The Myth of Racial Progress - Christianity Today

As L.A. and other urban areas simmer with racial tension, many Christians ask, “What does the church have to offer?” The past two decades have seen countless multiracial prayer breakfasts, pulpit exchanges, and formal declarations of reconciliation. Evangelical Christians can point to many places where blacks, whites, Latinos, and Asians are worshiping and ministering in harmony and as equals.

Despite these attempts, however, Christians remain as racially separated as the rest of society. It is still true that 11 o’clock Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. It is a costly separation. When African Americans speak frankly to their white counterparts, they express deep hostility and frustration. They feel angry, hurt, and betrayed by what they see as society’s and the church’s failure.

Many white Christians are bewildered by these strong feelings. They wonder what nonwhites want. Many white evangelicals do not feel they are racist, and they say they very much want for all colors to be united in their faith. Writes Jay Kesler in his foreword to William Pannell’s book The Coming Race Wars?, “Frankly, I thought we were doing better.”

Yet black anger is an undeniable reality. So are the economic facts of life for African Americans. While many middle-class blacks have improved their situation, their experience is not the norm. As a group, African Americans are, by some economic measures, worse off now than at the height of the civil-rights movement. For instance, the unemployment rate for blacks in the late sixties averaged 7 percent, but in 1990 it was 11 percent (comparable figures for whites are 3 percent and 4 percent). Today, nearly one in four black men between 20 and 29 years old is in prison, paroled, or on probation; 9 percent of whites and 32 percent of blacks are poor; the infant mortality rate for blacks is twice that of whites; whites live, on average, six years longer than blacks.

Clearly, the racial divide is a grievous problem for America—and for the church (whose reputation is tarnished by a history of racial splits within its institutions).

The frustration goes beyond statistics. African Americans describe daily humiliations in the most mundane situations.

One black executive within a mostly white evangelical organization tells how she recently was told her teenage son can’t date a white colleague’s daughter. A black evangelical family recounts moving into a new house in DeKalb County outside Atlanta. Within a week their white neighbors on either side put up their homes for sale. For every positive statement about race by church leaders, there are countless painful incidents on buses, in classrooms, hallways, board-rooms, and churches.

Black leaders warn that we could be at a point of no return. Writes Spencer Perkins in More Than Equals: “A new phenomenon is growing among blacks who are frustrated with the reality of integration: a call for black separation.” Pannell writes in The Coming Race Wars?, “Ultimately, the [nonwhite] church in the city will have to go it alone.”

If this were to happen—if black and white Christians were to grow permanently, angrily separated—what would God’s people have to offer to a racially torn world?

Racial complexity

Only to look at black-white problems is, of course, too simple. Richard Rodriguez, a leading California essayist, says, “The Kerner Commission Report’s conclusion in 1968 that there were two nations in the U.S., one black, one white, separate and unequal, simply does not fit today.” With the explosion of the Latino population, who by the year 2010 will outnumber blacks, and the great influx of Asian immigrants, America’s racial situation has become much more complex—and more urgent. Both whites and blacks face new, bewildering ethnic diversity that they cannot avoid.

It is also true that nonwhites have their own racist attitudes to work out. Koreans and Latinos have well-documented racist attitudes toward African Americans. Blacks carry negative stereotypes of Koreans (as witnessed in last year’s L.A. riots) and are participating in black flight from communities turning increasingly brown or yellow in cities such as L.A. and Chicago. Their response parallels that of whites who fled neighborhoods when blacks began to move in.

In this CT Institute, however, we have deliberately focused on white-black relations. These groups have the longest and most complex history in the U.S. church. Unless they can resolve their differences, there is little hope for reconciling ethnic groups that have less shared experience.

Hearing voices

We asked 41 African-American Christian leaders—most of them evangelicals—to address the white evangelical community. We asked them, “What do you want your white evangelical brothers and sisters to hear right now?” A selection of those responses are excerpted below. We also collected selections from recent books by black church leaders for narratives and insights to illustrate why African-American Christians feel such anger and frustration.

White readers, we suspect, may be tempted to find reasons to discount these statements. The words are personal and emotional, strong and shocking. Some are hopeful, but most are angry.

The dynamics between blacks and whites are in many ways similar to those of an estranged couple. Often the problem is not some single tension-causing incident but lies with a pattern of behavior. If one of the parties consistently feels rejected or ignored, then something is certainly wrong. Rebutting the angry emotions may not help. Sometimes, as in marriage counseling, it is necessary first simply to listen long and hard—and not to interrupt with objections. Then, after the message is heard, we can go on to ask, “What can I do to make this better?” In this institute we invite our readers to listen.

Andrés Tapia is a senior news writer for Christianity Today. Research for this project was partially funded by a grant from Religion News Service.

Something Is Wrong at the Root

John Perkins, founder of the John M. Perkins Foundation for Reconciliation and Development, and publisher of Urban Family magazine.

Something is wrong at the root of American evangelicalism. I believe we have lost the focus of the gospel—God’s reconciling power, which is unique to Christianity—and have substituted church growth. We have learned to reproduce the church without the message. It is no longer a message that transforms.

It reminds me of the white Christian sailor in Roots who went on a slave cargo ship to earn enough money to get married. The church-growth philosophy of homogeneity is a heresy that, like that young sailor, has sacrificed principle for expediency. That approach has encouraged the separation of the church rather than reconciliation with God, each other, and the world—which is the church’s mission. There is no biblical basis for a black, white, Hispanic, or Asian church.

I wish the church could come to grips with its mission: to repent and turn to the poor. Jeremiah proclaimed this message through tears. We need some living examples to stand up and be willing to accept the persecution that goes with preaching this message. But I know that as with Jeremiah, those receiving the message will want to brand the messenger “angry” so they don’t have to hear what he or she says.

Separate Vacations

Kay Coles James, executive vice-president of the Family Research Council in Washington, D.C., and the author of Never Forget (Zondervan).

I became involved in a women’s Bible study that met once a week at a white church. One of the highlights of the year was a trip to Myrtle Beach with the families of the women in our study. All year long references to the annual family beach trip were dropped into conversation. I had heard so many stories about the fun times they had together that I was really looking forward to going. But we were never invited. As summer drew near, I overheard women making arrangements for shared beach houses, but the conversation would die down whenever I came near. The group left for the beach without us, and I was crushed. I’d never felt so betrayed and rejected.

Eventually embarassment and hurt died down enough for me to ask one day in Bible study why Charles and I weren’t included in the beach trip. An uncomfortable silence fell upon the room. “Well, Kay, we just felt that—well, you know that there aren’t very many black people at Myrtle Beach … and we just thought you would be uncomfortable.” They were concerned about us? Didn’t they see the irony? It took all my courage to read our Scripture verse out loud before the group, but I wanted to say something else. I did. “I guess I thought that if we wouldn’t be accepted at a certain vacation spot, that you would choose another one rather than leave us out.” Nothing more was ever said about it.

Silent Whites, Dying Blacks

Hycel Taylor, senior pastor of Second Baptist Church in Evanston, Illinois.

For us, as an African-American people, we have to ask some serious questions. What’s going wrong with us? Not so much in relationship to white people, but in relation to ourselves. What’s so stigmatic in our minds that we have now turned on ourselves and begun to kill each other, where now we become our own lynch mobs? We’re looking at genocide so insidious that if we quantified the dying of African Americans just for 24 hours across this nation, we’d need to call for a state of national emergency. We’re dying of AIDS; we’re dying of hypertension; we’re dying as stillborn babies; we’re dying from drugs.

What’s happening to white America? How can it be that a David Duke would rise to any semblance of power in this country today? As Martin Luther King quoted, “All you need for evil to triumph in the world is for good people to do nothing.” Will the white church be silent as these things occur?

Is it possible for the races to rise above their differences and yet not ignore the diversity? Yes, we can. And we can do it because Christ is in our lives, and Christ rises above all of us.

The Issue Is Sin

Robert Suggs, academic vice-president at Grand Rapids Baptist College.

When I pastored an urban black church in Rochester, I frequently got a particular kind of call from the white pastors in the area. They would say, “We have the name of a family you might be interested in.”

Invariably, when I followed up on the referral, it was a black family that had visited the white church. The white pastors who called me often assumed the black family had come to their church by accident, or that they would not feel comfortable there. But these families often told me they had gone to the church because it was in their neighborhood and that they had not requested a referral to a black church.

It’s distressing that white evangelicals seem unable to see the reason for the troubled relationship with their African-American counterparts. Why is there an estranged relationship between these two groups that agree with each other in the fundamentals of Scripture and basic lifestyle issues? It is, quite frankly, sin.

It is clear to many African-American evangelicals that their white counterparts are operating under a redefinition of sin. It’s a redefinition that does not see as sin that few African-American students and educators can be found at our nation’s approximately one hundred Christian colleges and Bible schools; that does not see as sin congregations leaving their urban neighborhoods and their unsaved residents in an effort to pursue homogenous groupings; that does not see as sin the persistent reality of 11 o’clock Sunday morning being the most segregated hour in America. The evangelical church has never repented of these historical, social, and personal sins of racism. To a large degree, it continues the practices, but now more subtly and in many situations, not at a conscious level. It is time to put the past behind us and to repent of the sins of all of our fathers and for the indulgences and insensitivities of our own lives.

You Can’t Dismiss Martin Luther King

Dale Jones, executive director of Quest Atlanta ’96, a multiracial ministry serving the community and visitors for the 1994 Super Bowl and the 1996 Olympic Games.

Martin Luther King, Jr., continues to be suspect among white evangelicals because of his education in liberal seminaries. What many whites don’t realize is that conservative Christian colleges barred blacks from attending their schools for decades, leaving African Americans who felt a calling into the ministry with few options. The liberal seminaries were the ones that opened the doors to them. Martin Luther King spoke prophetically about America and gave his life up to seek a Christian ethic in this land. If African Americans who love Christ honor King, then for whites to dismiss him is to disrespectfully dismiss the judgment of a whole group within evangelicalism.

Needed: An At-risk Gospel

Cecil “Chip” Murray, senior pastor, First African Methodist Episcopal Church, Los Angeles. Murray’s 10,000-member church was the focal point of relief efforts during last year’s L.A. riots and was named one of President Bush’s Points of Light.

White evangelicals need an at-risk gospel for at-risk people in an at-risk society. Calling sinners to repentance means also calling societies and structures to repentance—economic, social, educational, corporate, political, religious structures. Why is the neighborhood church not doing nightly patrols of its own neighborhood, where illicit drugs are sold? Why are we not housing the homeless whose sleeping forms we step over to gain admittance to our churches? Where are our prison ministries, our substance abuse or mentoring or ethnic crossover or counseling ministries? Why are we not more at risk?

Personal salvation is never divorced from social salvation because personal sin is never divorced from social sin. The gospel at once works with the individual and the individual’s society: to change one, we of necessity must change the other. Even as the individual makes bad decisions, so do their decisions result in part from decisions made by a bad society.

Hitting Bottom

Dolphus Weary, director of Mendenhall Ministries in Mississippi and the author of I Ain’t Coming Back (Renaissance), from which this was adapted.

Things hit bottom one day when somebody at the mostly white Christian college I was attending came up and told me, “Martin Luther King got shot!”

“What?” I cried. “You’re kidding!” I ran to my room and flipped on the radio. The newscasters were talking about it. I was devastated.

As I sat there on my bed, I overheard voices down the hall, talking about it—talking about how glad they were that Martin Luther King had been shot! What am I hearing? I wondered, incredulously. What is this? I thought this was a Christian school, and here are these kids talking about how glad they are that Martin Luther King has been shot!

This went on for a while. My first impulse was to rush out and confront them. These kids were sick! Furthermore, I believed that by laughing at Martin Luther King, they were laughing at me, and at all the other millions of black people that Martin Luther King spoke of. But I resisted that. I needed to get control. I felt nauseated. I was hurt, disillusioned, and angry.

Then the report came: “Martin Luther King has died in a Memphis hospital.” A cheer erupted from the group down the hall.

I’m Pessimistic

Glandion Camey, associate director of the missions department of InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

I am very pessimistic. So much has been written on this topic, but when are we going to come together and not argue the issue and simply do what the Bible says, to do what is right regarding the issue of racial prejudice?

I’m tired of questions about this. I see no outcome, no real dealing with the issues, or doing what has been decided needs to be done. There has been very little fruit from the pledges of racial reconciliation made by evangelical groups, such as the National Association of Evangelicals and other major Christian Carney agencies. These organizations continue to be white in their structure and avoid issues that concern the cities.

Nothing has come from our great words. We seem always to fall short of being able to walk together as brothers and sisters. I am not hopeful, even though I want to be.

No Substitute for Love

Morris E. Jones, Sr., church planter and pastor of Immanuel Evangelical Baptist Church, Indianapolis, Indiana.

I believe many white evangelicals have an intellectual understanding of agape love, but lack heart knowledge of it. There seems to be right theology and the right religious works, but they do not understand that there is no substitute for love. Love must be practiced! Matthew 5:14 says: “You are the light of the world,” referring to believers. White evangelicals have done little or nothing to help America heal the wound of racism. A dying world needs to see this light instead of seeing Christians just doing what is best for their own race.

Sidebar: Models of Reconciliation: Passing on the Power

In 1975, Wayne Gordon moved to Lawndale, a black neighborhood on Chicago’s southwest side. Working as assistant football coach in a nearby public school, Gordon, a white farm boy from Iowa, started a youth group with some of his players. That group eventually grew into Lawndale Community Church, a 500-member, interracial, holistic ministry. Today the church has a medical clinic that serves over 4,000 people a month, a tutoring program that equips high-school students to go to college, a thrift store, and a housing rehab effort that has remodeled 50 apartments for people in the community.

“Leadership development” became one of Gordon’s mottoes. This meant investing in the neighborhood’s youth and developing them into church and community leaders. Several of the church’s African-American staff members came up through his program.

But Gordon was not satisfied. The top position was still in his hands, white hands. It did not matter that community leaders and church members now considered him a Lawndalian after 18 years in the neighborhood. “The history of race created an inescapable perception. ‘This white boy can’t trust a black to run the shop,’ ” says Gordon.

Perception was not the only issue. The church needed a pastor who could say things to the biracial congregation that Gordon, as a white, could not.

Whom could Gordon hire? In a congregation that called him “Coach,” it was going to be difficult to find a leader who could relate to him as a peer. So Gordon went outside the community and asked Carey Casey, a minister for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, if he would take the pastor’s job while Gordon continued to lead the community outreach programs.

“What is remarkable about what Wayne did,” says African-American leader Elward Ellis, “is that he didn’t just hire any black man. He hired a strong black man. Whites are not known for doing this kind of thing.” Gordon and Casey work hard at their relationship. They meet every morning at 6 A.M. for an hour to pray and to discuss personal and church issues. With their commitment to honesty, the sessions can be intense. Says Casey, “We say things like, ‘You hurt me,’ and, ‘I was embarrassed.’ We ask each other the tough questions.”

Gordon remembers reading 1 Samuel 20 one morning where Jonathan, King Saul’s son, tells his friend and his father’s enemy David, “Whatever you say, I will do for you.” Gordon felt God was using it as an example of what his and Casey’s relationship would look like. “But the way I was reading it, I was David and Carey was Jonathan. Something stopped me in my tracks and convinced me it was the other way around.” Gordon related the incident to Casey, who highlighted the passage in his Bible, which he now leaves open to that verse on his desk. “So whenever Wayne crosses the line and starts doing my job,” Casey explains, “I just point to that Scripture and say, ‘Remember?’”

Using their relationship as a model, Casey and Gordon pair up black and white church members for ministry, using every opportunity for whites and blacks to work together as equals.

Because of Casey’s and Gordon’s relationship, the ministry at Lawndale Community Church has gained much credibility within evangelicalism, especially among African Americans. But to convince the community outside the church walls is more difficult. “After being here a year and a half, some of the black brothers in the

hood

are still wondering what I’m up to running around with a white guy,” says Casey. “The suspicions die hard.”

In the meantime, Gordon’s and Casey’s families have established deep friendships. At any one time the children of one family can be found at the other’s home. This is not lost on the congregation. Says Casey, “People find freedom in our friendship. When they see a white man and a black man being friends, laughing and crying together, they can believe that a healthy relationship with someone from another race is possible.”

Says the six-foot-two Casey of the five-foot-eight Gordon, “I love that short white man.”

Sidebar: Models of Reconciliation: A Bus Ride Beyond the Comfort Zone

The well-dressed bank presidents, CEOs, lawyers, and country-club members gather with their spouses in front of their church’s multimillion-dollar complex in Atlanta’s Buckhead neighborhood. Forty-five members of the all-white, four-thousand-member Second Ponce de Leon Baptist Church are on their way for a trip outside their comfort zones—headed for worship at an all-black congregation in another Atlanta neighborhood, Summerhill.

For nearly all, it will be their first time at an African-American service. As the busload of people with $50,000-a-year-plus incomes tours the neighborhood of people averaging $6,500, Doug Dean, an African-American community organizer, and German Cruz, Ponce de Leon church member and urban planner for Summerhill’s revitalization plan, point out important development efforts. An unlikely coalition has come together in an effort to revitalize the low-income African-American neighborhood. The plan calls for developing a mixed-income community, a new business district, and improved social services. A big part of the effort is focused on racial reconciliation.

This trip is intended as one more step in the Ponce de Leon church’s commitment to the Summerhill plan. Already the church has promised $500,000 over three years and, more important in Cruz’s mind, 600 volunteers. Today, though, the commitments begin to turn into face-to-face encounters.

At the Southwest Christian Fellowship, the common church culture of bulletins, prayers, announcements, and hymns provides some comfort and security in an otherwise cross-cultural experience. The whites begin to flounder, however, as the gospel choir revs up with a rhythm that has the visitors struggling to clap on the offbeat. No matter. The spirit is infectious, and the white churchgoers, known for their straight-as-a-rod singing stance, shed some of their inhibitions.

The whites find their footing again as pastor Richard Barry applies an insightful exegesis to the morning’s biblical passage. Barry, who, like other blacks in the church has recently relocated from the suburbs to the city, is a good choice to preach to a group already being stretched.

When the service is dismissed, a question hangs over everyone: Will people connect over cookies and coffee in Fellowship Hall? Back on the bus, headed back to familiar Buckhead, the answer is a unanimous yes.

“I was surprised at how much we had in common,” says one visitor. “They’re people just like us. They seem to have the same concerns we do, such as wanting their kids to be the best they can be or wanting to learn more about God.”

The bus trip leads to other contacts. For example, six couples from each of the churches meet later in one of the Buckhead homes to share with each other their own personal histories.

While these are encouraging steps, the Summerhill coalition has its sights on even more significant steps—the actual relocation of whites into Summerhill. To this end, they have convinced Second Ponce de Leon and another large white church to set up Equity Relocation Funds, which would provide interest-free mortgages for families to buy homes in Summerhill. And there have been takers. One is a lawyer who would move out of a half-million-dollar home.

Cruz is challenging his peers at Ponce de Leon to re-examine their careers in light of the gospel. “If you’re a banker, change banking practices that are detrimental to the blacks who live in red-lined areas. If you’re a lawyer, speak up on behalf of the voiceless. You cannot separate your talents from your calling as a Christian. We need your talents more that your donations.” After the Summerhill tour, NationsBank, whose president was on the bus, offered down-payment assistance and special mortgage payments to build 22 middle-income homes in Summerhill.

Both Cruz and Dean feel encouraged by people’s responses. “Today’s group made me feel very tender,” Cruz says, in reference to the busload of whites. “I never thought they would be able to cross the bridge. They are beginning to see that to become relevant to the work of God, we have to become relevant to each other.”

Integration Versus Reconciliation

Spencer Perkins, editor-in-chief of Urban Family magazine. He lives in an intentional biracial Christian community in Jackson, Mississippi.

I fear that many whites assume that racial reconciliation is something blacks want from whites. It may surprise most white evangelicals to learn that black Christians are no more interested in working toward racial reconciliation than white Christians. Blacks are interested in eliminating racial injustice, in confronting racism, and in ensuring that the playing field is level, but going out of our way to build the cross-cultural relationships necessary for racial reconciliation does not evoke those same passions.

Whites also should not confuse racial reconciliation with integration. Integration was a political pursuit that could only be taken so far. You can’t make someone accept you as a brother or sister. All you can do legally is make it against the law for them to discriminate against you. Reconciliation, on the other hand, is spiritual and must be approached as such. Somewhere we’ve got this notion that reconciliation is optional—that it is okay for us to witness to the unbelieving world a gospel that is too weak to bridge racial barriers.

The evidence of our love for God is in our love for our neighbor. It then becomes very important to consider the answer that Jesus gave to the question “And who is my neighbor?” He didn’t just say the people of your neighborhood or the people who look like you. He told the story of the Good Samaritan.

In choosing a Samaritan, Jesus was saying that our neighbors are especially those people whom we have the most difficulty loving. It does not take much practical application to determine who Jesus would use as “neighbor” if he were talking to blacks and whites in the U.S.

For centuries, we have announced proudly to the rest of the world that Jesus (and our Christianity) is the answer for the world. Maybe we should add a disclaimer that says, “with the exception of race and culture.”

We Have Nothing to Show the World

Cheryl J. Sanders, associate professor of Christian ethics at Howard University School of Divinity and associate pastor for leadership development, Third Street Church of God, Washington, D.C.

The moral ineffectiveness of the evangelical churches on the issue of race is because many of these churches openly practice discrimination against blacks and women, especially in leadership and in determining ministry priorities. Exempt from the civil rights of the land, American churches have become a stronghold of resistance to the principles of justice and equality rather than the source of it.

We evangelicals must practice what we preach. Otherwise we’re hypocrites. We cannot despise persons who are different while we are trying to minister to them. Further, we do not have a positive Christian witness for racial justice if we have no models, no programs, no examples within our ranks to offer the world. If we were practicing reconciliation, affirmative action, and level playing fields in our churches, it would challenge our society’s dominant racist values and would give Christians something to preach to others.

Racism is a lie, and its structures and effects require the continued cover-up and double talk of some of today’s evangelical leadership.

Calling All Christians

Robin McDonald, executive director of the Capitol Hill Crisis Pregnancy Center, Washington, D.C.

God has called all Christians to the ministry of reconciliation—first, to be reconciled to him, and then to one another. Sadly, few heed the latter half of our calling. Racial reconciliation demands that we stretch ourselves past our comfort zones. Too often these attempts are casually dismissed by the white church, breeding disappointment and mistrust. Unless Christians stand together, our church and our nation will remain divided.

Whites Are Not Taken Seriously

William Pannell, professor of preaching and practical theology at Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California, and the author of The Coming Race Wars? (Zondervan).

We’re going to have to take some rather courageous and extraordinary steps to avoid a race war. The first step is sincere repentance of racism by white evangelicals. Until something like that happens, I don’t envision black evangelicals taking their white counterparts seriously.

Sidebar: Models of Reconciliation: Fudge Ripple Sundays

The Rock of Our Salvation, an Evangelical Free church, rose from the ashes of Circle Church, a multiracial effort in Chicago that tragically split along racial lines. “I can hardly describe the pain I felt as the dream crumbled,” writes Circle Church member Glen Kehrein in Breaking Down Walls, the book he coauthored with Rock pastor Raleigh Washington. “My greatest loss was that not one personal relationship with a black believer survived.”

In 1974, still smarting from the split, Kehrein met Raleigh Washington, an African-American seminary grad looking to start a church. Kehrein was leading a holistic ministry in Austin, a predominantly African-American neighborhood of Chicago. Slowly a friendship developed. Eventually Kehrein asked Washington to preside over the board of the social ministry; he also decided to join Washington’s new church in the neighborhood.

Racial reconciliation at the Rock was markedly different from Kehrein’s first experience. In explaining Circle’s failure, he writes, “We had theory rather than relationships. Racial reconciliation among Christians requires solid relationships.… But at Circle … everyone was bound to a vision but not to each other.” At the Rock, they emphasize the earlier missing ingredient—committed relationships.

Another important difference, Washington and Kehrein explain, is that the top leader is black. “Whenever there is conflict between a black and a white, regardless of the specifics,” explains Washington, “it always becomes a racial issue.” No matter how right a white might be in a conflictual situation, he explains, the objectivity of whites will always be suspect by nonwhites.

The Rock, now a church of 350–70 percent black, 30 percent white—is thriving. Each group’s culture is celebrated at the service through swaying gospel music and stout Wesleyan hymns. Pastor Washington uses black-only “chocolate” meetings and white-only “vanilla” meetings as forums for each group to express frustration over cultural differences. These, then, are worked through with both groups present at “fudge ripple” meetings.

The intentional efforts have paid off. At the Rock, it is common to see blacks and whites embracing each other in joy and sorrow—with arms around each other in hugs or hands clasped in prayer.

Why Are We a Threat?

Peggy L. Jones, senior pastor of the multiracial Macedonia Assembly of God Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and chief executive officer of a consulting firm that conducts training for Fortune 500 businesses and churches wanting to deal with multicultural diversity.

I am African American. I am female. I am bicultural. I was raised Baptist and have been evangelical for the past 16 years. Why did God call me out of a fairly comfortable homogeneous religious environment into a different racial and religious environment? Because he truly is an Ephesians 2:14 God who is tearing down walls of hostility between groups of people.

Sixteen years later my heart still cries out to God. When will my people no longer be seen by white evangelicals as a threat? As less than? When will we be allowed to be equal with you and not oppressed by you? It is expected that the secular world continues to oppress, but not the body of Christ.

Didn’t Jesus come to set the captives free? Isn’t the evangelical heritage one of social reform and speaking out against injustices as well as leading lost souls to Christ? Where are the Jonathan Blanchards today? the Charles Finneys? the Theodore Welds? the Antoinette Browns and Amanda Smiths? the Catherine and William Booths? These were men and women who could not idly sit by when black Americans were being treated unjustly. When did the heartbeat of many white evangelicals change?

We Will Be Held Accountable

Tony Evans, senior pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas, Texas, and founder of the Urban Alternative. His daily radio program is heard on 245 stations nationwide. He is the author of many books, including Are Blacks Spiritually Inferior to Whites? (Renaissance).

Unity is very expensive. Just as a husband and wife must give up a lot to gain the oneness that marriage offers, so also must races be willing to pay the price to experience biblical unity. One of the losses both sides must be willing to experience is the rejection of friends and relatives, whether Christians or non-Christians, who are not willing to accept the thesis that spiritual family relationships transcend physical, cultural, and racial relationships. This is what Jesus meant when he said, “Whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Matt. 12:50).

The cost is particularly expensive to local churches who begin opening their doors to people who are viewed by many as socially unacceptable, even though they have been made acceptable to the Father by the blood of Christ.

There must be the willingness to hold people accountable for refusing to cooperate with the bridge-building efforts of the church. Racism cannot be allowed to fester without public and personal condemnation. It should be clear what the church will and will not allow. What should not be allowed is the subjection of brothers and sisters who are different to racial slurs and public rejection in the church. There is no more time for us to sit by and wait for people to change. People must be led into change, and that cannot be done without the knowledge that we will be held accountable for how we treat the other members of God’s family.

Only if all sides are willing to take this stand will the effort be worth the risk. For one side to pay the price without equal commitment from the other is to create only more mistrust and division. However, when both sides take a strong biblical stand, the support systems will be there to withstand the opposition that will naturally come from taking a stand for righteousness.

Sidebar: What Can We Do?

How can we play a part in racial reconciliation?

Two recent books by biracial writing teams give practical suggestions. In More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel, by Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice (InterVarsity), and Breaking Down Walls: A Model for Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife, by Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein (Moody), the authors draw from over one hundred years of combined experience in developing black and white reconciled church communities.

Perkins and Rice communicate their model in three words: admit, submit, and commit. By admit, they mean that “both white and black Christians must admit that a separation exists, that our relationship is uneasy and that it misrepresents what God intended for his people.” This entails, among other things, getting acquainted with the history of race relations in our country and in the church, reading the works of African Americans such as Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, and learning about the significant contributions of blacks to this nation.

By submit, they mean “we must hand ourselves over to God, falling on our faces before him for help, recognizing that we can’t be healed apart from him. And we must submit to one another, black and white, by building loving relationships across racial barriers.”

And by commit, they mean “deep and lasting reconciliation will be realized only as we commit ourselves to an intentional lifestyle of loving our racially different neighbors as ourselves.” The process, they explain, requires intentionality on both sides, a commitment not unlike that between marriage partners to work differences out regardless of the cost, for better or for worse.

Good intentions and a few prayer meetings will not be enough. It means deliberately establishing relationships with those from a different culture, which often means going on their turf. And when friction arises, it means sticking it out and working through the issues. Writes Chris Rice, who is white, “Whites often ask me, ‘How do I know when I’m really dealing with the race issue?’ I tell them, ‘When you begin to feel uncomfortable.’”

Washington and Kehrein make similar points. Some of their practical suggestions for predominantly white churches include establishing a “sister church” relationship with an ethnically different congregation, recruiting ethnic church leadership, and changing worship and music to include several cultural styles. They also suggest individuals invite someone who is racially different to their homes, or visit an ethnically different church at least four times a year.

All four authors are motivated by a gospel imperative. They acknowledge there is not much worldly incentive to take the risks required for reconciliation. But they argue the gospel does not leave the Christian with a choice.

After quoting 2 Corinthians 5:16–21, which in part says, “He has committed to us the work of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were entreating through us,” Washington and Kehrein write, “the Word of God is not just saying that reconciliation is a good idea. Rather, Paul informs us that the ministry of reconciliation is a mandatory part of every Christian’s daily living.”

Both books communicate that the church really is the only agent that has a chance to succeed at reconciliation. Writes Rice: “The gulf between black and white can be crossed only on a bridge built by the hands of God.”

Greatest Thing Whites Can Do

Edith Jones, city director of CityLine, a ministry of World Vision in Washington, D.C.

The greatest thing whites can do is ask, “What can I do?” This bestows honor and respect on us as fruitful and accomplished people. Let us tell you. Come as humble servants. One of the greatest hurts within our community is seeing caring whites come in and write about us rather than letting us tell who we are. This is usurping and castrating.

Qualified Minorities

Billy Ingram, senior pastor of Maranatha Community Church and founder and leader of the Southern California Coalition of Religious Leaders, a multiracial organization dedicated to pursuing racial reconciliation in the greater Los Angeles area.

It is an insult when whites say they would like to hire a minority person but don’t know of anyone who is qualified. Within the black community there are plenty of talented, skilled, and educated people. We have great expositors, professionals, and leaders. The problem is that whites have not networked with minorities. They have not gotten to know us. You learn more about a person sitting around a table eating their food than by watching the media.

Black Rage

Spencer Perkins is coauthor with Chris Rice of More Than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel (InterVarsity), from which this has been adapted.

Most black people are angry—angry about our violent history, angry for the hassle that it is to grow up black in America, angry that we can never assume that we won’t be prejudged by our color, angry that we will carry this stigma everywhere we go (it is hardly ever a positive asset), angry that black always seems to get the short end of the stick. And most of all, angry that white America doesn’t understand the reasons for our anger.

This anger can be a very destructive force, as proved by the rioting in South Central Los Angeles after the police who beat Rodney King were acquitted. Backed up against the wall, most blacks will concede that the violence and looting were wrong. But deep in the recesses of most black minds was a tiny voice whispering, If this is the only way we can make them understand how we feel, then so be it.

As I sat in church the Sunday after the riots, a black friend passed me a note that read, “I’m kinda glad they are rioting in L.A.” My friend would never have made this statement in public.

Regardless of what you think about anger, it is present in nearly all American blacks—even in Christians like me—and must be reckoned with. If blacks and whites are to achieve long-term, intimate relationships, blacks must learn to channel their anger and reserve it to fight injustice rather than directing it at [those] whites who are sincerely trying to reach out. Whites, on the other hand, need not make it their mission to convince blacks that there is no justifiable reason for their anger. Instead, whites must seek to understand the reasons behind this anger and then learn not to fear it.

Black anger must be defused with sincere love, not negotiated like a minefield. And since the intended target of black anger is white arrogance and apathy, one of the best first steps toward healing is to build meaningful, nonpatronizing peer relationships with the targets of our anger—white brothers and sisters. It is easy to remain angry with a faceless white race. It is much harder to direct that anger at a particular white brother or sister who has a name and a face.

Learn from Us

Tony Warner, Georgia area director for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship.

The problem is simple. For the most part, white leadership has not been able to overcome the twin evils of dominance and arrogance that have historically marred hopes for biblical relationships across racial lines. For example, whites want blacks to come to their churches or organizations and learn from them, but there is very little inclination for whites to learn from African Americans in a significant way.

Only when whites are prepared to repent of dominance and arrogance in racial matters can a constructive start be made. While I do not limit the power of God, nothing in the track record gives me hope that this will happen on a broad basis. White evangelicals are more willing to pursue a white conservative political agenda than to be reconciled with their African-American brothers and sisters. It raises a fundamental question of their belief and commitment to the biblical gospel.

We Need Each Other

Samuel G. Hines, senior pastor of Third Street Church of God, Washington, D.C.

We need each other. Because of the interdependence of community, we all hold the key to other people’s freedom. White people can’t free themselves of their guilt, fears, and prejudices. Black people can’t free themselves of the oppression and injustices that have been meted out to them for generations. Racial divisions are robbing both sides. Whites not only have to be willing to help, but to be helped by the insights of a suffering people.

Whites can’t help until they have heard the cry of blacks. We’ve got to work with the anger that blacks feel, not around it. It is the church’s responsibility to take culture, race, and ethnicity seriously and teach people to appreciate differences rather than let them scare us. As we do this we’ll understand why the anger is there. And this builds trust.

Black Christians Love the Bible

J. Deotis Roberts, distinguished professor of philosophical theology at Eastern Baptist Seminary, Philadelphia, and president of the American Theological Society.

The word evangelical is a turnoff for most African-American Christians. In this country, it usually refers to a one-dimensional view of Christianity—a spiritual, privatized, vertical view. The term usually carries with it the idea that race relations are expected to be based on a sentimental love without real consideration for social justice.

Black Christians love the Bible, but it is their interpretation that differs from white evangelicals. African Americans know the Bible as a means of oppression as well as a source of liberation. We cannot assume that all Christians get the same message from reading the Bible. Only a liberating, holistic view of Scripture has an appeal for African-American Christians. There can be no genuine reconcilation without liberation and social transformation.

Racism and the Evangelical Church

Billy Graham is an evangelist.

Racial and ethnic hostility is the foremost social problem facing our world today. From the systematic horror of “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia to the random violence ravaging our inner cities, our world seems caught up in a tidal wave of racial and ethnic tension. This hostility threatens the very foundations of modern society.

We must not underestimate the devastating effects of racism on our world. Daily headlines chronicle its grim toll: divided nations and families, devastating wars and human suffering on an unimaginable scale, a constant downward spiral of poverty and hopelessness, children cruelly broken in body and warped in heart and mind. The list is long, but for the sensitive Christian, it is even longer: whole peoples poisoned by violence and racial hatred and closed to the gospel as a result; indifference and resistance by Christians who are intolerant toward those of other backgrounds, ignoring their spiritual and physical needs.

Racism—in the world and in the church—is one of the greatest barriers to world evangelization.

Racial and ethnic hatred is a sin, and we need to label it as such. Jesus told his disciples to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:39); and in reply to the question “Who is my neighbor?” he responded with a pointed parable about a good Samaritan, a member of a despised race (Luke 10:25–37).

Racism is a sin precisely because it keeps us from obeying God’s command to love our neighbor, and because it has its roots in pride and arrogance. Christians who harbor racism in their attitudes or actions are not following their Lord at this point, for Christ came to bring reconciliation—reconciliation between us and God, and reconciliation between each other. He came to accept us as we are, whoever we are, “from every tribe and language and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9).

Tragically, too often in the past evangelical Christians have turned a blind eye to racism or have been willing to stand aside while others take the lead in racial reconciliation, saying it was not our responsibility. (I admit I share in that blame.) As a result, many efforts toward reconciliation in America have lacked a Christian foundation and may not outlive the immediate circumstances that brought them into existence. Our consciences should be stirred to repentance by how far we have fallen short of what God asks us to be as his agents of reconciliation.

Racism is not only a social problem, therefore; because racism is a sin, it is also a moral and spiritual issue. Legal and social efforts to obliterate racism (or at least curb its more onerous effects) have a legitimate place. However, only the supernatural love of God can change our hearts in a lasting way and replace hatred and indifference with love and active compassion.

No other force exists besides the church that can bring people together week after week and deal with their deepest hurts and suspicions. Of all people, Christians should be the most active in reaching out to those of other races, instead of accepting the status quo of division and animosity.

The issues that face us are complex and enormous, and simply wishing they would go away will not solve them. I do not pretend to know the full answer. But let those of us who claim the name of Christ repent of our past failures and, relying on the Holy Spirit, demonstrate to a weary and frightened world that Christ indeed “has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility … through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (Eph. 2:14–15).