Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture invites you into transformative conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Each episode, host Joshua Johnson engages guests who challenge conventional thinking and inspire fresh perspectives for embodying faith in today's complex world. If you're curious about how cultural shifts impact your faith journey and passionate about living purposefully, join us as we explore deeper ways to follow Jesus in everyday life.
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Shifting Culture
Ep. 345 Joash P. Thomas - The Justice of Jesus
Joash P. Thomas joins me to talk about the justice of Jesus and what it means for the gospel to truly be good news for the poor and the oppressed. We trace Joash’s journey from growing up in Mumbai to working in U.S. politics, and then to encountering Jesus on the margins. Along the way, we explore how colonialism has shaped both the Global South and the Western church, why decolonizing our own assumptions is vital, and how Jesus’ ministry invites us into a justice that is both spiritual and physical. This episode is an invitation to imagine a church rooted not in empire or success, but in faithfulness, humility, and solidarity with our marginalized neighbors.
Rev. Joash P. Thomas is an author, speaker, and global human rights leader.
Drawing from his St. Thomas Indian Christian roots and a decolonized, justice-centered understanding of Scripture, Joash helps audiences reimagine a faith that unites rather than divides—and that stands firmly with neighbors on the margins. Through speaking engagements, teaching, and advocacy, he calls Christians to a more contemplative yet courageous activism, motivated by the grace-filled, non-violent way of Jesus.
Born and raised in India, Joash served as a U.S. political consultant and lobbyist before pivoting to global human rights advocacy. Now based in the Toronto area, he holds a master’s degree in Political Management from The George Washington University and has completed master’s degrees in Christian Leadership and Christian Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. A Deacon in the Diocese of St. Anthony, Joash is also the author of the forthcoming book The Justice of Jesus (Brazos Press, September 2025).
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God does have a preferential option for people who are poor and oppressed. We see that all throughout Scripture. We see that in the life of Jesus, the early church as well. And you know, what's beautiful about that is that this doesn't mean that God doesn't love the rich and the powerful. He loves the rich and the powerful. This doesn't mean that people who are poor and oppressed are ontologically better people who are rich and powerful. It doesn't mean that either. What it does mean is that the powerful have money and wealth and power on their side. The poor and oppressed have no one on their side. So God shows up for the poor and the oppressed and you ash,
Joshua Johnson:hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. Today, I sit down with Joash P Thomas to talk about the justice of Jesus. Joash grew up in Mumbai in a St Thomas Christian family. He immigrated to the US as a teenager and is now in Canada as a clergyman and working for justice organizations. His journey has been one of detangling Empire shaped faith and reimagining the gospel as truly good news for the poor and the oppressed. Our conversation moves through some big themes, how colonialism has harmed not only the global south but also the Western Church, why decolonizing our own assumptions is just as important as contextualizing the gospel for others, and how Jesus life and ministry point us toward a justice that is embodied, spiritual and physical all at once. We talk about what it looks like to advocate without making it about us to see Christ already present in the margins and to imagine a church shaped more by faithfulness than by success. This is a conversation about recovering the gospel as good news again, good news that sets captives free, lifts up the oppressed and calls us to follow Jesus with humility and courage. So join us. Here is my conversation with Joash. P Thomas, Joash, welcome to shifting culture. Thanks for joining me. Excited to have you. Yeah, thanks for having me. What an honor. I think your story can help us situate ourselves in this conversation, because I think you've gone on a journey of entangling different things to your own faith and then detangling things, and I think that will actually probably help all of us to figure out what that looks like. I know you grew up in Mumbai, so what was that like growing up, really, and how did that shape your faith through your you're actually growing up in India with your family and the history that you have with your family?
Joash Thomas:Yeah, absolutely. So I was born and raised in Mumbai, India to an Indian Christian family, a St Thomas Indian Christian family. So my family has been Christian for nearly 2000 years, going back to the Apostle Thomas, who brought us the gospel. So my ancestors have been everything from orthodox to Catholic to, you know, Pentecostal, for the last five generations. So I have it all in my DNA. So I think I've got a view of the church that's very ecumenical because of this. And also being raised in the global south Evangelical Church, I've noticed that you do tend to be more ecumenical and more pluralistic than Western Christians, especially Western evangelicals. And so I'm grateful for those values. Those are two values that I bring out in the book as I talk about retrieving justice in the Western Church,
Joshua Johnson:and so then, as you moved to the United States, you immigrated into the US when you were 18, yeah, you ended up going to university becoming a political consultant. How did your time in the US as as an immigrant start to really shape your faith? What did you absorb during that time, what were the top thinkings that you were saying? Maybe I missed something in India. Maybe there's something here in America that is good, that I need to actually take on. And then maybe some of that stuff you realized maybe I shouldn't have taken that on right away when it came in,
Joash Thomas:right, right? I mean, it was definitely a journey. And looking back now, I think there were racial elements to this journey for me as well. So as a brown person of color, as an immigrant moving to the US South, wanting to be as American as possible, so I assimilated pretty hard. I tried to be as white evangelical American as I could, which is how I think I ended up in Georgia Republican politics, working as a political consultant and lobbyist, and, you know, as a Liberation and Justice theologian. Today, no one would assume that of me, but that has been my journey. And so I know I still know people in that world today. People are elected officials even, and I know where they're coming from. I know where their voters are. Coming from, I help them do messaging to those voters and so, so I have a lot of grace and empathy for that and that part of my journey. But, but, you know, a Yeah, like you said, jumped in as a college Republican. I was chairman of my university Republican chapter, you know, I served on the boards for the Georgia Young Republicans, the Atlanta Young Republicans. I worked, you know, as the former governor of Georgia's speechwriter and his re election campaign. Worked for Marco Rubio when he ran for president, right? I mean, so I did all these things. I had all these credentials, and I think what really did it for me was spending time on the margins, ultimately, because that's where I encountered Jesus, really, for the first time. And you know, I often tell people that I looked for Jesus in the halls of power. I thought I'd find him there. I never found him there. Found him on the margins, the place that I didn't expect to find him. And that's what shaped me, working in international development, human rights. And you know, even my journey into the church as a clergyman today, as an ordained minister. You know, I tell people still in the conservative political world, you know, you may think you're advocating for the rights of some of our marginalized neighbors, but the church is called to advocate for the rights of all of our marginalized neighbors, and I think I feel that heavily as a clergyman today.
Joshua Johnson:So you said, found Jesus in the margins, yeah, in the marginalized. What did that look like for you, tangibly? How did you find Jesus in the margins?
Joash Thomas:Yeah, yeah. So I took a year off after university. People told me I was crazy. It was a presidential election year, right? And 2015 2016 a little bit going on in the US political world. Back then, when I took a year off, I went back to India, served with an anti trafficking organization. It was deeply formative for me, not just seeing courage of survivors on the margins, but also seeing the courage of the local church there, and the ways in which they prioritize justice and social action as an expression of the gospel. You know, I think what was really paradigm shattering for me was specifically seeing the courage of the local church when they had targets in their backs, when, you know, because that context still is a persecuted church context today, and they had every right to be advocating for themselves, I would see everyday Christians and the global south evangelical context even going out and advocating for the rights of those with lesser privilege than them. And for me, that brought me back to Philippians chapter two, where we see Jesus doing this for us, where he lays aside his privilege comes down to earth, essentially takes on the form of a marginalized human being, right? Like a colonized Jewish Palestinian man, a refugee, a victim of state violence, ultimately, and I think that was very paradigm shattering for me in understanding Christian advocacy, because the Christian advocacy that I was exposed to in the Western Church was more advocating for our rights, advocating for school prayer, 10 Commandments in schools, that kind of thing, versus advocating for the rights of our less privileged neighbors. And ultimately, that is what Christian Christian advocacy is.
Joshua Johnson:One of the things you write about the very beginning of your book is you say that in white western Christian spaces, you get asked the question, What do you mean by justice? A lot, but you don't in other spaces and spaces around the world, in the global south and the rest of the church. Why do you think that white Western Christians are asking about the definition of justice? What are they wrestling with and struggling with?
Joash Thomas:Yeah, Joshua, I'm so glad you asked that question, because this at its core, I think, is core thesis of my book, it's that colonization wasn't just bad for the Global South, it wasn't just bad for my family my ancestors. It was also bad for the Western Church, because it shaped us to resist justice for our most marginalized neighbors in our own context, here in the West, and injustice isn't just bad for the oppressed, it's also bad for the oppressor. It inflicts things upon their humanity that they were never meant to bear as the oppressors. But it's also bad for those on the side of the oppressors, like the Western Church. And so it wasn't just the Roman Catholic Church. Was the Church of England, the Dutch Reformed Church, Southern Baptist southern Presbyterians, participating in this colonial project of extracting wealth and resources from the Global South, right? And so, so that's that's something that I do in the diagnosis section of the book. But most of this book is actually a hopeful prognosis. It's where do we go from here, right? So thankfully, there's been a lot of good diagnosing work being done that has been done over the past few years, but I really appreciated my publisher, Brazos, challenging me to write more of a hopeful prognosis book, because there's not much work and and I think the way forward starts with acknowledging that we can change the past, but we can be faithful in our present context today, right? So same is true also for my St Thomas. Heritage, because, as I mentioned in the book, my St Thomas, Indian Christian ancestors have blind spots in their theology and Praxis too. They participated in the caste oppression of our lower caste neighbors, until the birth of the Pentecostal movement, started by my ancestors, five generations ago in southern India. And so again, we can't change the past, but we can be faithful at the present.
Joshua Johnson:So you think about colonization, and that's actually had harm, both to the ones that were being colonized and to the colonizers themselves, because they've taken on a different mindset and the conception of Jesus that is not the Jesus we actually find in the Gospels. In my circles, as a mission leader and doing missions and training missionaries, the easy thing for people to conceptualize is contextualizing the gospel message to people that they're going to go to within their own culture and what it looks like for them so that they could start to understand it. What they don't understand and don't get is the decontextualization that they need to do within their own faith, so that we're not presenting Jesus that our own conception of Jesus that is not actually presented in the Gospels. So you talk about decolonization work. It's the same thing for missionaries as they need to decontextualize where they came from. What does that look like? How do we recognize our blind spots? How do we start to lift the veil of what we have started to take on? Because I think this is one of the most difficult things to do, is to analyze ourselves and what we have gone through, the things we have taken on. What are some things that you have found in your own journey that helped you do this type of work.
Joash Thomas:Yeah, that's so good. And I love that you brought in missions, because I think we should wrestle with that as a church, right? Because we are called to proclaim the goodness of the good news of Jesus. So what does it look like for us to do that decolonize ways that care for the body as well as the soul, and not in colonialistic ways that just seek to extract and only preach a partial gospel that focuses on souls. Yeah, I think for me, I've learned so much at the feet of survivors, but also global south church leaders. So I'll share the story. I have a friend, dear friend, who missionary from India to the Tamil part of Sri Lanka, and he was telling me that the Tamil and really all of Sri Lanka, there's an indigenous people group, the original inhabitants of the land, right? It's funny, because both the Tamils and the Sinhalese are not and they're fighting over the land, but you've got the original indigenous inhabitants of the land, still there with their indigenous ways of understanding the divine, the Creator God, right? And what's interesting is they kind of have this thing where they look out to the sun and sing songs of lament. And so, you know, he really spent a lot of time observing them in that context. And then he ultimately went and he asked them, hey, like, Tell me more. As you built a relationship with them, why are you doing what you do? And they said, Well, you know, we have this story in our religion and our faith, that the Creator is going to reveal his Son to us and that there's going to be a star that points us to the location of his birth, right? You know, where this is going the and so my friend is like, Oh my goodness. Like, this is huge. Like we, you know, we just need to connect with them there, like God has already revealed Himself to them. And so he goes to local churches, local Tamil churches in the region, who've been planted, supported by missionary efforts. And he tells them, hey, we don't need to start all the way in Genesis one. We can just meet them where they just like God and Jesus have met them where they are, and talk about the Nativity. And the response of those churches was, no, no, no, we can't do that. We've been trained to start from Genesis one. We have to not even Genesis one, Genesis three, the fall we have to start. And so I think that's an example of, you know, just the decolonization work that needs to take place in the missions world around the world, where we're not coming in with one size fits all, cookie cutter solutions packaged from the West, but we're coming with a posture of curiosity, of generosity, of mutuality, of humbling ourselves, the way Jesus does. And again, we're looking at Mission not as a soul salvation project, but as a project to enhance and make known the shalom and peace and justice of God on earth as it is in heaven. And I think we absolutely need to retrieve what colonialism has also done to the church and missions.
Joshua Johnson:Well, as Jesus rolled out the scroll of Isaiah in Luke chapter four, his first really sermon, saying announcing his ministry, it seems all about justice, goodness, the. Poor. He's laying this out. That's Jesus saying, this has been fulfilled. This is what I'm here to do. How does he go about doing that? Then you talked about not just a cookie cutter, not one size fits all. You talk about curiosity and really realize where people are coming from. So we see the justice of Jesus being central to his ministry from the very beginning in Luke chapter four, unpack Jesus and His justice and what it looks like in his own ministry, so that we could start to embody that today.
Joash Thomas:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, so I think it's important to see the way Jesus lives his life. You know, I think so much in the Western Church, what we do these days is we just want Jesus to be born and then we want him to die crucified as a penal substitution, or atonement, or whatever theory of atonement you buy into. We just want him to die right and then sure, be raised again to life. But we're not. We've completely ignored 33 years of his life on earth, His life teachings, ministry, right? And so the way Jesus lives his life is so interesting, right? Like the way he relates to women in that culture is so counter cultural, and so advanced for that time and that context, you know, even having female disciples sit at his feet, learn from him like that was just not a thing among rabbis in Jesus's day, but then also the way Jesus interacted with the untouchables in his context, right, people with leprosy, people who were sick and disabled and looked down upon. And there's just the spiritual stigma to those people like God drew closer to those people through Jesus and and so I love that you brought Luke, chapter four, verse 18, where Jesus says, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor, to set the captive free. Set Free the oppressed. Proclaim Liberty. Will proclaim, you know, yet, to give sight to those blinded by the dungeons, right? And then you see him do that, and the rest of the Gospel of Luke you see him proclaim those things. He's healing sick people. He's feeding the hungry. He's breaking all these social norms of Empire and the cultural context that ultimately got him crucified. But then the beautiful thing is, after Jesus ascends into heaven, you see, the early church do that in Acts the sequel, and they do those things that they learned from Jesus to do as well. So you know, the good news of Jesus, I argue throughout the book, is it's not good news unless it's first and foremost good news to people who are poor and oppressed. It has to be good news. It has to be actualized as good news to them. Only then really would it feel like good news to the rest of us.
Joshua Johnson:I think that's one of the problems. Is that, you know, it is good news for the poor, it is good news for the oppressed. And when you live in a powerful Western world, which does have a lot of power and money and authority within the world to be able to shape some of those things. You're seeing something a little bit different. People are being pressed against their comfortable lives. And saying the Gospels may not just be for staying comfortable in your nice little life, but it's actually for the poor and the marginalized and the ones that are being oppressed, and we're actually going to see some new life through them, how to navigate living in the empire and following Jesus and caring for the oppressed.
Joash Thomas:That's such a good question. You know, just today, I got into a minor Twitter skirmish, not one of the major ones, a minor Twitter skirmish with another theologian in the States, in DC, actually defending the actions of ice, right? Defending essentially a video of someone being subdued and deported just because they had entered the US illegally. If you and you almost had this empire centric lens of, oh, we need to protect law and order. I think as the church, we really need to move away from that empire centric lens to a Jesus centered lens among the oppressed. So this is where I think Catholic social teaching can really be helpful in the evangelical church, especially specifically this doctrine of God's preferential option for people who are poor and oppressed. I talk about this in the book, but you know, God does have a preferential option for people who are poor and oppressed. We see that all throughout Scripture. We see that in the life of Jesus, the early church as well. And you know, what's beautiful about that is that this doesn't mean that God doesn't love the rich and the powerful. He loves the rich and the powerful. This doesn't mean that people who are poor and oppressed are ontologically better than people who are rich and powerful. It doesn't mean that either. What it does mean is that the powerful have money and wealth and power. Are on their side, the poor and oppressed have no one on their side. So God shows up for the poor and the oppressed. And if God has a preferential option for people who are poor and oppressed, then so should the church. So should our theology, so should our budgets, so should the way we do community and who we include at our table and the churches at Jesus' staple, right? And so I think we really need to move away from the colonial, shaped Empire lens of church that we have today, to retrieving the gospel as good news for the poor and the oppressed and helping actualize that and experiencing that for ourselves as people with power and privilege. So I often tell this to people, don't assume that I come from a slum part of Mumbai just because I was born and raised in actually come from a very wealthy family with a lot of privilege, probably more privilege than most of you listeners, I drive her a maid and a cook growing up, right? And the Americans get to say that, but again, like you inherit privilege, you don't get to change that, but what you do get to do is you do get to decide how you steward what you find yourself entrusted with today. And I think that's my invitation for the Western Church
Joshua Johnson:in India. How has the church helped reach across the caste system and different castes? Has it been able to do any of that work? And is Is it working?
Joash Thomas:I think there's been encouraging work that's being done has been done. I also get the sense that in many ways, it has been quite segregated within the Indian church, where, just the way in which we want multi ethnic churches here in the West, I think the Indian church should and is aspiring to churches made up of people from across the caste stratosphere. But obviously that's easier said than done. The one thing that does happen with you know, people who become Christians in that context is legally, they get to exit the caste system. But socially, culturally, there's still stigma, especially if you're coming from overcast groups. But I think what's really beautiful about Indian church history that I find you know, I often say this for the Western Church as well. Jesus once told His disciples, if you don't praise me, the rocks will cry out. And I think what's been happening in the western church over the past few years, with society and culture crying out for justice, is the rocks crying out because the church has had the opportunity to show up for so long. Instead of showing up, we've been the last to show up, or been slow to show up, and so if we don't praise God, the rocks will cry out. And that's why society and culture now is yearning for justice in the ways that they know best, right? And here's an opportunity for the church to be who we were always meant to be. So you know same for the Indian context right now you've got, or historically, rather, so I share this in the sermon that I just did this past Sunday. But of the first 18 centuries of my St Thomas, Christian ancestors in India, lower caste people, were kept out from church. They were kept out from receiving the sacraments, from receiving Jesus, really, at Jesus's table. It wasn't until Western missionaries come in and really, you know, not to give too much credit to the Western missionaries, I think the credit goes to the Dalit people, the lower caste people. They were the ones who enlightened the Western missionaries and said, here's our plight. We want to receive Jesus. We know people who want to encounter Jesus, but we're kept away from it because of these caste structures within the church. And then you had the British missionaries, the Anglican CMS missionaries, really interceding on behalf of lower caste communities and being good advocates for them. That leads to the inclusion. So some of that happened, but what also happened at the same time was a Pentecostal revival, essentially a revival of the Holy Spirit in the late 1800s early 1900s that my ancestors, five generations ago, got to participate and be a part of. And that led to the birth of an indigenous church denomination in India, still called as the Indian Pentecostal church. So it's not foreign funded, it's indigenous, locally supported, local planted, but but it was a work of the Spirit. No human being could take the credit for that, and that actually led, for the very first time, the inclusion of lower caste neighbors in the church, which also led reforms in the Indian Orthodox Church, the Marthoma Church, the more mainline, Catholic, Orthodox Protestant churches within the St Thomas branch, who now, because you've got the Pentecostal movement appealing to lower caste, uh Hindus, we better take action too. So it's beautiful to see the hand of the spirit throughout human history in that too.
Joshua Johnson:So you see the spirits, and there's a lot of people who, like you're saying in the Western Church. Now the rocks are cool. Crying out. We're seeing people yearning for justice. We're seeing justice being carried out in a myriad of ways, different ways. How do we start to say, okay, Jesus, one of his core tenants, is justice. So if I even say Jesus is justice, like we're gonna go after that and we follow the ways of Jesus, you're getting justice. That's what's going to happen if you follow the ways of Jesus. And so how do we take hold of the justice that Jesus wants, like Jesus being justice, and not let justice issues take front and center, but Jesus and those justice issues will then actually be taken care of. So we actually have to recognize the issues, but not just focus entirely on them. We have to bring Jesus in as well. How do we bring Jesus in and not just put his name on it and not just sprinkle a little Jesus dust on it to call it Christian?
Joash Thomas:Yeah, that's such a good point. I mean, I often say this to Western Christians in my sermon, my sermons, but there's this posture that we sometimes have, that I think is a very colonialistic posture of we have to bring Jesus with us to the margins, but Jesus is already present in the margins, and that's where I encountered Jesus. That's where so many leaders in the church have encountered Jesus throughout history. Jesus is on the margins. His real presence is on the margins if we have the eyes to see him there, if we have the eyes to encounter him there. So I think we need to go to the margins with this posture of, how can we see Jesus already at work here, and how can we partner with Jesus already at work on the margins right now? And the best people to educate us on that will always be the church closest to the margins. Because, believe it or not, there are members of the global church working all throughout the world on the margins, working in the margins, and they can be our guides. They can be, you know, just these helpful guides for us on the margins, to see Jesus there. See Jesus at work there. I think it's important number one, to have that posture. But then the other thing I'd say is we often also have this posture, shaped by, really by our capitalistic context of we need to be successful in everything we do as the church, right? But Jesus doesn't call us to success. He calls us to faithfulness, right? So I think it's worth all of us asking ourselves, what does faithfulness look like for me when it comes to proclaiming the gospel of Christ through justice, and what does faithfulness require from me, and what will it cost me to be faithful in this area as a Jesus follower so and then the other thing I'd say is, I tell this to advocates seeking justice within the church all the time, but the reality of injustice is so heavy and so dark that we can't do these things on our own. We'd be foolish to think we can take these evils on on our own strength. We need divine strength. We need that second wind, and that only comes from being rooted in the spirit and walking with Jesus. And we owe it to our marginalized neighbors to not burn out, to be in this for the long haul. So that's also where Jesus comes in and giving us the strength to sustain this work, if we stay connected and rooted in him. You know,
Joshua Johnson:you said that we often think that we need to be successful, but Jesus calls us a faithfulness and not success. So if you're thinking of a non profit, Justice oriented organization, one of the things that they need to do is they need to raise funds. They need a fundraise. You've been involved with fundraising, you know, it is a problem, but we often think, as organizations, we think that people will be attracted to success, so we have to make sure that we're telling everybody we're very successful. So is there a way to reorient the body of Christ who are giving to organizations as we're fundraising say it's more about faithfulness and less about success. How do we do that as organizations so that we can not perpetuate the same thing that we have actually are trying to go against, but we're thinking, hey, we have to do this in fundraising. So we're going to do it this way. Can we shift? Can we change? Is it get better?
Joash Thomas:I love that you've asked this question, Joshua, because I've been doing fundraising work, and, you know, justice, Christian nonprofit space for the past decade now, and initially, as I started in the world of that, I wouldn't say that I was being transactional, but I was probably being more transactional than I realized back then, with seeing people for their net worth and what they can bring to the table and all that. And I think even Christian non profits can run guilty of that at times, if we're. Not careful, even on our best days, but as I've stepped into the work of the church, as I found hope in the church, and become a church man, and you know, been ordained and all that almost feels like the spirits helped me develop this pastoral heart for donors, where I see them giving as an act of discipleship on their part, and I think Christian justice organizations then get to walk alongside these donors in their discipleship journey with Jesus. Get to steward not just their physical resources, but also their spiritual wholeness in this experience. And you know, so I've led vision trips that I talk about in the book. I've led vision trips of church leaders and really wealthy, wealthy Western Christians, you know, to global south context, and I've seen what that's done for them. I've seen what that exposure has done for their faith, their walk with Jesus, just their their broadening of their understanding of the gospel. I think Christian organizations prioritizing justice have this. Churches too, by the way, have this responsibility of exposing their people to Jesus on the margins and seeing that transform people's lives, yeah, in very spiritual, pastoral, non transactional ways. I think sometimes there can also be a bit of a challenge with that, because people with wealth and power sometimes have very fixed notions of how the gospel is, or how the you know, how the world operates, and things like that. And so in many ways, we're we're also this journey of discipleship, taking our donors on a journey with us. Of hey, you may start here one day, but just be open to where the Lord leads you. Just be open to what barriers get broken down in your own heart, and walk with them in pastoral ways as they're processing that. And that, to me, has been one of the best things that I've gotten to do in the nonprofit space.
Joshua Johnson:That's really cool. What are some misconceptions of justice within the Western Church, and how can we redefine it through Jesus?
Joash Thomas:Yeah, that's a great, great question. So I think one of the misconceptions about justice is that it is not a Christian concept, that it is a political concept, or a Marxist concept or a woke concept, right? And of course, it can feel that way if you've been conditioned not see justice as part of the gospel. My conditioning was different in the global south evangelical church, but, but that is not the conditioning that most Western Christians have, so there's grace for that. But I think what I try to do throughout the book is I don't just point people to Christians in the world, churches in the world right now, that prioritize justice. I also point to Christians throughout the Christian tradition, throughout history, church history, that have prioritized and so, of course, we see that all throughout the Bible, but we see it in the early church. We see it in the early church, fathers and mothers, how they prioritize justice. We see it among reformation figures and how they prioritize justice. So even the definition of justice that I offer in this book is a Christian definition of it's Augustine's definition of justice, which is justice is giving to each person their due, which is basically justice is giving to each person the good things that God intended for them. So what's injustice? Then? Injustice is taking away that fullness of life that Jesus always intended for us, that God always intended for us. So I would say that's the top misconception about justice in the Christian world. I think there would be other ones as well. Like you know, justice is a worthy pursuit, but still not as important as evangelism or discipleship, and there's that separation of justice from the gospel in that way, and that's also something I push back on and saying, No, this actually isn't how the global church has historically understood justice, or still understands justice to this day. We have this understanding of it because we learned about the gospel from these traditions that enslaved people and participated in colonization that shaped us. But let's challenge that and learn from the rest of the global church throughout time in history.
Joshua Johnson:So then I think that's part of I think in the Western Church, if you think gospel is just proclamation of a message and hopefully have some ascent to belief, and that's where the gospel is, yeah, Jesus came onto the scene and he says, I'm preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God. There was a gospel message right there, but it wasn't the gospel of get out of hell free card and going to heaven, right? It was that. It was the gospel of good news for the poor and the marginalized, the oppressed and for everyone. So can you just then tell me then help redefine what the gospel is and what's a holistic view of the Gospel for us to to have in front of
Joash Thomas:us? Absolutely yes. So this is very important. I say this early on in the book, but I center my definition of the gospel on Jesus's definition of the gospel, which is found Luke, chapter four, verse 18, where Jesus says, you know, Spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news to the poor, to set the captive free, set free the oppressed. He says all these things, I think for many of us who have been conditioned by the Western Church, we have been conditioned to believe that all of these things are true, but they're mostly spiritual and not physical. And that's what I push back against in this book, where I say that the gospel is both physical and spiritual. It's both. It's both and it's not either or the gospel is physical and spiritual, because God makes Himself known through the physical. He teaches us these spiritual truths about himself through the physical, right? So, for example, the incarnation of Christ was a physical event which had spiritual ramifications, the death and resurrection of Christ or physical events with spiritual implications, right? So the good news of Jesus is both physical and spiritual, and if we don't hold both together, I think we can run into the risk, into the risk of Gnosticism, which is this early church heresy of you know, the gospel is purely spiritual and doesn't have anything to say to the physical. And I think when we recover that holistic version of the Gospel, the original version of the gospel, we can then go to our poor and oppressed neighbors and proclaim the fullness of it verbally and through our deeds, and then the gospel would be experienced as good news to them. But the reason why hasn't been the case so much in the Western Church is because the Western Church that participated in the colonial project found it advantageous to tell enslaved and colonized people Jesus cares more about the salvation of your soul than the freedom and well being of your human body, right? And of course, historically benefited us to say that to our oppressed neighbors. But today, I think we must come to terms with that and say no, this is why we have such an anemic understanding of the gospel. And the gospel has always been both physical and spiritual.
Joshua Johnson:I mean, if you look and let's go back into Luke chapter four, yeah. I mean, we like this. This passage, Isaiah 61 passage, that's right, yeah, but he talks about the proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor. That's the last thing he says before he rolls up the scroll and says, it's now been fulfilled in your hearing, right here. And so proclaiming the year of the Lord's favor is a jubilee passage, and Jubilee itself is like forgiving all the debts of like, giving back to everybody everything that they owe, like it is a re leveling of the playing field. And so I don't think we, when I read that, I don't think about that. What is this Jubilee concept, and how does that help us realize what Jesus is really trying to get at when it comes to justice.
Joash Thomas:It's a scary concept. It scares people in the Western Church even today, right? So, a few years ago, when there was all this discussion around student loan debt forgiveness, I tweeted a very tongue in cheek tweet, hey, debt forgiveness is actually biblical. You know, Jubilee. Of course, there's more nuance. But you know Twitter, who comes there for nuance anyway? And you know, as I tweeted, that the pushback was vicious. It was people, you know, self proclaimed Christians who were just like, No, no. This is economic distribution. This is Marxism, and it's like, no, like, let's talk about this in a Christian way. Let's put these political systems that came about hundreds of years later aside and talk about what Jubilee is, what Jesus says, what Isaiah says. And I think it's this concept of equity, at the end of the day, it's this concept of the low being raised up, like Mary sings in her song in the Magnificat, in Luke chapter two. And so it's this new world that God is ushering in through the Holy Spirit, where everything is made new, where chains are broken, the oppressed are set free, where the humble are raised, where those who exalt themselves are humble too, and everything is as it should be on earth as it is in heaven. And this new creation, this new world, can be scary to us, and that's why, you know, the people of biblical Israel also neglected teachings of Jubilee. But this has always been God's desire for us, so we either get on board or we get out of the way.
Joshua Johnson:We see a lot of injustice around the world, and in today's age, we get all of the news feed at us at once, so we know all of the injustice that's happening all over the world, and we're incensed, and we enraged, and we want to say something about it, but we. Often, then forgets that we could actually start with our own community, and there's people next to us that requires justice and we could care. So if you have a local Community of Christ followers that want to make an impact within their community and see justice, take center stage and see the justice of Jesus. Takes center stage. What are some things that a local community can do for their own local community to see this take
Joash Thomas:place? Yeah, such a great question. I talk about this at length in the final section of my book, as you know, which is the final three chapters. And I tell Western Christians that three of the most effective things that we can do with what privilege we have here in the West is pray, partner advocate. So write a chapter on prayer. I talk about how our prayer should ultimately form us to prioritize justice, especially if we pray the words that Jesus taught us to pray, which is the Lord's Prayer, you know, give us this day our daily bread, and the Lord's Prayer is so rich and justice. And I actually go full exit Jesus on that in that context. And I break it down, and I explain how this connects to justice. In the book, I also talk about praying with our marginalized neighbors, not just praying for them, but actually getting in community with pastors on the margins and praying with our marginalized neighbors in that way, on the partnering side, living side. I talk about generosity throughout the book, and I don't just do this because I'm someone who's worked on the fundraising side of global justice, but I also do it because it's good for us. I've seen how it's good for donors in the West to partner with God on the margins by giving away what they don't need to see life flourish around them. And so I break that down, and also we're the beneficiaries of so much here in the West, we're the beneficiaries of colonization. So in the book, I say that I'm both a child of colonization and a beneficiary of colonization. Became a beneficiary the day I moved to North America and started living on stolen land with stolen resources. And so again, we can't change the past, but we can faithfully steward that the presence through giving and partnering. And then I also talk about advocacy, probably one of the most fun chapters for me to write, just from my experience leading advocacy efforts at Christian organizations and seeing everyday Christians speak truth to power on behalf of their oppressed neighbors and so. So yeah, those are three things that I think we can do, and I hope the details in the book inspire fresh ideas of the church.
Joshua Johnson:So then, what does advocacy look like, practically? How can we advocate well for people on the margins, and not make it about us, but make it about people on the margins.
Joash Thomas:So good. Yeah. I mean, I would start right there, Joshua. I would start with not making it about us, making it about people on the margins, right? Because, again, that's what Jesus does for us, right? He prioritizes our needs over his own right. And of course, that can be done in unhealthy ways too. But I think God is ultimately self sacrificing, self giving. So I would say advocacy is speaking truth to power on behalf of people who are poor and oppressed. So throughout the section on advocacy, I actually call us as the Western Church, to be politically agnostic, because here's the thing, right, political parties of every side want to co opt the voice of the church. They want to tokenize the church. They want to have a faith Advisory Council. I mean, both parties do this right, and they want to use them for their purposes, for the purposes of Empire, but we, as people who serve the God of the oppressed, we have a responsibility to engage with these political powers, not on behalf of ourselves and our needs, but on behalf of those with lesser privilege than us, right of our marginalized neighbors. So So I actually call us to be politically agnostic in this where I say we're politically agnostic, except on behalf of our marginalized neighbors and except on behalf of all our marginalized neighbors. So again, some political parties choose the rights of some marginalized people groups, and they exclude the rights of other marginalized people. So you're either for the unborn or you're against women, just as binary. But I think as people of the church, people of God, Jesus followers, I think we're called to be politically agnostic to all those things, and stand for the human flourishing and creation, flourishing of all of creation, and do it as best as we can, as faithfully as we can, even if there's not much success attached to it,
Joshua Johnson:you just breezed by it, but you're talking about how Jesus was for women and that he had disciples sit. As feet. So you think about the passage of Mary and Martha, there is very few people that read that that see sitting at the feet of Jesus is actually being a disciple of Jesus. How can we? They usually see it as resting, like, I'm just gonna rest here. Somebody is working really hard. You actually abide with Jesus and rest and and you don't have to do, you know, all the work, but just abide with Jesus, but it's actually being more subversive than that. So how do we know we're reading, well, the Bible? How do we know that we're actually seeing things like that that are more subversive and radical and revolutionary than we even think
Joash Thomas:that's such a good question. I think this is why it's important for us to read through the lens of of course, early church fathers and mothers who were on the margins for the first 500 years, but also read through the lens of our marginalized neighbors today, right? So I have that perspective, because female academics and scholars pointed that out to me and said, Yeah, beautiful. That is, you know how it feels like for us to see women being treated as property throughout Scripture, but then Jesus comes along and does this, and, you know, just things like that. So I think there's beauty in putting ourselves in the shoes of people who would interpret Scripture differently and ask them, Hey, how do you interpret this text? What does this mean to you? What does Jesus doing this mean to you in your context today? And then learning from the beauty and their perspectives there, yeah, and I think there's also reading people in a way that's connected with church history right before the Reformation Eve. So not ignoring the interpretation work that's been done in the medieval era and the early church era, but learning from that too, and then learning from the global church, right? Like learning from our Orthodox brothers, sisters, siblings, like, how do they read Scripture? How do they interpret Scripture in their context, learning from our Catholic siblings in Christ, you know. And again, you don't have to agree with everything that a liberation theologian or a feminist theologian or an LGBTQ theologian even the saying, but hear 'em out. You know, read their perspectives. Think Critically, challenge, challenge our thinking, because at the end of the day, we have been shaped so much by slaveholder theologians like Jonathan Edwards and, you know, George Whitfield and others, who have shaped so much of our theology, North American church. So if we can read slaveholder theologians like Edwards and the Trinity, then we can absolutely read feminist theologians, liberation theologians. So read broadly and let the Spirit shape our conscience.
Joshua Johnson:That's good. If you could talk to people who would pick up the justice of Jesus your debut book, which is fantastic. Really want a lot of people to read it. It's really, really good, well done. What hope do you have for this book? What would you like to get people
Joash Thomas:Yeah, yeah. Thank you for that. I mean, really, my hope is, my hope is just to get us thinking better. I'm not expecting people to agree with me on everything, but I just want us to think. You don't have to think like me, but just think. And I also want to introduce us to good teachers on the margins who can teach us about Jesus, who sought justice in their context and paid the price for it, and we can learn things from them. So really, for me, even as I preach about faithfulness over success, I try to practice that myself and saying, I don't know how successful this book will be, but I am content in having written what I think is a quality book from a unique perspective in the North American church, from a global church, global south perspective and an ecumenical perspective, and also an ancient Christian perspective, where I share the perspective of my St Thomas Indian Christian ancestors and so, yeah, so my hope is that this just takes down the strongholds for us that keep us from prioritizing justice for our marginalized neighbors, and that this book helps us make the gospel, reimagine the gospel as good news for people who are poor and oppressed in the first place.
Joshua Johnson:If you go back your 21 year old self, Josh, what advice would you give?
Joash Thomas:Oh, yeah, I would say. I would say what I'd say to myself today. You may think you know everything, but you really know nothing, and learn from people who have less power and privilege than you. Humble yourself under God's mighty hand in that way, to sit among the oppressed and and be shaped by their perspectives. I would also say, grow out your hair. Hair and your beard quicker. I guess
Joshua Johnson:it looks better that way. It looks better that way. That's great. Got anything you've been reading or watching lately you could recommend?
Joash Thomas:Yeah, yeah. I mean, I've been reading two, two dear friends lately, both white American men. So, you know, I do read white American men too. Actually, one of them is Canadian, so, yeah, so Bradley jerzak, who's becoming a dear friend as a Canadian scholar writing about biblical reinterpretation, like, how do we interpret the Bible in healing ways? And then another friend who's written an excellent book on that is Zach Lambert, who wrote better ways to read the Bible. Highly recommend that book, book that's also just come out, but the same publisher, Brazos press, yeah. And then so I've ADHD, I'm reading about 20 books at the same time. You open this can of worms here, Joshua but, but I'm also reading munter shocks new book. He's a Palestinian Liberation theologian. It's called Christ and the rubble. Thank you, Christ and the rebel. That's exactly it. Yes, I'm, you know, trying to read broadly and and be shaped by it even today. Excellent.
Joshua Johnson:Great recommendations. Well done. So, good job. The justice of Jesus will be out the end of September. Everywhere books are sold, if this comes out a week early, which it might. So I did hear that you might have some like a recipe, that's right, that you're giving out for everybody pre orders, like some butter chicken. Is that? What was that? What I
Joash Thomas:hear, yes, I mean, I wish I could cook butter chicken for everyone, but what I can do is I can share the recipe, so I've got the spicy butter chicken that I make and is a huge hit with family and friends. But yeah, as a way to celebrate a part of my god given identity around the book, as I bring my full self partnered with my publisher. So if you go to Baker, book house and buy, I think it's like the first 300 copies, or something like that limited edition, you can get your printed spicy butter chicken recipe in the mail with your book. If you buy it from anywhere else, just message me on social media or anywhere, and I'll give you the digital copy of that recipe as well, because good Indian food was always meant to be shared, so it's my little way of doing that.
Joshua Johnson:Hey, man, is there anywhere that you'd like to point people to just to connect with you?
Joash Thomas:Yeah, so my social media handles are all at Joe, Ash P Thomas, so I'm probably most active on Instagram these days. And then I've got a sub stack called Jesus justice and Joash, I do a weekly justice in the lectionary reflections, you know, email that goes out basically taking the lectionary scripture readings and seeing justice themes, and they're sharing that in community. So, yeah, do follow along my sub stack, too, and yeah, and you know, I'd love to connect with folks part of your community. The work of justice can often feel very lonely and isolating, but it doesn't have to be. It was all meant to be done in communities, so that's my hope. With all too
Joshua Johnson:good. Well, just Joe ash, thank you so much for this. This is a fantastic conversation around the justice of Jesus. What does it look like to decolonize our theology, our faith, what we have brought on to ourselves in the Western Church, so that we can see a global perspective and maybe actually see perspectives of those on the margins, those in the Global South, perspectives of Jesus, and how Jesus actually prioritize justice, how that was one of his core tenants of who he is and what he brought and so thank you as a fantastic Conversation. Really enjoyed talking to you.
Joash Thomas:Thanks. Joshua, honored you.
Unknown:You.
