Related articles and links |  1 of 8

In June Christianity Today brought together five respected leaders from diverse backgrounds to discuss the findings reported in Michael Emerson and Christian Smith's Divided by Faith and the evangelical racial dilemma in general. The panelists included: Elward Ellis, senior pastor of Crossroads Presbyterian Church, a multiracial congregation in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and the former national director of black campus ministries for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Robert Franklin, president of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, the largest historically African-American seminary in the U.S. Charles Lyons, senior pastor of Armitage Baptist Church, a multicultural congregation in Chicago that has made national headlines for its efforts in racial reconciliation. John Ortberg, teaching pastor at Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, Illinois. J. I. Packer, CT senior editor and professor of theology at Regent College in Vancouver. CT's Edward Gilbreath and Mark Galli moderated the discussion.

Gilbreath: Emerson and Smith say that many white evangelicals are not so much racist as they are immersed in a "racialized society" in which race reflects a huge cultural chasm between people. They write, "A racialized society is a society wherein race matters profoundly for differences and life experiences. … It can also be said to be a society that allocates differential economic, political, social, and even psychological rewards to groups along racial lines."

Is this a helpful distinction?

Ortberg: I think we need language like this. As racial problems become more subtle, talking about them in this way will be helpful.

Franklin: This book is a report card for church leaders and, I hope, the larger society. The authors show how racial valuations are basically built into the structures of society, and so we are, in a sense, failing by design. Insofar as the term "racialized" helps leaders pay more attention to that systemic dimension of the sin out there, it makes an important contribution.

Ellis: We come to this discussion exhausted over issues of nomenclature. Assigning new names and labels is a little tiring, because at the end of the day we live in the same world. It behaves the same way. And I think that the "racialized society" concept would only be refreshing if it could serve the purpose of getting someone off the dime who has entrenched himself and won't talk honestly or more broadly about the race problem. But the term doesn't excite me. There are as many concepts of racial alienation as perhaps there are groups of people alive. We have to come to terms with why we have a propensity to be hostile to some and preferential to others.

Galli: The term racialized struck me as a good one. If I'm told I'm a "racist," I have no way of processing that because I don't hold racist views. But if someone tells me I've been "racialized"—that I live in a world that divides itself by race—I'm able to listen because that accords with my experience and helps me see society in a different way.

Lyons: Most of what Emerson and Smith address, I think, is cultural, not racial. The isolation, the ignorance, is cultural. The fear is cultural. The language used is important, because words mean things. So the term racialization may be helpful. Mark, you touched on an important point. The term racist has so much baggage with it. You're not going to get your normal, drive-down-the-street white guy to admit he has racist attitudes. And so the discussion will stall right there. The idea of racialization is softer and, in that way, may be helpful to stimulate discussion. But again, we're dealing with cultural issues here. Across the board in America, the majority does not dislike, much less hate, somebody else for the color of their skin.

next page... |  1 of 8

share this page

October 2 2000, Vol. 44, No. 11