by James Ross Kelly

Sign The Atlanta Covenant

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“We believe all people are made in the image and likeness of God. In all of creation, there is only one entity – the human race – that is created in the image of God. As image bearers of the divine, each human being is endowed with inestimable worth and value.”

Source: The Atlanta Covenant

by James Ross Kelly

The Church Should Be at the Forefront of the Fight for Social Justice – RELEVANT Magazine

More than 4,700 pastors recently signed a document titled “For the Sake of Christ and His Church: The Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel.” The document states, “We reject any

Source: The Church Should Be at the Forefront of the Fight for Social Justice – RELEVANT Magazine

by James Ross Kelly

The Prophetic Tradition Of Social Justice– by Derek Morphew

Derek Morphew

It is sometimes said that Israel has two kinds of prophets, charismatic early prophets, like Elijah and Elisha, followed by the later literary prophets like Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and that it is these later prophets that developed the tradition of social justice. This is a mistaken opposition of ideas. All the prophets called Israel back to the covenant, even if they operated in different ways and some wrote while others did not. The context may have evolved from generation to generation but the fundamentals were the same. Israel was Yahweh’s covenant people. This covenant was established as a result of the in-breaking rule of God through the exodus and conquest and resulted in a defined relationship of laws and statutes. The relationship was vertical and horizontal: with Yahweh in sacrifice and temple worship; and between the families and tribes in community. The prophets never divided their message between “spiritual” things like false worship versus true worship and “social” things like the lot of the poor and abusive wealth. If Israel was in a bad state it was always because these things worked together. The king who led Israel to worship foreign gods was the same king who abused his powers.

from Derek Morphew, The Kingdom Healing: the dualism of personal and social ethics

 

by James Ross Kelly

The Way of Death–from The Didache

But the way of death is this…

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A fireball erupts from one of the World Trade Center towers as it is struck by the second of two airplanes in New York, Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001. In a horrific sequence of destruction, terrorists hijacked two airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center in a coordinated series of attacks that brought down the twin 110-story towers. (AP Photo/Todd Hollis) TODD HOLLIS

V.2. Persecutors of the good, hating truth, loving a lie, not knowing the reward of righteousness, not cleaving to that which is good nor to righteous judgment, watchful not for that which is good but for that which is evil; far from whom is meekness and endurance, loving vanity, seeking after reward, not pitying the poor, not toiling with him who is vexed with toil, not knowing Him that made them, murderers of children, destroyers of the handiwork of God, turning away from the needy, vexing the afflicted, advocates of the rich, lawless judges of the poor, wholly sinful.

May ye, children, be delivered from all these.

 

The Didache (The Teaching of the 12 Apostles)

The Didache (pronounced /ˈdɪdəkiː/; Koine Greek: Διδαχή, Didachē “Teaching”; Modern Greek [ðiðaˈxi]) is the common name of an early Christian writing (dated by some scholars to the late first/early second century although John Robinson  argues that it is first generation, dating it c. 40-60 AD). The Didache is an anonymous work that was virtually lost until  a Greek manuscript of the Didache was rediscovered in 1873 by Philotheos Bryennios, Metropolitan of Nicomedia in the Codex Hierosolymitanus.