Category: Social Justice

Across the Universe

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To continue in the theme of recent posts…

I recently got around to watching Across the Universe. I know the movie was all the buzz last Fall, but I don’t get to see many movies these days so I waited until it finally arrived through Netflixs. I loved the whole concept of a musical journey through the sixties to the soundtrack of the Beatles, I just wasn’t expecting it to be so depressing. It had the obligatory happy ending of course, but the general message was “live for yourself because trying to make a difference in the world is pointless.”

The film portrayed the existential struggles of youth, the crisis of the Vietnam war, and the struggles of the civil rights movement during the sixties in ways that deliberately spoke to their exact parallels today. On one level it is disturbing how little has changed since then. The characters sought to bring change to their world and failed. As the characters sought unity they found selfishness. As they sought spiritual answers they met the hollowness of consumerism. As they attempted to serve something bigger than themselves they found despair, madness, and death. As they sought to work for peace they found apathy, hypocrisy, and corruption. In the end they just had to give up on those passions and causes and find contentment for themselves. To put it in Beatles terms – “And, in the end, the love you take/ Is equal to the love you make.”

I found the message depressing and disturbing mostly because I’ve heard forms of it over and over again from the church. “Don’t bother trying to change the world, you won’t make a difference anyway.” “Just focus on your own relationship with Jesus, that’s all that really matters.” “There is so much evil and corruption out there that you can’t ever really change things.” And the implicit message – “see none of this is new, people have tried to work for peace and justice before and they failed, so just grow up and get over it.” I’m sick of these messages. I’m sick of the defeatist, “all things conspire against you so just give up” attitudes. What will it take for people to actually have hope?

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The Roots of Social Change

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So I had an interesting conversation last night on the nature of social change. We were lamenting how so much of the injustices in the world are perpetrated and sustained by untouchable major corporations – systems that control our society so subtly that most of us aren’t even aware of their influence on our lives. It is easy to despair in light of such systems – they have the money to control the opinions of the world and the power to sue you into oblivion if you stand up against them.

It was brought up that often for real social change to occur a dramatic and generally violent event must take place. A bomb must be dropped, the nation decimated by war, a terrorist must strike, a president assassinated, a space shuttle explode… Events that shock us enough to make changes. That change may be immediate – slavery will end, a nation gains independence, people relinquish their civil liberties. Or that change may just subtly change the outlook of a generation – we lose our faith in science to dominate the world. Even the “non-violent” revolutions are long drawn out ordeals that capture the attention of the nation/world before they affect change. Gandhi’s hunger strikes or march to the sea, Rosa Parks on the bus, the “I have a Dream” speech in Washington, or even the decades of marches by women seeking the right to vote. Big events capture attention and our collective imaginations. We are then shocked or scared or passionately motivated into change.

But what is so disturbing about most systems of injustice is that they aren’t dramatic. Take the issues with the environment. There was never any big campaign where the world decided to start destroying the environment. No tragic event that left us convinced we need to trash the earth. But even so, our ancestors of just 100-150 years ago would be horrified at the wasteful and disrespectful habits of our disposable culture. So what happened? One answer is to point to the 100+ years of advertising (by the major corporations) bent on convincing us to adapt a lifestyle most people don’t believe in or need. We were told that if we wanted to be sanitary we needed to buy paper towels, if we wanted to appear educated and upper-class we women needed to use disposable sanitary pads, and if we wanted to be modern and not confined to our grandmother’s kitchen we needed to use foil and plastic wrap. And of course we agreed and bought into the lifestyle of “use it once then throw it away” with little regard to what that would do to our world. We didn’t think about where all that trash would go, the forests that would be destroyed and the dioxins produced to make the paper towels, the diseases the sanitary pads would cause, the oil used for the plastics, and the strip mining for the foil. We just choose step by step, product by product to adopt a disposable lifestyle. Today such philosophy is so ingrained in our cultural psyche that most respond “gross” to the idea that the parchment paper wrapping butter originally had to be marketed as “re-usable” because consumers thought it was wasteful and expensive to throw away perfectly good parchment paper.

The messages we have been fed over the last century or so have done more to completely alter the social habits of our world than any drastic or violent event. There is no date one can point to, or singular event to be blamed, or even a particular person who can be held accountable. We let ourselves walk down the very path – often going quite willingly – that many of now are attempting to change. So while some are asking what sort of drastic event will force us to change our wasteful ways – (the melting ice caps, the extinction of polar bears, $6 a gallon gas prices???), others are simply trying to undo slowly the monster that was slowly created. Sure my decision to alter my shopping habits, or to recycle, or reduce my carbon footprint may not make a huge dent in the problem, but I am taking steps toward change and sending subversive messages. I am letting forces and ideas bigger than major corporations desperate for profit no matter the cost shape who I am. And I believe that a culture that has been shaped to believe in the message of destruction has the potential to be shaped into conscientious stewards as well. Sure those of us who care for creation and its inhabitants don’t have the money or the power to reach masses, but that should never stop us from sending out alternative messages. We may be labeled as extreme or ridiculed, but I take heart in the fact that the first public paper cup drinking fountain was attacked by a group of soldiers convinced that it represented a threat to society. Swaying popular opinion takes time, but lies can be unraveled and better choices can be made.

Social change can take many forms. Dramatic events make the history books, but the slow subtle capturing of the cultural imagination may have the most profound long term effects. The real question is – how can we be agents of this sort of change?

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Good Intentions?

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So it is really amusing to hear through the grapevine that Moody Press has just published a book that discusses me and my underwear choices. Apparently chapter 8 of the recently released book Good Intentions uses a poorly (barely) paraphrased version of my “Justice Bra” article from the God’s Politics blog as an extended illustration (to read, enter my name in the “search inside this book” function on Amazon). Now it is one thing to use my own voice to write a somewhat tongue-in-cheek article about buying a bra, but it is a tad creepy to have two (male) economists open a chapter by stating “Julie Clawson needed a new bra.”

The book hadn’t crossed my radar yet (not like I read much out of Moody Press these days), but I found it intriguing that its basic concept is similar to the book I am currently writing for IVP. Both books address relevant issues of our day and attempt to give a Christian response (the issues aren’t all the same though). I’ve only read excerpts of Good Intentions, but from what I can gather our perspectives and conclusions are rather divergent. The Good Intentions promo carries the tagline “few things are more dangerous than good intentions” which gives a good indication as to it’s perspective on people who care about stuff like the environment. The description of the book states that because the Bible is about “morality” it is difficult to apply scriptural principles to economics, so we instead need to apply economic theory to the Bible to understand how best to live. I obviously have an issue with that sort of thinking, believing instead that Biblical morality should be what determines our economic systems in the first place. But it’s not surprising to still find Christians who believe that free-market capitalism was invented by God and should be worshiped as the fourth member of the Trinity.

From the parts I read regarding my “Justice Bra” article, I found that the authors fell into the typical trap common in that line of thinking. To them there exist only two options when it comes to things like sweatshops – either people get paid pittance in an often abusive situation or they have no job at all. Their argument is that people like me seeking “fair and just” products are actually hurting the workers because by demanding the end of sweatshops we are putting people out of jobs. They argue that it is better for the people to have a job rather than not and therefore I am being unjust in buying a “justice bra” and not some $8 piece of crap at Wal-Mart. But they are assuming a false dichotomy here and really missing the point those of us calling for justice make. There is no reason why people should have to choose between a crappy job and no job at all. The idea is that since the cruel sweatshop jobs shouldn’t exist because they are immoral, they need to be reformed into jobs that treat the workers with dignity and pay them fairly. It is about redeeming the system, not destroying it. A good, decent, and safe job needs to be an option – the primary option – for workers everywhere. And if an economic system exists that doesn’t allow for the possibility of such jobs, I have a hard time understanding how Christians should be encouraged to participate in it.

But then again as I see it, rubber-stamping the status quo as “biblical” is far more dangerous than anyone’s good intentions to “act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with their God.”

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Up/rooted and the Other

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Do you ever have one of those moments when you really don’t know what to say or do? I just got back from up/rooted, our local Emergent cohort where I had one of those moments. We had some good conversations tonight which I may blog about later when I’m more awake, but it was the very start of the evening that created this awkward moment of self-doubt and paralysis of action. We were meeting tonight at a pizza place in Wheaton and had reserved their patio/party room like we have done before. As the leaders and first to arrive, the manager asked us if we would like to see if the room was okay before we were seated. Since we’d met there before we told him to just seat us. As we walked into the room he mentioned that he would turn the heat on in the room for us. I just assumed the room was empty when he said that, but as we walked in I saw there there was a homeless guy in there eating a pizza. I have no clue if it was a free meal or if he was a “paying customer,” but I was appalled that on this bitterly cold night he would be stuck on the unheated patio (and that we were essentially asked if we were willing to be in the same room as him). Apparently turning on the heat for a book discussion group is okay, but not for the homeless man.

So I felt awkward. Here a group of well-dressed, well-fed, and “deserving” of heat Christians come in to discuss the justice issues in McLaren’s Everything Must Change and immediately we are faced with the realities of poverty and prejudice. So what, if anything, do we do? Do we make a scene about his treatment? Do we offer to help the homeless guy (who I have encountered before) or would that be condescending (in the “hey look, you’re homeless! Can we pity you or have you be the token poor for our group?” sort of way)? Or do we treat him like we would any other “regular” customer in the restaurant and ignore him? We ended up doing that latter and just not engaging him. He left shortly after we got started, but it was a strange moment wondering about the best course of action. And it was odd realizing that even in attempting to determine how best to treat him with dignity and respect I was labeling him as “other” and not treating him with the same anonymous respect I would give anyone else. Perhaps the answer is that I should be more aware of how I interact with everyone. I don’t know. It just set an interesting mental stage for the evening.

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Lent and Justice Article

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I have a new article up in the February edition of Next-Wave Ezine entitled Lent and the Pursuit of Justice. Head over there to check it out and to read the other great pieces featured this month.

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I was in college before I discovered Lent.  That might sound strange given that I grew up in the church, but I came from non-denominational Bible church traditions where the church calendar wasn’t followed.  I knew about Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday, but had no understanding of their significance.  So during Spring Semester Freshman year at my non-denominational Christian college as many of my friends started giving up caffeine or dessert I found myself curious.  I bought a Lenten devotional guide at the college bookstore and tried to figure out what it was all about.

Even so, it took a few years before I began to grasp the spiritual significance of the season.  Sure I joked with my friends about giving up homework for Lent and even flirted with giving up chocolate a few times (how significant is denial if it doesn’t lead to spiritual reflection?), but Lent remained an odd tradition I played at and not a habit I embraced.  I respected the idea of discipline, but balked at the legalism of giving up something just because that is what people do during Lent.  Perhaps hearing my friends complain about how desperate they were for a cola and not hearing anything about how they had been affected spiritually fed my confusion.  Lent just didn’t make sense, at least not in the popular ways I saw it conveyed and practiced.

Then I discovered the connection between Lent and justice.  I was serving as a Children’s Director at a small Baptist church and was attempting to find a way to introduce the kids to Lent in tangible ways.  As I pulled together resources, I discovered that many of the common practices of the Lenten season sprung from the desire for justice.  Prayer represented justice toward God, fasting justice towards self, and charity justice towards neighbors.  Through this threefold pursuit of justice I saw that the Lenten season encompassed more than just personal piety, but called for a period of restoration of relationships with God, with self, and with others.  In essence, a specific time to focus on the ways Jesus had taught us to actually live.

With the children, Lent became a time to focus on the needs of others.  We adopted a homeless ministry to pray for and support.  A practice of this ministry is to pass out bags of toiletries to the homeless, so the kids were encouraged to use their own money to buy travel sized items to donate.  It wasn’t a huge gesture, but it was something they could tangibly engage – involving prayer, personal sacrifice, and charity to others.  They saw that believing in and following Jesus involved seeking justice in these ways.

Through guiding the children through this project, I realized that I too needed the discipline of the Lenten season to put into practice the pursuit of justice in my life.  I had for a few years been reading about the importance of ethical consumption – making just decisions in one’s shopping habits.  I knew that I could care for others, this world, and myself by making better decisions in how I shop, but I always had some excuse for not actually doing it.  It was too expensive, too hard, too inconvenient.  So a few years ago I decided to put my money where my mouth was and use the Lenten season to be disciplined enough to seek justice in my shopping habits.

I choose during the 40 days of Lent to seek to buy food that had been produced ethically.  I sought food that had been grown locally, produced without hazardous chemicals, drugs, or hormones, and for which the producers had been paid a fair wage.  I researched where to find such food in my area and committed to change my habits to serve God, others, and myself in this way.  And it mostly worked.  We had to make serious adjustments in the way we ate in our household, but we also weren’t so legalistic that we starved.  I learned a lot about food and where it comes from, but I also discovered that I could be disciplined enough to attempt to be an ethical consumer.  This was a pursuit of justice that I didn’t abandon as soon as Easter Sunday rolled around, but habits I integrated into my life year-round.  Of course, I am the first to admit that not all of my shopping choices are ethically influenced, but I don’t see this as an all or nothing issue.  I do what I can, where I can.

Lent represents for me a period where I devote myself to following more closely the way of Christ – not just for a season, but for life.  It is a time in which I seek to bring my life into alignment with the values of the Kingdom of God.  Values that include personal sacrifice, devotion to God, and service to others.   It is still a very personal time of devotion as I choose these forms of spiritual growth and sacrifice, but I have finally come to understand a bit of its purpose.  And for that I am grateful.

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Blessings, Thanksgiving, and Hunger

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As we Americans prepare for a day of utter gluttony tomorrow, I found Anna Quindlen’s back page editorial in this week’s Newsweek to be rather apropos. She writes on the devastating shortage of food recently in food pantries. –

The worst emergency food shortage in years is plaguing charities from Maine to California, even while the number of those who need help grows. The director of City Harvest in New York, Jilly Stephens, has told her staff they have to find another million pounds of food over the next few months to make up the shortfall. “Half as many pantry bags” is the mantra heard now that the city receives half the amount of emergency food than it once did from the Feds. In Los Angeles 24 million pounds of food in 2002 became 15 million in 2006; in Oregon 13 million pounds dwindled to six. It’s a cockamamie new math that denies the reality of hunger amid affluence.

There are many reasons why. An agriculture bill that would have increased aid and the food-stamp allotment has been knocking around Congress, where no one ever goes hungry. Donations from a federal program that buys excess crops from farmers and gives them to food banks has shrunk alarmingly. Even the environment and corporate efficiency have contributed to empty pantries: more farmers are producing corn for ethanol, and more companies have conquered quality control, cutting down on those irregular cans and battered boxes that once went to the needy.

This is a sobering reminder on the eve of a holiday generally used to preach the Christian values and origins of “our great nation.” Yet even in this remembrance we have somehow made it all about us. Now I’ve got no issue with family getting together for turkey and dressing or with the call to be thankful. But perhaps we could broaden our perspective. Instead of making construction paper pilgrim hats and handprint turkey placemats with our children in school and church, perhaps we should be out there collecting food and writing letters to the government imploring them to care for those in need. In our pious thanksgiving for all that we have been blessed with, it is good to be reminded that we need to in turn bless others. So instead of just remembering the origins and “Christian” roots of our country, perhaps we could put an effort into doing Christian things as a country. Like feeding the hungry.

But what am I doing to change that this year? Not a whole lot. I’m figuring it out too.

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Token Gestures and True Justice

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As a follow up to my post a couple of days ago regarding toys made in sweatshops, I want to point out other recent news regarding children being held in slave-like conditions to produce clothing for The Gap. An article Sunday in the London Observer revealed that children as young as ten years old have been subjected to work long hours without pay and regular threats and beatings in an Indian textile factory subcontracted to produce clothing for Gap Kids. This clothing was destined for American and European markets this Christmas. Children were being held in slavery to we could buy a $30 sequined t-shirt.

Gap of course did what it could to save its own butt and severed ties with the factory and is withholding the clothing. That makes them look good as a company, but does nothing to help the children. What is the Gap doing to assure that these kids won’t be harmed because now their slaver isn’t getting income? What is Gap doing to stop illegal indentured servitude that they found themselves a part of? Just severing ties saves face, but it doesn’t solve the problem

This isn’t the first time Gap has faced negative press because of its usage of sweatshops. Just last year reports came in of Gap clothing being made in sweatshops in Jordon where young teenage girls were trafficked in, stripped of their passports, held in slavery, beaten and raped by the factory owners. Over the last few years, Gap has attempted to overcome those damaging reports (as if the public cares anyway) by participating in token acts of charity and justice. Gap featured prominently in the Red Campaign by selling $50 t-shirts of which a portion would be donated to AIDS relief work. My favorite token gesture is the one Charles Kernaghan, Executive Director of the National Labor Committee, mentioned in his recent interview with Democracy Now!. Gap apparently created a Code of Conduct for their factories – voluntary compliance of course. It was printed on treeless paper using non-toxic soy based ink, all perfectly environmentally friendly and sustainable. The problem was that it was just a PR job, it had never actually been translated into a language besides English. The document about caring for people that itself cared for the earth never made it to the people it was meant to protect. The document was only to calm the fears of English speakers wanting to know that their clothing was ethically produced.

So while all token gestures are not just complete BS like Gap’s Code of Conduct, they still remain mere token gestures. When coffee companies can pay their farmers below living wage and put production demands on them that force the farmers to use unsustainable practices, but by building one school near one of their coffee farms they can appear caring and just to their customers, why bother with anything more than token gestures? When a church group can volunteer once a year at a soup kitchen or fill up a couple of shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child and feel like they have helped the poor, token gestures are really all we see. Acting justly has become for many a one time event and not a day to day lifestyle. We have settled for token gestures instead of holistic approaches in our lives, and so let companies get away with token gestures instead of true reform. No wonder things have gotten so out of hand.

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Safe and Ethical Toys?

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t’s that time of year again. Halloween is so over and the store shelves are being cleared for Christmas. Time to start your Christmas shopping. Unfortunately recent news has highlighted that the “Santa’s little helpers” making the toys for our children are actually young Chinese women forced to work 90 hour work weeks for pennies an hour and trafficked children held in slavery forced to work in factories. Wow doesn’t that just make you feel all warm and fuzzy with holiday cheer?

In a report released this past week by the National Labor Committee in Support of Human and Worker Rights, the atrocities committed by companies like Gap and Mattel were revealed. Mattel has been in the news a lot these past few months because of revelations of excessive amounts of toxic lead paint in their toys. I find it very interesting that after the lead paint scandal hit the news, my inbox was flooded with emails from other concerned moms spreading the news that our children could be exposed to hazardous conditions. So far no public service emails from moms concerned that people were abused and kept in slavery to make our children’s toys. Guess it’s the old, “if it doesn’t affect me and mine, then I don’t give a shit.”

You can read the full report here and a good interview transcript summarizing the report at Democracy Now!. The horrific conditions at these factories are detailed in these reports. Basically young women making Barbie Mattel toys for Walmart are paid just 53 cents an hour and $21.34 a week. “Forced to work excessive overtime, the toy workers are routinely at the factory 82 to 87 hours a week, while toiling 66 to 70 hours. The standard shift is 14 ½ hours a day, from 7:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., six days a week. Mandatory overtime at the Xin Yi Factory exceeds China’s legal limit by 260 percent! Workers are routinely cheated on nearly 20 percent of the wages legally due them – resulting in the loss of two days wages each week. After deductions for primitive dorms (12 workers share each room sleeping on double-level bunk beds) and company food that the workers call “awful,” the workers’ take-home wage is just 46 cents an hour. Managers routinely yell and curse at the workers, and it is common – nearly every day – to see young women workers crying. Workers who are insulted have but two options – to bow their heads and remain silent or to quit and leave without the back wages due to them. Workers can be fired for having an “inattentive attitude” or for “speaking during working hours.” Workers falling behind in their mandatory product goal will be punished with the loss of five hours wages. Workers are prohibited from standing up and must remain seated on their benches at all times during working hours. Workers report that the factory is overcrowded and extremely hot, and that everyone is dripping in their own sweat.Workers in the spray paint department who cannot tolerate the strong acrid stench of the oil paint are immediately fired. Failure to properly clean the shared bathroom in the dorm will result in the loss of one and a half day’s wages.”

What I find most interesting in this whole thing is Mattel’s behavior. This is the Mattel that recently apologized to China for the “excessive” recall of so many lead tainted toys. So if they are apologizing for attempting to make toys safe, then I don’t have much confidence in their treatment of workers. This is also the company that sues someone on average once a month for Barbie copyright infringement. Apparently Barbie has more rights than the 14 year old girl who made her in a sweatshop. This is the Mattel that “sought and won special “waivers” from the government of China to pay below the legal minimum wage in its factories. Mattel also received waivers to unilaterally extend allowable working hours to seventy-two hours per week, which exceeds China’s legal limit on overtime by 295 percent.” Oh and this is also the Mattel whose CEO paid himself $7,278,178 last year in wages and other compensation—which is 6,533 times what he pays his toy workers in China.

So who wants to go Christmas shopping?

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So What’s Your Excuse?

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Yesterday in church I led the conversation on the Great Commission. We have been making our way through the book of Luke for the last couple of years and have finally arrived at the end, which of course just means we are diving straight into Acts next. For many of us who grew up in the evangelical church, the Great Commission involves nothing more than convincing other people to believe in Jesus. Preaching forgiveness and making disciples simply meant getting people to intellectually assent to a certain set of ideas. We’ve left out the whole part about training people in everything Jesus taught.

So yesterday we looked at the mission Jesus sent his followers on (with the help of the Spirit) in light of how Jesus himself described his own mission in Luke 4 (to preach good news to the poor, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners,recovery of sight for the blind, and to release the oppressed). The Spirit of the Lord was on Jesus to fulfill his mission and Jesus promised the Spirit so that the disciples could fulfill theirs as well (which included training others in the way Jesus trained them to follow). But sometimes doing that mission – spreading the message of forgiveness and freedom through our words and deeds – is hard. We obviously have failed at the whole setting the oppressed free and bringing good news to the poor (since there is still oppression and poverty), so there is a lot more work that needs to be done to fulfill the Great Commission. That’s where the Spirit comes in to kick out butts.

I love the example Sarah Dylan Breuer gives as she compares what the Spirit does to a washing machine –

Washing machines don’t work if the load is stagnant; without motion, there’s no transformation. So the washing machines that I grew up with had something at their center that bounced around to push what’s at the center out to the margins and bring what’s at the margins in to the center such that the whole load could be transformed.

We call that thing at the center of the washing machine an ‘agitator,’ and I can think of no better word for what the Spirit does for us. The call of God’s Spirit pushes those of us at the center of our world’s all-too-concentrated power and wealth out to the margins to welcome the marginalized to the center. If we stay where we are and let the rest of the world stay as it is, we’re not fully experiencing the presence and work of the Spirit, and we won’t benefit as fully from the transformation that the Spirit is bringing.

We need that agitation, that kick in the butt, to actually be out there engaging in the mission Christ called us to. Our discussion yesterday concluded with a time of brainstorming of everyday practical things we each could do to engage in that mission followed by us having to list the excuses we give for why we don’t actually engage. Here’s a sampling of some of the stuff we came up with.

Ways we can engage in Mission

    • – Be a volunteer

 

    • – Get to know our neighbors

 

    • – Live more frugally and simply

 

    • – Take the time to be educated on justice issues

 

    • – Learn Spanish

 

    • – Buy Fairly Traded items

 

    • – Do chores for your elderly neighbor

 

    • – Go to student’s soccer games

 

    • – Write actual letters to lawmakers

 

  • – Visit the “unseen” in our culture

Our Excuses for Not Doing Anything

    • – I’m too shy

 

    • – I won’t make a big difference anyway

 

    • – It’s too expensive

 

    • – I don’t know where to begin

 

  • – There is always something better I could be doing to help others, so I end up doing nothing at all

What would you add to either of these lists?

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Christians Don’t Care about Justice

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I was browsing Amazon earlier and stumbled upon John Perkins’ new book With Justice for All: A Strategy for Community Development. This is the John Perkins who help co-found the Christian Community Development Association, but apparently Amazon has got him confused with another John Perkins (not a Christian) who also promotes justice issues. Now I haven’t read the book yet, but the description sounds interesting – With Justice for All is Perkins s invitation to live out the gospel in a way that brings good news to the poor and liberty to the oppressed (from Luke 4:18). This invitation is extended to every racial and ethnic group to be reconciled to one another, to work together to make our land all God wants it to be. And it is a blueprint a practical strategy for the work of biblical justice in our time.

But apparently the Amazon mix-up has really pissed a few people off. While that is somewhat understandable, what I found to be really intriguing are how the disgruntleds’ comments convey negative cultural perceptions of Christianity. For example, they write –

I saw the email from Amazon encouraging me to buy at a discount the “latest” book from John Perkins, author of “Confessions of an Economic Hitman” and other fantastic eye opening books. If he had, instead of a book that preaches about how Christianity and the Churches of Christ will be our Saviour, it would have been a fantastic book about how we as people in our local communities need to take care of our communities through active involvement in buying sustainably grown and produced products, avoiding purchasing from the various corporate entities like WalMart etc. and manufacturers that have products produced by sweatshops and to instead reduce consumption and to care for one another in our communities with local action. Guess if anybody doesn’t figure out that this book is NOT from the John Perkins who we all know and love, that this book will be a big disappointment and extremely confusing.

and

The John Perkins we all know and love is the one who confessed his sins to mankind. this other guy, whoever he is, sounds alright i guess, but being Christian, it is doubtful he is really truly interested in the betterment of mankind.

Yes, yes I know they should have taken the time to discover this John Perkins’ beliefs and perspectives before they dismissed the book as generally being anti-justice. But their gut reaction was that it could not be about helping people or doing justice because it is Christian. That is disturbing. So even though certain people are claiming that we don’t need to talk about biblical justice because all people are decent and support justice anyway, this perception (which is the true reality) begs to differ. Not that I was planning on stopping talking about justice issues, just that the implications are bigger than I thought.

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