failure. The content enclosed in this book provides poignant synopses of topics from motivation and inspiration for the call of Christian Justice to injustices in desperate need of Christian attention, from reason to response.
If you are wondering about why Christians should care about justice, read this book. If you're curious about areas in which you could be dedicating yourself to justice, read this book. Allow this book to be a catalyst for judicious studies of justice and know that this book forces you to delve deeper. It's compelling summaries mandate that you peruse other volumes for more.
And, most importantly -- since no book can make you fully aware of the injustices in this world that you are called to address -- it asks you to put down the book and experience the injustice and proclaim the Gospel in word and deed against it.
"Open thy mouth, judge righteously, and plead the cause of the poor and needy." - Proverbs 31:9

I believe this book challenges the assumptions of the many Christians in North America. I like the fact that it includes writers from around the world who are involved in ministry with people who are marginalized. I wish the authors gave more information concerning action opportunities, so people could come away with local as well as global recommendations for action. While I appreciate the vast amount of information included, there is danger of "justice fatique" that could result in failure to take action because the reader is overwhelmed. I hope the challenge spreads through our churches in North America.

The Emerging Church movement, a self-described `conversation' among people from many walks of life, has captured my recent interest. Questioning many basic truths and emphases of the Christian story, `Emergents' have become controversial within Protestant Christianity . In theory, they are a diverse group of dreamers, offering fresh perspectives on the Gospel. In practice, they are primarily young, American hipsters fed up with traditional Evangelicalism. They recoil against their parent's faith, the sterile, staunchly-conservative Evangelicalism of the past century.

Though the movement has questioned or de-emphasized much of traditional orthodoxy--the miracles of Jesus, the realities of Heaven and Hell, and the grave evil of abortion among other things--Emergents have re-ignited interest in other areas. The traditional Evangelical emphasis on heaven and salvation bred a de-emphasis of the here-and-now for the Emergents. Backlash against an over-spiritualized Christianity initiated a growing emphasis on "social-justice".

Though this focus doesn't originate with the Emergents, their movement has contributed greatly to its growing intensity. Brian McLaren, a controversial author and leader within the movement, gathered dozens of Emergent voices to produce a social-justice manifesto. "The Justice Project" (Baker Press, 288 pages, hardcover) includes essays from more than 30 of the most penetrating thinkers in the justice conversation, each discussing a different facet of the justice pursuit.

The book is loaded with social theory, but many of the essays feature practical justice tips. The numerous voices provide diverse texture to the conversation, allowing different experiences and gifts to illuminate each topic.

While the diversity of contributors is welcome, the choice of topics will seem scandalous to many. In addition to essays on poverty, the environment, and universal education, an essay on "justice for families"--in which the author promotes acceptance of gay-marriage--sticks out like a sore thumb. Also, some authors skirted around theological relativism, noting that it doesn't really matter what you believe as long as you help people. This confusion between the Gospel and social justice is a major shift from traditional Christianity, which has always taught that both right-belief ("orthodoxy") and right-action ("orthopraxy") are vital.

Also, though it is a book about justice, "The Justice Project" squeezes out most facets of the Gospel unrelated to justice. The message of Jesus and the Story of God are about more than the healing of physical, Earthly maladies. The Gospel includes that, but it reaches much deeper. When holistic faith is replaced by passionate activism, much of God's story is lost; the plot becomes watered-down. We become Christian social-workers instead of authentic disciples. "The Justice Project" promotes the former rather than the latter.

Overall, "The Justice Project" provides smart conversation on issues of social-justice and presents an accurate portrait of the Emerging Church movement. Those curious of justice's place in Christianity will find interesting proposals. But while good intentions fill the book's pages, its faults and warped emphases preclude recommendation.