Blog Post 3

On November 9, Pastor Earle Fisher “blessed” our classroom with an expansion the discussion of social justice and the church. This idea was not new to me. My parents are servant leaders in my hometown and so I commonly heard the phrase faith without deeds is dead. This shortened saying comes from the bible, James 2:14-26. “14 What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? 15 Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. 16 If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? 17 In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead... 26. As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without deeds is dead” (NIV Bible). I’ve always interpreted the “deeds” in these verses, to be tasks that we do as community service. Verses 15-16 speaks to clothing and feeding a person. I never interpreted these things to fall under the umbrella of political action or social justice. 

So I was very intrigued by Fisher’s claim that Jesus is a political symbol and Cleage’s intention to move the Black church onto a political and revolutionary stage. In class, Fisher told us that messiah translated into Hebrew means political king and that crucifixion was a form of execution by the state. Both of these definitions reinforce Fisher’s point that Jesus was a political symbol. In an interview with Essence in December 1970, Rev. Cleage says, “What we must do is to restructure the Black Church so that the liberation struggle can have some institutional foundation. We cannot restructure our army or our economic system because we have neither. Thus, our church must serve as out power base” (Essence Interview 24). Both of these claims bring up two questions for me. The first is understanding that Jesus is a political symbol, and that He moved and worked for social justice, what responsibility does that place on Christians to act? The second is understanding that the Black Church is supposed to be designed to aid in the black freedom struggle, what responsibilities do churches now have to be engaged in this struggle? What do you all think?