The Boston Declaration and God’s monstrous entourage

Each November, I attend the AAR/SBL annual meeting, a gathering of 10,000 religion scholars who meet to share their research. Last year’s meeting, held just weeks after the presidential election, felt downright mournful. It felt to me as if a large group of horrified and shocked white liberals were being suddenly and swiftly educated out of our naiveté by a small group of non-white liberals who kindly refrained from rolling their eyes as they patiently rehearsed for us (yet again) the long history of white supremacy and reminded us (yet again) of our complicity in it.

This year, the meeting had a more upbeat feel. It’s not that the topics were inherently more upbeat. Many of the sessions still focused on the collective sins of our era: racism, violence, forced migration, and poverty. But the conference participants seemed less paralyzed by grief this year and more prepared to take action.

A few days into the meeting, a group of Christian scholars gathered at Boston’s Old South Church, a few blocks away from the convention center where the conference was being held. Some of them wore sackcloth and ashes (literally) as they presented the Boston Declaration, a statement signed by nearly 200 scholars, pastors, and activists that denounces Christian complicity in “poverty, economic exploitation, racism, sexism, and all forms of oppression” and calls on Christians to reflect the life and love of God by working actively against these systemic sins: “We affirm the beauty and humanity of all people in their manifold difference—race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion—as reflecting God’s image through lives of love and hope.”