The Heart Of God And Social Engagement

By Michael J. Anthony

[This is the third article in the four-part series “The Heart of God,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 6–9, 2018.]

[Michael J. Anthony is research professor of Christian education at Talbot School of Theology, La Mirada, California.]

Introduction

The previous article examined the heart of God in relationship to his call to conversion, and for some, his call into vocational ministry. It also glanced at the paradoxical manner in which God trains and equips his servants for the vocation of ministry. There is no template for how God calls and prepares ministry leaders, as there doesn’t seem to be any prescribed method in Scripture. Some were called with dramatic methods while others not so much.

You will recall that when we talk about the concept of God’s heart, we are speaking of God’s determined will and pleasure. In one chapter of Hans Wolff’s excellent Anthropology of the Old Testament, he summarizes twenty-six Old Testament passages referring to God’s heart by saying, “They generally attest to His steadfast will and His longing desire—usually in regards to His plans for the future to which His whole will is completely committed.”[1] In essence, once God has determined in his heart to do something, whether it be in the present or the future, once God has purposed something in his will, it is set. To do otherwise would undermine the immutability of his character.

This article turns its attention to the heart of God as it pertains to the needs of the world—more specifically, those who are suffering from injustice, intolerance, discrimination, and prejudice. In some situations, we are referring to those who are, as the Old Testament describes, “sojourners in the land,” while at other times they may be referred to as the downtrodden, oppressed, disenfranchised, trafficked, or exploited.

I am not addressing the topic of social justice, Christian or otherwise, but rather social engagement. The former term has its origins in the writings of Plato in The Republic, a Socratic dialogue revolving around the nature of a just society. Indeed, many of our most conflicting and volatile political debates today—such as those around same-sex marriage, healthcare, Internet privacy, religious freedoms, immigration, redistribution of wealth, racism, and the like—center on disputes about the meaning of social justice.[2]

I prefer to focus less on the extremes of social justice, as seen in the more contemporary disciplines of liberation theology, feminist theology, and theologies attentive to religious diversity, and focus more on what the text of Scripture has to say about how God expects us to respect, interact with, and treat others. To do this, I prefer to form a biblical theology of social engagement based on the conservative foundation of exegesis rather than the more easily distorted and biased methods found in eisegesis.

Forming A Biblical Theology Of Social Engagement

As I approach my desire to form a biblical theology of wealth, poverty, justice, and oppression, I am more acutely aware of my limited time than at any point prior to today. How is it possible to review and discuss with any degree of satisfaction the more than two thousand verses that deal with these topics?[3] Throughout the Old Testament we read of God’s heart toward those who are oppressed, imprisoned, treated unfairly, homeless, sex trafficked, and enslaved by economic systems that favor the rich over the poor.

Here is a sampling of verses that speak of God’s heart toward these people and what our response should be when we encounter them over the course of our travels.

• Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt (Exod 22:21).
• Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly (Lev 19:15).
• Do not degrade your daughter by making her a prostitute, or the land will turn to prostitution and be filled with wickedness (Lev 19:29).
• When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest. Leave them for the poor and for the foreigner residing among you. I am the Lord your God (Lev 23:22).
• If anyone is poor among your fellow Israelites in any of the towns of the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be hardhearted or tightfisted toward them (Deut 15:7).
• Follow justice and justice alone, so that you may live and possess the land the Lord your God is giving you (Deut 16:20).
• Do not take advantage of a hired worker who is poor and needy, whether that worker is a fellow Israelite or a foreigner residing in one of your towns. Pay them their wages each day before sunset, because they are poor and are counting on it. Otherwise they may cry to the Lord against you, and you will be guilty of sin. . . . Do not deprive the foreigner or the fatherless of justice, or take the cloak of the widow as a pledge. Remember that you were slaves in Egypt and the Lord your God redeemed you from there. That is why I command you to do this. When you are harvesting in your field and you overlook a sheaf, do not go back to get it. Leave it for the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands (Deut 24:14–15, 17–19).
• But you, God, see the trouble of the afflicted; you consider their grief and take it in hand. The victims commit themselves to you; you are the helper of the fatherless (Ps 10:14).
• The Lord loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of his unfailing love (Ps 33:5).
• A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling (Ps 68:5).
• For he will deliver the needy who cry out, the afflicted who have no one to help (Ps 72:12).
• Defend the weak and the fatherless; uphold the cause of the poor and the oppressed (Ps 82:3).
• I know that the Lord secures justice for the poor and upholds the cause of the needy (Ps 140:12).
• He upholds the cause of the oppressed and gives food to the hungry. The Lord sets prisoners free (Ps 146:7).
• Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done (Prov 19:17).
• The righteous care about justice for the poor, but the wicked have no such concern (Prov 29:7).
• Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow (Isa 1:17).
• Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless (Isa 10:1–2).
• “Woe to him who builds his palace by unrighteousness, his upper rooms by injustice, making his own people work for nothing, not paying them for their labor. . . . God defends the cause of the poor and needy, and so all goes well. Is that not what it means to know me?” declares the Lord (Jer 22:13, 16).
• He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God (Mic 6:8).
• Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the foreigner or the poor. Do not plot evil against each other (Zech 7:10).

Now turning our attention to selected New Testament passages:

• Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former (Matt 23:23).
• For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in; I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me. . . . Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me (Matt 25:35–36, 40).
• Cornelius stared at him in fear. “What is it, Lord?” he asked, The angel answered, “Your prayers and gifts to the poor have come up as a memorial offering before God” (Acts 10:4).

One would be hard pressed reading these verses, and the hundreds more that reference these themes, without coming to the conclusion that God’s heart is acutely tender to the plight of those who find themselves oppressed, mistreated, hungry, imprisoned, homeless, poor, fatherless, immigrants in a foreign land, trafficked, or victims of unfair employment practices. God’s heart, that is, his steadfast will and his longing desire, is to see justice, mercy, compassion, and peace prevail.

Jesus’s Mission Statement

Now let me quote Jesus at the advent of his earthly ministry:

He went to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, and on the Sabbath day he went into the synagogue, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written: “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:16–21).

This passage Jesus read was a messianic prophecy that envisioned a coming Messiah who would be both a servant to the needy and a king worthy of obedience and devotion. As one of Jesus’s first statements regarding his earthly mission and identity as the Messiah, what he said at this small synagogue nestled along the shore of Galilee was a declaration to all who were in attendance that he had come for a specific and prescribed purpose.

This mission statement of Jesus included “recovery of sight to the blind.” It is interesting to note that the original text found in Isaiah 61 also included a promise to “bind up the brokenhearted.” He continued by asserting his commitment to justice. He had come to “proclaim freedom for prisoners,” to “release the oppressed,” and to “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

No doubt this was an allusion to those who were living under the dictatorial reign of Rome, but perhaps in a broader sense it also addressed those who found themselves victims of a variety of injustices, whether political, social, or economic. This proclamation of “the year of the Lord’s favor” was a clear reference to the Old Testament year of jubilee when slaves were set free, land was returned to its ancestral owners, and debts were forgiven (Lev 25). This celebration, once every fifty years, was God’s way of protecting against the rich getting too rich and the poor sinking too low into poverty.[4]

In their book Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, Gushee and Stassen write regarding this passage: “This justice and righteousness are what God wills. More than that, they are what God does, what God enacts and carries out, as God delivers the oppressed from those who dominate them. In the reign-of-God passages especially, they are not merely human action: they are the gift of God’s dynamic reign. They are the heart of what God does when God delivers, saves, ransoms, and redeems His people.”[5]

Isaiah 58

A beautiful picture of God’s heart in relation to social engagement is provided for us in the fifty-eighth chapter of the book of Isaiah. It addresses the exiled nation of Israel while they were held in Babylonian captivity during the sixth century BC. Invaders had violently conquered these people as God’s punishment for their habitually idolatrous lifestyles. They had demonstrated centuries of contempt for God’s law over a long succession of apostate kings. They were desperate in their attempts to gain God’s favor in the hope that he might one day return them to their land. Yet, in spite of their efforts toward religious devotion, God judged them for their superficiality. God first passed judgment on their duplicity and then provided a glimpse into what he expects from those who desire to win his favor.

The prophet interrupts their claims to piety by calling for a series of behaviors we recognize as themes throughout the prophets: to loosen the bonds of injustice, to share what we have with those who have not, to bring the homeless into one’s house, to give clothing and shelter to the naked, to reconcile with one’s family, to help the afflicted. These are more than one time actions. These are behaviors with broad social consequences, actions that will restructure relationships. God’s desire is not for singular, pious acts, but for a whole cloth dismantling of unjust relationships.[6]

On the outside, they may have looked pious and godly, but God saw through their superficial acts of religiosity. God cares little for our rituals and liturgies if they are not offered with a sincere heart. What is shocking to us is the pronouncement in verse 4 that God refuses to listen to the prayers and veneration of those who practice insincere religious activities. However, this passage provides clear direction about what does please God.[7]

Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? (Isa 58:6–7).

Untying the cords of the yoke would have referred to the leather straps that fastened the yoke on the head of the oxen as they ploughed. While the exact meaning of the prophet’s statement may be susceptible to debate,

the more probable sense is, that if they were exercising any unjust and cruel authority over others; if they had bound them in any way contrary to the laws of God and the interests of justice, they were to release them. This might refer to their compelling others to servitude with more rigidity than the law of Moses allowed; or to holding them to contracts which had been fraudulently made; or to their exacting strict payment from persons wholly incapacitated to meet their obligations; or it might refer to their subjecting others to more rigid service than was allowed by the laws of Moses, but it would not require a very ardent imagination for anyone to see, that if they held slaves at all, that this came fairly under the description of the prophet.[8]

In short, if they wanted their prayers to be answered by God and if there was to be any hope of national restoration, a public commitment to national justice would have to prevail. It would need to be sincere, comprehensive, and infused with wholehearted mercy, compassion, and fairness. Anything less would be met with distance and silence from God.

Putting This Into Contemporary Perspective

So what is the average Christian sitting in a pew today to do? If we know in no uncertain terms that the heart of God is directed toward the plight of the poor, the hungry, the trafficked, the orphan, widow, unborn, persecuted, the imprisoned, the immigrant, and those who have been treated unjustly, what is our response? Does God expect anything of us as we read these verses? Is there a divine mandate that we will join him in these concerns, in his quest for justice, intervention in social engagement or other forms of intercession on behalf of those who are weak? Or is this simply something we read, give mild reflection to, and then go merrily on our way, achieving our personal goals and objectives for life?

If this idea of social engagement were based on one random verse, biblical concept, or mystical parable, we might be able to get away with inactivity. But when we discover that these verses transcend the entire biblical narrative, they force us to reconsider our personal priorities—at least they should.

But is it realistic to believe that our engagement in the plight of the world could make a difference? In essence, does it really matter? Many who have read these verses, for they are certainly not hidden from anyone who has read through the pages of Scripture, have come to believe that since the world is going to burn up in the end anyway, “why bother?”

I grew up in the hippie generation, which subsequently transitioned into the Jesus movement. We were raised on a steady diet of teaching about the rapture. It was coming any day. Books were written on it (The Late Great Planet Earth, There’s a New World Coming), songs were written to remind us of the impending destruction of our world (“I Wish We’d All Been Ready”). Youth rallies proclaimed with urgency that we were on the brink of the end. So naturally, why invest in what may not be here tomorrow? Why feed a hungry child if they were going to die tomorrow anyway? Wasn’t it more important to ensure their eternal home, since they were so close to going there?

It was for this reason that the evangelical church placed greater emphasis on evangelism than on social engagement. Now, nearly fifty years since I gave my life to Christ, I am wondering if we somehow missed the message, misinterpreted the urgency, or at the very least, perhaps were misguided in our passion and zeal. Is there not room for a balanced perspective?

Time certainly doesn’t allow for an exhaustive exploration of each of these important issues, but let’s drill down on just one of them for the sake of argument. Let’s take poverty for example.

I deal with this issue every day in my capacity as chief operating and finance officer at the Dream Centers in Colorado Springs. In our city, I am led to believe by the folks sitting on our city council, we have approximately 850 women and their children who are victims of domestic violence and have fled from their homes. Imagine living in your small vehicle with two young children in the backseat. It’s seven degrees outside and snowing. At dawn you need to get them fed, dressed, and dropped off for school by 8:00 a.m. Everything your family owns is packed in the car with you. Life has not been fair, equitable, or just, but here you are. Some of these ladies drop their kids off at Sunday school as they enter the church sanctuary and pray to God for provision, protection, and deliverance. Welcome to the world of urban poverty.

How do we fix this? How is poverty “solved”? It’s more than simply giving this woman and her children a bed to sleep in at night. Shelters have their place but they don’t solve the underlying issues that contribute to this woman’s state of affairs. It’s more than providing her with a meal to eat at night. A meal is helpful but it doesn’t solve the long-term problem this family is facing. Commenting on this dilemma, Richard Stearns, president of World Vision USA, writes,

Meeting one need isn’t enough. Shelter is a good thing but having a new home doesn’t necessarily put food on the table. Food security is crucial, but food without medical care is insufficient for good health. Access to health care is key, but without clean water and sanitation, people will continue to get sick. Water is foundational to life, but without schools and education, or economic opportunities and access to capital, communities remain mired in poverty.[9]

So then, if it is genuinely complicated and convoluted, do we do nothing? Are we to simply throw up our hands and say, “This is too hard, let someone else figure it out.” Is that the response God calls the church to? That certainly wasn’t the attitude of the Jerusalem church in Acts 4:

All the believers were of one heart and mind, and no one felt that what he owned was his own; everyone was sharing. And the apostles preached powerful sermons about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and there was warm fellowship among all the believers, and no poverty—for all who owned land or houses sold them and brought the money to the apostles to give to others in need (vv. 32–34, TLB).

While there are any number of possible responses a Christian could make, probably the most common response, judging from what I see being acted out in the North American evangelical church today, is simply no response at all. After all, getting involved in the needs of those who are dirty, hungry, imprisoned, or trafficked is messy business. It’s not that today’s average church attending person doesn’t care—they genuinely do, just not enough to do anything significant about it. They may offer the occasional prayer to solving these social plights, but at the end of their day, their inactivity speaks loud and clear about their apathy. I suspect God hears it too, much as he did in the days of Isaiah.

The founders of the liberation theology movement espoused another possible response—albeit a more militant form. Founded in Latin America in the 1960s and ’70s as a response to the widespread poverty and injustice found in Latin America, its leading proponents were Leonardo Boff of Brazil and Gustavo Gutierrez of Peru. The former was a Catholic theologian and friar from the Franciscan order and the latter was a Peruvian philosopher and Catholic priest from the Dominican order. Both were instrumental in calling out the authoritative hierarchy of the Catholic Church and were highly critical of those in economic and political power. Gutierrez penned a groundbreaking book titled A Theology of Liberation in 1973 that rocked the Catholic Church and espoused a radical model of socialism that was predicated on the writings of Karl Marx. Liberation theologians sought to depose the ruling elite and fight for an economic, political, and spiritual liberation of socially oppressed peoples.[10] In liberation theology, the lines between social engagement and political revolution are blurred. We see the remnants of this response in calls for a radical economic redistribution of wealth within American society today.

Liberation theology goes wrong in a couple of places. For one, it places social action on equal footing with the gospel message. As important as feeding the hungry is, it cannot take the place of the gospel of Christ (see Acts 3:6). Mankind’s primary need is spiritual, not social. Also, the gospel is for all people, including the rich (Luke 2:10). Visitors to the Christ Child included both shepherds and magi; both groups were welcome. To assign special status to any group as being preferred by God is to discriminate, something God does not do (Acts 10:34–35). Christ brings unity to His church, not division along socio-economic, racial, or gender lines (Eph. 4:15).[11]

Perhaps we would all agree that having no response is an unacceptable response. And likewise, the radical and revolutionary response of liberation theology is not a credible alternative. How about we discuss the possibility of a more moderate and reasonable alternative? While running the risk of being overly simplistic, let me suggest that the answer is a reliance on the Holy Spirit. I don’t think there is a “one size fits all” response for the church today for meeting the needs of poverty. Even Jesus said, “You will always have the poor among you” (Mark 14:7). There are simply too many variables involved that war against a sustainable alternative.

I would be naive if I believed that the plight of the world’s poor would be solved through the efforts of the government, federal social agencies, Wall Street tycoons, or well-meaning contemporary entrepreneurs. The answer will always be found in the church.

But how do we hear the voice of the Holy Spirit as he seeks to reveal the heart of the heavenly Father as it pertains to the needs of the poor? A corporate heart of humility and openness to respond in a meaningful way are two good first steps. Believing the words found in Proverbs 19:17 is also helpful: “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.”

Let me close with a contemporary case study, one based on what one local church did to meet the needs of the poor in its community. The year was 2006 and New Life Church was being led by the highly charismatic and politically engaged Reverend Ted Haggard. He had been hailed as one of the most up-and-coming evangelical leaders in America but was harboring hidden sins. Eventually, they came out and the church came crashing down, $26 million in debt. The nation was in the midst of a financial meltdown, and the church went looking for a new pastor. No one in his right mind would have volunteered for such a post. It had to be a calling from God.

Enter Pastor Brady Boyd, age 40, then serving as an associate pastor in a local church in Dallas, Texas. He had never served as a senior pastor before he started his commission from the Lord at New Life Church in August 2007. “Three months later, on Dec. 9, 2007, a disturbed young man named Matthew Murray showed up on campus with a gun and took the lives of sisters Stephanie and Rachel Works.”[12] It should go without saying that the church was on the brink of folding. Attendance was down to 8,000. Some people believed it was cursed, while others believed it had no future. Mass exodus, extreme debt, moral failure, active shooter takes the lives of two parishioners—what a way to start a pastoral ministry.

At the onset of Pastor Boyd’s tenure at New Life, he read those poignant words in Proverbs 19:17: “Whoever is kind to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will reward them for what they have done.” Pastor Boyd had a passion for the needs of the poor in the community, but what about the church’s debt? They had been paying their 150-member staff with a line of credit. Was this any time to start giving to the poor? Wasn’t the church itself poor?

Pastor Boyd believed God and took a bold leap of faith. He expanded the church’s local outreach ministry and formed the Dream Centers as a separate 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. Needless to say, not everyone was in support of this “outward” ministry venture. He started a medical clinic for the women of the city who had no medical insurance. Shortly thereafter, he raised two million dollars to purchase and refurbish an apartment complex to house homeless and abused women and their children. Today, Mary’s Home provides housing, trauma counseling, and college level education to twelve ladies. When they graduate four years after starting the program, they will enter a career earning a minimum of $40,000 per year. During this same time the church has paid off half its debt, and this past Easter they had 22,000 people in attendance.

Somehow the Holy Spirit spoke to this local church pastor, who had the courage to do something counterintuitive and give to the poor—not after the church had paid down their debt, not once attendance had picked back up, not even after he had earned the trust of the entire congregation. This pastor acted out of the conviction that there are certain nonnegotiable and irrevocable fundamentals for the church. One of those is a social engagement with the points of pain in their city. Like the first church and the early churches, they sought to minister to the places of greatest need in their community.

Too many churches have been fixated on building bigger church buildings, stages with dramatic lighting and sound, marketing themselves to every possible demographic. These things are not necessarily bad, they just aren’t the best kingdom activities.

Let me be honest. I don’t recommend this approach to anyone who hasn’t heard the voice of God speak clearly to them. Remember, there is no “one size fits all” approach to urban poverty. However, never underestimate what God can do through the life of someone whose heart is perfect toward him, so that he can show his great power in supporting him or her (2 Chron 16:9).

Let me conclude with the words of the psalmist in Psalm 146:7–9, as he describes the Lord,

Who executes justice for the oppressed;
Who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free.
The Lord opens the eyes of the blind;
The Lord raises up those who are bowed down;
The Lord loves the righteous;
The Lord protects the strangers;
He supports the fatherless and the widow,
But He thwarts the way of the wicked.

Let me encourage you to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit as you try to discern the heart of God regarding the level of social engagement you feel is appropriate for you and your church. Nobody can tell you how to respond beyond what you read in God’s Word. It needs to be applied with wisdom, God-given discernment, and only under the clear direction of his Spirit. However, engagement in our broken world is not an option. Scripture is replete with far too many verses for us to comfortably walk away in ignorance or apathy.

My prayer is that you will discern the heart of God and have the courage to respond accordingly.

One thing I admonish you not to do is sit back and simply wait for change to happen. From his Birmingham jail cell in April 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. wrote, “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.”[13] He then went on to say, “Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say ‘Wait.’ Progress takes time as well as the ‘tireless efforts’ of dedicated people of good will.”[14]

Notes

1. Hans Walter Wolff, Anthropology of the Old Testament (London: SCM, 1974), 56.
2. Vic McCracken, “Social Justice: An Introduction to a Vital Concept,” in Christian Faith and Social Justice: Five Views (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014), 2.
3. Poverty and Justice Bible (Swindon, UK: British and Foreign Bible Society, 2008), http://povertyandjusticebible.org.
4. Richard Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel (Nashville: W. Publishing Group, 2014), 9.
5. David P. Gushee and Glen H. Stassen, Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 137.
6. Amy Oden, “Commentary on Isaiah 58:1–9a [9b–12],” ¶3, https://www.working-preacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=793.
7. Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel, 43.
8. Albert Barnes, “Commentary on Isaiah 58:6, ” Barnes’s Notes on the New Testament (1870), http://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bnb/isaiah-58.html.
9. Stearns, The Hole in Our Gospel, 274.
10. For excellent critiques of liberation theology consider the following: Edward A. Lynch, “The Retreat of Liberation Theology,” The Homiletic and Pastoral Review (February 1994): 12–21; William Diono Jr., “The Errors of Liberation Theology,” First Things, July 5, 2015, https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2015/07/the-errors-of-liberation-theology.
11. https://www.gotquestions.org/liberation-theology.html
12. Mark Barna, “The Pulpit: New Life Church Is Thriving under New Leadership,” The Colorado Springs Gazette, December 5, 2008, http://gazette.com/the-pulpit-new-life-church-is-thriving-under-new-leadership/article/44469.
13. Martin Luther King Jr., “Letters from a Birmingham Jail,” ¶ 11, http://www.af-rica.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html.
14. Ibid.