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

by Michael O. Emerson

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.