If there’s one topic that divides Christian culture in the United States today more than just about any other, it’s the topic of justice. Despite Hebrew and Greek words for justice appearing more than 1,000 times throughout the Bible - the American Christian church is often starkly divided when it comes to how we go about seeking and advocating for justice today.

While Christian pastors were prominent leaders in the Civil Rights movement and other justice work since the founding of the United States, Christianity has also been used as justification for some of the most horrifying violations of human rights. During the Civil War, the vast majority of white American slave owners used the Bible to justify slavery and racial abuse. The Confederacy was founded as a Christian organization. Many of the most prominent and violent white supremacist groups including the Ku Klux Klan explicitly claimed Christianity as their foundation. And even today, when any marginalized group begins to advocate for fair treatment and freedom from oppression, it tends to be American Christians who are the most resistant and hostile to those efforts. When it comes to what justice actually means here in the present day, Christians tend to be sharply divided.

In Luke Chapter 4:17-21, Jesus returned to his home town and began to preach. He opened to the book of Isaiah and read a list of things he had come to earth to do. Here are a few of those things: To preach the Good News to the poor. To heal the brokenhearted. To proclaim liberty to the captives and the recovery of sight to the blind. And to set at liberty those who are oppressed.

In a country built on a legacy of violence and oppression, the question for each of us who want to follow Jesus is - what does He want us to do about it now?

As a Black kid growing up in Oregon, Taylor Stewart was taught very little about Civil Rights or justice at his Christian school. He grew up, graduated from college, and decided to join a trip to the American South to learn more about this history. While touring Alabama, Mississippi, and Arkansas, Taylor was especially impacted by the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, which memorializes nearly 6500 African American victims of lynching documented between the years of 1865 and 1950. As he read the names and even saw people with his own last name listed, Taylor says that he realized only time and place separated him from the people named in the memorial. As the trip ended and time went by, he found himself wanting to share the history he had learned, and started thinking a lot about a quote from Civil Rights leader John Lewis that says, “If not us, then who? If not now, then when?”

In 2018, Taylor founded the Oregon Remembrance Project, which works side-by-side with communities that have a history of racial harm to chart a new end to their stories. Most notably, Taylor has worked with the communities of Coos Bay, Oregon, the site of the most widely documented lynching of an African American man in the state, and Grants Pass, Oregon, a former sundown town, to chart a new course toward healing, hope, and historical honesty.

[Content Warning]: This episode contains a racial slur as part of a historical quote.

Follow Taylor Stewart and the Oregon Remembrance project by visiting www.oregonremembrance.org or by watching their 2024 OPB Documentary at www.opb.org/article/2024/09/18/oregon-remembrance-project-truth-reconciliation/