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

by Jemar Tisby

The Supreme Court decision in Brown v. Board struck the South like a bolt of lightning. The reaction was swift and fiery. It came from all segments of southern society, including many white southern churches. Some preachers quoted the Bible to battle against the decision. In 1954, clergymen in the conservative and mostly southern Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) gathered for their regular regional meeting of churches, and this assembly of pastors heard a message from G. T. Gillespie, the president emeritus of a Christian school, Belhaven College, in Jackson, Mississippi. In a carefully argued speech to the pastors in attendance, Gillespie outlined a “Christian View of Segregation.” His argument reveals some of the specific ways Christians compromised with racism during the civil rights era.