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.

Change Is The Conservative Church's Kryptonite

Almost a month ago, a statement written by John MacArthur and friends spoke against the Church's involvement in promoting social justice was reviewed in this blog (click here for that blogpost and there for the statement by MacArthur and friends). But others chimed in too. And one of those challenges, a brief one, was written by Jemar Tisby (click here for a bio) from The Witness: A Black Christian Collection (click here for his article).

We should note here that John MacArthur, the theologian who opposes the idea of the Church promoting social justice, is White. Jemar Tisby is Black and is favor of the Church pursuing social justice. And here we should note that race most likely has something to do with the different responses. That's at least partially true because since MacArthur's White, he still enjoys a privileged place in America. On the other hand, Blacks are still struggling to fully escape the marginalization that the Civil Rights Movement tried to eliminate.  It's not that the Civil Rights Movement initiated no significant changes, it did. But there still exists quite a bit of race-based marginalization for Blacks to overcome especially in today's age where both ideological and racial tribalism reign perhaps as strongly as ever.

In other words, race-based marginalization is not a daily reality for White theologians, like John MacArthur, who live a privileged life; it is, however, all too real for Blacks either directly or through incidents that are forced on friends and/or family.

But there is a another factor that is involved here. That factor is that answering the call to work for social justice is not part of the traditions of many a conservative denomination. And just like the saying in Pennsylvania Dutch country that goes, 'If you ain't Dutch, you ain't much,' so for conservatives, especially religiously conservative ones, their sentiment goes along with the following: if it ain't in tradition, it gets no recognition. That is because of the nature of conservatism, many conservatives have almost a phobia to change because they feel that even small changes eventually severs them from the past.

So how does Tisby challenge MacArthur's opposition to Church involvement in social justice. Tisby, like a conservative draws on the past. However, the past that Tisby draws on is much more recent than MacArthur's past and it was never accepted as part of Church tradition. Thus it gets no recognition. Tisby draws on the Chicago Declaration Of Evangelical Social Concern (click here for the declaration). That declaration is more of confession of sin and failure for not having applied the Gospel and the Scriptures to the social and corporate sins of the day.

Tisby divides up the Chicago Declaration into 4 parts with each part represented by no more than 2 sentences. The first part is the confession of the Church's failure to speak out against the injustices of the day despite what God demands of us. The second part speaks against racism. The third part speaks against the suffering caused by an unjust distribution of the world's resources. And the fourth part. The last part speaks against merging Christianity with nationalism and patriotism.

Tisby's purpose is to answer MacArthur's conservative resistance to change by drawing from the past rather than providing his own challenges. And to an extent, two conservative denominations had at least partially pre-emptively acted in support of Tisby's position. Both the PCA and the SBC have in the past couple of years adopted resolutions that publicly denounce both past participation in racism and resistance against the Civil Rights Movement.

On the other hand, Church history points out the horrors and consequences of the Church not speaking out against social injustice. For in the pre-revolutionary times of the French, Russian, and Spanish Revolutions, the most dominant branch of the Church sided with wealth and power. An apparent immediate result for those respective branches was that they were unnecessarily counted with the enemy when the revolutions came. A more invisible result was that the Church missed many opportunities to preach repentance to those who used their positions of privilege to exploit the less fortunate.

Tisby's response to MacArthur is important is an important read as his the reference he cited. For those who either have little time or who are highly distracted, Tisby's article, as well as the declaration he works from, is short and very accessible. And his response is recommended by this blog.

Real White Christian Guilt

Rod Dreher has caused a real stir by strongly suggesting that, in the light of today's lost culture war, Christians should look to St  Benedict (click here), a monastic, for learning how to live in more tight knit communities. The reason for doing this is so that we don't lose our values and traditions to an increasingly hostile, secular and modernistic culture. 

We've lost the culture war to secularism and modernity, Dreher says, and so now it is our turn to be marginalized. Here we should note the first funny, not ha ha funny, thing about Dreher's view of our situation. That because Christianity has lost control over culture, its enemies stand poised to marginalize us. But never does Dreher say anything about whether Christians had marginalized unbelievers when Christianity ruled culture. We do know that many Christians definitely worked to marginalize people of color and the LGBT community, but as long as unbelievers followed Christian inspired civil laws, such as the Blue Laws. Thus, it seems that Christianity coexisted to some extent with parts of secularism and modernity. But now that secularists and modernists are in control via  the sexual revolution, we can anticipate being persecuted to varying degrees with the result that we will be marginalized in society (click here for Dreher''s Christianity Today article describing his Benedict Option).

So Dreher has proposed that Christianity, in several senses, circle the wagons because of our anticipated torment. And here is the next funny thing. For while Dreher is adamant about denying that we are to withdraw from society, he sees a strong need for us to become more insular because culture has gone too far for us work with it.

Dreher has received both positive and negative reactions from a number of Christians. This blog has rejected Dreher's proposal starting with his analysis of the problem and finishing with his solution.  This blog has stated that Dreher's analysis is flawed because it seems to assume that Christians and unbelievers cannot or should not share society as equals. And this blog has rejected Dreher's solution because it is similar to what was known as 'White Flight.' That was when Whites moved to the suburbs from urban neighborhoods in order to get away from neighborhoods where Blacks were beginning to move into. Other Christians who have rejected Dreher's Benedict Option do so because they see other Christian examples, such as that set by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, of dealing with anticipated marginalization. Certainly, no one could argue against following Bonhoeffer's examples of how to deal with hostility and persecution.

But along comes Jemar Tisby (click here for bio) from the Reformed African American Network to throw an altogether different challenge at Dreher's Benedict Option. For Tisby sees racism in Dreher's approach. How could he possibly see racism in an issue where race has no bearing on the issue at hand? It is actually quite simple. For Tisby asks why, if Dreher is looking for examples on how to handle marginalization, has he not looked to the African American Church for examples of those who handled marginalization? After all, the vast majority of those from African American Church have been marginalized for most of America's history if not all of it.

In an article on the Reformed African American Network (click here for the article), Tisby answers that question. The answer is that White Christians do not go to Black Christians to be taught. In Dreher's case, it was because Dreher looked for help from examples that came from a completely different continent. It might not have occurred to him to look for examples from America because those examples were from those of a different skin color and race. And Tisby does share a couple of examples of Blacks who, because of their graceful responses to some of the most difficult hardships, could become sources of inspiration and enlightenment on how to handle being marginalized.

Tisby's point is rather simple and so obvious. Yet, neither Dreher nor his critics nor his supporters, at least the ones I have read, have considered looking to the African American Church as a resource for how to handle being marginalized in society. And all those who ignored the many African American  examples of how to handle marginalization and worse included me. Yes, I thought that Dreher, despite his denial, proposes a significant withdraw to society. But never once did I think of looking the to African American Church for examples of and wisdom on how to handle marginalization in society. I am as guilty of overlooking the wisdom of the African American Church in this matter as Dreher is and this is despite my having read Martin Luther King Jr. and James Cone.

Before we consider how to handle the changing times in our culture, especially regarding how to endure potential marginalization and persecution, perhaps all of us should put the Benedict Option on hold while we research how the African American Christians endured all of the hardships that White Americans, including White Christians, threw their way.

Is The PCA Apology Better Late Or Never?

In their most recent General Assembly meeting, the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA) did something that might have been unprecedented at the time for a religiously conservative Christian denomination: they apologized. They apologized to Blacks in America for the denomination's practicing of segregation and its support for white supremacy during the days of the Civil Rights movement. The PCA overture that addressed this made mention of something that many of something that my fine fellow flaming fundamentalist friends and family frequently forget to refer to: corporate sin. We should note that corporate sins are those practiced by groups, which in this case the PCA denominations. But the sins that the PCA was repenting from were not just the sins of individual Christians in the denomination, they were repenting of the sins practiced by the denomination as an institution in the past.

Jemar Tisby (click here for the bio) wrote a blogpost reaction to the PCA's apology for the Reformed African American Network website (click here for the article). His remarks were very reasonable and balanced. And instead of commenting on what he wrote, I strongly suggest that you click the link to the article and read it for yourself.

What I would like to point out is something that Tisby misses in reacting to the PCA apology. That something missing is a perspective on racism held by Martin Luther King Jr. The perspective I am referring to is expressed below in a speech he made to voice opposition to the Vietnam War (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.

We should note two points made by King here as the PCA and some other religiously conservative churches have become sensitive to past sins and oppressions. We want to draw attention to these things not as an attempt to take away attention from the positive steps that the denomination is taking. Rather, it hoped that the corrections made here will further enhance the PCA's attempts at racial reconciliation.

What were King's points? The first point is that racism is not a problem that stands by itself. It is inextricably connected to other sins. The result is that if we try to significantly reduce or even eliminate racism from the Church, we cannot accomplish that by addressing racism alone. 

What must we also focus on when trying to combat racism in our ranks? King notes that the driving force for the evils of racism, poverty, and militarism has to do with materialism and our society's inclination to value things over people. And here, what King is referring to by things consists of gadgets, profits, and property rights.

Yes, we must apply a concerted focus on racism. But for as long as things are more important than people, we will be inclined to compromise moral values that promote division amongst us and one of those divisions will be race. And note that if we address what King saw as the root cause for problems like racism, we would be killing more than two birds with one stone.

Thus, the PCA must not only apologize for racism. It must start addressing its corporate participation in other sins such as supporting an exploitive economic system that invisibly leads people to embracing racism, materialism, and militarism. Yes, we should be very grateful that the PCA is apologizing for its institutional support of racism in the past. But if King is right, to focus on racism without addressing our tendencies to value things more than people is rather self-sabotaging. For as long as things are more important than people, our own practices and state policies will reflect those priorities. And for as long as we hold to those priorities, we will be clinging to racism regardless of what we claim to be doing.