Denying The Existence Of Elephants In The Room

Sho Baraka (click here for a bio) wrote about a non-incident in his church that seems most appropriate to mention today. He talked about how the acquittal of George Zimmerman for the killing of Trayvon Martin was ignored in his church despite the racism that exists in our nation. This angered Baraka greatly. I am, in anger, anticipating a similar non-response in my church to the separating of children from the parents who have tried to enter our nation illegally. And, despite the fact that some of our nation's foreign policies are responsible for the impetus of many to try to enter our nation illegally, I have already seen too many conservative defenses for the separation policy to not be livid over the situation.

Baraka's article (click here for the article) strongly states that churches must address the racism elephant in the room. Otherwise both a strong anger by some and an absence of reconciliation between others in our churches will result. However, Baraka provides some guidelines for how racism should be dealt with in our churches. His guidelines preclude claims of being colorblind by some in an effort to show that they have no racism. Such claims also fail to recognize the presence of people of different races.  His guidelines preclude ignoring racism in our nation's history. And his guideline wisely preclude the use of labels on one another pending on what we say and believe. And his guidelines, so far, are simple and yet necessary to mention.

In addition, Baraka's guidelines have a stated purpose in mind: racial reconciliation within our churches. What Baraka wants to accomplish does not include playing the same old game while reversing the positions of the 1st and last place teams. He wants us to play a new game where teams aren't competing to be superior to one another. Baraka wants the house of God to live by a different set of rules than the world does. So Baraka wants problems like racism in society to be addressed and dealt with in the churches to help people in the churches deal with it and, at the same time, for people in the churches to live in a state of reconciliation and forgiveness. And for that to happen, Baraka correctly believes that our churches have to address the issue of racism in society head on.

And so far, everything in Baraka's article is good. But what is wrong with his article is what is missing from it. For what is missing from his article are the insights of Martin Luther King Jr. on racism. A good summation of King's views on racism can be seen in the quote below (click here for the source):

 I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

 Now we should note in the above quote that King would substitute 'economic exploitation' for the word 'materalism' when talking about racism at other times. Other than that, his above quote should be examined word by word. And when we do that, what we find is that racism is among 3 problematic elephants that exist in the world. And when one listens to King talk about these 3 evils, he explicitly states that we cannot eliminate just one of these problems, we must eliminate all of them together. Thus those who say that they want to eliminate racism but don't also mention exploitation and militarism, are doomed to failure.

Another part of King's quote we must pay attention to is that the cause for these three problems is found in society's valuing of gadgets, profits, and property rights more than its valuing of people. And thus, the solution to racism and the other 3 problems at least includes the changing society's values.

Why didn't Baraka mention what King said? We could venture a guess that Baraka was just writing about racial reconciliation in the Church. But how can racial reconciliation occur in our churches when our churches don't acknowledge the other problematic elephants that are inseparable from racism?

Here, perhaps we find the elephant that many conservative churches are most reluctant to mention. Lately, conservative churches have been acknowledging their role in maintaining or promoting racism in the past. Many conservative churches have acknowledged that elephant in the room. But church history shows that the elephant that is least likely to be mentioned in conservative churches is that of economic classism and exploitation. That is because, many conservative churches have sided with wealth and power. 

That siding by the predominant branch of the Church with wealth and power was true in the pre-revoutionary times of France, Russia, and Spain. In France and Spain, the predominant branch of the church was the Roman Church while in Russia, it was the Orthodox Church. And the results of that siding with wealth and power after the respective revolutions took place was unnecessary persecution of the Church and a tarnishing of the reputation of the Gospel.

Certainly while King talked about the problem of racism in society,  Baraka's concern is about racism in churches. But if being thing-oriented contributes to racism, then there can be no racial reconciliation inside or outside of our churches without acknowledging one of the causes of racism.

In the end, what Baraka wrote was good. But we need to go beyond our concerns for what happens in our churches to what also exists in our society if we are going to tackle racism in either place. That is especially true if King's views on racism and how it is inseparably tied to economic exploitation and militarism and how is caused by society valuing things more than people are true.