What is the role of faith in the pursuit of social justice? Should Christian faith have a public, legal/political expression, or should its sole focus be the regeneration and transformation of committed followers? Wherever one lands in that debate, history will demonstrate that Christianity has indeed played a public role in legal and political action. Charles Marsh argues for a perspective of mission of the church in The Beloved Community that demonstrates that Christians should indeed see a public strategy for social change. But that strategy must remain rooted within the theological expression that brings about regeneration and transformation as the mission of the church to inspire the pursuit of the beloved community. His book is divided into three parts: The first describes the faith-based origins of the civil rights movement in two notable figures from that era; MLK and Clarence Jordan’s Koinonia Farms. The two leaders were motivated in their activism by a theological hermeneutic that stemmed from their understanding of the mission of the church. They disagreed on a strategy for social change as a result. King saw the churches role connected to a public assault of social evil, while Jordan saw the church combating evil by attracting willing participants into community where their hearts would be changed. That is, Clarence Jordan's "Koinonia Farms" made the formation of community its sole focus and the transformation of individuals from the "inside out", while King and the civil rights movement made a priority of "outside in" transformation. King, like many other black pastors, made a direct connection between personal faith and attention to the plight of the oppressed; political, social and legal attention to oppression a derivative of loving one's neighbor. But Jordan's complaint was that so much attention to the legal and political effects of racism that the civil rights movement did not provide the same theological, or spiritual vitality towards the redemption and regeneration of people. Hence, there was no power to sustain the beloved community. Yet, both ministries had weaknesses, and both left much of the work of the beloved community undone. The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) is a casualty of their unfinished business. SNCC was birthed in the movement led by MLK, and was originally inspired by the same theological convictions. But after the political failure of their summer project of 1964, SNCC derailed, and their social activism was dislodged from its theological foundation. The result was a spiral into radicalism, and eventually into chaos. Their pursuit of the beloved community turned into hate towards whites, and a disdain for Amerika as an evil empire (p. 133).
Part two of Marshes book is brief and describes how some who were inspired by the theological foundation of civil rights dispensed with the theology and the mission of the church only to end up in a misguided frenzy. "Freedom" became a pursuit without a foundation or a telos. Marsh describes the “flower children”, or hippies as an example of this. They were communities of adolescents who had lost hope, but gathered “in pursuit of something real, or at least fun" (p. 131). Marsh quotes a notable hippie, Joan Didion, who described her disappointment with "butchered effort" to pursue a beloved community, and thus dispensed with it all, but were left wandering aimlessly. Marsh also quotes Richard Rorty as one who recommends moving religious convictions to private expression, only to encourage a retreat from service and public action. Rorty too, is a casualty of the unfinished business of the civil rights movement.
The story of John Perkin's ministry of Christian Community Development is the third part of Marsh's book. Perkin's ministry is described as a movement that completes the unfinished business of the civil rights movement by keeping the mission of the church and strategies for social change intact. Perkin's ministry takes public legal/political action serious, while providing the means for attention to the interior work of regeneration and transformation. Thus, Perkin's work is both inside out and outside in. It is holistic transformation that emphasizes three Rs: Reconciliation, Relocation, and Redistribution; Reconciliation between God and humanity, and between people; relocation into a community in which one can serve and practice reconciliation; and finally, redistribution of wealth and resources to the poor and the marginalized. Perkins' ministry was also inspired by the civil rights movement, but it does not leave the business of pursuing the beloved community undone.