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

by Jemar Tisby

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Perhaps the only other “r-word” more controversial to American Christians than racism is reparations.

The fact remains that enslaved black people labored for centuries without pay. They tilled the soil, picked crops until their fingers bled, raised other people’s children, and performed many other valuable forms of labor even as they endured abuse, rape, murder, and family separations. But reparations pertain not only to the problems that attended slavery. The opportunities lost due to legalized segregation during the Jim Crow era also demand redress. Segregation denied black people opportunities for education, employment, and asset accumulation, all of which contribute to the wealth gap between black and white citizens.

A 2011 study revealed that a typical white household had sixteen times the wealth of a black one.

The reasons for these gaps include redlining in real estate, denying bank loans to people of color, and higher unemployment rates among black people, just to name a few. These gaps will persist unless a broad-based reform effort takes hold. One facet of these reforms could include reparations.

Presbyterian minister Duke Kwon distinguishes between reparation and reparations.10 The former refers to the principle, and the latter refers to the practice. In terms of the principle, reparation simply means repair. Injustice obligates reparation. Reparation is not a matter of vengeance or charity; it’s a matter of justice. The concept of reparation has biblical precedence.

Within Christianity, then, is a sense of corporate and communal participation. The injustices of the past continue to affect the present, and it is up to the current generation to interrupt the cycle of racial compromise and confront it with courage.

Injuries to the church body, as Jesus teaches, are so important that one should interrupt worship to go address the problem.

If the American church wants to make a clear break with the racial compromise that has characterized its past, then believers must agree that it is time to take down the Confederate monuments.

In many white Christian contexts, theology produced by racial minorities comes with an assumption of heresy and heterodoxy.

For example, the American church can learn from the black church what it means to lament.

Much of Christian history has been characterized by persecution and rejection, and black Christians intimately and experientially know the reality of ongoing suffering that comes from the bigotry of others and by no fault of their own. In the midst of marginalization, they have learned how to dwell with sadness and transform it into strength.

Black people have somehow found a way to flourish because of faith. It is a faith that is vibrant and still inspires black Christians to endure and struggle against present-day forms of racism. The entire church can learn from believers who have suffered yet still hold onto God’s unchanging hand.

Black theology can teach the American church not just how to lament but how to rejoice as well. The exuberant vocal and bodily expressions common in much of black worship represent a faith that celebrates God’s goodness in equal measure with lament over humanity’s sinfulness. Those who have suffered much find much joy in God’s salvation. After laboring all week under the dehumanizing conditions of slavery, black Christians celebrated on Sunday. They thanked God for giving them life and breath and the full functioning of their faculties.

The pleasant byproduct of learning theology from the black church is that some of the assumptions of suspicion will start to fall away. Christians will learn that people from different nations and ethnicities have dwelled in different contexts that cause them to approach the Bible with different questions and emphases.

New seminaries that have incorporated antiracist ideas from their inception may be required. This is not to say that racially responsive seminaries do not already exist, just that we need more of them.

In the 1960s, activists started Freedom Schools to teach people at the grassroots level about civil rights and methods of protesting for change.

Pilgrimages serve as another method of transformative education. Reading books and listening to presentations serve a purpose, but they cannot replicate the experience of visiting the sites and seeing the places where historical events happened. Christians should visit Emanuel AME Church in Charleston and touch the white walls that have stood for decades and seem to breathe with life. They should travel to the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and see the wreath hung on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in the exact spot where Martin Luther King Jr. stood when an assassin’s bullet stole his life. Christians should look into the history of their communities to explore significant sites to develop an appreciation for the black past and present that exists in their own vicinity.

Pilgrimages are spiritual ventures that challenge the participants to make sense of their surroundings and what they are learning from a spiritual standpoint. They include prayer, journaling, Scripture readings, and humble listening to individuals who have experienced suffering or who have conducted in-depth research on relevant topics. A pilgrimage makes abstract concepts of racism real through physical, sensible encounters that evoke visceral and emotional responses.

Juneteenth, a mash-up of the words June and nineteenth, remembers the day in 1865 when slaves in Texas finally learned about their emancipation. It is the oldest-known celebration of black freedom from slavery. While over forty states currently recognize Juneteenth as a state holiday or observance, it should become a national one.

Emancipation is a singular moment in US history, and making Juneteenth a national holiday would help solidify the reality that black history is American history.

Reverend William J. Barber Jr., a pastor and activist from North Carolina, has called for a third reconstruction. The first reconstruction occurred immediately after the Civil War when newly freed slaves joined in a flowering of black political, economic, and social participation. The second reconstruction happened during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s when activists assailed the stronghold of Jim Crow segregation. The third reconstruction is happening right now.

Leaders such as Brittany Packnett, Bryan Stephenson, and Bernice King often speak publicly about their faith. Pastors and laypeople alike populate the marches and fill the churches where rallies still take place. The question is whether the broader American church will recognize and participate in today’s civil rights movement.

mass incarceration and criminal justice reform have become priorities for thousands of Americans. The entrance to the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration, which opened in 2018 in Montgomery, Alabama, has the words slavery evolved at the beginning of an exhibit showing how slavery morphed into modern-day mass incarceration.

“most black and Latino students today are segregated by both race and class, a combination that wreaks havoc on the learning environment.”21 Christians need to pay attention to how their educational choices for their own children reinforce racial and economic segregation in schools.

Strict voter identification laws, hyperpartisan gerrymandering, and the lifetime loss of voting privileges for the formerly incarcerated have all become targets of renewed attention and cries for reform. Christians, whether Republican or Democrat, should be able to agree on ways to ensure a truly democratic political process and work together for change.

Public offense calls for public opposition.

When it comes to racism, the American church does not have a “how to” problem but a “want to” problem.

In my experience of talking to hundreds of Christians—black and white, men and women, young and old—I have observed one primary reason more of us do not exhibit the strength and courage required to root out racism: fear.

Another type of fear that may affect some of us is the fear of getting it wrong. We worry that we do not know enough yet, that our good intentions may have unintended negative consequences, or that the very people we seek to serve will rebuke us for our ignorance or missteps.

Jesus crossed every barrier between people, including the greatest barrier of all—the division between God and humankind. He is our peace, and because of his life, death, resurrection, and coming return, those who believe in Jesus not only have God’s presence with us but in us through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we have the power, through God, to leave behind the compromised Christianity that makes its peace with racism and to live out Christ’s call to a courageous faith. The time for the American church’s complicity in racism has long past. It is time to cancel compromise. It is time to practice courageous Christianity.