Dream with Me: Race, Love, and the Struggle We Must Win

by John M. Perkins

But I’ve learned what Saul learned on the road to Damascus: when God’s involved, everything can change in an instant. You may think you know where you’re headed, but often God has a different plan—something “exceedingly abundantly above all that [you] ask or think” (Eph. 3:20 NKJV). Sometimes a light drizzle becomes a deluge. Other times you open your eyes to find yourself by still waters. Sometimes you hear thunder clapping along with the rain. Other times the clouds disappear so you can see a billion stars in the sky.

The old-time preacher and prophet A. W. Tozer had a way of making the most profound truths simple and palatable. He once said, “God is love, and just as God is love, God is justice.”2 That’s it! God’s love and justice come together in the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, and we can’t be about one and not the other. They’re inextricably connected.

Years ago, before the emancipation of slaves, Frederick Douglass described the contradiction and failure of the church in America, saying: Fellow-citizens, I will not enlarge further on your national inconsistencies. The existence of slavery in this country brands your republicanism as a sham, your humanity as a base pretense, and your Christianity as a lie. It destroys your moral power abroad: it corrupts your politicians at home. It saps the foundation of religion; it makes your name a hissing and a bye-word to a mocking earth. It is the antagonistic force in your government, the only thing that seriously disturbs and endangers your Union. It fetters your progress; it is the enemy of improvement; the deadly foe of education; it fosters pride; it breeds insolence; it promotes vice; it shelters crime; it is a curse to the earth that supports it; and yet you cling to it as if it were the sheet anchor of all your hopes. Oh! be warned! be warned! a horrible reptile is coiled up in your nation’s bosom; the venomous creature is nursing at the tender breast of your youthful republic; for the love of God, tear away, and fling from you the hideous monster, and let the weight of twenty millions crush and destroy it forever!3

But it is time to repent. It is time to forgive. It is time to move forward from the racism and bigotry that we have allowed to define us for too long. It is time for love, rather than pride and division, to be our final fight.

If my kids are ready to give their lives for the cause, I’m willing to let them do it.

It’s also painful to think about the way the schools have resegregated themselves. And the church has helped. When the federal government ordered desegregation, many white parents decided to keep their kids from going to school with black kids. During the first year of integration, they formed all-white private academies. After the government said that was illegal and wouldn’t give them tax-exempt status, they turned the schools over to the churches.

I do not believe our children should be used to make political statements or pacify the guilt parents might feel about having the ability to send their children to better schools. However, I also see an undermining of the purpose of integration, resulting from decisions to move children out of the public schools. The most obvious sign is a weakened resolve by the community to see that all children receive a top-notch education.

It has often been said that church on Sunday morning is the most segregated time in America today. This rings true in Mississippi. We claim to be an ethnic “melting pot,” yet people of different nationalities and backgrounds—black, white, Latino, Asian, Eastern European—most often worship with people who look, act, and talk like themselves. In His high priestly prayer in John 17, Jesus prayed that all the church might be one as He and the Father are one, as a witness to the world. Yet on Sunday morning, we seldom model this reality of the gospel.

People—people I respect, people who are committed to reconciliation—disagree with me about this, but I am convinced that God’s will is for churches to be integrated. When we come to worship God, we should gladly come into His presence alongside anyone else who has come to worship Him. But for the most part we have done something else instead. We have accommodated bigotry within the church. We have become captive to the same divisions and hostilities that have plagued our nation for generations. In fact, instead of leading our culture toward unity, love, and reconciliation, the church often lags behind secular efforts to promote equality and healing.

First John 3:18 reads, “Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth” (NKJV). We can pass lofty-sounding laws and give speeches about tolerance all day long. We can boast about how we have black or white, Native American or Persian friends, but as long as we do not worship together, it is only talk. Segregation in the church inhibits love, which is the gospel. How can we expect God to break down walls and be present among us when we will not do the same and be present among one another?

dignity. I get it. But it is a backward cry. In a way, it’s an attempt to make poor whites feel the way we did when whites would fling racial slurs our way. But for us to do the same thing to poor whites that wealthy whites were doing to us only throws everyone into the same mud heap. A better way is possible. We all must have the compassion, wisdom, and mutual respect to rise above slander, slurs, and snubs to a place of love. What we ought to be striving for today is a new language of love and affirmation that will replace these hurtful slights. What if we started calling one another “friend,” no matter our race, politics, or economic class? Friends, I like that.

Something I’m coming to believe is that God will carry out those things He is concerned about. If I have a will to obey Him by doing something in an area He is concerned about, He will get me to the place He wants me to be.

If the church took up the responsibility of caring for the poor, of living incarnationally, of participating in the unspeakable gift of giving, our world would look much different from the way it does today. Justice is a stewardship issue, caring for the poor is a stewardship issue, loving our neighbor as we love ourselves is a stewardship issue. We have the resources, but our priorities aren’t there yet.

Justice is an economic and stewardship issue. When Psalm 24:1 says, “The earth is the LORD’S, and everything in it,” that’s a justice statement. The way we utilize the resources we’ve been given determines whether we are being just.

Black theology has a very different take on both redemption and justice, in part because much of it has been developed in response to white oppression. In terms of redemption—or liberation—black theology builds on the “Let my people go!” model of Moses. It celebrates God’s history of delivering His people from slavery and oppression and regards redemption as communal as well as individual. As black Christians, we almost always see religion as something that uplifts people, and the Bible is considered a textbook for living. Black theology doesn’t specify that blacks and whites should be separate, but sadly it has turned out that way.