Sermon Illustrations on oppression

Learned Helplessness can be easily seen in a research study when participants are given a math test. In this study, some participants are told, “men don’t tend to do well on this test,” or “Millennia...

Lamin Sanneh, the African theologian who would be pivotal in the development of missional theology, was raised in an orthodox Muslim household in Gambia. He found himself drawn to Christianity after e...

I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that I have heard a sermon on the meaning of religion, of Christianity, to the man who stands with his back against the wall. It is urgent th...

For years, Bible scholars have danced around the matter by saying slavery in Rome was far different from slavery in the first few centuries of American history. No doubt their observations carry a mea...

Have you heard the old spiritual “Down to the River to Pray” or “The Good Old Way”? It is most famous in popular culture because of Alison Kraus’s version of the song recorded for the movie O Broth...

What is the witness of the church in times of persecution? The historical record demonstrates that persecutions of Christians were regular and prolific in the first centuries of the church, especially...

The most poignant and powerful time for me in the film 12 Years a Slave was not when the beatings took place or the general degradation meted out to the hero as a matter of course or even the general ...

One of the great leaders of the first generation after the apostles was a man named Polycarp. Polycarp, it is believed, was discipled by the apostle John and carried out a long and fruitful ministry i...

The most serious thing [concerning the credibility of our global witness] is the image around the world that evangelicals are soft on racial injustice. . . . One sign and wonder, biblically speaking, ...

To illustrate how the racial oppression of previous generations has benefited European Americans, we can look at the fate of Native Americans. When Europeans arrived in North America, Indians owned al...

Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end. With this compas...

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 ...