Equity: A Divine Imperative
By Paul Robeson Ford
In 1971, Gustavo Gutierrez published A Theology of Liberation , a groundbreaking work which argued that God had a preferential option for the poor; and that the work of Jesus Christ as represented in the Gospel record demonstrated that God stood alongside the poor of the world in radical solidarity, working for them and on their behalf. God’s positioning in this way is made most clear by the final fifteen verses of Matthew 25, where Jesus declares in no uncertain terms that our treatment of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the stranger, and the incarcerated will — literally — determine our entrance into eternal life or eternal punishment.
God’s concern for the poor and oppressed is reiterated in Jesus’ inaugural sermon in Luke 4:18-19, but also in Mary’s Magnificat, that praises God for lifting up the lowly and filling the hungry with good things; and still further, in the Beatitudes which declare that “Blessed are the poor, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.” God’s preferential option for the poor demands that we imitate that same preferential option in the public sphere and in our communal relationships.
Jesus teaches throughout the Gospels about how hard it will be for the rich to gain entrance into heaven and eternal life because of how attached they are to the material possessions of life and the comforts that they bring; in effect, he suggests that the rich more often than not slip into idol-worship, with material wealth and luxury being the god (with a little ‘g’) to whom they bow down and serve.
If we were to compare the haves and the have nots, we would observe that those who have are typically guilty of worshipping mammon (wealth) — and Jesus is clear that mammon is an idol that is at odds with God. The problem with idol worship is that it becomes entrenched across succeeding generations; it becomes a part of the culture of the rich and powerful; the comforts associated with it seem to be necessary and required for happiness and contentment and one is taught that the only way to live is to live in excess and splendor, even while so many others live in (relative) poverty and squalor.
If you accept Guitierrez’ reading of the biblical text, then it becomes abundantly clear that equity is not a choice among other equal choices, but in fact, it is a divine command for the lives of those who love God. As Jesus stands with the poor, so must we ; as God steps in on behalf of the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the stranger, and the incarcerated, so must we . It is an imperative, and we should move with a sense of urgency as we see to this work and to this mission.
What is required for this present age is a theology of equity that recognizes this imperative – this command – and the revolutionary implications that it has if we consider the fundamental inequity of the present circumstances that surround us. If we embrace a theology of equity, it requires us to “turn the world upside down” (as the Apostles were accused of in the Book of Acts); it requires to co-labor with God in upending the status quo. The Old Testament Prophet Zephaniah positions God as this sort of actor: “I will deal with all your oppressors at that time. And I will save the lame and gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise and renown in all the earth.” This verse prophecies divine intervention on behalf of equity; it asserts that God WILL save the marginalized and render judgment on those who pushed them to the margins.
It is important to note that the preferential option for the poor is not intended to suggest that rich people are less important in the eyes of God; this is a tragic misunderstanding that has characterized how some have received Gutierrez work; instead, the preferential option for the poor seeks to compensate for the fact that the world treats the poor AS IF they are less important here and in the hereafter; the preferential option for the poor seeks to balance a set of scales that have been imbalanced for at least two millennia.
The late Dr. James Hal Cone said that the purpose of the gospel is to comfort the afflicted — i.e the poor — and afflict the comfortable — i.e. white people, specifically the rich and the privileged; the premise of a theology of equity is that God intervenes on behalf of those who have been systematically victimized and intentionally dispossessed by a world that is characterized by an “intentional architecture” of inequity; simply put: this world is not inequitable by accident, it is inequitable by design.
The record of human history (and certainly the history of the United States) makes clear that those who have realized that they could not have unless there were also those who have not ; it makes clear that the structures that support inequity in this nation have been built that way in order to support what Kelly Brown Douglas has called the “Anglo-Saxon Myth,” the idea that a particular people whose origins lie in Western Europe were superior to all other types of people, and that these people were intended to have dominion over all of the earth. This mindset justified the genocide against the indigenous people of this country, it justified the enslavement of Africans and the 400 years of continuing oppression that we mark in 2019, and it justified the conquest of foreign lands and people, by force or by intimidation, by outright takeover or by covert overthrow.
If we were to consider our history against the balance sheet of moral credibility, we would see that our net worth is negative – we are in the red and we have been for centuries, because the liabilities of our history are greater than the assets of our past and present. This is a fact if we are honest about that history, and if we are willing to examine that history holistically, and not just through rose-colored glasses that benevolently consider the perspective of the victors while disregarding the lived experience of the victims .
A theology of equity judges the powers that be as guilty; guilty of orchestrating and violently enforcing the marginalization of the poor, the black, the brown, and the indigenous. And inasmuch as the rest of us have been complacent in response to this inequitable reality, we are all guilty and we need to repent, we need to seek God’s forgiveness, and we need to turn from our wicked ways. The priorities that are emphasized by a theology of equity must become our own priorities too.
A theology of equity is about God’s movement in and relationship to a world that is plagued by structures of oppression and practices that marginalize entire groups of God’s children who have been made in the divine image (imago dei). A theology of equity asserts unapologetically that the God who we serve is a God who is FOR THEM – for the oppressed, for the marginalized, for those who are “living with their backs against the wall,” in the words of Howard Thurman; the God who we serve is a God who is most present with those who feel like the world is least present with them.
That idea should not be a threat to anyone who understands that God’s love is available to all. It should not be a threat to anyone who is familiar with the passages that I have referenced, who is acquainted with the politics of Jesus, and who sees a clear set of principles articulated by the work of the Holy Spirit in this world.
You do not have to be poor to embrace a theology of equity; you do not have to be black, or brown, or indigenous. A theology of equity is both a lens through which to look at the world as it is, and it is also a set of principles that any believing Christian – or for that matter, any person of faith – can make their own. A theology of equity is for the white, and it is for the rich, and it is for the privileged. It is for the middle-class and it is for those who live in the “First World.” Anyone can endorse a theology of equity and seek to make meaning of it for their own life.
A theology of equity presents an important distinction, about which I must be clear: equity is NOT the same as equality. We have been disserved in this country by a discourse about equality, and equal access, and equal opportunity, and ‘equal pay for equal work.’ But that’s not enough, and it never has been; it leaves a void in the quest for justice that only equity can fill. This void has been felt acutely in the context of public education and the quest to ensure that all children – especially those who are poor and black and brown – achieve at the same level as their more privileged peers. Writing in a 2014 post for the Education Trust, Blair Mann explained the difference between equality and equity this way:
“Should per student funding at every school be exactly the same? That’s a question of equality. But should students who come from less get more in order to ensure that they can catch up? That’s a question of equity.”
He goes on, offering an example that should resonate with all of us here who are working to change the local school system:
“The students who are furthest behind — most often low-income students and students of color — require more of those resources to catch up, succeed, and eventually, close the achievement gap. Giving students who come to school lagging academically (because of factors outside of a school’s control) the exact same resources as students in higher income schools alone will not close the achievement gap.
But making sure that low-income students and students of color have access to exceptional teachers and that their schools have the funding to provide them with the kind of high-quality education they need to succeed will continue us on the path toward narrowing that gap.”
If a theology of equity is implemented in its fullest expression relative to public education, then we should see a day when predominantly black and brown and poor schools would be so heavily flooded with resources that privileged white folks would want to send their kids to those schools. This is what Blair Mann was talking about, and this is what a theology of equity calls for: a radical restructuring of resources that is targeted not at making things equal, but making things right. Equality is an unhelpful myth of American history, and while the language of equity may be new, resistance to the rhetoric of equality is not.
In response to a question by a white reporter in May 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., exposed just how obtuse the rhetoric of equality had always been: “…when white Americans tell the Negro to “lift himself by his own bootstraps, they…don’t look over the legacy of slavery and segregation. I believe we ought to do all we can and seek to lift ourselves by our own boot straps, but it’s a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.”
Too many of our students have been bootless for a long time.
For a bootless people, equality is not the solution to equipping them to run the race of life; equity is .
A theology of equity demands an Equity Agenda, one that is broad-based & universal. It demands that we flood – and I mean a flood of biblical proportions – our schools that are predominantly black and brown, and predominantly populated by students who receive free lunch, and historically underperforming (or outright failing) – that we flood those schools with resources that far exceed the resources that are currently given to other schools. This agenda is not and should not be preoccupied with desegregation of the races; instead, we need to advocate for the desegregation of resources and for the wholesale reaggregation of school funding writ large.
This focus should inform advocacy at the federal, state and local levels of government, where public revenue is collected and resources are allocated. It should fundamentally alter (and altar) the public discourse about what is required to finally fix our education system. It should reorient the way that we think and talk and act around questions of opportunity, access, and achievement.
A theology of equity begins with the way things are, and casts a vision for the way things ought to be. All that remains for each of us is a decision: do we believe in this God, and do we have the will to work with God to make things right? Are we ready to stand in radical solidarity with “the least of these my brothers and sisters”? I hope that the answer is yes.
—Paul Robeson Ford is senior pastor of First Baptist Church (Highland Avenue) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
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