The Use of the Bible to Justify Inequality and Advance Social Justice
Earlier this summer, US Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders referenced the Bible, specifically Romans 13, to justify the US government’s acts of separating children from their parents on the Mexico/US border. This example raises important questions about the use of the Bible and biblical interpretations in social and economic policy and practices, which has a long and complicated history in the US and global context.
Uncritical and literal interpretations of biblical texts — those that do not take into account the social, economic, and political contexts in which the texts emerged — have been used to oppress, suppress, and marginalize those with less power. Many such interpretations are grounded in the tenets of white nationalism and racial superiority; for example, being used to justify the suppression and genocide of Indigenous peoples during US colonization, the slave trade and the practice of slavery, post-reconstruction Jim Crow laws that continue to disenfranchise generations of Black Americans and People of Color, and policies that restrict the roles and mobility of women in societal institutions. The current state of policy and debate around the separation and detention of immigrant families in the US can be described as following the same thread — the conflation of Christian values and nationalism — reflected in the use of biblical text to enforce obedience of laws that dehumanize and position People of Color as “other”.
At the same time, the Bible has been used in many institutional and community spaces to affirm the values of unity, diversity, interdependence, and co-existence across identities, and to promote personal and collective resistance to injustice based on identity. This type of use is most likely when the approaches to interpreting biblical text include analysis of the contexts and conditions that shaped ideologies contained within the texts. Examples include the historical and contemporary roles of Black churches as spaces both for personal spiritual and emotional support and for education and training for collective action to advance racial equality.
The complex relations among Christianity and the Bible, social oppression, and social justice have been interrogated by scholars across the disciplines. In this month’s blog series, members of the Diversity Scholars Network provide their scholarly perspectives on how the Bible has been used to justify social inequalities or used to challenge injustice and promote social equality.
