The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

by Jemar Tisby

the United States has just 5 percent of the world’s population but 25 percent of its incarcerated persons.

These were men and women who believed in free-market capitalism, meritocratic individualism, local control of communities, and the idea that America had been founded as a “Christian Nation.” Historian Darren Dochuk argues that these Sunbelt citizens blended their evangelical religion into their political outlook as well, as Sunbelt evangelicalism “melded traditionalism into an uncentered, unbounded religious culture of entrepreneurialism, experimentation, and engagement—in short, a Sunbelt Creed.”

In place of obviously racist policies, law-and-order rhetoric “had become a surrogate expression for concern about the civil rights movement.”

“[Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

A poll in 1970 discovered that 70 percent of Southern Baptist pastors “supported abortion to protect the mental or physical health of the mother, 64 percent supported abortion in cases of fetal deformity and 71 percent in cases of rape.”

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.

“What galvanized the Christian community was not abortion, school prayer, or the [Equal Rights Amendment]. . . . What changed their minds was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.”

By 1976, Falwell had completely flipped his position and his stance against mixing religion and politics and embarked on an “I Love America” rally tour. In a sermon delivered on the Fourth of July, he made his new position crystal clear: “This idea of ‘religion and politics don’t mix’ was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country.”

Reagan was also known for popularizing the term welfare queen, which became an oft-used phrase by the president. He told the story of a black woman from Chicago with “80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social Security cards,” who gamed the social support system for $150,000 in annual tax-free income. The “welfare queen” became a stand-in for the president’s criticism of an undeserving class of poor people,

Drawing on the work of conservative economist Milton Friedman, Falwell claimed that capitalism was the only Christian form of commerce and contended that a free enterprise system liberated from government constraints would lift black people out of poverty.

In addition to movements like Promise Keepers in the ’90s, the start of the new millennium witnessed the growth of intentional, multiethnic churches.

In 2015, a white supremacist entered a Bible study at a historic black church and murdered nine worshipers, sparking divisive debates about monuments to and symbols of the Confederacy.6 Amidst the furor of racist words and events, Christians today remain divided along racial lines.

Emerson and Smith go on to explain that discrimination in a racialized society is increasingly covert, embedded in the normal operations of institutions, and it avoids direct racial terminology, making it invisible to most white people.

“culture creates ways for individuals and groups to organize experiences and evaluate reality. It does so by providing a repertoire or ‘tool kit’ of ideas, habits, skills, and styles.”

just 27 percent of white evangelicals attribute the wealth gap to racial discrimination, while 72 percent of blacks cite discrimination as a major cause of the discrepancy.

A Pew Research poll found that 49 percent of whites were satisfied with the verdict that acquitted Zimmerman, while just 5 percent of black people surveyed agreed with the trial’s outcome.

Observers not only considered the isolated incidents that led to the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown, they looked at the longer history of similar events, from the absolute power of life and death slaveowners had held over black slaves to the decades of lynching during the Jim Crow era, when few of the murderers had paid for their crimes against black people and their communities.

Black lives matter served as a rallying cry for protests, but it also acted as an assertion of the image of God in black people. In Christian anthropology, saying that black lives matter insists that all people, including those who have darker skin, have been made in the image and likeness of God. Black lives matter does not mean that only black lives matter; it means that black lives matter too. Given the racist patterns of devaluing black lives in America’s past, it is not obvious to many black people that everyone values black life. Quite the contrary, the existential equality of black people must be repeatedly and passionately proclaimed and pursued, even in the twenty-first century.

The words black lives matter also function as a cry of lament. Theologian Soong-Chan Rah explains in his book Prophetic Lament that in the Bible lament is “a liturgical response to the reality of suffering and engages God in the context of pain and suffering.”20 He goes on to say that it is a way “to express indignation and even outrage about the experience of suffering.”21 Racism has inflicted incalculable suffering on black people throughout the history of the United States, and in such a context, lament is not only understandable but necessary. Black lives matter presents Christians with an opportunity to mourn with those who mourn and to help bear the burdens that racism has heaped on black people (Rom. 12:15).

many evangelicals have distanced themselves from or even opposed both the Black Lives Matter organization and the phrase. But the American evangelical church has yet to form a movement as viable and potent that addresses the necessary concept that black lives do indeed matter. This is not to suggest that evangelicals have not responded to present-day racism but that the national presence and influence of Black Lives Matter, as both an organization and a concept, should prompt critical engagement rather than a reflexive rejection.

Evangelicals would agree that black people should be treated fairly and have all the civil rights other citizens have. But the root of the disagreement over racial issues lies deeper beneath the surface. It is a failure to acknowledge the subtler ways that racism operates today. Because their religious beliefs reinforce accountable individualism, relationalism, and antistructuralism, many white Christians wrongly assume that racism only includes overt acts, such as calling someone the “n-word” or expressly excluding black people from groups or organizations.

Being complicit only requires a muted response in the face of injustice or uncritical support of the status quo.

Johnson posted a video of Anyabwile at an evangelical conference in 2010 preaching a message called, “Fine-Sounding Arguments: How Wrongly ‘Engaging the Culture’ Adjusts the Gospel.” Along with the video came Johnson’s caption: “Before he became an agitator for the radical left wing #BlackLivesMatter movement, Thabiti Anyabwile was arguing for a more biblical, gospel-centered approach.”26 As Anyabwile pointed out in his blog post, Johnson’s implication was that speaking about racial justice somehow indicated a drift away from the “true” gospel.

When it came to black lives matter, just 13 percent of evangelicals said they supported the “message” compared to 27 percent of adults overall and 45 percent of millennials. On the same question only 7 percent of those who identified as Republicans supported the movement.

In a summary of the survey’s findings, researchers concluded, “If you’re a white evangelical Republican, you are less likely to think race is a problem, but more likely to think you are victim of reverse racism.” They further contended, “You are also less convinced that people of color are socially disadvantaged.” Citing the importance evangelicals attribute to the church in racial reconciliation, the researchers said, “This dilemma demonstrates that those supposedly most equipped for reconciliation do not see the need for it.”

In 1973, the US Department of Justice sued his company, Trump Management, for discrimination against potential black renters of his apartments. Under directions from their superiors, apartment managers refused to show certain apartments to black people or claimed that the rent was much higher in order to dissuade them.

In 1989, police accused five black and Latino teenagers of beating and raping a white woman in Central Park. In response, Trump paid $85,000 to place full-page ads in four New York City newspapers calling for a return of the death penalty.

Many viewed his comments as creating a false equivalency between white supremacists and those who assembled to oppose them. Add to these incidents the support the president has received from white nationalist groups, his call for a ban on Muslim immigration, and his tendency to positively and uncritically quote from white nationalist media sources, and it’s clear why Trump’s actions have elicited repeated accusations of racism.

Black people recognized the pattern of prejudice from Trump, and they showed their distaste at the polls. Eighty-eight percent of black voters, including 94 percent of black women, supported the Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

81 percent of voters who self-identified as white evangelicals pulled the lever for Trump.

Russell Moore, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, vocally opposed Trump during the primaries and the early part of the election campaign. He called evangelical support of Trump “illogical.” He went on to suggest that evangelicals might risk losing credibility among black people by supporting Trump: “When evangelicals should be leading the way on racial reconciliation, as the Bible tells us to, are we really ready to trade unity with our black and brown brothers and sisters for this angry politician?”

A Public Religion Research Institute survey found that the only religious group that thought Christians in America faced more discrimination than Muslims were white evangelicals: 57 percent of evangelicals thought Christians faced a lot of discrimination compared to 33 percent of Americans overall.

The Trump campaign and presidency revealed just how tenuous the interracial coalition of Christians that had emerged in the past two and a half decades really was. The forty-fifth president did not produce the racial and political divide between black and white Christians, but he exposed and extended longstanding differences while revealing the inadequacy of recent reconciliation efforts.

Christian complicity with racism in the twenty-first century looks different than complicity with racism in the past. It looks like Christians responding to black lives matter with the phrase all lives matter. It looks like Christians consistently supporting a president whose racism has been on display for decades. It looks like Christians telling black people and their allies that their attempts to bring up racial concerns are “divisive.” It looks like conversations on race that focus on individual relationships and are unwilling to discuss systemic solutions. Perhaps Christian complicity in racism has not changed much after all. Although the characters and the specifics are new, many of the same rationalizations for racism remain.

“We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now,” King explained. “This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. . . . Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.”

The reluctance to reckon with racism has led to a chasm between black and white Christians in theology, politics, and culture. This chasm only makes it harder to productively communicate and take effective action around racial issues. When it comes to opposing racism, have we as a nation overdosed on “the tranquilizing drug of gradualism”?

studying the history of the American church’s compromise with racism should teach us that action is necessary and long overdue.

friendships and conversations are necessary, but they are not sufficient to change the racial status quo. Christians must also alter how impersonal systems operate so that they might create and extend racial equality.

The ARC (Awareness, Relationships, Commitment) of racial justice helps distinguish different types of antiracist actions.

History is about context, so studying history remains vital. It teaches us how to place people, events, and movements within the broader scope of God’s work in the world.

Watch documentaries

Diversify your social media feed

Access websites and podcasts created by racial and ethnic minorities.

Do an internet search about a particular topic instead of always asking your black friend to explain an issue to you.

No matter how aware you are, your knowledge will remain abstract and theoretical until you care about the people who face the negative consequences of racism.

• Start with the people you know.

it takes intentionality to diversify our social networks, and we should start with those nearest us.

Find new places to hang out.

Join a sport, club, or activity with people who are different.

Developing awareness and relationships may create a burden for the struggles of others, but does that burden move you to act?