Publisher's Synopsis
Master's Thesis from the year 2017 in the subject Theology - Biblical Theology, grade: A, language: English, abstract: As far back as I can remember, I heard my parents say to ministers "Don't forget your Bible and newspaper." My parents always judge preachers who had no social or political understanding of biblical texts. They would see ministers in their communities who would not touch on what the people were facing and would consider those sermons empty and devoid of substance. My parents believed that they were not just responsible for handing out government cheese to welfare recipients during the Reagan years, but that as elders in the church, their responsibility, along with the ministers, was to advocate for and sometimes create public policy. They thought there must be a balance between the theology of prophetic action that supports protest and organizing the protest called for by the prophetic message. I put this memory out of my mind until I had started seminary. However, when I came to seminary and I met people like Obery Hendrix, Jeremiah Wright, Peter Heltzel, and Father Michael Pfleger the message of my parents came back. Each of them in their own way has echoed the sentiment that real ministers have a newspaper in one hand and a Bible in the other hand, that Jesus always advocated for rights and never against rights as he preached against injustice and bigotry. Howard Thurman, mystic and philosopher, believed preachers must have a word for the men and women with their backs to the wall as the preachers seek to marry the historical Jesus and the Jesus of Faith.
