In Their Steps
On the Side of the Angels: Justice, Human Rights, and Kingdom Mission
by Joseph D’souza and Benedict Rogers
Authentic Books, 2007
(224 pages, $14.99, paperback)
reviewed by Benjamin Marsh
Spring break, senior year. My friends relaxed on a beach. I stood under a blistering Indian sun listening to Dalit villagers tell their stories of children sold into slavery, of impossible debt, of drought, famine, and violence. A month later, I met Joseph D’souza, president of the All India Christian Council, who later asked me to move to Washington, D.C., to be an advocate for India’s 250 million Dalit people, who in India’s caste system are still considered sub-human and often brutally oppressed and mistreated.
I could not refuse, having sat with my wife and relayed to her through tears how the churches in India have gates around them to keep the homeless from coming to sleep inside, and how old men with no hands and girls of three beg in the middle of the highway to earn a few rupees.
On the Side of the Angels is thus a personal book to me, but it should resonate with anyone who struggles to find the proper place for evangelism and justice in a fallen world. Having witnessed unspeakable atrocities, D’souza and Benedict Rogers, an advocate with Christian Solidarity Worldwide whose work on Burma has shed light on a catastrophically repressive regime, understand better than most the violence man perpetrates against man.
They do not offer an academic investigation of justice and mission, but a call for the church to participate in the work of justice and of evangelism in the midst of oppression, based upon their own experiences of extraordinary Christians at work. Their thesis is not new, but the stories they tell are compelling.
Not Enough
“‘My mother—dead,’ reported Amil. . . . [H]e drew his index finger down his stomach and demonstrated the action of pulling out his intestines. ‘My mother, with baby . . . both dead.’” Where, this book asks, was the church when this boy’s pregnant mother, her father, and her brother were killed in East Timor?
The question does not ask for a theodicy, an answer to the question, “Why do bad things happen to human beings?” It is instead a question concerning responsibility: What is the church doing to alleviate the suffering of mankind and to act as Christ to a dying world? Have we done enough?
The answer, for Evangelicals and mainstream Protestants alike, the authors insist, is unequivocally no.
Leaders and followers in the church have adopted widely divergent perspectives, creating confusion for some and division for all. One segment of the church has regarded the preaching of the good news as its sole mission. Another part has contended that social action is the only valid gospel expression.
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