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Dear Gentle Readers,   I, like many of you, am a white pastor ministering to a predominantly white congregation in a predominantly white suburb (a suburb of St. Louis in my case) who is, nonetheless, always striving to push myself and my flock into the work of antiracism, liberation, and critical consciousness. And this, I will often contend to my parish, should hit close to home specifically for us given our geographical proximity to the killing of Michael brown and the resultant Ferguson riots—the event that launched the Black Lives Matter movement into the national spotlight.   I believe that predominantly white churches should always be reflecting on the ways in which we can be standing in solidarity with the Black community and ways we can make an impact in the fight for racial justice. The rub, though, is how to move our often-apathetic white congregations into a space of care and concern for issues of injustice that don’t affect them. Luckily for you, gentle readers, this is exa

[The following resumes, in medias res, the same session as recounted in the most recent post in this series .]   In Luther’s 2nd Galatians commentary—and this is common in Calvin, too—he has a section at the beginning summarizing what he thinks the book is all about. Luther talks about types of righteousness. His interpretation of Galatians is that it is teaching us about different types of righteousness. On the one hand, you have political righteousness and political justice. This is the complicated thing with the word “righteousness,” in German but also in Greek. It’s righteousness in what we would call a religious sense, and it’s also “justice” in what we would call a political sense. Luther also talks about ceremonial righteousness. He’s thinking here about the sacrificial system in the Hebrew Scriptures. There’s also legal righteousness or justice, and he’s thinking here specifically about the 10 Commandments, the “ethical law.” Luther says all these things are gifts of God:

[The series continues and now commences the second in-person session.  Find the last post here .] x. Excursus on the NRSVue   McMaken: I was talking to Ronnie [1] ahead of time about how I only learned about a month or so ago that there is a new NRSV translation. It came out in 2021 but, somehow, I missed it. Ronnie told me he knew all about it. He’s very happy to have known something that I didn’t know. So tell him “well done.” Give him some praise for that.   Participant: I noticed that. Isn’t it something at the end, like the “anglicized version” or something?   McMaken: It says UE, “updated edition,” at the end. I upgraded all my “working” Bibles just the last couple of weeks. This is one of the new ones. Ronnie and I were looking in the front trying to figure out what changed. I found this statistic in the preface. It says that the NRSVue “presents approximately 12,000 substantive edits and 20,000 total changes, which include alterations in grammar and punctuation.” [2]