Product Description

In the suburban world of nice homes, neat lawns, and new cars, it can be easy to forget about social justice issues. Life keeps us busy, and the poor and disenfranchised of our world are invisible as we go from our garage to our workplace and back again. But suburbanites can be a force for social justice in the world. In this unique book, readers will take a journey with a young couple from the 'burbs as they learn to notice and act on the issues of justice that abound no matter where you live. This engaging narrative helps readers kiss apathy and ignorance goodbye in favor of a life of concern and action in order to help our fellow human beings.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #127392 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 208 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Award-winning Christian novelist Lisa Samson (Songbird; Quaker Summer) and her husband, sociology doctoral student Will Samson, intertwine fiction and nonfiction in this challenging and inspiring book about justice. Lisa Samson's novella features the Marshalls, a suburban family with all the accoutrements: Matt climbs the corporate ladder, Christine cares for their three children, and both are busy with numerous church leadership positions. One day, Matt and Christine visit an inner-city mission, and their ideas about how they should be living gradually but dramatically change. The nonfiction portion of the book examines the issues these characters (and most of the book's readership) face. The Samsons talk about why God cares what we eat, where we live, how much electricity we use and to whom we minister. Astonishingly, the authors manage to do this without hitting a sanctimonious note. On the contrary, they repeatedly highlight the heartbreak and complexity of what they refer to as thinking and living in keeping with God's heartbeat of justice and frequently acknowledge their own struggles and failures. The Samsons include short meditations at the end of each chapter written by a variety of Christian authors, as well as a series of helpful discussion questions at the end. (Aug.)
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From the Inside Flap
EXCERPT FROM CATALOG Most of us sense some missing element in our lives. Sometimes we are acutely aware of this. We groan with the world and wonder why everything aches so profoundly, why we feel so far from who we know we could be, from the Garden, from God. We suspect the missing element may involve how we live in the world and the impact of our behavior. We suspect the question of whether there is justice in the world relates to choices we have made, are making and will make in the future. But perhaps we have forgotten, or perhaps we never knew, what a life lived justly might look like. The question rarely comes up in regular conversation. So we stumble through life with unanswered, sometimes unvoiced, questions, some x-factor missing from our lives, but we fail to remember, or maybe we just don't know, what that factor is. Or, we realize exactly what's missing but have no idea how to incorporate issues of justice into our lives, particularly in a way that would safeguard us against completely disrupting our everyday existence. We do not like disruptions.

From the Back Cover
In the suburban world of nice homes, neat lawns, and new cars, it can be easy to forget about social justice. Life keeps us busy, and the poor and disenfranchised of our world are invisible as we go from our garage to our workplace and back again. But suburbanites can be a force for social justice in the world. In this unique book, you will take a journey with a young couple from the burbs as they learn to notice and act on the issues of justice that abound everywhere. This engaging narrative will help you kiss apathy and ignorance good-bye in favor of a life of concern and action. "Will and Lisa are provocateurs of imagination, writing from a desert where folks are thirsty for more than the American dream. This is a much-needed invitation for justice to flow through the suburbs like mighty waters and bring to life all the parched souls trapped in the ghettos of poverty and wealth."--Shane Claiborne, activist, author, The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical "Will and Lisa have joined talents to offer a compelling argument for living justly in an unjust world, and for loving our neighbors in a hands-on, life-changing way."--Liz Curtis Higgs, author, Bad Girls of the Bible "Will and Lisa Samson's new book, Justice in the Burbs, is a moving book. I wept with joy, knowing how many people will be moved to join the work for justice God has already begun in the world."--Christian Scharen, author, One Step Closer: Why U2 Matters to Those Seeking God "Whatever happened to the vital social and moral energies of the Christian faith? They are alive and throbbing in this book that shows how the gospel can walk the missing sidewalks and unfriendly cul-de-sacs of the suburbs."--Leonard Sweet, Drew Theological School, George Fox University

Customer Reviews

Husband and wife duo Lisa and Will Samson join forces in JUSTICE IN THE BURBS, calling suburban Christians to make a difference
Award-winning novelist Lisa Samson and her husband, Will, join forces in JUSTICE IN THE BURBS, a call for suburban Christians to rouse themselves from apathy and make a difference in their communities and their world. Think Micah 6:8: "And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." (NIV)

Will's and Lisa's backstories are of growing up in conservative, evangelical Christian homes where attending church was as regular as brushing their teeth, and memorizing scripture was a normal part of everyday life. "Yet neither of us can remember hearing sermons about God's concern for those in need during these formative years," Will writes. Later, Lisa tells of their own early marriage: "...As typical professionals in the suburbs, Will and I found our lives consumed by the kids' school, sports, church, and of course, our careers. We had no time to help out others and felt pretty satisfied with infrequent touches of goodness on our part...."

The Samsons use the spiritual discipline of dislocation or displacement to gain perspective, moving from the suburbs into the city of Lexington, Kentucky, with their family. "We failed to live a life of justice in the suburbs, and this book is, at least in part, our mea culpa --- our confession of insufficiency," Will writes.

Justice, they believe, needs to be based on Biblical ideas: care for the poor and oppressed, concern for the environment, love for foreigners, sharing of wealth, not profiting at the expense of the poor. However, how we have learned to view the Bible, they believe, has given us an overly simplistic understanding of the role it plays in our lives. "The Bible is quoted but rarely understood in its entirety...some really awful things have been justified by a poor understanding of the purpose of Scripture....we need a new view of Scripture."

Lisa, a well-known novelist in inspirational reading circles, creates the fictional suburban characters of Matt and Christine Marshall, whose continuing story illustrates the concepts throughout. Nonfiction passages offer insights about suburban culture and ideas for learning to live a life of justice. Sprinkled throughout the book are various meditations on different aspects of justice by an eclectic group of individuals, including Brian McLaren, Leonard Sweet and Luci Shaw.

An interesting point that the Samsons make is our culture's avoidance of disruption. "Why are we so afraid of disruptions?" they write. "What are we doing that is so completely important we cannot be interrupted?" Fear often keeps us from acting, as does busyness and overwork. "The suburbs seem particularly designed to avoid facing the bigger issues of life," write the Samsons. In her fictional scenes, Lisa illustrates many Christians' unwillingness to get involved with other denominations, to work side by side with those who have different belief systems, and the peer pressure from family and other well-intentioned Christians that may sink good intentions.

The Samsons ask some probing questions. "How do we define God's blessing on the church today? More people, bigger buildings, better programs...What if success in God's economy is more people being fed, less people dying of AIDS, and families restored after years of religious bickering?" As well as theoretical questions, there are also plenty of practical, applicable ideas for Christians to begin making changes that reflect a pursuit of justice.

So, what do we do? According to the Samsons, we start small. But we start where we find ourselves. "Perhaps Jesus lives right next door or down the street. He might even be in your own home." Readers will be encouraged to take the next step on the road to a more justice-oriented faith. And, as the Samsons say, "Kiss normal goodbye."

--- Reviewed by Cindy Crosby

Paperback Theology's Review: Justice in the Burbs
This book is about living the justice life. I want to recommend that you read "Justice in the Burbs" all the way to the end. I almost didn't. I almost put this book down after two chapters. It is co-authored by a husband/wife duo Will & Lisa Sampson. Each chapter has three parts: a narrative section written by Lisa who is a popular fiction writer (essentially a novella divided into 13 short sections), a discourse section authored mostly by Will (I'm guessing), a PhD student in Sociology at Univ. of Kentucky, and a meditation section, each one composed by a different author/thinker/artist within emerging church circles.

I almost put the book down early on because the structure was throwing me off a little and the discourse seemed overly simplistic, the first meditation was lackluster...it just wasn't grabbing me. Then a funny thing happened: the story sucked me in. The truth is that Lisa Sampson is a really good writer - Will is, too. But, I realized how difficult a task she was undertaking - developing plot and characters so quickly, way more quickly than a typical novel, trying to tailor a story to a theological discourse without making the story appear contrived, splitting a short novella into 13 sections all of this while trying to make us care about not only the story but the idea of justice. This is a really difficult task. The truth is, she did great. When really good artists are left to just provoke and preach, it's pretty amazing what they can do. This book is a great example. The story is great. I liked what was happening and I found that the more I cared about it, the more I enjoyed the discourse sections & appreciated the points that were made.

[...]

Disappointing and preachy
Our book group read Justice in the Burbs, hoping to get some practical ideas of how to follow Jesus in ministering to those who don't have a voice. Although we had some good discussion, most of the time we were arguing with the writers. They failed to acknowledge the impact churches DO have for the poor. They were contemptuous of what the church does "for itself," which actually may be for the hurting people who AREN'T poor (and they do exist throughout our churches).

Basically, this book was preachy and did not mention anything about responding to the leading of the Holy Spirit. They were wagging their fingers at us rather than inspiring us and helping us translate compassion into action.

The fiction part of the book was particularly disappointing, contrived, and manipulative.

I do not recommend this book. If you want to get plugged in to social justice issues, go to church and volunteer at the church-supported shelters, clothing banks, and soup kitchens.