Mosaic Waco Position Paper on
Philosophy of Ministry and Social Engagement
“Justice is what love looks like in public.” – Cornel West
Affirmations
- We affirm the Bible as “God breathed”
- We affirm the vision of the redeemed in Revelation 7:9-11, where all nations and ethnicities are fulfilled in Christ.
- We affirm the image of God reflected in all people. We affirm the image of Christ reflected in His body.
- We affirm that biblical righteousness has dimensions of both piety and justice.
- We affirm the Westminster Standards.
Denials
- We reject racism, sexism and all forms of oppression and exploitation, including interpersonal and systemic.
- We reject as aberrant and anti-biblical any theological formulations incorporating racism or racial superiority.
Pastoral Ministry
Biblical Basis
At Mosaic, we firmly believe that the role of the shepherd is outlined in Ephesians 4:12-13: “to equip the saints for the work of ministry and to build up the body of Christ until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Pastoral care is this work of applying the Gospel of Jesus Christ to every facet of the believer’s life; it is to explicate what a life in union with Christ looks like. This explication will necessarily have personal, communal, and cosmic applications, and the communal and cosmic applications are social.
Jesus makes this stunning application in Matthew 25 when he says, “Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.” Jesus directly ties our love for our neighbor to our love for him! Loving God necessitates our love for our neighbor, which has social implications. Joshua Butler says it this way: “There are a lot of versions of social justice out there that aren’t biblical, but biblical justice is always social.”[1]
Jesus’ brother James says, “If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, “Go in peace, be warmed and filled,” without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also, faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead (James 2:15-17). Mosaic’s leadership believes that all Christians have a responsibility to other believers as well as the world at large in meeting the most basic needs.
Because of these biblical injunctions to love others and meet their needs, pastoral ministry necessarily requires the delicate work of applying the Scriptures to the social and political realm. For instance, when Deuteronomy 10:18 says, “He executes justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the sojourner, giving him food and clothing,” this means our focus should be on how we can care for the most vulnerable in our congregation, city, and elsewhere. We take a dedicated look at how we may love the orphan, the widow, and the immigrant.
A Basis in Christian Tradition
We do not apply biblical principles to social issues infallibly, nor do we do so alone: we bring to bear the weight of the Scriptures and various faithful biblical traditions to understand and interact with our world. For us, the most prominent influences are the Reformed tradition and the historically Black theological tradition.
From the former, we glean theological precision, care, rich language, and written confessions. From the latter, we glean the invaluable insights of a people who have been forced to affirm their own dignity in a world that has sought to violently tear it from their hands. From the former, we glean an uncompromising commitment to affirmation of both the holiness of God and the profound and extensive corruption of humanity. From the latter, we glean an uncompromising commitment to the dignity of the marginalized and oppressed and the boldness to declare such a commitment fiercely and without compromise. The combination of these commitments is important because one of the weaknesses of our confessional documents (besides the Belhar Confession) is that they do not explicitly speak to the questions of a racialized society and a society in which unjust powers, principalities, and structures are constantly shifting and changing forms as time marches on. Thus, we are committed to applying the good news of Jesus Christ in these turbulent times.
So, what drives the liturgy, the preaching, Bible studies, outreach, and missional components to our ministry is a deep love and care for the particular people in our congregation. Weekly, we call God’s people to worship (usually from a psalm or anywhere from Scripture, followed by a responsive song), and then we usher the church into the service’s main theme from a historic creed that has stood the test of time for hundreds of years. Then, as we move into confession of sin, we are guided by Westminster 15.5: “Men ought not to content themselves with a general repentance, but it is every man’s duty to endeavor to repent of his particular sins particularly.” Therefore, we consider what the people of Mosaic particularly need to repent of Then, we choose a specific passage of Scripture that provides comfort through God’s grace in the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the convicted and burdened hearts of our people.
For example, one Sunday we might draw from the WLC Q. 135, equipping our congregation to engage in “all careful studies and lawful endeavors, to preserve the life of ourselves and others by resisting all thoughts and purposes, subduing all passions, and avoiding all occasions, temptations, and practices, which tend to the unjust taking away the life of any.”
Addressing Racial Issues in Liturgy
Now, as we seek to apply this creed to our people in our context, the issues often dismissed as “political” really are matters of life and death for human beings; thus, they are necessarily firmly within the realm of our confessional commitments and subjects we need to speak into. Particularly, race is fundamentally a construct of power created to subjugate, kill, and destroy; thus, for us to live redemptively in a racialized world, we must understand how racialization subjugates human beings and resist it with the means provided to us by our Lord.[2]
We see how ethnicity greatly impacted the first set of deacons in Acts 6 when the Hebrew-speaking Jews were getting preferential treatment with the daily distribution over the Greek-speaking Jews. So from the very beginning of the church, division over ethnic lines threatened the unity of the church. The earliest church knew that for the Greek minority group in the church to truly be heard and respected, they needed the minority group in leadership. So, all seven deacons chosen were Greek-speaking Jews. They elected a seven-person deacon board of Greek minorities, to make real change and care for the most overlooked.
We realize the context of East Waco and those who come to Mosaic will have different needs, fears, and struggles than those attending another church in our area. And it’s precisely at this point that we as a church are committed to our particular people and need to apply and contextualize the Gospel specifically to our unique congregation. This contextualization process is never stagnant but is always dynamic and ever changing.
Therefore, we always need to prayerfully discern what our congregation needs most right now and apply the Gospel there. One can think of Paul in Acts 17:22–23, in the middle of the Areopagus, adapting to his context and saying, “Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you.” Our culture today is asking this burning question: “Does the church have anything to say to the issues that are plaguing our communities?” And we have this great opportunity to say, “Absolutely! These issues are the result of sin and thus the Gospel necessarily and specifically addresses them. In fact, we have lots to say about this!” And so this becomes a pastoral and an evangelistic opportunity, which leads us into our Philosophy of Ministry.
Philosophy of Ministry (POM)
In RUF (Reformed University Fellowship), campus ministers are taught that their POM is twofold: to reach the lost and to equip the saints. In the simplest terms, this is exactly what Mosaic sets out to do. We seek to reach the lost and equip the saints for ministry. Mosaic was planted out of a desire to see more come to know Jesus—our only hope for comprehensive salvation.
Likewise, we seek to equip the saints for ministry by applying the Gospel in small group Bible study settings. This equipping takes many forms depending on where the disciple is at. If one is a new believer, we may go through the book of Mark one-on-one. If one is a seasoned saint struggling to believe God’s promises during difficult times, we take a different approach. If one is an apathetic cultural Christian, equipping and discipling are giving them a taste for something bigger than just a me-centered religion. We think this is implied in RUF’s “equipping,” but we want to make it explicit that in caring for the world around us, we continue the creation mandate and bring shalom and justice to the world and cities we live in.
Tim Keller has said, “When the world sees us doing evangelism, they just see us recruiting. When they see us doing justice, they see God’s glory.”[3] The modern world sees Christians just trying to build their brand, platform, or kingdom. But, by speaking to the issues of the day that plague our context and stepping into broken arenas in our city, we aim to show mercy and compassion to cut through the skepticism, all the while preaching grace amidst it. Mosaic’s mission is stated very clearly and succinctly: to Adore Christ, Apply the Gospel, and Act with Mercy and Justice.
We adore Christ in worship. We apply the Gospel in our small groups, but it is this third leg of our mission that is the reason for this paper: To act with mercy and justice. Where do we do that, and why do we act? To begin with the last question, we believe this action is a natural outflow of a love for God. As Cornel West said, “Justice is what love looks like in public.” We believe there is a direct line between loving God and loving your neighbor. Said another way, being loved by God spurs a love for one’s neighbor.
The great reformer John Calvin though often pigeonholed into Calvinism, has much more to say, and one passion of his was seeing justice as essential and not a distraction from or tangential to the Christian faith but as integral to it. “In a sermon on the Ten Commandments, Calvin exclaims that while we must first yield to God the worship he deserves, we must “live in such justice and equity with our neighbors that we demonstrate thereby that we are true children of God.”[4] So for Calvin, love of God is a necessity to love of neighbor. But also, the acid test if we love God is how we love our neighbors.
This love or outflow of the Gospel locates itself personally, communally, and cosmically. We want to love our neighbors across the street, in other American states, and across the world (Mark 12:30-31). Carl Ellis argues that it’s easy to focus on the personal pietistic forms of biblical justice (the one-to-one neighbor love), but it’s the institutional (or social) forms of oppression that is an area that the evangelical church has traditionally lacked a voice in.[5]
Two Important Responses to Injustice
It’s in this vacuum that we’re trying to speak into as we seek to apply Isaiah 1:17: “learn to do good, seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow’s cause.” How do we bring to justice the fatherless, for example? There are many different points where one can get involved, but too many times we seek to address only the most urgent issue. We jump in as foster/adoptive parents. But, do we consider why so many kids are filling the foster system? What is driving the need for more foster parents? Likewise, what are we doing to bring justice to those children who never find a home? This example illustrates two very different ways to respond to injustice: one is on the personal level while the other is on the communal level.
A helpful analogy to understand this distinction between personal vs communal comes from Michael Emerson and Christian Smith’s book Divided by Faith.[6] Emerson and Smith argue the distinction can be summarized in two different ways: If a brick in the wall is broken, what’s the solution? Replace the brick because it’s just one bad brick. But, what if we see the crack in the wall goes all the way down to the foundation and produces more cracks in multiple bricks? Is it one bad brick, or is it because the foundation has issues? We want to love the individual brick and all those affected by the disturbance. Sin has communal effects, not just individual effects. As a result, we need to both highlight the communal effects of sin and show how the Gospel provides communal and not just individual solutions.
The Bible doesn’t call believers to pick between individual justice and social/communal justice and neither should we. Seeking the good of our literal neighbors is a worthy endeavor, and so is seeking the good of the city (Jeremiah 29:7). We don’t have to pick.[7] But, because these topics have become so polarizing in our present day, we feel the need to debunk 3 key myths that fight against the work we’re trying to do.
Three Myths We Reject
“Spirituality of the Church”
The doctrine known as “the Spirituality of the Church ” often calls into question the argument that love of God necessarily produces a love for neighbor in the way we have laid out above. This is not a new theology, as its roots go deep into American and presbyterian history. Sean Michael Lucas’ work in this area is invaluable:
Stated in its most classic form by the nineteenth-century southern Presbyterian theologian James Henley Thornwell, the spirituality of the church doctrine means that the church “has no commission to construct society afresh…to change the forms of its political constitutions…. The problems, which the anomalies of our fallen state are continually forcing on philanthropy, the Church has no right to solve. She must leave them to the Providence of God, and to human wisdom sanctified and guided by the spiritual influences which it is her glory to foster and to cherish. The Church…has a fixed and unalterable Constitution; and that Constitution is the Word of God…She can announce what it teaches, enjoin what it commands, prohibit what it condemns…Beyond the Bible she can never go, and apart from the Bible she can never speak.[8]
Rather, the Church’s authority and role “is only ministerial and declarative since the Holy Scriptures are the only rule of faith and practice.” In essence, this position demands silence on matters of political and social policy except when they touch on issues of morality. Yet this position requires clarity about what qualifies as “issues of morality” and what the extent of these issues are. And it is here, where clarity is most required, that the real debate lies. The moral issues the Bible addresses are inextricably linked to social, economic, and political realities.
Thus, a boundary between the “moral” and the “political” is difficult to maintain because, on its face, it necessarily cuts off the “spiritual” from the rest of life. For example, from 1862 on, the southern Presbyterian General Assembly repeatedly advocated against alcohol consumption and urged people to “use all legitimate means for its banishment from the land.” These “legitimate means” included advocating for public policy solutions.” In that same period, however, the doctrine of the “spirituality of the Church” was used to stifle conversation about the unmixed evil of racial chattel slavery. So the same doctrine that keeps the church quiet while people are being burned, hung, and raped, did not prevent it from speaking out against alcohol.[9]
In the 1920s, the church spoke out loudly against the teaching of evolution in schools. Again, beyond the rightness or wrongness of the action, the main point here is that the spirituality of the church doctrine did not prevent these Presbyterians from intervening in civil affairs outside the “spiritual” realm of the church. In fact, the church could simply look at John the Baptist’s engagement with the political leaders in his day, as he decried the incestuous relationship of Herod. Mark 6:17-19 says, “‘It was Herod who had sent and seized John and bound him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, because he had married her. For John had been saying to Herod, ‘It is not lawful for you to have your brother’s wife.’ And Herodias had a grudge against him and wanted to put him to death.”
The issue is not whether the church ought to touch on topics outside itself, but rather which topics require comment and which do not. Historically, the doctrine of the “spirituality of the Church” has been invoked to squelch the church’s involvement in fighting for the lives of her brothers and sisters of color, but not when addressing other moral issues with social and political ramifications.
Still, some may argue, addressing social issues is a distraction from preaching the Gospel. In line with Westminster Larger Catechism (WLC) Questions 91 to 152, however, we believe the whole Gospel requires us to speak to sins particularly. The Westminster divines, while beacons of the good news and grace-saturated doctrines, were no proponents of antinomian views either. WLC 131 tells us of our duty “to regard the dignity and worth of each other.” WLC 135 and 136 especially speak to our treatment of one another. Similarly, the Heidelberg Catechism Q 107 asks, “Is it enough then that we do not murder our neighbor in any such way? No. By condemning envy, hatred, and anger God wants us to love our neighbors as ourselves, to be patient, peace-loving, gentle, merciful, and friendly toward them, to protect them from harm as much as we can, and to do good even to our enemies.”
Our historic creeds are clear that the whole Gospel speaks not just of our justification and adoption but also of our sanctification. If Christians unpacked the law of God to move beyond not murdering and saw its extensive commandments to uphold the life of our brothers and sisters, then questions of “should/can the church speak to these issues?” disappear. We must, out of love for our neighbor, commit to all careful studies and lawful endeavors to preserve the lives of ourselves and our neighbors and to teach our congregations to do likewise (WLC 135). If generations of Christians during Jim Crow resisted all actions that tended towards the unjust taking away of life, the Civil Rights movement would have come much sooner. The Bible and our Westminster Confession of Faith ground our treatment of fellow Christians as brothers and sisters, joint heirs, as blood-bought family in the doctrine of the communion of the saints.
We believe God cares about the physical as well as the spiritual realms. King Jesus, the God of this world, cares about our souls and our bodies — so the Gospel pushes us to love people and care for orphans, widows, the foreigner, the poor, and, in a nation rooted legally and culturally in affirmations of white supremacy, racial and ethnically minoritized persons. The Gospel creates in us a desire to show empathy and compassion to God’s creation while adoring and magnifying Christ as King Redeemer of the church.
As a side note, returning to Keller’s quote about the world seeing acts of Justice and seeing the glory of God references above, we have seen positive evidence of this to be true in our local context. We have seen an emphasis on justice has acted as an evangelistic tool to a world that wonders, “Does the church really care about people like me?” As events like the murder of George Floyd happened, and as they continue to happen, silence on these issues communicates a deafening lack of compassion and concern for our Black and Brown brothers and sisters in our church and outside of it. In this country, we have been granted political power the likes of which Paul and the apostles had little access to. As members of a representative democracy, we citizens hold the power to check the government and call it to account. By the Spirit, this power is to be wisely used for the good of the oppressed.
The Miracle Motif Myth
The “miracle motif,” often invoked in Christian circles is the theologically rooted idea that as more individuals become Christians, social and personal problems will be solved automatically. What is the solution to violent crime? Convert people to Christianity because Christians don’t commit violent crimes. What’s the solution to divorce? Convert people to Christianity because Christians are less likely to get divorced. As one nondenominational woman from the Midwest said, “Christianity has the answers to everything if individuals become Christians. That means that we see each other as God’s children. How can we look down upon anybody that He created?”[11] Others comment: “If everybody was a Christian, there wouldn’t be a race problem. We’d all be the same.”
Using the sin of lust as an example, we know many men and women who have experienced precisely this response from their churches. Yet the reality is, if a believer struggles with lust before marriage, he or she will still struggle with lust after marriage. There is no magic bullet for the daily struggle with sin. In the same vein, if a prideful, envious, or bigoted person becomes a Christian, it is not a guarantee of the Gospel that immediately upon professing faith, all those sins go away and he or she is suddenly humble, content, and loving. The struggle against sin—all sin—is a fight. And it is a fight that apart from the Holy Spirit, we cannot win.
But when many look at racism, they do so with the tools common to white evangelicalism: accountable freewill individualism, relationism, and anti-structuralism.[12] If a society is just an aggregation of individuals, so that all of society is summed up by the life experiences of the people in society, then it makes sense that social change is the aggregation of personal change. Baked into this assumption is that if a person becomes a Christian, he or she will automatically act like a Christian, an unfortunately naïve assumption.
Along with a focus on the interpersonal is a mistrust of the structural. One man said that the main reason that the United States still has race issues is “because we’re dealin’ up here on the superficial level with programs and laws. It’s only with Christianity that you can change people’s hearts. You’ll see people of all kinds of colors hugging and praying for each other. That’s the only way to a solution.”[13] Note that the person quoted argues that programs and laws are superficial and not a real solution.
Against this, we offer the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. when asked about legislating morality: “it may be true that the law cannot make a man love me but it can keep him from lynching me and I think that is pretty important, also.” King’s statement applies not just to lynching but to many issues of perpetuating poverty and oppression. James 1:27 tells us that “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
Christ, the Law, and the Prophets all instruct us to care for the poor. This care does not only mean giving money to random homeless people one sees or volunteering at a soup kitchen, although these are positive actions. It also means thinking about and actively fighting (insofar as you have the time and capacity) against the structures that maintain that poverty.
To be clear, we are not denying the reality of human agency and that one’s situation in life can depend (at least in part) on bad choices one makes. Rather, we are denying the assumption that creeps into our minds that ALL people in such a situation are in that situation because of their choices. We all should look at our lives and see that we’re not where we are solely because of sheer grit and self-determination alone but because of the grace of God and the people that He has put around us to give us opportunities.
The most fatal and theologically dangerous flaw of the miracle motif is the idea that if there were simply more Christians, then society’s problems would fade. This position assumes that conversion and discipleship are the same thing. It assumes that when someone is converted, his or her sin not only ceases to exist but also ceases to have consequences. If a man is an alcoholic and an abusive father but comes to faith later in life, we rejoice at that conversion. But we also continue to weep at the damage that he has done to his family. Healing still needs to take place. If a woman has issues with envy before her conversion, after her conversion, those struggles may get even stronger, now that she recognizes what they are. Also, many of the individuals responsible for the laws and the structures that we’re dealing with and attempting to battle claimed to be Christians. They claimed a belief in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who was born, lived, suffered, died and was raised, and yet their practice suggested something quite contrary to the Lord who bought them.
Therefore, right belief is necessary but not sufficient for right practice. The miracle motif suggests that we think that if one believes the right things, one will necessarily do the right things, which is a common yet false assumption. The link between belief and practice is more complicated: our beliefs, gleaned from Scripture, are then run through ways of thinking that then inform how we translate that into practice, drawing attention to the importance of Christian discipleship. When sinners are converted, they are babes in Christ, immature children who must grow up into adulthood. That growing up requires focused, intentional training. No sin goes away just with time or just by conversion or just by any other means.[14] Sin corrupted the cosmos. Its ultimate defeat was secured by the death of the Son of God.
Thus, our fight against sin, as well as the powers and principalities (Ephesians 6:12), cannot be simplistic. The intricacies of racialization in this country, subtle denials of the equal humanity of Black and Brown and Asian and Native American people, seep throughout the history of our nation, and we as believers in Christ cannot allow those powers and principalities to go unchallenged.
The Colorblind Myth
Another false solution that we want to push against is the Colorblind Myth. Many believe that if we keep addressing the issues of racism, we create deeper division that would lessen if left alone. Therefore, what would be best is to be color blind: “Just don’t see color – that makes us all equal!”
While seemingly noble, this theory vastly underestimates the seriousness of the situation. This myth eliminates people’s past and culture, and nowhere else in human existence is blindness ever seen as positive. The stated rationale for this assertion comes from a certain interpretation of Galatians 3:28: We are all one in Christ. However, union with Christ does not destroy all distinctions. If that were the case, the virtue of a Gospel-shaped community would be conformity rather than true unity.
Rather, the Scriptures give us a different understanding of how to address ethnic conciliation: active peacemaking. Malcolm X said, “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even pulled the knife out much less heal the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.” At the very least, we must “see color” in hopes to see the wounds and history for true ethnic conciliation and racial healing to happen. “Colorblindness” ignores the beauty of God’s creation and shields one’s eyes from the historic subjugation and demeaning of His image-bearers. To be color-blind is to be person-blind, and Christ calls us to truly see one another (Revelation 7:9).
Our ethic as Christians is guided not by self-interest and the normalization of our own blinders but by sympathy and empathy. We are called to walk with, act with, and feel with one another. We place our trust in a Savior who did not pluck us out of our own fallenness in a fallen world, but assumed our human nature, became Jewish flesh, and dwelt among us in a profound and unrepeatable act of covenant faithfulness and divine sympathy. By that same Spirit that facilitated the conception of His humanity, we are to exemplify these aspects of the unrepeatable Incarnation.
As an American church, active peacemaking necessarily includes ethnic conciliation and resistance to white supremacy. Ethnic conciliation has been integral to the Gospel from the beginning. Jews and Gentiles were ethnically distinct, but the Gospel brought them together with the differences intact. Union with Christ doesn’t destroy distinctions; it recontextualizes them. The book of Ephesians overflows with Paul’s amazement at this reality. Racial reconciliation in Christ is among the “mysteries” he reveals (Ephesians 3:4-6). In “the mystery of Christ,” ethnic categories find meaning in God who emphatically drained Jew and Gentile of any hierarchical distinction. Affirmed instead is the fact that “Gentiles are fellow heirs, members of the same body, and partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the Gospel” (Ephesians 3:6).
Advocating for colorblindness, however well-intentioned, not only runs counter to the Gospel, but like white supremacy more broadly, exploits the Gospel. Energy that could be spent loving our neighbors is spent rationalizing why we won’t love them in particular ways. Love must be manifested in the wise and constant struggle for racial justice, especially once one becomes more aware of the profound levels of injustice our neighbors endure. As followers of Christ with varying levels of individual and systemic power, it is our responsibility to use all privileges to build others up, and as a church marshal the declarative power of the Church for the good of God’s people.
The Love of Christ Compels Us
Because we know how deeply loved we are, and we know how deeply God loves his creation, we act with mercy and justice to fight for His works of art. Plain and simple, the love of Christ compels us. When we speak out about “issues of the day,” it’s because we love our people and we love the creator of those people. We seek to live out Galatians 6:2:“Carry each other’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” If we neglect our duty to care for the orphan, the foreigner, the poor, the outcast, the most vulnerable in our society, and, in our nation especially, people of color, then we are not practicing true religion.
Most importantly, however, this commitment is fundamentally a commitment to the Son of God’s ministry, both earthly and eternal. As Christ was and is fundamentally committed to the oppressed, so also must we be. As Christ died both in solidarity with and in exchange for the suffering and the rebellious, so also must we, daily. As Christ was and is fundamentally opposed to all which seeks to steal, kill, and destroy His image-bearers, so also must we be.
[1] Butler, Joshua. Theology in the Raw. #855 Political Discipleship in a Post-Covid World. https://www.prestonsprinkle.com/theology-in-the-raw/tag/Joshua+butler
[2] Foley, Malcolm. Racial Healing as Pastoral Care. Truett Church Network. Jun 3 & 17 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbyLP7elgjA&t=1177s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzcRsqsFHME&t=124s
[3] Keller, Tim. Twitter @DailyKeller. January 20, 2014. https://twitter.com/dailykeller/status/425350404780859392?lang=en
[4] Emmert, Kevin P. “John Calvin: Justice is a Form of Worship.” Christianity Today. August 2020.
https://www.christianitytoday.com/history/2020/august/social-justice-john-calvin-worship.html
[5] Ellis, Carl. Biblical Righteousness is a Four- Paned Window. August 22, 2018. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/biblical-righteousness-four-paned-window/
[6] Emerson, Michael O., Smith, Christian. Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. Oxford Press, January 1, 2001.
[7] Foley, Malcolm and Hawkins, Justin. An Evangelical Response to “The Statement on Social Justice.” https://mereorthodoxy.com/an-evangelical-response-to-the-statement-on-social-justice-and-the-gospel/
September 27, 2018.
[8] Lucas, Sean Michael. Owning Our Past: The Spirituality of the Church in History, Failure, and Hope.
[9] Lucas, Sean Michael. For a Continuing Church: The Roots of the Presbyterian Church in America. P&R Publishing. Dec. 2015
[11] The quotes from individuals can be found in Christian Smith and Michael Emerson’s great book, Divided by Faith.
[12] (See Divided by Faith, 76-80).
[13] Divided By Faith
[14] Westminster Confession of Faith 13:1