Breaking Away From Racism Is Hard To Do

Jemar Tisby (click here for a bio) has recently attempted to address the problem of racism in conservative American churches. The title of the article is Why White Nationalism Tempts White Christians (click here for the article). And though he has some very insightful things to say, there is a hint that  Tisby is fishing for a more comprehensive approach as to why White Christians find it difficult to away from white nationalism and racism.

What are some of the very good things things Tisby says?  Below is a partial list. We should first note that Tisby uses the recent mass shooting in a California synagogue as a backdrop for his discussion. He does so because the shooter there was a member of a very conservative Christian denomination: the Orthodox Presbyterian Church. And this has a special interest for me because I too am a member of that denomination.

• Too often Christian individuals and institutions act as if general statements condemning bigotry and saccharine assertions of racial and ethnic equality are sufficient to combat white nationalism.
   
• White denominations, especially in the theologically Reformed branch of the church, should hold specific workshops, classes and special events explaining white nationalist beliefs and tactics so their members can guard against subversion.
   
• White churches and leaders must bring members who express white nationalist views or sympathies under church discipline, with the ultimate goal of discipleship and restoration. But, if necessary, suspension from the Lord’s Supper and excommunication should be an option.
   
• Maybe white racists and nationalists can sit comfortably in the pews of certain churches because whenever calls for social justice arise their leaders say that such issues are a “distraction” from the gospel.
   
• Their view of the gospel only focuses on issues of personal salvation and individual piety. It never touches broader matters of systemic and institutional injustice. It has little to say about white supremacy and its specific manifestations such as white nationalism and the alt-right.

We should also note that the magazine of the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, New Horizons, had just, previously to the shooting, published an issue where a number of articles dealt with racism (click here for that issue). In that article, there is a reference made to the Orthodox Presbyterian Church's 1974 report on racism (click here for that report). Here we should note that within the last two years, other conservative American denominations have made public statements about their dealings with racism.

Now the mentioning of the most recent edition of the New Horizons magazine that deals with racism and the reference to the OPC's 1974 report on racism is because what is missing in those works coincide with what is missing in Tisby's article. And what is missing, at least for the OPC, is an important reason why racism can stealthly find a home in that denomination. The reason why those works are incomplete is because of the denomination's insularity. For almost nowhere in the New Horizons articles or the OPC report on racism are there any outside references that would address racism as it exists in America.

The reason for the denomination's insularity is because of its theology. And this is where, as Tisby wrote in the article, the denomination's theology interferes with its battle against racism and white nationalism. The denomination's theology says that God's Word is sufficient in terms of teaching us what to believe and how to live. And because of that, the OPC's approach to racism have rested solely on using the Scriptures to address racism. But the problem with that approach isn't that the Scriptures are insufficient. The problem is that Scriptures give us little to no information, history and insight into why racism in America has taken the shape it has.

And because of the denomination's insularity, what others have said regarding how we should battle racism has also been ignored. At this point we can say that it has been ignored for reasons cited above from Tisby's article. That insights from social justice activists regarding how to contend against the social injustices of racism are looked at as an optional secondary information that do not explicitly direct us to the Scriptures. Too many of us believe that if we read the Scriptures, we will know all that we need to know about how to resist and confront racism. But that approach causes us deliberately neglect to read insights from people who have observed what is involved in white nationalism and racism in America.
 
Here we should note that Martin Luther King Jr. tells us that racism is due to a preference of society for things rather than people and that racism is inseparably bound to economic exploitation/materialism (King would vary as to which one he would include in the list) and militarism so that one cannot eliminate racism by targeting racism alone. We should note that a vast majority of conservative American Christians have no exposure to King's view of the entanglements that maintain racism's web.  As for what King said, it is below (click here for a 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.

We might also note from King's quote, that in order to topple racism, we have to be ready to tip some of conservative American Christians' sacred cows. This is a point that Tisby also seems to have overlooked. Obviously, we need to note that America was founded as a white nationalist nation mostly by white nationalists. But if that isn't enough, if society being thing-oriented rather than person-oriented maintains racism, then our cherished economic system, Capitalism, must also be made vulnerable to a very cutting examination and challenge. For American Capitalism  pushes society toward being 'thing-oriented.'

Despite what Tisby has missed, he gives many helpful insights into how conservative American Churches, like the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, can address its and society's problems with racism and white nationalism. His article deserves to be read and reread a number of times.