Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America

by Michael O. Emerson

Our argument is that evangelicals desire to end racial division and inequality, and attempt to think and act accordingly. But, in the process, they likely do more to perpetuate the racial divide than they do to tear it down.

Just as important for our purposes, evangelicals believe in “engaged orthodoxy.” By engaged orthodoxy we mean taking the conservative faith beyond the boundaries of the evangelical subculture, and engaging the larger culture and society. To be sure, for many non-evangelical Americans, this is controversial. For evangelicals, however, this engaged orthodoxy is part of their very identity. Evangelicals want their traditional faith to offer solutions to pressing social problems, such as race relations.

A major problem in understanding race relations in the United States is that we tend to understand race, racism, and the form of racialization as constants rather than as variables.

It understands that racial practices that reproduce racial division in the contemporary United States “(1) are increasingly covert, (2) are embedded in normal operations of institutions, (3) avoid direct racial terminology, and (4) are invisible to most Whites.”11

Rather, it is because they are better able to follow core American ideals—in this instance, a nice home in a quiet neighborhood with parks and good schools. In the racialized United States, this means ending up in “whiter” neighborhoods and schools. To reproduce racialization does not require “racism” or “prejudice” as they are typically defined.

White and Black Household Median Net Worth and Net Financial Assets by Selected Characteristics (in Dollars)

Other areas of health also diverge by race. For instance, African-American babies die at a rate over twice the frequency of white babies, African-American mothers are four times more likely to die in childbirth than white Americans, and young African-American males are six times more likely to be murdered than are young white American males.33

She concludes by pointing out that the need for writers to employ racial rhetoric in making their arguments “reflects the degree to which race shapes our understandings of the world.”39

In short, religion in the United States can serve as a moral force in freeing people, but not in bringing them together as equals across racial lines. American religion is thus one embodiment of larger American contradictions.

Because evangelicals view their primary task as evangelism and discipleship,1 they tend to avoid issues that hinder these activities. Thus, they are generally not counter-cultural. With some significant exceptions, they avoid “rocking the boat,” and live within the confines of the larger culture. At times they have been able to call for and realize social change, but most typically their influence has been limited to alterations at the margins.

Evangelicals usually fail to challenge the system not just out of concern for evangelism, but also because they support the American system and enjoy its fruits. They share the Protestant work ethic, support laissez-faire economics, and sometimes fail to evaluate whether the social system is consistent with their Christianity.

Our present point is that although some of the more outspoken abolitionists were evangelical, most evangelicals were not outspoken abolitionists.

Denied equal participation in the existing churches, “the move toward racially separate churches was not a matter of doctrinal disagreement, but a protest against unequal and restrictive treatment.”58

The key to success and the welfare of the society was for individuals to work hard and be disciplined. Christianity was an important component. The ethic was the gospel of work.64

The emergent racial difficulties in the North eventually quieted down, in the eyes of whites, thus requiring less attention. This “quieting down” was, as Massey and Denton outline, simply earlier racial violence giving way to more “civilized” forms of maintaining advantage and segregation, such as the formation of neighborhood “improvement” associations, zoning restrictions, the preemptive purchase of property that African Americans might buy, redlining, racial steering, and restrictive covenants.69

With World War II came new changes, particularly the acceleration of suburbanization and white flight in the face of continued black migration to northern cities. While in 1940 only one-third of metropolitan residents lived in suburbs, by 1965, the majority did. The end result, according to Massey and Denton, was that nearly all American cities with significant black populations—North, South, and West—had developed black ghettos.77

Some whites did indeed participate in Civil Rights marches, freedom rides, and the like, but they were rarely evangelical Christians. Rather, they were northern liberal Christians, Catholics, Jews, and non-Christians. Southern evangelicals generally sided against black evangelicals on the segregation issue, and northern evangelicals seemed more preoccupied with other issues—such as evangelism, and fighting communism and theological liberalism. In fact, when we reviewed a central periodical of evangelicals, Christianity Today, from its founding in 1957 to 1965, we found, on average, less than two articles per year on race issues, despite this being a tumultuous period in American race relations history.

As for the laity, they were probably even quieter on the race issue. William Martin notes, “Most evangelicals, even in the North, did not think it their duty to oppose segregation; it was enough to treat the blacks they knew personally with courtesy and fairness.”79 That is, they opposed personal prejudice and discrimination, but not the racialized social system itself.

To understand this, we must account for the pre-millennial view that had come to dominate the American evangelical worldview and played a role in limiting evangelical action on race issues. According to this view, the present world is evil and will inevitably suffer moral decline until Christ comes again. Thus, to devote oneself to social reform is futile. The implications of this view were clearly expressed by Billy Graham. In response to King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech that his children might one day play together with white children, Graham, who had been invited but did not attend the 1963 March on Washington, said: “Only when Christ comes again will little white children of Alabama walk hand in hand with little black children.”82 This was not meant to be harsh, but rather what he and most white evangelicals perceived to be realistic.83

As Myrdal aptly foretold: “The younger generations [the leaders and persons who had come to power by 1964]… are less indoctrinated against the Negro than their parents were. But they are also farther away from him, know less about him and, sometimes, get more irritated by what little they see.”84 As the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders reported in 1968, in the aftermath of the Civil Rights movement, “our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.” Racialization, although it changed in form, remained ever-present.

this period, they developed a formal theology of racial reconciliation. They devised principles and practices attempting to address a key issue pointed out at the close of Chapter Two: that blacks and whites probably knew less of each other in the late twentieth century than in previous times. This has been a vibrant period focusing on race relations for evangelicals. It began as a bud, developed and led by black evangelicals, and then flowered into fuller bloom, growing in influence, and increasingly involving more evangelicals, including whites. But something happened, we argue, in the translation from black evangelicals to a larger white evangelical audience. The popularized version for white evangelicals has emphasized mainly the individual-level components, leaving the larger racialized social structures, institutions, and culture intact.

What is this “reconciliation” to which these men devoted their lives? Reconciliation, as they proclaimed repeatedly, is the message of Christianity. The gospel story is about reconciling people to God and to other people. For example, they created a theology of racial reconciliation by using scriptures such as Ephesians 2:14-15, which says that Christ “has made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility … to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.”10

First, individuals of different races must develop primary relationships with each other.

The second major step demands recognizing social structures of inequality, and that all Christians must resist them together.

The third step is that whites, as the main creators and benefactors of the racialized society, must repent of their personal, historical, and social sins.

The problem with whites’ conception of reconciliation, many claimed, was that they did not seek true justice—that is, justice both individually and collectively. Without this component, reconciliation was cheap, artificial, and mere words. It was rather like a big brother shoving his little brother to the ground, apologizing, and then shoving him to the ground again.

DeYoung wrote that “systems of injustice in society and in the church exact a heavy cost on those outside the centers of power and effectively block reconciliation,” and “declaring that we are equal without repairing the wrongs of the past is cheap reconciliation.”

As the message of reconciliation spread to a white audience, it was popularized. The racial reconciliation message given to the mass audience is individual reconciliation.44 That is, individuals of different races should develop strong, committed relationships. There is also need to repent of individual prejudice. These are the means to reducing racial strife and division. Missing from this formula are the system-changing components of the original formulations. The more radical component of reconciliation espoused by the early black leaders and many of the current leaders—to challenge social systems of injustice and inequality, to confess social sin—is almost wholly absent in the popularized versions.

For most white evangelicals, race was compartmentalized. They most certainly had thoughts about the race issue and, as we will argue, their thoughts are shaped at least in part by their faith, but the race issue in no way dominates their thinking. Race is not a focal point in their day-to-day lived experience.

But he sees these isolated events as simply part of a system. To be an American Indian, he said, is to be “on the bottom of the ladder” with blacks. The racial slurs, being offered alcohol in lieu of money, and being physically attacked are to him all just outward signs of this hierarchy. To be American Indian or an African American means a history of being dealt with harshly, being denied jobs, living in rural or urban ghettos, growing up (as he did) without parents, being poor, being expected to achieve little, and ultimately, he says, accepting and becoming what others expect of you. For him it also means, as he continues to struggle with it, seeing all white people as rich. The race problem is painfully real to him. It is complex, involving actions both by individuls and the larger community. It is people, it is policies, it is our society.

Common terms used to describe the race problem were prejudice, bigotry, anger, ignorance, lack of respect, fear of each other, poor communication, individuals hating or being angry at each other, and lacking Christlike love for one another.

For most white evangelicals, however, sin is limited to individuals. Thus, if race problems—poor relationships—result from sin, then race problems must largely be individually based.

Although some individuals may be prejudiced, they think, America is not racialized. We have tried to show why they hold these beliefs. In the process, we moved beyond the simplistic explanation that white evangelicals, to protect their advantages, simply lie or distort the truth. We cannot conclude that their expressed views are merely smoke screens to divert attention from what they know to be true. Instead, we have argued, the cultural tools and intergroup isolation of evangelicals lead them to construct reality so as to individualize and minimize the problem. They do so honestly and with good intentions, if somewhat one-sidedly.

We stand at a divide. White evangelicals’ cultural tools and racial isolation direct them to see the world individualistically and as a series of discrete incidents. They also direct them to desire a color-blind society. Black evangelicals tend to see the racial world very differently. Ironically, evangelicalism’s cultural tools lead people in different social and geographical realities to assess the race problem in divergent and nonreconciliatory ways. This large gulf in understanding is perhaps part of the race problem’s core, and most certainly contributes to the entrenchment of the racialized society.

African Americans fall below the poverty line more than three times as frequently as non-Hispanic whites, are substantially less likely to own homes than are white Americans, and their median household wealth is only 8 percent that of Anglos.1 Even middle-class African Americans, we saw, are on shaky footing. For example, the median net assets for college-educated whites are nearly 20,000 dollars. But for college-educated blacks, median net assets are a miniscule 175 dollars.

In accounting for economic inequality, it appears that conservative religion intensifies the different values and experiences of each racial group, sharpening and increasing the divide between black and white Americans.

African Americans, despite their Christian association, violate key tenets of white conservative Christianity. African Americans, in their eyes, are not true accountable freewill individualists, are relationally dysfunctional, and sin both by relying on programs rather than themselves, and by shifting blame to structurally based reasons for inequality.

To these respondents, race, especially the black race, is one of America’s thorns in the side. If only blacks would “catch the vision,” change their habits, stop trying to shift blame, and apply themselves responsibly—in short, act more Christian, as they define it—racial inequality would be but a memory.

As heirs of traditional values that make the United States distinct, white evangelicals overwhelming hold both that the United States offers equal opportunity to all and that inequality results from lack of individual initiative and noncompetitive practices, such as accepting single-parent homes, having too many children, not stressing education, being too willing to receive welfare, and being unable to move beyond the past. White Americans favor individualistic explanations over structural ones.15 White American evangelicals are even more inclined to this pattern.

For the reasons discussed in this section, evangelicals’ application of their cultural tool kit, in the context of intergroup isolation, unwittingly contributes to the reproduction of racial inequality.

For white evangelicals, the “race problem” is not racial inequality, and it is not systematic, institutional injustice. Rather, white evangelicals view the race problem as (1) prejudiced individuals, resulting in poor relationships and sin, (2) others trying to make it a group or systemic issue when it is not, or (3) a fabrication of the self-interested.

miracle motif is the theologically rooted idea that as more individuals become Christians, social and personal problems will be solved automatically. What is the solution to violent crime? Convert people to Christianity, because Christians do not commit violent crimes. What is the solution to divorce? Convert people to Christianity, because Christians are less likely to get divorced. What is the solution to the problems of race? Our grassroots evangelicals told us.

Two factors are most striking about evangelical solutions to racial problems. First, they are profoundly individualistic and interpersonal: become a Christian, love your individual neighbors, establish a cross-race friendship, give individuals the right to pursue jobs and individual justice without discrimination by other individuals, and ask forgiveness of individuals one has wronged. Second, although several evangelicals discuss the personal sacrifice necessary to form friendships across race, their solutions do not require financial or cultural sacrifice. They do not advocate or support changes that might cause extensive discomfort or change their economic and cultural lives. In short, they maintain what is for them the noncostly status quo. We thus have a common problem. White evangelicals want to see an end to race problems because both their Christian faith and their faith in the American creed call for it. But they are constrained by at least two forces. First, their cultural tools point them only to one dimension of the problem. As Stokely Carmichael and others have noted, when problems are at least in part structural, they must be addressed at least in part by structural solutions. If a building is on the verge of collapse due to an inadequate design, improving the quality of the bricks without improving the design is not a solution. Evangelicals, for all their recent energy directed at dealing with race problems, are attempting to improve the bricks, even having ...

We thus have a common problem. White evangelicals want to see an end to race problems because both their Christian faith and their faith in the American creed call for it.

Although their faith directs them in many powerful ways, white American evangelicals, unless burdened by an individual “calling,” assume that faith does not ask them to change the material aspects of their lives for this cause. Given their aversion to discomfort (a universal human trait) and cultural tools, they offer “Christian” solutions such as asking forgiveness, converting people to Christ, and forming cross-race friendships. The problem with these solutions is that, by themselves, they do not work.

Having a close, cross-race friendship—or even two—has only minimal effects, and only on three of the ten factors they examined. Similar to our findings that changes in racial perspectives occur mainly in the context of interracial networks rather than by merely having an intimate friendship, they found that intimacy is less important than having a variety of contacts, such as also having black acquaintances and living in mixed neighborhoods.

Religious disestablishment leads to pluralism, increased competition, and individual choice. These in turn are associated with specialization and niche marketing—that is, marketing specifically to a certain segment of the population. And these processes lead to something else, something of tremendous importance for understanding evangelicals and race relations. In the process of competing, of developing niches and assuring internal strength, congregations come to be made up of highly similar people. Individual congregations tend to be made up of people from similar geographic locations, similar socioeconomic statuses, similar ethnicities, and, perhaps first and foremost, predominately the same race. From the perspective of race relations, evangelicals, and religious groups in general are in a quandary. The processes that generate church growth, internal strength, and vitality in a religious marketplace also internally homogenize and externally divide people. Conversely, the processes intended to promote the inclusion of different peoples also tend to weaken the internal identity, strength, and vitality of volunteer organizations. Let us explore this further.

“As churches constitute themselves agents to produce social change, they are likely to lose, rather than gain, social strength.”26 Social solidarity is sacrificed, and the group loses its energy and strength.

Thus, internally homogenous congregations more often provide what draws people to religious groups for a lower cost than do internally diverse congregations.28

In the deregulated religious marketplace of the United States, the niche overlap effect implies that competition between religious groups drives them to be what they often do not want to be—homogenous.44 This is because they must focus limited resources on a relatively unique niche and, as we have seen, because atypical members do not generally remain members. Therefore, because individual congregations are situated within a marketplace of competing congregations, attempts at pluralism are often overridden by the homogenizing structural factors of the niche edge and overlap effects. And this is in part why stated ideology or religious values regarding race often make little difference in the actual level of within-group heterogeneity.45