Prophetic Justice: Race, Religion, and Politics

By Keith Magee and Susannah Heschel

In this prophetic collection of seminal essays and articles, the public intellectual, theologian, and social justice scholar Reverend Professor Keith Magee provides a thoughtful, sharp, and critical analysis of how questions of race, religion, and politics have an impact on society today. The book explores the historical context of American democracy and how it has long failed to deliver true justice to all of the nation’s citizens.

Prophetic Justice exposes the social construct of race and the myriad ways in which this false idea – along with the sometimes wilful misinterpretations of sacred texts – have been used to justify the subjugating of one people by another, simply because of the color of their skin.

Written between 2016 and 2023, these essays and articles touch on some painful subjects, but also give us reason to hope. Keith Magee describes how, with empathy, courage, and faith, we can come together to face up to the injustices of the past and celebrate our common humanity, thus creating a new world in which every life truly matters.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jun 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798385024421

Keith Magee

Keith Magee is a public intellectual, theologian, and social justice scholar. He is Senior Fellow in Culture and Justice and Visiting Professor of Practice in Cultural Justice, University College London Institute of Innovation and Public Purpose, where he leads for Black Britain and Beyond. He is Chair and Professor of Practice in Social Justice at Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University. In 2014, while in post at Boston University, he founded the Social Justice Institute, which remains the hub for his independent work and research. He is also the lead pastor at The Berachah Church, which has a virtual global presence. Having trained as an economist and in theology, at Grace Bible College and Harvard, Magee’s work reflects on the Ten Commandments as ‘public policies,’ thereby exploring how they inform society through belief, culture, and economic and social justice. One of his greatest accomplishments was serving for five years as the founding director of the National Public Housing Museum in Chicago, Illinois. He successfully initiated and led a $13 million capital campaign for the museum, which is committed to being a living cultural experience on social justice and human rights, illuminating the power of place. Having served as an advisor on faith and racial equality for the Biden 2020 Presidential Campaign, Magee has been appointed to the U.S.–U.K. Fulbright Commission by the Biden-Harris Administration’s U.S. Ambassador to the Court of St James. Magee is also the Chair of the Board of Trustees for The Guardian Foundation, Trustee of The Gallery of Living History, and Trustee of Facing History and Ourselves. The Mayor of London Sadiq Khan appointed him as a Commissioner on Diversity in the Public Realm. He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He was inducted into the Morehouse College Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars. He is a life member of Kappa Alpha Psi and a member of Sigma Pi Phi. He previously also served as Senior Religious Affairs Advisor with the Obama for America 2008 and 2012 campaigns, subsequently working alongside the Obama administration’s Faith Based Initiative. He was also the Co-Chair of the Massachusetts Council of Chaplains in State Institutions for Governor Deval Patrick. Additionally, he served as the Co-Chair of the Endowment Committee on the Board of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation ($50 million). As a dyslexic, he has secured more than $15 million to develop programs and initiatives that advocate for and support dyslexic people globally. His efforts have led him to co-create the Multicultural Initiative at Yale University Center for Dyslexia and Creativity, and to co-found the Urban Teachers Masters of Education Residency Training Program at Saint Joseph’s University. Reverend Professor Magee’s body of work has seen him awarded with distinctions and the support of the MacArthur, Ford, and Seedlings foundations. He is an internationally sought-after speaker and frequently features as a columnist and op-ed opinion contributor with CNN, TIME, The Guardian, and LSE on issues of social justice, politics, race, and religion. He and his son, Zayden, live in the United Kingdom.

Book preview

Copyright © 2024 Keith Magee.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

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Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® NIV® Copyright © 1973 1978 1984 2011 by Biblica, Inc. TM. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Editor: Joanne Clay

For more information visit http://www.4JusticeSake.org

ISBN: 979-8-3850-2440-7 (sc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-2441-4 (hc)

ISBN: 979-8-3850-2442-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024908540

WestBow Press rev. date:  06/19/2024

CONTENTS

Foreword

The Forethought

Chapter 1The Fate of a Nation: The Sky Is Falling

Chapter 2It’s Called Race: Towards a Collective Humanity

Chapter 3Birthing Racism: An Invisible Empire

Chapter 4Strangers Sharing Egypt: Go Down Moses

Chapter 5Bittersweet: From Slavery to Freedom and Beyond the Color Line

Chapter 6Fathers of a Nation: Black Men Vote Too

Chapter 7The Soul of a Nation: Courage for the Constitution

Having My Say: A Selection of Articles

Article IWhy Did Jesus Weep: Because #BlackLivesMatter Too?

Article IIPoverty Isn’t a Privilege: The White Man Is Your Brother Too

Article IIIThe Paradox of Love: President Trump’s Divided States of Hate

Article IVDeliver Us from Evil: Letter to Brother Vice President Pence

Article VThe Truth: It’s Sometimes Black and White

Article VIA Year After George Floyd: A Letter to My Black Son

Article VIIMy Six-Year-Old Just Had His First Encounter with Racism

Article VIIILessons from the March on Washington on the Value of Allyship

Article IXGuilty Verdicts in the Ahmaud Arbery Murder Trial Are Bandages on Festering Racial Wounds

Article XI’m a Middle-Aged Black Father: I Want to Ask White Teen Males this Question

Article XIThe Remarkable Response of RowVaughn Wells After Her Son Tyre Nichols’ Death

Article XIIWhat’s Stopping King Charles from Saying ‘Sorry’ for Slavery?

A Call Towards Action and Empathy

The Afterthought

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Bibliography

Endnotes

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Herein Is Written

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To – Zayden, Andre, Holden,

Amauri, Grace, Eleanor, and Khari

The Lost and the Found

~ with thanksgiving for ~

Karen Pritzker

FOREWORD

I am delighted to welcome readers to this inspiring book by Keith Magee on Prophetic Justice. His voice is that of a younger generation attentive to the teachings of the pioneers – DuBois, Baldwin, King, and West – but he also brings a wonderful freshness in his voice, that of a trained economist and policy maker who understands political complexity and finds profundity and inspiration in the Bible. A religious thinker who seeks to impart hope even while he understands the depths of despair, he offers a promise of redemption despite the corruption and injustice that surround us.

In 1968¹, my father, the theologian Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, asked, Where in America do we hear a voice like the prophets of Israel? Martin Luther King is a sign that God has not forsaken the United States. Let there be a little of the prophetic tradition in all people, my father urged, and Keith Magee agrees and writes, I hope these words cause you to seek within your being your own prophetic voice.

How do we find our prophetic voice and proclaim it from the mountaintops? Who are the Hebrew prophets of the Bible? My father defined them this way: The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man’s fierce greed. Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey its full terror. Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world. It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and human beings. God is raging in the prophet’s words.²

How do we follow in the path of the prophets? That is the question this magnificent book seeks to answer. At the heart of our humanity is our struggle to become the voice of God, yet we are hampered by the knowledge that the United States rests both on principles of liberty and justice for all – and on the mass expulsion and murder of Native people and the enslavement and brutalization of African men, women, and children. Crimes of that scale leave a legacy to this day in our laws, political views, institutions, and in our hearts and minds. Racism is locked in a struggle with the American promise of freedom for all. We too often refuse to acknowledge racism; disavowal is the handmaiden of sin; as the prophet Jeremiah warned, On your shirt is found the life-blood of the guiltless poor. Yet in spite of all these things, you say, I am innocent. Behold I will bring you to judgment for saying, I have not sinned. (2:35-36) Disavowal is at the heart of American racism, James Baldwin wrote, They have destroyed and are destroying hundreds of thousands of lives and do not know it and do not want to know it…. It is the innocence which constitutes the crime.³ As a fantastic system of evasions, innocence itself is the crime. ⁴ The prophet, like the poor, the despised, the asylum seeker, the immigrant, the prophet stares, as Baldwin describes, witnessing and exposing strategies of disavowal used to conceal wickedness. The prophet Isaiah declares, You felt secure in your wickedness; you said, No one sees me; your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, I am and there is no one beside me. (47:10) Let us discuss and interpret our past with respect for one another, Keith Magee writes, and Be honest about how racists sowed the seeds of hatred and destruction across entire continents. Let us hear each other’s stories, listening with the empathic hearts of the prophets; the survival of our nation is at stake. He quotes W.E.B. DuBois: The future of the South depends on the ability of the representatives of these opposing views to see and appreciate and sympathize with each other’s position. Not only the south, Keith Magee writes, America needs healing for its soul. As my father writes, Daily we should take account and ask: What have I done today to alleviate the anguish, to mitigate the evil, to prevent humiliation?⁵

With this powerfully small book that is brimming with inspiration, Keith Magee presents both a spiritual autobiography and an agenda for healing the country. A Christian pastor and an advisor to political leaders at the highest levels of government, he presents us with a profound prophetic challenge and also with words of courage and hope. Like the prophets and like Heschel, Keith Magee understands that the ultimate expression of God is not wisdom, magnificence, land, glory, nor even love, but rather justice: justice is the tool of God, the manifestation of God, the means of our redemption and the redemption of God from human mendacity.

Susannah Heschel

Eli M. Black Distinguished Professor of Jewish Studies

Dartmouth College

THE FORETHOUGHT

Since the beginning of time there has been an intersection of beliefs, values, and religious ideas contributing to the development of societies, cultures, and policies. In a commonly agreed-upon discourse of the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, the Hebrew prophet Moses is recorded as having been the leader and deliverer of his people from Egyptian slavery. All three major faiths capture the covenant ceremony at Mt. Sinai, where the Ten Commandments were promulgated. These ten public policies and stipulations formed the religious and civil traditions for a community then known as Israel, and still have a significant influence on religious life, moral concerns, and social ethics today.

All around the world, societies and cultures have, nestled within their belief systems, ideologies that impact everyday life and often the rule of law. The Varna caste system in India dominated the Hindu beliefs about how society ought to be structured. The central claim of Nigeria’s Yoruba ethnic group is that local and national communicative principles in political discourse should be subsumed under epistemic, ontological, and ethical dimensions drawn from its histories, cultures, and values. In the United Kingdom, the Sovereign holds the title ‘Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England.’

The official motto of the United States of America, ‘In God We Trust,’ places religion firmly at the heart of government. The motto was adopted by the U.S. Congress in 1956, supplanting ‘E pluribus unum,’ the Latin for ‘Out of many, one.’ Since that time, from the halls of government to the closing stanza of ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ and to coins and paper currency, the motto is embedded as a reminder that, come what may, we must keep the faith and put our trust in God.

It is worth noting, however, that the U.S. Constitution itself is a secular document. It only mentions religion twice – once to prevent laws respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, and once to prohibit religious tests for public office. The Founding Fathers took a clear stance on the separation of Church and state and on the importance of religious freedom for all.

Today in America, as in many developed nations, we are faced with the paradox of the state’s supposedly secular nature and its religious underpinnings. American patriotism seems to be tied to the latter in a way that often proves to be divisive rather than uniting. There continues to be a large disconnect as America deals with the issues of culture and society as they intersect with race, religion, and politics. Unlike some nations, America has not brought to bear a revelation from a divine prophet or head of state, leading to a singular, abiding religious system that proclaims the standards of moral codes and policies. Instead, America has heard multiple voices speaking about justice and injustice, morality and immorality, civility and incivility, with many proclaiming that their interpretation and voices speak on behalf of God. I’m of the opinion that we all have room to grow. I for one believe that I’m practicing my faith.

It is my efforts to lend my voice within these writings to bring to consideration all that is entangled in America’s rhetoric through the lens of race, religion, and politics. Herein lie many things intended to reveal the various dynamics that have brought America to this point. I hope that these writings will enable us to face our fears, both past and present, but, in doing so, also give a sense of real hope and promise for the future.

All the essays that form chapters one to seven in this book were written between 2016 and 2020. In them, I seek to capture the stark contrast between the fate of the nation and its soul. Likewise, I explore questions of race and set out how to understand this politically charged construct, while addressing the birthing of racism and its resurgence in the Obama and Trump eras. There is also a description of the kinship of strangers who have both known ‘Egypt’ – a consideration of the experiences that link Black and Jewish Americans. I examine the bittersweet history of slavery, looking at how its complex legacy is now being debated in the public sphere. I try to provide insight into the role and value of Black men in American democracy. Equally, I attempt to place the U.S. Constitution in context and to assert that we should see it as a thread that, if bravely used, can weave a tapestry for all.

For this second edition I have also included a series of shorter articles, written (and, in most cases, published in the media) between 2016 and 2023. During this extraordinarily turbulent period, we have seen the election of two very different men, Donald Trump and then Joe Biden, to the highest office in the land. The murder of George Floyd in 2020 sparked global protests against racism and police brutality and accelerated a long-overdue reckoning with many Western nations’ colonial pasts. In the U.S., however, Black and Brown people have, tragically, continued to lose their lives to hate. Our precious democracy has been threatened by President Trump, a reckless and embittered would-be