I recently visited my Alma mater, Montreat College, to speak for their monthly convocation. The prior evening I joined a world religions class to share about our ministry of racial reconciliation in Chicago. As part of that talk I articulated six of my theological assumptions which reinforce how I think about multiracial, reconciling ministry.

1) The death and resurrection of Jesus reconcile us to God and to one another. According to 2 Corinthians 5:18, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ…” Paul writes in Galatians 3:28, “There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.”

There are many ways to describe what Jesus accomplished for creation through his life, death, and resurrection, but reconciliation is a central and critical insight into all that has changed as a result. We live in the glorious aftermath of reconciliation as witnesses to reconciliation.

2) The reconciled nature of the Church is a witness to God’s salvation through Christ. There’s probably no passage in Scripture that inspires my vision for reconciliation as much as Jesus’ prayer in John 17:20-21. “I ask not only on behalf of these but also on behalf of those who believe in me through their word, that they may all be one. As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us, so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

What Jesus is asking for in this prayer is not the bland uniformity-for-its-own sake which too often characterizes our churches. No, the vision here is the sort of profoundly countercultural oneness whose apparent implausibility points beyond itself to the One who makes it real. “That the world may believe…” is the aim of our reconciliation.

3) Divisions in the church are a hindrance to the gospel. The early church in Corinth brought the cultural divisions typical of their society with them when they gathered for worship; the wealthy came staggering in under their affluence while the poor and enslaved came hungry. Paul was deeply frustrated that this church had left the status quo undisturbed. Writing in 1 Corinthians 11:20-21, he declared, “When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you proceeds to eat your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk.”

Like the wealthy Christians in Corinth, many contemporary, privileged Christians are content to bring our stratified and segregated society with us to church. The result is not simply distance between sisters and brothers but a diminished witness to our Lord Jesus.

4) Racial divisions in U.S. Christianity have always been a hindrance to the gospel. Speaking about reconciliation and divisions in the context of the U.S. church requires lingering over the myriad of ways race has hindered our witness. There’s nothing new in this observation. In 1845, in the appendix to his autobiography, Frederick Douglass made it plain. “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.”

But too many U.S. Christians, especially white Christians, have accepted a facile understanding of racial division as cultural preference rather than the result of generations of sinful intention. Rather than weeping and lamenting over our divisions, they barely register. So long have the sins of racism and white supremacy shaped the U.S. church, it can be hard to see how profoundly our racial divisions have damaged our witness.

5) The ministry of reconciliation to which Christians are called must include reconciling across cultural lines of racial hostility and division. Given the prior four assumptions, ignoring the wounds caused by systems of white supremacy, including the ways many majority culture churches have conformed to these racist systems, would be a betrayal to our Christian calling.

Is every church in the U.S. called to foster reconciliation across racial hostility and division? Yes! But given the radically differing experiences different racial groups have of racism and the countless differences found in particular contexts, how we go about the ministry of reconciliation will look wonderfully and creatively different from church to church.

6) The reconciliation of the U.S. church across cultural lines of racial hostility and division must prioritize the discipleship of white Christians away from racial segregation and into solidarity with our sisters and brothers in Christ. I’ve written a lot about this last one so I’ll keep it brief. Given the ways that white people have been discipled by racial whiteness for generations, it is absolutely critical for majority white churches to finally counteract that mal-formed discipleship with the real thing.

If the U.S. church is ever going to be reconciled across race on a wide scale, it will have to involve the spiritual formation of white Christians who come to find greater solidarity in our faith than our race. Only then will we, like those privileged Corinthian Christians, be able to come humbly, authentically, and joyfully to the table of reconciliation.

(Photo credit: Stephen A Johnson.)

The View From Here

I had a few extra hours before my flight home from Asheville last week so I drove along the Blue Ridge Parkway for a few miles. I can only imagine how spectacular those mountains look today, covered in their autumn glory.