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by
Jemar Tisby
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February 4 - February 15, 2021
if we built the walls on purpose, we need to tear down the walls on purpose.
The failure of many Christians in the South and across the nation to decisively oppose the racism in their families, communities, and even in their own churches provided fertile soil for the seeds of hatred to grow. The refusal to act in the midst of injustice is itself an act of injustice. Indifference to oppression perpetuates oppression.
It seems like most Christians in America don’t know how bad racism really is, so they don’t respond with the necessary urgency.
Protestants, especially evangelicals, have written some of the most well-known narratives of racism in the United States.
What do we mean when we talk about racism? Beverly Daniel Tatum provides a shorthand definition: racism is a system of oppression based on race.
there have been notable exceptions, and racial progress in this country could not have happened without allies across the color line,
people invented racial categories. Race and racism are social constructs.
black people have become the most religious demographic in the United States.
The same arguments that perpetuated racial inequality in decades past get recycled in the present day.
Paul’s words to the Corinthians might ring true for today’s church: “As it is, I rejoice, not because you were grieved, but because you were grieved into repenting” (2 Cor. 7:9 ESV).
Williamsburg, Virginia, features exhibits detailing the earliest English settlements in North America.
Looking at the history of colonial Virginia uncovers the reality that racism in the church has been a problem from the very first moments of European contact in North America.
Race is a social construct.
Instead of abandoning Christianity, though, black people went directly to teachings of Jesus and challenged white people to demonstrate integrity.
As many as one-third of African slaves died within their first three years in the Americas.14
slaveowners preferred male slaves who they could literally work to death.
Slave women in North America had an average birthrate of 9.2 children, twice as many as those in Caribbean colonies.
From their earliest days in North America, colonists employed religio-cultural categories to signify that European meant “Christian” and Native American or African meant “heathen.”
Europeans did not introduce Christianity to Africans. Christianity had arrived in Africa through Egypt and Ethiopia in the third and fourth centuries.
from the beginning of American colonization, Europeans crafted a Christianity that would allow them to spread the faith without confronting the exploitative economic system of slavery and the emerging social inequality based on color.
The antislavery clause was excised from the final draft of the declaration due to the objections of delegates from Georgia and South Carolina as well as some northern states that benefited from slavery.
“The driving goal of evangelical ministers was to spread the message of new birth while combating those who assumed that grace was achieved gradually and by good works.”
Thus Baptists in Virginia declared slavery to be a civil issue outside of the scope of the church.
there would be no black church without racism in the white church.
Black Christians have repeated their exodus from white churches throughout American history on both large and small scales.
Many white Christians comforted themselves with the myth that slavery allowed them to more adequately care for the material and spiritual needs of enslaved Africans.
The committee members assured the convention that their objections had nothing to do with race. “We object not to the color of the skin, but we question their possession of those qualities which would render their intercourse with the members of a Church Convention useful.”
Despite the racism black Christians experienced, they did not abandon the faith.
the United States could have become a worldwide beacon of diversity and equality. Fresh from the Revolutionary War, it could have adopted the noble ideals written in the Declaration of Independence. It could have crafted a truly inclusive Constitution.
From the beginning, the Constitution ensured that nowhere in America would be safe for an escaped slave.
The nation’s political leaders used black lives as bargaining chips to preserve the union of states and to gain leverage for other policy issues.
The chattel principle is the social alchemy that transformed a human being made in the image of God into a piece of property.
of the more than 600,000 interstate sales that occurred in the decades prior to the Civil War, 25 percent destroyed a first marriage, and 50 percent broke up a nuclear family.
Rather than defending the dignity of black people, American Christians at this time chose to turn a blind eye to the separation of families, the scarring of bodies, the starvation of stomachs, and the generational trauma of slavery.
While many Americans were complicit in the continuation of slavery, Christian support stands apart because the Bible clearly and frequently instructs believers in how they should treat others.
Even learning to read was a form of resistance.
No specter cast a longer shadow in the minds of North American enslavers than the Haitian Revolution.
the white population of the city of Charleston burned the church, Emanuel AME, to the ground.
paternalistic attitudes toward black people defined much of American Christianity.
“Sunday morning only became the most segregated time of the week after the Civil War. Before emancipation, black and white evangelicals typically prayed, sang, and worshiped together.”
Finney led Oberlin College, which became the first institution of higher education to accept both women and black people.
According to this logic, once a person believed in Christ as Savior and Lord, he or she would naturally work toward justice and change.
no single individual characterized the conflict better than Abraham Lincoln.
Throughout the conflict, Christians of both the Union and Confederate forces believed that God was on their side.
Even if there were additional disputed issues, such as the extent of federal versus state power, the future of slavery in America was paramount.
Proslavery politicians won the first election after the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but antislavery advocates accused them of fraud and unilaterally declared the results void. Armed groups attacked one another,
colonization was an easy way for white people to skirt the issue of white supremacy. Rather than combatting racism, why not simply send people of other races far, far away?
Southern Christians devised increasingly complex theological arguments to argue for the existence of slavery, and in the process, southern Christians moved from viewing slavery as something permitted to something positive.
abolitionists and socially moderate Christians struggled to argue against what seemed evident to many people—the Bible never repudiates slavery.
Christians in the South believed the Bible approved of slavery since the Bible never clearly condemned slavery and even provided instructions for its regulation.
