Final Q&A: Why has the church stepped back from being on the forefront of race relations?
I was on a panel last week at an event entitled Uprooting Racism from the Church, sponsored by the Michigan State University student group MSU Project 1:17. In addition to the live panel, they took anonymous questions from the audience for the speakers to answer online. I’ve realized recently that I haven’t posted about racism / racial reconciliation in a while. Somewhat because I’ve been busy with posts about sexual purity, lust, porn, marriage, etc. that go along with my recent book release. But to my discredit, it’s also because some white Christians who would be interested in buying my book about sexual purity would also be upset about what I write about race. So in my fear of man, I have backed down from speaking the truth (the same temptation I face as a pastor with the topic of race, Lord help me). How quickly and easy it is to fall into this trap! I had also become fatigued with debates and fatigued with people being upset with me, so had taken the easy road. I apologize for that to anyone reading this, especially my friends of color.
I thought posting a blog with my answers to these Q&A questions would be helpful because I’ve already written them, and because I’ve previously articles on these subjects, which you can find at the bottom of each post. There will be 3 of these, with the questions having been anonymously submitted from the crowd at the event earlier this week. The original format for these was on a Facebook event page, which I’ve just copied and pasted here. I’ll post one each day over the next three days, this is day #3 of 3:
The Question:
Why has the church stepped back from being on the forefront of race relations? Do you think if we stepped in and did it God’s way, we could end it?
My Answer:
For the white church, it has typically avoided race relations historically. In the Civil Rights Movement, it didn’t want to offend / lose its white members or jeopardize being able to “preach the gospel” to white lost people who also would not have been on board with the Civil Rights message. I put “preach the gospel” in quotes because we did such a disservice to Jesus when we divorced his teachings from how to get to heaven, what we often now call “the gospel.” Yes, the gospel is how we get to heaven, but it’s also entering into Jesus’s Kingdom, where he and his teachings are on the throne. We can’t divorce the two. I think the black church is still heavily engaged in race relations, but our society is much more secular than in the 60’s, so the voice of the Church isn’t as heard in the public forum. Though there are definitely still prominent black Church leaders on the forefront of race relations today. I think it would idealistic to say we could end it if we stepped in and did it God’s way, though that should be our prayer and God can do anything. I say idealistic because Dr. King and the powerful movement of the black Church in the 60’s wasn’t able to end it, and sadly so much of the white Church today is in denial that there is even a problem. And I mean deep denial where there’s a lot of anger if it’s even brought up. It’s hard to picture those folks jumping in to the forefront, or at all. Though I am encouraged to see movement! While there are still a lot of naysayers in the white Church, there is also some movement which is very encouraging to see.
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