Liberating Jesus: Christian Ethics for Privileged People

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Can we still talk about Christian ethics As most data show a great exodus from the Church, and general dissatisfaction with organized Christianity, there exists an urgent question of whether 2,000 years of Christianity have done more harm than good upon the Earth and its people. Christianity has been integral to colonialism, white supremacy, and the Atlantic Slave Trade, and perpetuates racism today. Large segments of Christianity continue to endorse discrimination against women, LGBTQ individuals, and other marginalized groups; underwrite a capitalist system that destroys the planet and renders portions uninhabitable; and manufacture a complex, individualized approach to poverty that promotes charity work but resists structural engagement. Christianity has done much harm in the name of Jesus. In fact, for at least the past thousand years, the mission of Jesus has been captive to a colonial ethic of exploitation and oppression that has contorted and distorted much of Christian theology and practice of ministry.

This book issues a call to liberate Jesus from this oppressive, colonial ethic. It enjoins Christians with privilege and power to promote a decolonial, liberative Christian ethic that serves as a corrective to the harms Christianity has manifest and conventional Christian ethics has neglected or even supported.

Liberating Jesus is designed for use in seminary or undergraduate classrooms, as well as for broader, public appeal, such as church or denominational study groups. It is not intended to be a comprehensive survey of the field. Rather, particular commitments animate the framework, namely a concern for justice and liberation. The ethical model presented and applied draws upon interwoven threads of liberationist, womanist, Anabaptist, and postliberal theologies, and offers a framework for a communitarian virtue ethic of liberation. It identifies the commonalities between these threads, notably the importance of community, character, and justicewhile acknowledging their distinctionsand directs them toward the target audience: Christians who embody and enjoy various levels of social, economic, and political privilege. In doing so, it calls on them to confront the oppressive legacy of Christian ethics and begin to understand ethics as formation into a life of service and advocacy, following the witness of Jesus, for the liberation of the marginalized. By drawing on such an array of theological approaches, the book offers multiple entry points for readers from various perspectives and introduces them to a diverse collection of thinkers and surprising conclusions found at the intersections of these approaches. Liberating Jesus provides Christians with various levels of privilege a way to understand their role and responsibility in participating in movements for justice and liberation.

Includes discussion questions and resources for further reading at the end of each chapter.

Author Bio

Kristopher Norris is Vice President of the Alliance of Baptists denomination. He has served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Public Theology and consultant for the Center for Public Theology at Wesley Theological Seminary as well as the Kreitler Visiting Professor of Christian Ethics at Virginia Theological Seminary and is author of three books: Witnessing Whiteness: Confronting White Supremacy in the American Church, Kingdom Politics, and Pilgrim Practices.