"White Christians learned to separate their personal ethics from their social ethics."
In her important book, I Bring the Voices of My People, Dr. Chanequa Walker Barnes asks, "How could White people consider themselves Christian while engaging in the daily horrors of slavery, especially when those horrors were targeted toward their supposed brothers and sisters in Christ?"
In his autobiography, Frederick Douglass repeatedly bears witness to this hypocrisy. About a Rev. Rigby Hopkins, a minister in the Reformed Methodist Church, Douglass writes that "there was not a man any where round, who made higher professions of religion, or was more active in revivals, - more attentive to the class, love-feast, prayer and preaching meetings, or more devotional in his family, - that prayed earlier, later, louder, and longer, - than this same revered slave-driver, Rigby Hopkins."
The dynamic described by Walker Barnes and to which Douglass could testify is one that still haunts white Christianity. It's not simply that white Christians are unconcerned about justice. It's that when our fellow Christians, women and men of color, testify to their lived experiences with injustice, we often look away.
I think, for example, of the most recent presidential election. Despite the concerns and fears voiced by Christians of color who were bearing the brunt of the Republican nominee's rhetoric, white Christians overwhelmingly supported him. Think also about the plight of refugees and migrants who, though they are mostly Christians, are rejected by white Christians at rates higher than most other demographics.
The question Walker Barnes puts to slave-holding white Christians can also be asked of us today. What explains the disconnect between what white Christians say we believe and how we consistently ignore and mistreat Christians of color? Her answer to this terrible question is worth considering.
White Christians learned to separate their personal ethics from their social ethics. In order to preserve their self-images as good people, they had to minimize, repress, and deny their sinfulness - their active participation in racial oppression or silent complicity with it. Further, they had to create theologies and ecclesiologies that supported this minimization, repression, and denial. Thus, Christian identity became a matter of orthodoxy rather than orthopraxy. In other words, believing in God and feeling good about one's personal relationship with God became more critical in defining Christian identity than did acting in a manner consistent with Christian social ethics.
Walker Barnes points out three tendencies within white Christianity worth our attention:
- separating personal from social ethics;
- minimizing personal sinfulness related to racial oppression;
- and creating theological systems that justify racial oppression.
Taken together, these three tendencies lead to a separation of right belief from right action. The focus becomes one of private piety and correct doctrine. These are seen as the essentials of Christian faith social concerns like racial justice, even when devastating fellow members of the church - even when committed by fellow (white) members of the church - can be ignored.
If Walker Barnes is right, and I think she is, then it's necessary for white Christians not only to begin caring about racial injustice and how it's wreaked havoc on our fellow Christians - though we should! We must also begin with an honest assessment of the warped tendencies and assumptions that led to our willful ignorance in the first place. We might ask ourselves such questions as: How are we bifurcating personal and social ethics? Why is it so difficult for white Christians to confess sins related to racism? How are the theological systems we depend on complicit with harming our family in Christ?
These are obviously painful questions to ask but, for those with courage enough to ask them, they will open up pathways to greater solidarity with the body of Christ. And that's a goal worthy of asking a few painful questions.
Over the past few years I've had the chance to facilitate racial reconciliation journeys through the American South with my friend Dominique DuBois Gilliard. Dominique has written an important book about mass incarceration and I'm grateful for his endorsement of Rediscipling the White Church.
Rediscipling the White Church illuminates the worldviews and customs hindering white Christianity's witness. Swanson prophetically models how confession, repentance, and renewed minds liberate captive congregations and embolden them to holistically redefine discipleship. Through reimagined liturgical, spiritual, and ecclesial practices, this book offers a tangible framework for producing Christlike disciples who will in turn make Christlike disciples.
Thanks Dominique!
I've learned so much from my friend, Pastor Michael Neal, over the years. He and I planted churches in the same neighborhood at roughly the same time and he's been generous with his time and wisdom over the years. He was my internship supervisor for my seminary program and he'll be hosting my book release event in May. So it's going to be a lot of fun to have this conversation with him next week. If you're in the area, I hope you'll join us!