amos on Justice

Updated for 2026. January 19, 2026 is Martin Luther King Jr. Day— the only U.S. national holiday commemorating a pastor. Under his leadership, non-violent civil rights advocacy achieved leaps f...

As we depart,  Both individually and collectively  Be who you are called to be. In any and in all the ways you can Seek justice.  Resist evil.  Stand strong against Death.  And all Death’s works and w...

Dear Lord, I am filled with anger born of frustration. I confess I know not whether my anger is of you. I just know I am filled with hope, which makes me angry that others are not so filled. Take away...

If we acknowledge the God of the Bible, we are committed to struggle for justice in society. Justice means giving to each his due. Our problem, as seen in the light of the gospel, is that each of us o...

Churches want to hear nice, optimistic messages, free of the mention of sin or a call for repentance. Churches want nice, lean programs, directed at nice, clean families, leading to growth without sac...

I was sixteen when a white deputy sheriff shot and killed my twenty-five-year-old brother, Clyde, in New Hebron, Mississippi, where we had grown up. Clyde had returned home from fighting in World War ...

The prophet Isaiah describes God as a purveyor of righteousness and justice continually, and speaks to God’s expectation that his children will bring about righteousness and justice as well. Justice i...

Father: You are good and You are strong. You want what is best. You act to bring it about .And you invite us to hold our hearts before You in prayer, so we can participate in what You do. Therefore, w...

Father God–You invite us to come as a child to his/her daddy. You invite us to open our souls to You. You invite us to lay our desires before You. You are fond of us, Your children–so we come to You h...

You give us prophets, holy God, to cry out for justice and mercy. Open our ears to hear them, and to follow the truth they speak, lest we support injustice to secure our own well-being. Give prophets ...

It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important.

Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.

preaching commentary The Seemingly Outmoded Judgment of God Judgment is not en vogue these days. Well, a form of it is, the kind one sees on NextDoor, FB, Twitter, and any slew of other social m...

Confrontation Most pastors don’t care for confrontation. Maybe, that could be said for most people. There are the rare few of us who thrive on the tension and drama that comes with a direct standoff,...

Preaching Commentary Confrontation Most pastors don’t care for confrontation. Maybe, that could be said for most people. There are the rare few of us who thrive on the tension and drama that comes ...

Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated indi...

There is no peace in Southern Africa. There is no peace because there is no justice. There can be no real peace and security until there be first justice enjoyed by all the inhabitants of that beautif...

Simone Weil, a French philosopher, theologian and activist around the time of World War II, wrote a remarkable essay in which she connects the discipline of schoolwork with that of prayer. She argues ...

Editors Note: This is perhaps less a review as a jumping off part to articulate some thoughts I developed while reading The Minority Experience. For a full review of the title, a cursory google search...

One night I went to church One night I went to church. They had a mass meeting. And I went to church, and they talked about how it was our right, that we could register and vote. They were talking a...

For biblical righteousness is more than a private and personal affair; it includes social righteousness as well. And social righteousness, as we learn from the law and the prophets, is concerned with ...

As any parent of small children will tell you, children have an amazingly acute sense of justice. Even the most fractional disparity in the distribution of the most trivial family good will be met wit...

When did the topic of justice become important to you?” Gideon Strauss posed that question to two dozen people crammed into our living room one fall evening in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Some of us wer...

In his now famous Letter from a Birmingham Jail , Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. offers a scathing rebuke of his white clergy colleagues, whose inaction caused him much frustration: I have heard numero...

After several years of engagement in justice work Warren says in reflection on the story of the Good Samaritan, “I realized it’s not okay to have a road that perpetuates the beating, robbing, and pote...

I recently met with Heather, a woman who attends my church in New York City. After graduating from Harvard Law School she landed a lucrative job with a major law firm in Manhattan. It was a dream come...

You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression ... If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this nation is wrong. If we are wrong, the Cons...

Never, never will we desist till we extinguish every trace of this bloody traffic, of which our posterity, looking back to the history of these enlightened times will scarce believe that it has been s...