Soong-Chan Rah’s latest publication, Prophetic Lament: A Call for Justice in Troubled Times, has just been released. Rah writes in response to the American church’s tendency to avoid lament. But lament is a missing, essential component of Christian faith. Lament recognizes struggles and suffering, that the world is not as it ought to be. Lament challenges the status quo and cries out for justice against existing injustices. Soong-Chan Rah’s prophetic exposition of the book of Lamentations provides a biblical and theological lens for examining the church’s relationship with a suffering world.
In his review of Prophetic Lament, Project Contributor Kristopher Norris states:
Prophetic Lament suggests lament as a counter to both the triumphalistic and nihilistic narratives that pervade the American evangelical church. Rah suggests the need for a new language and skills to lament the complex social and racial issues that face American society—and the church—today, beginning with the ability to confront our own culpability in these corporate sins and failures. Rah offers not only a thorough interpretation of the often-overlooked Book of Lamentations, but draws on this text to call the American evangelical church to lament its own history of racism and sexism. As Rah concludes, “Lamentations provides a necessary corrective to the triumphalism and exceptionalism of the American evangelical church arising from an ignorance of a tainted history” (198).
For more information on Rah’s book, click here. To continue reading Norris’s review, click here.