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

by Jemar Tisby

Many Christians, including some conservative black Christians, have rejected the concept or phrase black lives matter because of the Black Lives Matter organization. The organization that developed to channel passion into long-term change includes a strong platform advocating for gay, queer, and transgender rights, a position that is contrary to a conservative evangelical definition of marriage as between one man and one woman. The Black Lives Matter organization does not identify itself as a faith-based organization like the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and other organizations that formed during the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s. As a result, 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.