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

by Jemar Tisby

The truth about humanity’s heritage turns a mirror on our souls and pushes us to recognize who we truly are and who we are not.

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.

While white soldiers and political leaders were declaring their inalienable right to independence, they were also enslaving countless women, men, and children of African descent. And the American church participated in and defended the contradiction between freedom and slavery embedded in the constitution of its young nation.

the “universal” rights referenced in the Declaration of Independence were not universally applied.

This belief led to a fixation on individual conversion without a corresponding focus on transforming the racist policies and practices of institutions, a stance that has remained a constant feature of American evangelicalism and has furthered the American church’s easy compromise with slavery and racism.

Two facts about the Civil War are especially pertinent to our examination of race and Christianity in America: that the Civil War was fought over slavery and that countless devout Christians fought and died to preserve it as an institution.

Slavery has always been a profound contradiction at the heart of both the United States and the American church. The Civil War was the climactic, bloody reckoning of this contradiction.

The doctrine of the spirituality of the church has continued to influence the church in America, even to the present. Its adherents are diverse and often selective in how they apply the doctrine. The injunction against church involvement in policy issues was not upheld for the temperance movement, debates on evolution, attempts to keep prayer in schools, or discussions on how to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Compromised Christianity transcends regions. Bigotry obeys no boundaries. This is why Christians in every part of America have a moral and spiritual obligation to fight against the church’s complicity with racism.

King saw an indissoluble link between the Christian faith and the responsibility to change unjust laws and policies.

the American church largely chose to compromise with racism through passive complicity,

awareness isn’t enough. 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.

To look at this history and then refuse to act only perpetuates racist patterns. It is time for the church to stand against racism and compromise no longer.

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.