How Do Christians Exercise Privilege in the World?

Messiah Community Radio Talk Show

While preparing the way for the Lord, John the Baptist declares, "Produce fruit in keeping with repentance." Many have failed to do this, in part, because repentance has become diluted. Rather than truly turning away from sin--back to God--we often equate repentance with a mere oral confession. This domesticated, unbiblical understanding of repentance bears no fruit and lacks the power to transform broken people, relationships, systems, and structures. Our lack of repentance conforms us to the patterns of this world, keeping us content amid sinful inequities, complicit with systemic injustice, and apathetic in oppressive context. Privilege is largely a social consequence of our unwillingness to reckon with and turn from sin. Scripture repeatedly affirms that privilege is real and declares that, rather than exploiting it for selfish gain or feeling immobilized by it, Christians have an opportunity to steward privilege and a responsibility to leverage it to further the kingdom and sacrificially love our neighbors. In Subversive Witness, read how Dominique DuBois Gilliard... x highlights biblical examples of privileged people who understood this kingdom call x casts a new vision for faithful participation in the inbreaking kingdom as co-laborers with Christ x leads the church to grapple with privilege, indifference, and systemic sin in new ways x uses Scripture to elucidate how privilege emerges from sin, is sustained by our hardened hearts, and keeps us complicit with oppression x demonstrates that Christians can wield privilege as an instrument to pursue justice and further the Kingdom x details Scripture's subversive call to leverage, and at times forsake, privilege to sacrificially love our neighbors, enact systemic change, and advance the kingdom of God Dominique DuBois Gilliard is the Director of Racial Righteousness and Reconciliation for the Love Mercy Do Justice (LMDJ) initiative of the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC). He is the author of Rethinking Incarceration: Advocating for Justice that Restores, which won the 2018 Book of the Year Award for InterVarsity Press. Gilliard also serves on the board of directors for the Christian Community Development Association and Evangelicals for Justice. In 2015, he was selected as one of the ECC’s “40 Under 40” leaders to watch, and the Huffington Post named him one of the “Black Christian Leaders Changing the World.” An ordained minister, Gilliard has served in pastoral ministry in Atlanta, Chicago, and Oakland. He was executive pastor of New Hope Covenant Church in Oakland, California and also served in Oakland as the associate pastor of Convergence Covenant Church. He was also a campus minister at North Park University and the racial righteousness director for ECC’s ministry initiatives in the Pacific Southwest Conference. Gilliard earned a bachelor’s degree in African American Studies from Georgia State University and a master’s degree in history from East Tennessee State University, with an emphasis on race, gender, and class in the United States. He also earned an MDiv from North Park Seminary, where he served as an adjunct professor teaching Christian ethics, theology, and reconciliation.