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

by Jemar Tisby

Black lives matter served as a rallying cry for protests, but it also acted as an assertion of the image of God in black people. In Christian anthropology, saying that black lives matter insists that all people, including those who have darker skin, have been made in the image and likeness of God. Black lives matter does not mean that only black lives matter; it means that black lives matter too. Given the racist patterns of devaluing black lives in America’s past, it is not obvious to many black people that everyone values black life. Quite the contrary, the existential equality of black people must be repeatedly and passionately proclaimed and pursued, even in the twenty-first century.