"...the Bible was used to rationalize racial hierarchy and segregation."
In 2001 I was a graduate student at Wheaton College taking an undergraduate-level theology class which was a prerequisite for my program. Dr. Vincent Bacote was my professor and I'll always be grateful to have registered for his class among the few others I could have chosen. Dr. Bacote is one of those professors who is expert in his field while also containing a breadth of knowledge about... well, in his case, a lot. Get him started on just about any pop culture topic, music especially, and then sit back and enjoy the ride.
I'm grateful to have remained in touch with Dr. Bacote over the years but back then, almost twenty years ago, there was a particular class that altered the trajectory of my life and ministry. Earlier that year Michael Emerson and Christian Smith had published Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America about the reasons white expressions of Christianity couldn't make a dent in racial segregation. It's hard to overstate, from the vantage point of the past two decades, how influential this book and it's analysis has been on American Christianity, especially within white Evangelicalism. It's almost impossible to read anything that's addressing race and racial injustice without bumping into Emerson and Smith's work.
Anyway, during one class Dr. Bacote mentioned this recently published book in a way that made its significance clear to me. Despite the pile of required reading facing me, I made my way to the college bookstore and picked up Divided by Faith. While I can't remember all of my reactions, I do recall waking up to a reality that had previously been hidden from me, that the racial homogeneity of the churches of my youth was neither natural nor neutral. Behind that segregation lay an entire infrastructure of cultural assumptions that consistently sabotaged any effort at racial reconciliation. For white churches to actually move from our segregation and complicity with racial injustice, something deep within our imaginations would have to be reoriented.
In a recent article, Dr. Bacote connects white Christianity's theological failures with de-formed disciples.
The theological failure, as noted above, was the possession of a strong commitment to orthodoxy (dare I say, the “fundamentals” of Biblical truth) without producing theology and ethics that formed and oriented the lives of Christians toward discipleship that included clear opposition to racism; indeed in some cases the Bible was used to rationalize racial hierarchy and segregation.
I do my best in Rediscipling the White Church to reckon with the assumptions within white Christianity which derail our reconciliation efforts and the warped discipleship noted by Dr. Bacote. This, I believe, is where our previous efforts have fallen short. We've not been honest enough about the traits inherent to white Christianity and how these have colluded with how our racialized society has discipled us.
What Dr. Bacote, the authors of Divided by Faith, and so many friends have helped me see over the years is that the weight of racial reconciliation work lies with white people and among white people. It's a genuine paradigm shift for those of us who've imagined the problems related to race as residing among communities of color. Only once we see that the problem is much closer to home can we begin the long journey toward repentance and reconciliation.
This next thing might be a bit inside baseball, but it probably ticks the boxes for some of you. Like many other predominately white denominations, my own, the Evangelical Covenant Church, has been wrestling with conversations related to human sexuality for, well, as long as I've been a part of things. I locate myself toward the traditional side of the conversation (to be incredibly reductionist) and many friends and colleagues press in the more progressive direction. I've long found the way we talk about sexuality in our denomination to be very white. It's not just that the loudest voices on both sides are themselves white, but the manner in which it's discussed and debated feels very culturally white.
At our recent pastors conference, my good friend Rev. Shaun Marshall preached a powerful sermon and used our debates as an example of our captivity to the false god of whiteness. If you find yourself in a white denomination or Christian organization with similar fights on your hands, you very well may be ripe for Shaun's prophetic word.
This week's endorsement for Redicipling the White Church comes from my friend Brandon O'Brien who works with Redeemer City to City and whose recent book, Not From Around Here I've found myself recommending regularly over the past few months. It's a timely one for this moment in time.
This book does not ask you to diversify your congregation. Instead it invites you to join the reconciled body of Christ. To that end, David Swanson has reimagined how to leverage the features of worship and service you already use—preaching, communion, children's ministry, evangelism, and more—to disciple the congregation you already have, regardless of its racial makeup. This is clear-headed, concrete guidance from a humble and experienced leader.
Thanks Brandon!