---
title: "What Hath Justice to Do with Righteousness? by Charlie E. Dates"
description: "Summary:  A rhetorical question about what it means to be the church. I do not remember when I first ran across Charlie Dates. I do not think I have ever met him, but I do know several people who know..."
url: https://bookwi.se/what-hath-justice-to-do-with-righteousness/
date: 2026-11-07
modified: 2026-11-07
author: "Adam Shields"
categories: ["Book Reviews"]
type: post
lang: en
---

# What Hath Justice to Do with Righteousness? by Charlie E. Dates

[![What Hath Justice to Do with Righteousness?: Reclaiming the Intersection of Protest and Prayer by Charlie E. Dates cover image ](https://bookwi.se/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/238298267-194x300.jpg)](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FH4HDXNM/)**Summary:  A rhetorical question about what it means to be the church.**

I do not remember when I first ran across Charlie Dates. I do not think I have ever met him, but I do know several people who know him. I know that I was well aware of him before 2018 because he was one of the reasons that I watched the [MLK50 event that he describes in the book](https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/conference_media/segregated-hour-america-overcoming-divisions-pursue-mlks-vision-racial-harmony/). So I think I have followed him from afar for at least 10 years. Charlie Dates is now the pastor of two Chicago churches, Progressive Baptist on the west side of Chicago and Salem Baptist on the south side of Chicago. I knew Rev Meeks who was the founder of Salem Baptist and Dates’ mentor because he was part of a group I worked with in the early 2000s. And I think it was in part because of Meeks that I paid attention to Dates initially.

I want to say that I both enjoyed What Hath Justice To Do With Righteousness and I wanted a bit more from it. If you have followed my reading, you know that the Black Church is a special interest of mine and I have read widely about it. I think I would have more unqualified support if I had not read so widely. While I spent about 15 years living in Chicago, I have lived just outside of Atlanta for 20 years now. I picked up Raphael Warnock’s [The Divided Mind of the Black Church](https://bookwi.se/the-divided-mind-of-the-black-church/) because he is my Sentator.

I want to suggest The Divided Mind of the Black Church to people who read What Hath Justice To Do With Righteousness. They are writing from different perspectives, but they have a complimentary message. Warnock is writing mostly from the perspective that the Black Church has always had a tension between the holiness tradition and the justice tradition, but he is advocating for a stronger connection to the justice tradition as a requirement for “black theology.” I have complaints about Warnock’s position for two main reasons. First, he has a narrow definition of Black Theology that only sees it as Liberation Theology since James Cone and that seems too restrictive. But second, his conclusion is that justice includes LBGTQ inclusion and I know that this is part of what Dates is opposing in this book.

Even as the writing styles and methods are different between Warnock and Dates’ books I do think that it is helpful to read them together. Warnock is primarily writing a historical theology book that traces the tension between holiness orientations and justice orientation in the Black Church, while Dates is primarily trying to make a biblical/pragmatic argument that the Black Church needs to maintain both parts of its message. Dates talks about the problems of not paying attention to either righteousness or justice as being incomplete. While Warnock really assumes that same idea and is tracing the history of how and why one or the other side hasn’t been appropriately emphasized.

I also think both have different intended audiences. Warnock is primarily writing to the Black Church. While I think Dates is writing to both Black and White readers, but he assumes that his readers are mostly theologically conservative. I think one of the problems of What Hath Justice To Do With Righteousness is that it doesn’t engage with Warnock or other justice-oriented Christian perspectives well. I think Dates makes the case well that a justice movement without the Church, or at least some type of religious/ethical component has a hole in its mission. I am also reading Howard Thurman’s Jesus and the Disinherited with a book group right now and it clearly was an influence on the Civil Rights movement’s approach that rooted protest in theological commitments. Dates is writing from his perspective of the justice movement of the past two decades being one that has not been rooted in the Black Church tradition and both pointing out the weaknesses of that as well as using that as a pragmatic argument for why the Black Church needs to emphasize justice more clearly and publicly.

While I think that Warnock and Dates agree on the vast majority of their positions, but I think that they have blindspots. Dates suggests that the modern justice movement does not want righteousness instead of grappling with different understandings of righteousness. And Warnock suggests that to be a part of the Black Church tradition requires LGBTQ inclusion and suggests that the only reasons to reject that is a type of bigotry. I don’t think either of those two makes sense of the other’s position because both of those positions have theological convictions behind them which are not fully grappled with.

I do think that part of this is [Esau McCaulley’s shorthand of the three approaches to the Black Church tradition](https://bookwi.se/reading-while-black/). Esau McCaulley wrote the intro to Dates’ book and used to attend Dates’ church before starting his own. McCaulley’s three approaches are revolutionary/nationalistic, reformist/transformist, and conformist. I think Warnock leans toward the revolutionary and Dates leans toward the reformist/transformist and both tend to reject the conformist approaches. But no one, and certainly not Dates nor Warnock, fully fit inside a single category.

I think that What Hath Justice To Do With Righteousness is a helpful book in this conversation about what the role of the Black Church is today. I think that it adds to the nuance of justice-oriented, theologically conservative Black Church pastors who are not conformist in orientation. ([Swing Low: A History of Black Christianity in the United States by Walter R. Strickland](https://bookwi.se/swing-low/) is another in this vein.) I do think it has some weaknesses, primarily not addressing the progressive black church as having different understanding of righteousness instead of asserting that it is not interested in righteousness. But I will keep reading and listening to Charlie Dates because he is talking about something real that needs to be worked on.

**What Hath Justice to Do with Righteousness?: Reclaiming the Intersection of Protest and Prayer by Charlie E. Dates Purchase Links: [Paperback](https://www.amazon.com/dp/083084788X/), [Kindle Edition](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0FH4HDXNM/), [Audible.com Audiobook](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H8FD51J2/)**