Systemic Racism: Church

Estimated Reading Time: 15 minutes

“Black visitors showed up at New Seasons [Church] for worship...They were told to wait in their vehicles and one visitor’s daughter was told to use the convenience store bathroom down the road. ‘It was because of the color of their skin that they were turned away at the door,’ [Hans] Wunch [director of missions for the Mallary Baptist Association] said.” (Holly Meyer, “Georgia church expelled from Southern Baptist Convention over racial discrimination charges”)

No, this act of racial exclusion didn’t take place in the 1950s or 60s. This happened in 2018.

I am wrapping up the systemic racism series here on the Broadening the Narrative blog. To learn more about this series, you can read the first fourteen posts. I am learning and sharing as a learner, not as a teacher or an expert. Today’s post addresses systemic racism in the Christian church. All over this country, various iterations of stories of racial discrimination and a lack of love from white Christians for our neighbors who are not white are playing out in Christian churches, specifically in white and multiethnic churches. In her new book Mixed Blessing: Embracing the Fullness of Your Multiethnic Identity, Chandra Crane wrote about the multiethnic church she attends: “I’m not sure what to make of the large numbers of majority-culture folks who love the fact that the preacher gets excited, the choir sways, and the organ hums...but get upset if someone mentions police brutality or the plight of immigrants or the complexity of having our church building on lands stolen from the Choctaw” (Crane, 2020, pp. 168-169). I can’t say the witness of white Christians is at stake because we’ve already lost credibility due to our outright participation in injustice or our silence and complicity historically and presently.

Data

We all know the famous words spoken by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” Is this still true today? Let’s examine racial segregation in churches as well as beliefs held about racial diversity, race relations, social justice, and the reason for racial disparities by Christians.

In the article “Sunday Morning in America Still Segregated – and That’s OK With Worshipers,” Bob Smietana reported, “Sunday morning remains one of the most segregated hours in American life, with more than 8 in 10 congregations made up of one predominant racial group. And most worshipers like it that way...Evangelicals (71 percent) are most likely to say their church is diverse enough, while Whites (37 percent) are least likely to say their church should become more diverse. African Americans (51 percent) and Hispanic Americans (47 percent) were more likely to say their church needs to be more diverse...Still, for many pastors, the issue of racial reconciliation seldom comes up in sermons. Four in 10 (43 percent) say they speak on the issue once a year or less. Twenty-nine percent of pastors rarely or never do.”

Besheer Mohamed and Kiana Cox wrote in the article “Before protests, black Americans said religious sermons should address race relations,” “Six-in-ten black adults (62%) say it is important for houses of worship to address ‘political topics such as immigration and race relations’ – including 23% who say covering these topics is ‘essential.’ By contrast, 36% of white Americans say it is important for sermons to deal with these topics, and only 8% say it is essential. Four-in-ten white Americans (42%) say these themes should not be discussed in sermons. Hispanics are more divided on this issue than black or white Americans are; about half (53%) say it is important for sermons to cover political issues…Black Americans are nearly three times as likely as white adults to say they heard a sermon dealing with criminal justice reform (32% vs. 12%) in 2019, with Hispanics falling between the two (20%).”

Finally, in the article “Racism among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious. That's no coincidence,” Robert P. Jones explained, “Surveys conducted by PRRI in 2018 found that white Christians — including evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics — are nearly twice as likely as religiously unaffiliated whites to say the killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans. And white Christians are about 30 percentage points more likely to say monuments to Confederate soldiers are symbols of Southern pride rather than symbols of racism. White Christians are also about 20 percentage points more likely to disagree with this statement: ‘Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class.’ And these trends generally persist even in the wake of the recent protests for racial justice.”

History

The statistics above are not accidental. Why does racial segregation in Christian churches persist? Why is there such a divide between the beliefs held about racial diversity, race relations, social justice, and the reason for racial disparities?

In part, white Christians haven’t told the truth about our history. In her book Native: Identity, Belonging, and Rediscovering God, Kaitlin Curtice communicated, “For a number of reasons, church spaces have become unsafe for so many people, and if we want to be honest about how that happened, we have to be honest about the origins of the colonizing, white American church, which was birthed out of European ways of knowing God and which used and still uses empire to get what it wants. The Doctrine of Discovery, conceived in and clarified over time by the church of Europe, gave European Christian men the power to overtake the people and the land in the Americas, which meant abuse of women and children in the process, abuse that continues today” (Curtice, 2020, p. 109). This is in stark contrast with how other Christian churches operate. For example, Besheer Mohamed and Kiana Cox wrote in the article referenced above, “For black Americans, faith and racial justice have long intersected. Throughout history, houses of worship served as central gathering places where black communities discussed political issues and civic action. This often took the form of protest strategy meetings and rallies. But political activism also infused the sermons, hymns and other religious content of many black congregations. Given that tradition, black Americans and white Americans have differing views on the role that political topics such as race relations and criminal justice reform should play in religious sermons.”

Why have Christians who are not white had to gather together and invest in their own churches? To see how we got here, let’s examine the history of the Christian church in the United States.

In Native, Kaitlin Curtice also wrote, “How can the white American church, with a history of complicity and abuse toward Indigenous peoples, ask any questions about the nature of God if we cannot ask ourselves to take an honest look at our own intentions? As Vine Deloria Jr. says in his book God is Red?, ‘Instead of working toward the Kingdom of God on Earth, history becomes the story of a particular race fulfilling its manifest destiny.’ Whiteness is a culture that requires the erasure of all others, considering them less-than. It is believing in that well-known metaphor of a melting pot that we so love to hold on to in America, but erasing the value of the lives of the ‘other’ within the narrative and in the process presenting the idea of assimilation as virtue. But really, assimilation is about power, power that puts shackles on Black people, Indigenous people, and other people of color” (Curtice, 2020, p. 45). Curtice further explained, “The government and the church came alongside each other to make the children in the [Indian boarding] schools both more Westernized and more ‘Christian,’ because America itself was built on the premise of a colonizing Christian empire...These boarding schools were filled with abuse and neglect of all kinds, stories that we’d never openly talk about in church or even in American society at large” (Curtice, 2020, p. 61).

White Christians created and sustained the conditions of racial oppression throughout this nation’s history. Jemar Tisby authored an entire book about the church and race. In The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, Tisby delineated, “Harsh though it may sound, the facts of history nevertheless bear out this truth: there would be no black church without racism in the white church. The first congregations of black Christians in America often met in secrecy for fear of persecution...Black Christians did not always meet in secret. Sometimes they worshipped in the same congregations as white Christians, albeit under segregated seating. This was a pragmatic decision on the part of white [Christians]. Controlling and monitoring [enslaved people] was easier if they were in the same building” (Tisby, 2019, p. 52). In chapter 5, “Defending Slavery at the Onset of the Civil War,” Tisby unpacked the Methodist, Baptist, and Presbyterian denominational splits over the issue of enslavement. When I talk with my kids about race, one of the points I make is that visible racial injustice that was acceptable in white Christian churches was not that long ago. Tisby wrote, “[Linda] Gordon also points to white Protestant complicity in the racism of the KKK: ‘It’s estimated that 40,000 ministers were members of the Klan, and these people were sermonizing regularly, explicitly urging people to join the Klan.’ The KKK’s dedication to race and nation rose to the level of religious devotion because of its overt appeal to Christianity and the Bible” (Tisby, 2019, p. 102). My grandmother, who is still living, was alive during this second wave of the KKK Gordon described.

In the article “The Real Origins of the Religious Right,” Randall Balmer explained, "The IRS had sent its first letter to Bob Jones University in November 1970 to ascertain whether or not it discriminated on the basis of race. The school responded defiantly: It did not admit African Americans. Although Bob Jones Jr., the school’s founder, argued that racial segregation was mandated by the Bible, Falwell and [Paul] Weyrich quickly sought to shift the grounds of the debate, framing their opposition in terms of religious freedom rather than in defense of racial segregation...In 1975, again in an attempt to forestall IRS action, the school admitted blacks to the student body, but, out of fears of miscegenation, refused to admit unmarried African-Americans. The school also stipulated that any students who engaged in interracial dating, or who were even associated with organizations that advocated interracial dating, would be expelled. The IRS was not placated. On January 19, 1976, after years of warnings—integrate or pay taxes—the agency rescinded the school’s tax exemption. For many evangelical leaders, who had been following the issue since Green v. Connally, Bob Jones University was the final straw...Although abortion had emerged as a rallying cry by 1980, the real roots of the religious right lie not in the defense of a fetus but in the defense of racial segregation.” In The Color of Compromise, Tisby wrote, “In recent years, Bob Jones University has officially changed its views on race and interracial relationships. In 2000, George W. Bush, who was the Republican candidate for president at the time, endured harsh criticism for speaking at BJU. In response to the controversy, the school’s president, Bob Jones III, led the decision to officially change the rules and allow interracial dating. In 2008, Stephen Jones, the new leader of the school since 2005, issued a formal apology for Bob Jones University’s past racial recalcitrance” (Tisby, 2019, p. 165).

Racial injustice, oppression, and inequality, was possible because of the white moderate, as the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. conveyed in his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” when he penned the words, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action’.”

Enslavement, genocide, Jim Crow laws, and domestic terrorism through lynchings have fueled fear of the devastation and death that white people, including white Christians, can usher in simply because a nation built on and sustained by white supremacy allows it. Isaac Adams wrote in the article “Why White Churches Are Hard for Black People,” “Can we please not say the American church hasn’t been persecuted when the black church has known extreme persecution - Charleston and arson being the most recent exhibitions?” Four examples of the persecution Black Christians have experienced include:

- “A 22-year-old man pleaded guilty on Monday to intentionally setting fires to three predominantly black Baptist churches in Louisiana over a 10-day period...Three fires destroyed churches that had existed for more than a century and had been the spiritual homes of generations of black families, evoking the long history of racist crimes committed in the Jim Crow South. Since the 1950s, black churches across the South have been targets of arson, bombings and armed assault.” (Mariel Padilla, “Louisiana Man Pleads Guilty to Burning Down Three Black Churches”)

- “One by one, friends and family members walked up to the witness stand and testified about the nine black church members gunned down during a Bible study in Charleston on June 17, 2015.” The church members were Rev. Clementa Pinckney, Myra Thompson, Rev. Sharonda Coleman-Singleton, Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor, Cynthia Hurd, Rev. Daniel L. Simmons Sr., Ethel Lance, Susie Jackson, and Tywanza Sanders. (“Charleston church shooting victims remembered at ****** **** trial”)

- “Four young girls busily prepared for their big day. It was September 15, 1963, the day of the ‘Youth Day’ Sunday service at Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama...The girls - Addie Mae Collins (14), Denise McNair (11), Carole Robertson (14), and Cynthia Wesley (14) - had just finished Sunday school and were in the church basement making final adjustments to their white dresses when the bomb exploded. The blast, which killed all four girls and injured at least twenty others, left a hole in the floor five feet wide and two feet deep” (Tisby, 2019, p. 13).

- “Jim Crow could not have worked as effectively as it did without the frequent and detestable practice of lynching…The exact details of the conflict leading up to the lynching of Luther and Mary Holbert in February 1904 are not clear, but we know it was about love...The lynching didn’t happen immediately. It was planned for the next day, a Sunday afternoon after church so a larger crowd could gather. The murderers strategically chose their location for maximum intimidation of the black populace. It was to take place on the property of a black church in Doddsville, Mississippi. The black church has historically been the locus of religious and communal life for black people, so performing a lynching on church grounds would send a message to all black people in the area that no place was safe from white power and hatred. More than a thousand people showed up to gawk at the lynching of Luther and Mary Holbert” (Tisby, 2019, pp. 106-107).

In Native, Kaitlin Curtice wrote, “Ongoing trauma was evident in the way entire generations of Indigenous people left those boarding schools (if they didn’t die while they were there) unable to reconnect to their cultures, often stripped of memories and the ability to understand who they were and where they came from. We are seeing this mirrored today in our immigration policies under the Trump administration, as families seeking asylum at the border and people who have lived in the US for years are suddenly being torn away from one another, and as children are put in cages in detention centers where they are abused, neglected, and in some cases killed” (Curtice, 2020, p. 61).

With all of the above historical context taken into account, it makes sense that 81% of white evangelical Christians voted for Donald Trump in 2016, as described in the article “Blessed Are The Religious Right, For Theirs Is The Presidency Of Trump” by Brandi Miller. Miller explained, “White Jesus arrived in America when white people did. The early colonizers needed to justify the brutality of Manifest Destiny ― massive land theft, genocide and enslavement. From the earliest days of U.S. colonization, it was vital that their God agree with their hostile takeover of the continent, and their desire to dominate, suppress and eliminate anyone who resisted. Jesus was the key to their success, but not just any Jesus. They needed permission and anointing from White Jesus. White Jesus is not a person, but a tool, a tool that has been used by the religious and secular white alike to justify voting for Trump.”

We will repeat these same injustices, even with a new administration, if white Christians don’t tell the truth, repent, and commit to repairing the damage done in the name of Jesus. Racial injustice today continues because of the silence and complicity of the white moderate and white Christians.

Action Steps

Complete additional research on the topic of systemic racism in the church. The majority of my research yielded results about Black, Indigenous, and white Christians and churches, and I didn’t include seminaries or missions, so I will link additional resources at the end of the post. The amount of linked articles, books, podcasts, videos, and songs isn’t meant to overwhelm but to demonstrate that the inexhaustible list I compiled sheds light on how this subject has been addressed by numerous Christians long before I wrote this post.

Have action that follows your research and reflection.

- Stop colonizing and centering whiteness in Christianity. In Native, Kaitlin Curtice wrote, “Growing up in church, I went on several short-term mission trips, and I showed up at church once a week to participate in F.A.I.T.H. visits, which were door-to-door evangelism to people who attended our church once or twice, just to see if they needed saving and, possibly, community. While our intentions were to care for people, to love people, we instead created systems of colonization through our evangelicalism and missional programs. This problem of centering whiteness within Christianity has resulted in the invasion and erasure of cultures all over the world” (Curtice, 2020, p. 49).

- In chapter 11 of The Color of Compromise, “The Fierce Urgency of Now,” Jemar Tisby listed solutions to seek: reparations, take down Confederate monuments, learn from the Black church, start a new seminary, host freedom schools and pilgrimages, make Juneteenth a national holiday, participate in the modern-day Civil Rights Movement, publicly denounce racism, and start a Civil Rights Movement toward the church.

- Support continued policy changes that dismantle systemic racism by contacting local, state, and national elected officials, including H.R.40 - Commission to Study and Develop Reparation Proposals for African-Americans Act. 

 

- Vote, show up, and engage in meaningful ways to dismantle systems of oppression. Do all of this under the leadership of Black, Brown, Indigenous, Asian/Asian American, and Pacific Islander people.

What to Expect Now That This Series Is Concluding

This is the final regular post of the systemic racism series, but I will post a conclusion post next month. Then, I will be taking a break from writing blog posts. Thank you for reading these posts.

As I look at the Equal Justice Initiative calendar and read it to my kids, I see that every single day conveys at least one injustice, usually based on race. These are past and present injustices, spanning hundreds of years, demonstrating that racism in this country is not simply an individual problem. Rather, racism is a systemic problem, infecting institutions and structures. Further, this problem centers around justice, therefore it's a problem Godde is concerned about, which means I must be concerned. I don’t think systemic racism is solely a political issue but also a spiritual issue. I am called to love my neighbor, and one way I can do this is by joining the fight to dismantle systems of oppression so that all people can flourish.

(Resources are linked below.)

Videos

“#SeminaryWhileBlack” - Jude 3 Project and The Witness: A Black Christian Collective featuring Lisa Fields, Ally Henny, Jemar Tisby, Maliek Blade and Ekemini Uwan 

Race - The Power of an Illusion 

Podcasts

Almost Heretical: “Brandi Miller - Farewell White Theology”

Almost Heretical: “Lisa Sharon Harper - Good News & Bad News”

Almost Heretical: “Mark Charles - The Truth of Our History”

Broadening the Narrative: “Embracing Your Multiethnic Identity with Chandra Crane”

Broadening the Narrative: “Intersection of Multiple Identities with Sequana Murray” 

Existential: “Episode 21 (I Am Not a Virus) with Kathy Khang”  

Sincerely, Lettie: “The Jim Crow Series: Laws, Racism, & Miscegenation”

Truth’s Table: “Gender Apartheid”

Truth’s Table: “Multiethnic Churches: A Foretaste of Heaven or Bulwarks of White Supremacy Part 1”  

Truth’s Table: “Multiethnic Churches: An Interview with Dr. Glenn Bracey (Part 2)”

Truth’s Table: “Multiethnic Churches: An Interview with Rev. Russ Whitfield (Part 3)”  

Truth’s Table: “Multiethnic Churches: An Interview with Laura Pritchard (Part 4)”  

Truth’s Table: “Reparations NOW: Ecclesiastical Reparations with Rev. Duke Kwon” 

Truth’s Table: “#SilenceIsNotSpiritual with Lisa Sharon Harper” 

Music

“Design” by Bandy featuring Nicki Pappas

“Playing Hookey” by Andre Henry

“Facts” by Lecrae

“Fan Mail” by Micah Bournes feat. Propaganda

“Long Live the Champion” by KB feat. Yariel and GabrielRodriguezEMC

“A Time Like This” by Micah Bournes 

“Too Much?” by Micah Bournes

Reading

Articles

“A Letter from the Angry Black Woman in Your Pew” by LySaundra Campbell

“A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshipers Are Leaving White Evangelical Churches” by Campbell Robertson

“Asian Americans Call on the Church to Preach Against Coronavirus Racism” by Kate Shellnut

“Black Church Figures You Should Know - Howard Thurman” Jude 3 Project Series

“Captive Audience: A Black Woman's Reflection on the Sparrow Conference” by DeeDee Roe

"Closing the Gulf Between Black and White Christians" by Emma Green

“Decolonized Discipleship” by Ekemini Uwan

“4 Reasons We Left the SBC” by John Onwuchekwa

“If Your Church is Silent Right Now—You Should Leave it” by John Pavlovitz

“Is God racist or is it my church?” by Alexis Freeman

"My Story of Spiritual Abuse at Renovation Church in Atlanta" by Judy Wu Dominick

“Only Preach the Gospel?” by Thabiti Anyabwile

“The Mask of Multicultural Churches” by Lamont Francies

“When the Church Uses God’s Name to Oppress” by Kaitlin Curtice

“White Evangelical Churches Use ‘Race Tests’ on People of Color, Study Claims” by Nicola A. Menzie

“White Evangelicals Must Ask, ‘Why Does Our Theology Lead to Republicanism?’” by Jemar Tisby

“White Evangelicals, This is Why People Are Through With You” by John Pavlovitz

“Why Jesus’ Skin Color Matters” by Dr. Christena Cleveland

 

Books

“A Latinx Theology Reading List” by Santi Rodriguez

Age of Jim Crow (The Norton Casebooks in History) by Jane Dailey

Be the Bridge: Pursuing God’s Heart for Racial Reconciliation by Latasha Morrison  

Beyond Colorblind: Redeeming Our Ethnic Identity by Sarah Shin

Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America by Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith 

Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez 

One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race and Love by John Perkins and Karen Waddles  

The Last Segregated Hour: The Memphis Kneel-Ins and the Campaign for Southern Church Desegregation by Stephen R. Haynes

The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power by D. L. Mayfield

The Very Good Gospel: How Everything Wrong Can Be Made Right by Lisa Sharon Harper  

What Comes Naturally: Miscegenation Law and the Making of Race in America by Peggy Pascoe  

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