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

by Jemar Tisby

the same question only 7 percent of those who identified as Republicans supported the movement. Perhaps predictably, 94 percent of evangelicals thought the Christian church “plays an important role in racial reconciliation” as compared to 73 percent of all adults. In a summary of the survey’s findings, researchers concluded, “If you’re a white evangelical Republican, you are less likely to think race is a problem, but more likely

“This dilemma demonstrates that those supposedly most equipped for reconciliation do not see the need for it.”29

In the church, conversations about injustice should include an examination of the circumstances of each incident, but Christians should also analyze the larger patterns—ones that can operate independent of malicious intent—to see the historic and systemic picture and advocate for more effective solutions.

Public Religion Research Institute survey found that the only religious group that thought Christians in America faced more discrimination than Muslims were white evangelicals: 57 percent of evangelicals thought Christians faced a lot of discrimination compared to 33 percent of Americans overall.

Trump’s campaign slogan promised to “Make America Great Again.” In the conservative Christian political mind, Trump, despite his, promised to “Make Evangelicals Great Again.”

In a culturally obtuse move, a group of white professors at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary thought it would be funny to send off a retiring colleague by posting a posed picture of themselves in baggy pants, hoodies, and crooked caps. One professor even held a real gun.

The Presbyterian Church in America, a denomination founded in the 1970s but with connections to Southern Presbyterians, decided to deliberate for a year before passing a resolution about their complicity in racism during the civil rights movement.

The Southern Baptist Convention faced a public relations debacle when a committee refused to consider a proposal by a black minister t...

Christian complicity with racism in the twenty-first century looks different than complicity with racism in the past. It looks like Christians responding to black lives matter with the phrase all lives matter. It looks like Christians consistently supporting a president whose racism has been on display for decades. It looks like Christians telling black people and their allies that their attempts to bring up racial concerns are “divisive.” It looks like conversations on race that focus on individual relationships and are unwilling to discuss systemic solutions.

but schools remain segregated. People of color are incarcerated at disproportionally high rates. Black unemployment remains double that of whites. Most poignantly, churches remain largely segregated.

To be clear, friendships and conversations are necessary, but they are not sufficient to change the racial status quo. Christians must also alter how impersonal systems operate so that they might create and extend racial equality.

My hope is that as people learn about how deep and far reaching the problem of racism is, these “radical” solutions will start to seem more reasonable.

The ARC (Awareness, Relationships, Commitment) of racial justice helps distinguish different types of antiracist actions. They are not formulaic; they can happen nonsequentially and simultaneously.

Although you can expand your awareness in many ways, one particularly fruitful place to start is by reading and learning more about the racial history of the United States.

Watch documentaries about the racial history of the United States.4 • Diversify your social media feed by following racial and ethnic minorities and those with different political outlooks than yours. • Access websites and podcasts created by racial and ethnic minorities. • Do an internet search about a particular topic instead of always asking your black friend to explain an issue to you.5

Start with the people you know. Most of us know someone of a different race or ethnicity. Have you talked with them specifically about their experiences and perspectives of race and justice? These individuals cannot merely be projects or sources of information. They are real people with whom to pursue a meaningful friendship. Still, it takes intentionality to diversify our social networks, and we should start with those nearest us. • Find new places to hang out. We are creatures of habit and convenience. We go to particular places simply because they are familiar. A purposeful effort to develop relationships with people from diverse backgrounds will carry you to different restaurants, grocery stores, and hangouts. If you strategically organize your spatial habits, the mundane places where you enact your regular routines can become the richest sites to encounter those who are different from you. • Join a sport, club, or activity with people who are different. In my experience, other than people who have been involved with the military, those who have the most diverse networks of friends have participated in some sort of activity that brought them into frequent contact with people of other races and ethnicities. You may have to engineer these opportunities, but they can lead to organic friendships that cross traditional lines of social division.

Developing awareness and relationships may create a burden for the struggles of others, but does that burden move you to act? Are you willing to set aside preferences and prestige to take the side of the marginalized and despised? More to the point, are you willing to address the systemic and institutional aspects of racism rather than solely work on an interpersonal level?

Create something. Write a blog post. Write a book. Write a sermon. Do a Sunday School class. Host a forum. Write a song or a poem. Create something that speaks to racial justice. As you do it, though, remember it always helps to get feedback from person from a different racial or ethnic background who is willing to help.7 • Join an organization that advocates for racial and social justice. • Donate money to organizations that advocate for racial and social justice. • Speak with candidates for elected office in your area and ask them about their views of racial justice and the policies they advocate. • Vote.

Perhaps the only other “r-word” more controversial to American Christians than racism is reparations.

2011 study revealed that a typical white household had sixteen times the wealth of a black one.8 According to a 2014 report, for every dollar in a white household, a black household has less than seven cents.

The concept of reparation has biblical precedence.

Germany has paid about $50 billion to Holocaust survivors and their families. Japanese-Americans confined to internment camps during World War II received an apology from the government and $20,000 per victim. Although far too few received far too little, some Native American nations received some recompense for the land stolen from them.

Even apart from political attempts at reparations, the church should be willing to consider some talk about reparations.

Much of the American church has not yet considered racism to be a serious enough sin to interrupt their regularly scheduled worship, at least not much beyond conversations and symbolic gestures, to repair the relationship.

If the American church wants to make a clear break with the racial compromise that has characterized its past, then believers must agree that it is time to take down the Confederate monuments.

Part of the pernicious effects of white supremacy in the church has been the devaluing of black theology—the biblical teachings that arise from and are informed by the experience of racial suffering, oppression, and perseverance by black people in America.

As the church learns to value the unique applications of eternal biblical principles across people groups, it will grasp more of God’s truth than ever before.

New seminaries that have incorporated antiracist ideas from their inception may be required. This is not to say that racially responsive seminaries do not already exist, just that we need more of them.

Pilgrimages serve as another method of transformative education. Reading books and listening to presentations serve a purpose, but they cannot replicate the experience of visiting the sites and seeing the places where historical events happened.

FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD