Esights Topics - Renewed Heart Ministries

Viewing Topic: Economic Justice

A World that is Just, Safe, and Compassionate for All

Big News! Your Gift Will Go Twice as Far! From now through December 31st, every dollar you donate to Renewed Heart Ministries will be matched dollar for dollar! That means your support will have double the impact in helping us continue to educate, inspire,...

The Social Vision of the Gospel

Economic justice is integral to spiritual renewal. Addressing growing disparities is not only a policy issue but also a deeply moral and theological one.

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector

We want to take a moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to each and every one of you who supports the work of Renewed Heart Ministries. Your generosity makes it possible for us to continue our mission of love, justice, and compassion—even in a...

The Rich Man, Lazarus and Justice

It was about forging bonds through shared resources and mutual aid. Even now, this parable whispers through time, urging us to transform the riches of the few into a wealth shared by all.

The Parable of the Dishonest Manager

Hating One’s Family

Bending Our World’s Arc Toward Justice

The Moral Dilemma and Challenge of Wealth

We want to take this moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to all of our supporters for your support of Renewed Heart Ministry’s work of love, justice, and compassion. At a time when ministries like ours are being asked to achieve more with fewer...

Peace Through Justice Doesn’t Need A War Horse

Mary, Christian Patriachy and the Existence of Poverty

A Gospel of Economic Justice

When Faith Does Societal Harm

We want to take this moment to express our heartfelt gratitude to all of our supporters for your invaluable role in the Renewed Heart Ministry community and for your dedication to our mission of fostering love, justice, compassion, and healing. Your support is the...

God and Money

Reaping What Is Sown

We want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters. Please see the various thank you offers following this week’s article, below. New Episode of JustTalking! Season 1, Episode 39: Matthew 25.14-30. Lectionary A, Proper 28 Each week, we’ll be talking...

A Case for a Politically Compassionate, Distributive Justice Minded Christianity

“In the end, for me, it’s no longer enough to say that God is love. If our ideas of God’s love don’t also address love of neighbor in very real, concrete, material ways, then we are still missing the mark.”

Unheeded Calls for Justice in the Parable of the Vineyard

“The crowds of people found hope and resonance in these the teachings of reversal: the elite and powerful would have the reins of society taken away from them and given to the marginalized and excluded. And if this parable did teach that power and resources would be taken away from the powerful, propertied and privileged, and given to the masses, then it makes sense that when those in power heard this, they sought to kill Jesus. It also makes sense that they had to be ever so careful because they knew the people heard something in this parable in the long line of justice prophets that made them love Jesus all the more.”

Equality, Generosity and Concern for Workers’ Needs

"Three themes surface, three values that have the power to inform how we shape the present world we are all sharing: a desire for equality, generosity concern for workers’ needs. The priority is a combination of equality, generosity, and concern for the needs of the workers. What might our present economic system look like if these three themes governed us?"

Seventy Times Seven

"This parable originated not as allegory but as an example of real life indebtedness Jesus’ audience would have been familiar with. This was not a call for the indebted to forgive their abusive creditors, but for creditors to forgive the debts of those who owed them."

The Deceitfulness of Wealth

Wealth creates in us a kind security that isolates us from fellow members of our human family. Community, on the other hand, is a way of finding security to weather potential future hardships together.

Our Dependence on One Another

We want to say a special thank you to all of our supporters out there. If you would like to join them in supporting Renewed Heart Ministries’ work you can do so by going to renewedheartministries.com and clicking donate. New Episode of JustTalking! Season...

Refusing to Be Silent About Injustice

Sacrificing our Humanity to Change the World

These legends of Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness can still inform the lives of Jesus followers working to shape our world in more just and compassionate ways. We’ll need to interpret them differently than the original audience did, but we can still interpret them in life-giving ways for our society.

Choosing the Common Good

Herb Montgomery | October 30, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. “Is my Jesus-following contributing to harmful policies toward those who are different from me? Or does my Jesus following move me to listen to those whose...

Faith and Political Harm

Herb Montgomery | September 30, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. “The Jesus of the gospels cared about the concrete harm being done to the marginalized and exploited. And our faith in this kind of Jesus should...

Stories that Shape Us

Herb Montgomery | September 23, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. “This story might have spoken to those in Luke’s culture, but it would not work to threaten people in our culture with a burning afterlife. It’s...

A Preferential Option and Student Debt Forgiveness

Herb Montgomery | September 9, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. “In a society that privileges certain ones from pushing others to the edges and undersides of their society, we have to practice a preferential option for...

Envisioning a World of Care

Herb Montgomery | August 5, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. We don’t see Luke’s Jesus traveling around passing out tickets to heaven; instead we see him teaching a more socialized way of living here on earth...

Sharing More Than We Need

Herb Montgomery | July 29, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. Every day, we face the evolutionary challenge of survival. We here in the U.S. have also been deeply conditioned by our culture of individualism, independence, and...

Mary’s Perfume and No More Poverty

Herb Montgomery | April 1, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. “I want to offer an alternative interpretation. Poverty is a human-made reality, and therefore poverty can be eradicated through our choices in how we structure our...

Injustice is Not Sustainable

Herb Montgomery | March 18, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. “Democratic societies must be made to birth a distributively just society where the needs of everyone and not only an elite few are...

Myth of Redemptive Sacrifice

Herb Montgomery | March 4, 2022 To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here. “In the wilderness story, Jesus rejects the temptation to sacrifice himself and tempt God to save him in the end. This calls into question how we...

Setting in Motion a Safe, Compassionate, Just Society

Herb Montgomery | February 18, 2021 (To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.) “The passage describes the reciprocal nature of judgment, of condemnation, of forgiveness, and of giving. Our choices show not only what kind of people we want...

When Social Justice is Rejected and Spoken of as Evil

Herb Montgomery | February 11, 2022 (To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast episode click here.) “But things never remain as they are. Change is the nature of reality. We can choose to bend the arc of the universe toward justice for...

Liberation for the Oppressed

Herb Montgomery | January 21, 2022 “There are so many contemporary parallels to draw between the way Luke’s gospel characterizes the life and mission of Jesus and the justice needs present in our world today. Since his era, oppression, domination and subjugation have only...

Declaring War Against Poverty

November is A Shared Table 2021 month! Find out more here. (To listen to this week’s eSight as a podcast, click here.) by Herb Montgomery | November 12, 2021 “Seen through this lens and given Jesus’ love for the poor of his own society,...

A Widow, Taxes, and Giving More Than What is Life-Giving to Give

November is A Shared Table 2021 month! Find out more here. Herb Montgomery | November 5, 2021 “This story does not praise the piety of the poor within a system that takes economic advantage of their piety. It condemns any system that conditions and...

Damage Mitigation Versus Changing the System

Herb Montgomery | October 22, 2021 “It’s not enough to remove the basis for people being treated as less-than. We must also challenge the very systems the create less-thans and greater-thans. Jesus didn’t just give Bartimaeus his sight. He continued on the road to...

Getting Free from Fear and Facing the Future Together

Herb Montgomery | October 8, 2021 “Christians have always come up with ways around stories like these in the gospels, but imagine with me this week, a community didn’t try to get around them. What if we allowed ourselves to be confronted...

The Bread of Life

Renewed Heart Ministries is a nonprofit organization working for a world of love and justice. We need your support to offer the kind of resources RHM provides. Helping people find the intersection between their faith, compassion, and justice is work that continues to prove deeply...

Enough for Everyone

A Community of Dependence and Connectedness

Herb Montgomery | July 2, 2021 “In Jesus’ vision for human community in the synoptic gospels and the book of Acts, we take responsibility for taking care of one another, not to establish dependency, but because we already are dependent on one another.” Our...

Peace, Be Still.

Herb Montgomery | June 18, 2021 “I need a Jesus that can challenge the great windstorm and the waves of deep homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia in the Christian church that threatens to capsize the lives of LGBTQ young people — not just the...

The Politics of Jesus

Herb Montgomery | March 26, 2021 The synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, offer consistent political comparisons between Jesus’ vision for human society (God’s just future) and the status quo of the society Jesus found himself in instead . . . certainly we can...

Jesus and Protest

Herb Montgomery | March 5, 2021 This week’s reading is John 2:13-22. I prefer Mark’s version of this story: “On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple courts and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the...

The Falling and Rising of Many

Herb Montgomery | January 22, 2021 “This is the intrinsic reason why our collective thriving depends on raising up some in society while those who have gained too much power, privilege, property, or profit must fall back down. Ancient societies also knew this.” In...

Reimagining Our World in 2021

by Herb Montgomery | January 8, 2021 Mark’s stories about Jesus begin: “Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe...

A Community of the Rejected

2020 has been a challenging year for many nonprofits. RHM is no exception. We need your support to impact lives and bring the faith-based, societal-justice focused resources and analysis RHM provides. Intersections between faith, love, compassion, and justice are needed right now more than ever. If you...

An Unjust Judge

The Social Location of Your Christianity Matters

A Cautionary Tale for Society

Herb Montgomery | October 16, 2020 “Seeing the man set free from his internalized oppression, the society around him refuses to get free of the same ‘demons.’ . . . When people get free of collective violence toward a marginalized sector of our society,...

Jesus and Law and Order

Herb Montgomery | September 25, 2020 “Beware when you see those in power using law and order rhetoric used to maintain power, position, control, and political office. Jesus’ followers should be the first to recognize when ‘law and order’ is being used to serve...

What a Just Future Requires

Enough for Us All

Herb Montgomery | September 4, 2020 2020 has been a challenging year for many nonprofits. RHM is no exception. We need your support to impact lives and bring the faith-based, societal-justice focused resources and analysis RHM provides. Intersections between faith, love, compassion, and justice are needed right...

Three Paths Toward Change Rejected

Herb Montgomery | July 31, 2020 “And in each of these versions of the story, Jesus announces the arrival of God’s just future (‘the kingdom’) but rejects three methods for bringing justice to fruition. We’ll look at each of them.” The beginning of Mark’s...

Systems of Sacrifice

Herb Montgomery | July 24, 2020 As COVID-19 cases continue to rise and set new records each day, remember that the world that exists post-COVID will be determined by the kind of people we choose to be right now during COVID. Will we be...

Mislabelling Social Justice as Foolishness

by Herb Montgomery | July 17, 2020 “I find it alarming that there are Christian pastors or leaders who call fellow Jesus followers seeking social justice ‘fools.’ It is past time for those who bear the name of Jesus to see in the gospel...

More Effective Ways To Care

Herb Montgomery | July 10, 2020 “The question I wrestle with most when considering communities like those I just described is how do we protect certain community members from others who may use their strength to overpower, take advantage of, and do harm to...

A Path Toward Societal Equity

Herb Montgomery | July 3, 2020 “Every generation faces these inflexible alternatives, transformation or eventual implosion—these are the inflexible alternatives before us, today, too. How much of what we are now experiencing was unavoidable? How much could we avoid in the future if we made...

Choosing Peace through Militarized Policing or Distributive Justice

Herb Montgomery | June 26, 2020 This week we end our consideration of the final warnings in Luke’s version of the Jesus story and how they might relate to our society. In Luke 23, we read: “Jesus turned and said to them, ‘Daughters of...

A Different Kind of Messiah

Herb Montgomery | May 29, 2020 “Our passage this week and this pandemic make me think of my working-class Appalachian friends, family, and neighbors—forgotten by the establishment or marginalized by the elite class as dumb mountain people. These forgotten people were particularly vulnerable to...

Building the World We Want to Live In

“Today, many of us are seeing our society being pushed to yet another breaking point. Blessed are the ones calling for change now. Blessed are the ones modeling a compassionate new world. Blessed are the ones shaping a world that is just and safe...

Growth For Growth’s Sake

Herb Montgomery | May 15, 2020 “The contradictions of our present economic system are being exposed more every passing day. The exploitations built into our present system are straining in this pandemic. A system with such a long history of placing profit above people...

A Gospel for the Earth

by Herb Montgomery | May 8, 2020 “What would happen if Christians stopped believing that Jesus’s way is impractical, naïve, insufficient, or “doesn’t work in the “real world” and began to follow the way of life Jesus came to teach us, no matter how...

A Community of Healing Justice

Herb Montgomery | March 13, 2020 “At its source, it’s not about a lone hero who does something revolutionary on our behalf. It’s a call to participate, with others, in a community of healing justice. “You have said so,” Jesus replied. “But I say...

Zacchaeus and Christian Support of Destructive Administrations

“What is needed for empowered, privileged Christians who support a corrupt administration today to follow Zacchaeus’ example? What is needed for Christians to take more seriously Jesus’ commands to stand with the vulnerable and those on the margins rather than the systems that harm...

The Refusal of the Older Brother

Herb Montgomery | February 7, 2019 “If you believe God loves someone, justice for them isn’t far behind. Love for those on the margins is the seed out of which the reality of God’s inclusive, just future sprouts.” “The older brother became angry and...

Jesus’ Enoughism

by Herb Montgomery | November 22, 2019 “Some will say, ‘This sounds like socialism!’ I’m reminded of the words of historical Jesus scholar John Dominic Crossan, ‘Do not, by the way, let anyone tell you that is Liberalism, Socialism, or Communism. It is, if...

Biblical Inclusion Versus Biblical Exclusion

by Herb Montgomery | November 8, 2019 “What is our relation, as followers of Jesus, to the marginalized of our day? To what degree are we marginalized in our own lives? Are we standing in solidarity with others who are marginalized or are we...

Challenging Exclusion

Herb Montgomery | June 21, 2019 It’s not enough to simply offer a gospel that only offers divine forgiveness of sins. A gospel that is faithful to the Jesus story must include people forgiving people. It must include a redistribution of power and resources...

Lightening the Burden of Others

Herb Montgomery | December 21, 2018 “This Christmas, we may not all have someone whose economic debt we can cancel. But are there other types of forgiveness we could embrace? Are there reparations for past wrongs we still need to make? Does someone else’s...

Another World is Possible (Part 3)

by Herb Montgomery | July 27, 2018 “The poverty of the poor is not a call to generous relief action, but a demand that we go and build a different social order.” — Gustavo Gutiérrez; The Power of the Poor in History “Jesus looked...

Another World is Possible (Part 2)

by Herb Montgomery | July 13, 2018 “To live out the reign or kingdom of God is to replace wealth accumulation with a distributive justice that ensures people’s needs for survival and thriving are taken care of: an early version of ‘people over profit.’” ...

Another World is Possible (Part 1)

by Herb Montgomery | June 28, 2018 “Tempted to succumb to the narrative of scarcity and competition against one another for the one loaf in the boat, they forgot the lesson in the feeding of the multitudes. What little we have (even a few...

Pyramids, Circles and a Shared Table: Jesus’ Vision for Human Community (Part 2)

Jesus’ shared table community was an expression of voluntary “from each according to their ability, to each according to their need.” by Herb Montgomery | May 10, 2018 “Yet too often, historically, economic reforms have come at the expense of those barely getting by...

Pyramids, Circles and a Shared Table: Jesus’ Vision for Human Community (Part 1)

by Herb Montgomery | May 3, 2018 “Politics answers the question of who gets what. So Jesus was not a religious figure as much as he was a political one. He did not fundamentally challenge his Jewish religion, at least not much more than...

Directed Good News

by Herb Montgomery | April 12, 2018 Jesus’ gospel was good news to those who were on the margins. If they were able to shape a safer, more compassionate, just society, this would, in the long run, be good for everyone. Nonetheless, the news...

The Parable of the Entrusted Money

by Herb Montgomery | February 1, 2018 “In the story, this king’s passion was profit. The God Jesus described at the heart of the kingdom was passionate about people, not profit. Jesus’ “kingdom of God” was a community where people were valued over...

God or Money

“Jesus’s ethic is not capitalist. In a capitalist system, the goal is simply to create capital. The game is won by those who are able to create the most capital and use it to create more . . . Jesus asks us to lift...

The Reversal of the Last and the First

by Herb Montgomery “Economies that keeps workers desperate are structured that way by design . . . Just this past week it was published that there is not one state in the US where a 40 hours a week (full-time), minimum-wage worker can afford...

I Do Not Know You

by Herb Montgomery “Why is the path narrow? It’s narrow simply because it’s traversed by so few. Paths are broad or narrow determined by the number of those who travel them. In other words, we too often think of this saying as describing a path...

Settling out of Court

by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: While you go along with your opponent on the way, make an effort to get loose from him, lest the opponent hand you over to the judge, and the judge to the assistant, and the assistant throw you into...

Children against Parents

by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “Fire have I come to hurl on the earth, and how I wish it had already blazed up! Do you think that I have come to hurl peace on earth? I did not come to hurl peace, but a...

The Faithful or Unfaithful Slave

by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “Who then is the faithful and wise slave whom the master put over his household to give them food on time? Blessed is that slave whose master, on coming, will find so doing. Amen‚ I tell you, he will...

The Son of Humanity Comes as a Robber

The banner reads: “Capitalism isn’t working: another world is possible.” G20, Meltdown Protest, City of London, Bank of England, 1 April 2009. Credit: Tony Hall. by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “But know this: If the householder had known in which watch the robber was...

Free from Anxiety like Ravens and Lilies

by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you are to eat, nor about your body, with what you are to clothe yourself. Is not life more than food, and the body than clothing? Consider...

Hearings before Synagogues

by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “When they bring you before synagogues, do not be anxious about how or what you are to say; for the holy Spirit will teach you in that hour what you are to say.” Q 12:11-12 Companion Texts: Matthew 10:19:...

Speaking against the holy Spirit

by Herb Montgomery Featured Text: “And whoever says a word against the son of humanity, it will be forgiven him; but whoever speaks against the holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him.” Q 12:10 Companion Texts: Matthew 12:32: “Anyone who speaks a word...