Reparations

Book Review (Duke L. Kwon & Gregory Thompson)

What obligation do Christians individually, and churches collectively, have for past injustices and present unjust circumstances?

That is the question that underlies this book, and why I decided to read it. I'd heard about the book for a while, have listened to a talk or two by Kwon, and have been reading in related areas, but what prompted me to pick up this book and actually read it is the following conviction: there can be no reconciliation without justice, and no justice without repair. But what does that repair look like?

There are two great features about this book, let me say. Firstly, that virtually every chapter begins (and ends) with a historic example/story/text that powerfully and pertinently addresses the subject at hand, and leads you into the history side of things. Secondly, that the authors are incredibly good at signposting their own argument at every stage.

The book as a whole lays out a case that the American church ought to make genuine and sincere reparations for slavery. The structure of the whole book walks us through that argument clearly, theologically, and persuasively. In the first chapter they tackle the question of what is racism, looking at four views (which are not necessarily exclusive): (1) personal prejudice, (2) relational division, (3) institutional injustice, and (4) cultural disorder.

I definitely think I grew up in a world that thought and taught of racism as personal prejudice, and we 'overcame' that. I also think this idea of personal prejudice is the overwhelming dominant view among evangelical and evangelical-adjacent christians, which is why they think all this race talk is nonsense and if we just convert people's hearts, everything will be fine. The experience and the voices of non-white christians says otherwise.

Chapter 2 is a treatment, then, of how white (supremacy) functions as a cultural ordering in the US, its history, before chapter 3 analyses its effects. For Kwon & Thompson, this can be seen as primarily theft - theft of truth, of power, and of wealth. Chapter 4 moves on to a call to 'own' responsibility, which they ground in the church's (i) mission, (ii) history, and (iii) moral tradition. In terms of history, they walk through ways in which the church was faithful, i.e. abolitionist strands, as well as a failure as perpetrators, accomplices, and silent bystanders. This kind of nuanced and varied treatment of the church's history, even in short form, recognises the complexity of speaking about the past and giving attention to both successes and failures.

Chapters 5 and 6 contain the bulk of what I would call a more Scripturally-oriented argument. In chapter 5 the authors argue for an Ethic of Restitution, and their paradigm example is Zacchaeus in Luke 19. If the primary lens for understanding the crime done against Black people is theft, then the question to ask is

What is morally required of those who are guilty of stealing? And it offers an unequivocal answer: not repentance alone but restitution. Indeed, the two are inseparable.

Kwon, Duke L.; Thompson, Gregory. Reparations (p. 136).

Zacchaeus is an institutional thief - as a tax-collector he is engaged in systematised violence, fraud, and theft, and his response to Jesus' radical kindness is framed in terms of restitution, which Kwon and Thompson understand not just as  a random act, but an informed realisation of OT ethics. They plot this out in terms of realisation (i.e. the recognition of sin), return (of stolen property), relatives (the beneficiaries of restitution when the original persons are gone), ram (the necessity of atonement), and remission (the full forgiveness effected through the above).

I find their argument here persuasive on a number of accounts. Firstly, it's a better reading of Zacchaeus than the Sunday school one. Zacchaeus in historical context is indeed much more like a crime lord than an amusing character, and his response to Jesus is not a one-off gesture, but makes sense in terms of a properly developed ethic. That ethic ought to be grounded in a well-developed reading of the OT in light of the NT, and the general poverty of contemporary Christian readings of ethics, let alone OT ethics, is itself a failure of the collective intellectual practice of the church. Kwon and Thompson address this, in part, by not resting their case there, but providing a synthesis of historical theology, primarily from the 16th-18th century, on the issue of restitution for theft. The church has its own rich resources for ethical thought and practice, if only it will look. In this section, they also point out why Zacchaeus gives to the poor - when no heirs of injustice are to be found, the stolen wealth belongs to the poor as a matter of justice, not charity. Within this ethical tradition they also find the answer to the question, 'what if the original perpetrators have died?' which is:

The restitutionary responsibility of these heirs is not grounded in a moral transfer of the parent’s (or ancestor’s) personal guilt to their heir but in the simple yet crucial fact that the stolen possessions, despite now being in the hands of the heir, still belong to the original owner (or that original owner’s heir).

Kwon, Duke L.; Thompson, Gregory. Reparations (p. 149).

Chapter 6 turns from restitution to restoration, and the argument here proceeds on a parallel but different basis, one which I think is provocative and probably not obvious to some. Drawing upon the parable of the good Samaritan as a paradigmatic text, the authors speak of the work of restoration as the act of neighbour-love, "even if we ourselves are not directly culpable" (emphasis original). In doing so, they acknowledge that while reparations might justly and primarily be grounded in restitution, considering the broader mission of the church in terms of restorative love provides a rich resource, motivation, and guide for how redemptive repair is an expression of Christ-shaped gospel love. They also take the time in this chapter to explore why this work remains undone - what are the features of life and practice that explain why we don't do this.

I think this argument is particularly valuable against the oft-remarked, "Well, I don't bear guilt for the sins of others (including forebears), so why do I need to make restitution?" The answer is two-fold - (i) when we inherit or benefit from previous injustice, we bear responsibility, not personal guilt, to set things right; (ii) even when we do not, we are called by Christ to restore what is broken, and set right what is wrong, as an act of love and justice.

The authors conclude the book in chapter 7 by taking the time and space to centre other voices, primarily Black voices, around the questions of what reparations might look like. In any process of reconciliation or reparations, it is incumbent to let victims speak, and in the matter of racial reparations and reconciliation, that people of colour be heard. This chapter is Kwon and Thompson's attempt to do so, acknowledging that asking Black people what Black people want and need is a right and proper response to historic injustice.

I have two words of application as I finish up here:

For myself, here in Australia, I read this book in light of the historic injustices committed against our First Nations people (Kwon and Thompson acknowledge that their book addresses slavery and African Americans in particular, and they frankly recognise that there are other contexts in which this work needs application, but they are not doing it). Primarily, we can say without much hesitation, that Australian First Nations people were subject to theft - the theft of sovereignty, the theft of land and property, the theft of truth, wealth, life, and dignity. All those things are unequivocally true, even on a relatively politically-conservative reading of history. Every piece of land in Australia is technically stolen. As inheritors of stolen goods, coming to terms with Australia's own past ought to involve the work of reparations and restoration, both at a societal and an ecclesial level.

Secondly, I feel like one of the themes of my own reading and writing in recent months is the move back and forth between the personal and the collective. In listening to Kwon speak (in some talks and on a podcast), he speaks of how at the heart of this idea of reparations is (of course!) repair. Where there is sin, where there is a breakdown in shalom, then part of repentance is the act of repair - to restore what is broken. In fact, not just to put back to the way it way, but to positively and proactively create a new state, a healed state. We are to be people who seek for, long for, and practice shalom and the restoration of shalom. And that involves repair.