Charlie Dates on What American Christianity Gets Wrong About Justice

What happens when Christians separate righteousness from justice?

⁠Watch this conversation on YouTube .

In American Christianity, questions of personal morality and public justice are often treated as though they belong in different categories. Christians may speak confidently about some moral issues while dismissing others as distractions from the gospel or as politics the church should avoid. Charlie Dates’ new book, What Hath Justice to Do with Righteousness?, challenges that distinction. Scripture, he argues, doesn’t allow Christians to choose between personal holiness and concern for the people and communities around them.

On this episode, Russell and Charlie explore what that divide has done to the American church and why, in Charlie’s words, American Christianity can become “more American than Christian.” They discuss what the prophet Amos has to say to comfortable churches, why pastors can be tempted to avoid difficult subjects, and what Christian courage looks like when speaking the truth comes with a cost. 

Dates has no easy optimism about where American Christianity is headed, in fact, he says he has a “healthy cynicism". But, he does have hope that, as he says, is needed “when the evidence is against you.”

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