Amos and American Christianity
September 23, 2018 4:38 PM   Subscribe

"Amos was responsible for one of the three major conversions in my life. Two were intellectual and religious: a conversion to the study of religion and an experiential conversion to the conviction that God is real. The third was political: from the conservative political orientation I absorbed while I was growing up to what I have learned from the Bible and Jesus. Amos was the trigger. In my junior year in college in a political philosophy course, we spent a week on Amos. The encounter stunned me. Speaking in the name of God, he passionately indicted the powerful and wealthy of his time because they had created an economic system that privileged them and inflicted misery and suffering on most of the population."

Preaching from Amos:
I have been exposed to nearly 2000 sermons in a lifetime; I could count on one hand the number of sermons I heard that were based on the book of Amos.

Why? Amos is tough; Amos is blunt; Amos says things that no one wished to hear 2800 years ago, things no one much wishes to hear today. My own context for the preaching I have heard and done offers some clues. I have primarily listened to preaching in a seminary that was training preachers for the larger churches of the south. And let me be honest, I was preaching primarily in the larger churches of the south, and elsewhere, who could afford to pay me for my services. In my United Methodist denomination, there is a ladder that clergy are expected to climb, from associate pastor of a large church, to senior minister of a smaller church, and finally to senior pastor of a large congregation. To climb that ladder it will hardly do to ruffle too many comfortable feathers. Amos is a chief ruffler of feathers. Not to put too fine a point on it, sermons from Amos could knock one off the ladder to success.
A few verses:
There are those who turn justice into bitterness
and cast righteousness to the ground.

He who made the Pleiades and Orion,
who turns midnight into dawn
and darkens day into night,
who calls for the waters of the sea
and pours them out over the face of the land—
the Lord is his name.
With a blinding flash he destroys the stronghold
and brings the fortified city to ruin.

There are those who hate the one who upholds justice in court
and detest the one who tells the truth.

You levy a straw tax on the poor
and impose a tax on their grain.
Therefore, though you have built stone mansions,
you will not live in them;
though you have planted lush vineyards,
you will not drink their wine.
For I know how many are your offenses
and how great your sins.

There are those who oppress the innocent and take bribes
and deprive the poor of justice in the courts.
Therefore the prudent keep quiet in such times,
for the times are evil.

Seek good, not evil,
that you may live.
Then the Lord God Almighty will be with you,
just as you say he is.
Hate evil, love good;
maintain justice in the courts.
posted by clawsoon (17 comments total) 48 users marked this as a favorite
 
As-salāmu ʿalaykum.
posted by Samuel Farrow at 4:52 PM on September 23, 2018 [4 favorites]


Some guy named Jesus said similar things.
posted by Modest House at 5:14 PM on September 23, 2018 [10 favorites]


Exactly. You don’t have to do a deep dive of the “Minor” Prophets of the OT for a message of social justice, uplifting the poor and sick, and not worshiping money. It’s all over the Gospels, to be found by anyone that’s actually sincere about living out their faith, and not just enjoying the tribalism of their religious identity.
posted by darkstar at 6:30 PM on September 23, 2018 [23 favorites]


You would think so, yes, but from another writer's article on the same site, reachable from the sidebar of the "Amos was the trigger" link above:
Over 4,400 pastors signed John MacArthur’s “Anti-Social Justice Proclamation” a few weeks ago. Over 7,000 have now added their names to that statement, making it crystal clear that they do not follow Jesus in any way, shape or form.

One of the most troubling statements they all agreed to was this:

“We emphatically deny that lectures on social issues (or activism aimed at reshaping the wider culture) are as vital to the life and health of the church as the preaching of the gospel and the exposition of Scripture.”
A huge number of American churches see social justice and the Gospel as separable issues and for a smaller but still horrifyingly large set I dare say they are in some sense not only separable but in conflict.
posted by Nerd of the North at 6:49 PM on September 23, 2018 [29 favorites]


The war between the priests and the prophets has always been and shall always be to the death.
posted by No Robots at 8:12 PM on September 23, 2018 [15 favorites]


John MacArthur’s “Anti-Social Justice Proclamation”

An appropriately placed hyphen.
posted by justsomebodythatyouusedtoknow at 9:11 PM on September 23, 2018 [11 favorites]


A dilemma exists here, in that nobody would zealously apply Amos to modern times if their minds weren't already mush with other bible lore and democratically dangerous superstition. This is on top of the internal evidence in Amos, which leads folks to believe that God is angry but does not act; in essence, settling the matter by doing nothing. As a 2700 year-old warning to the powerful, we might want to reflect on the success of its failure as a message of change.
posted by Brian B. at 9:28 PM on September 23, 2018 [3 favorites]


“We emphatically deny that lectures on social issues (or activism aimed at reshaping the wider culture) are as vital to the life and health of the church as the preaching of the gospel and the exposition of Scripture.”
Hey, if they'd only apply this to all kinds of "lectures on social issues (or activism aimed at reshaping the wider culture)"...
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 10:00 PM on September 23, 2018 [1 favorite]


Brian B.: This is on top of the internal evidence in Amos, which leads folks to believe that God is angry but does not act; in essence, settling the matter by doing nothing.

Well, there was the earthquake and (a few decades later) the destruction of the kingdom, which those with prophecy-believing inclinations could point to for an I-told-you-so.

I'm an atheist, but I have an appreciation for an angry sermon on inequality and injustice, as little as it might seem to accomplish.
posted by clawsoon at 6:19 AM on September 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Well, there was the earthquake and (a few decades later) the destruction of the kingdom, which those with prophecy-believing inclinations could point to for an I-told-you-so.

Which is a social injustice in today's terms, though perhaps not at all to them, because the concept of social justice originally meant that God punishes the many for the few. It made more sense within their socially ordered worldview, and because only God can make earthquakes and allow the Assyrians easy conquest, giving wealth and power to the victors, not by accident. And, dating Amos is summarized here. See conclusion.
posted by Brian B. at 7:21 AM on September 24, 2018


The Rev. William J. Barber II, founder of the Moral Mondays movement, has been preaching about Amos for a long time. In 2017 he preached a barn-burner on Amos at the Wild Goose Festival. [SLYT]

He will light you up.
posted by conscious matter at 7:44 AM on September 24, 2018 [17 favorites]


Prophecy is not about foretelling the future as such. It is about giving voice to the thirst for freedom and justice. It anticipates a future where these will reign on earth as they do in heaven, ie. in practical daily life as they do in the ideal.
posted by No Robots at 8:06 AM on September 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


Great poetry, Amos rather than the articles, though those were fine too, thanks for posting.
posted by hap_hazard at 10:30 AM on September 24, 2018


hap_hazard: Great poetry, Amos rather than the articles, though those were fine too, thanks for posting.

One of the good things that came out of the New International Version's translation effort was an attempt to translate the poetry as poetry.
posted by clawsoon at 10:47 AM on September 24, 2018 [2 favorites]


Prophecy in the Bible does not predict the future and anyone (in a position of religious leadership) who claims it does is either woefully Biblically uneducated or deliberately lying. Prophets speak for God; frequently, they warn. (Although Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings are all classed as prophetic books, and they're about things that already happened so they don't need to warn.) They don't foretell!

There is, in fact, an entire book of the minor prophets -- Jonah -- where God's chosen prophet goes and issues a warning, the people repent, and God doesn't destroy Nineveh ("that great city, which has 120,000 people who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals" as God puts it), so Jonah climbs up to the top of a nearby mountain and attempts to SULK HIMSELF TO DEATH ("I'm so angry I wish I was dead!" says Jonah) because he was looking forward to the destruction and now God's made him a liar. God's response to this kind of hubris from his prophet is to rebuke him; prophets warn, they don't foretell.

To that end, Amos's warnings are as necessary today as they were back then -- and as unheeded by many who claim to follow the words of God.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:38 PM on September 24, 2018 [21 favorites]


As far as feather-ruffling sermons based on Amos go, the line about justice flowing down like water is memorably quoted in MLK's "I Have a Dream" speech.
posted by whir at 10:14 PM on September 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


I hate, I despise your religious festivals;
your assemblies are a stench to me.

Even though you bring me burnt offerings and grain offerings,
I will not accept them.

Though you bring choice fellowship offerings,
I will have no regard for them.

Away with the noise of your songs!
I will not listen to the music of your harps.

But let justice roll on like a river,
righteousness like a never-failing stream!

I double-dare you to walk into a megachurch Christmas pageant and start yelling that through a megaphone.
posted by clawsoon at 9:53 AM on September 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


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