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Is the church at large, and are we as individuals, currently making any contribution to healing the divisions? Or are we making things worse? Have we come to grips with our role in creating this divide, or are we stuck in a state of denial?
We live in a fragmented time when people of faith often avoid discussions about race and when those who meaningfully confront the challenges often ignore faith.
Underneath my shame and embarrassment, I felt ignorant. Ignorant of the historical context of my people. Ignorant of my own roots. I wondered how the White students in the class felt. Did they feel as ignorant as I did? Were they filled with embarrassment and shame by what their ancestors did to my people?
When we lack historical understanding, we lose part of our identity. We don’t know where we came from and don’t know what there is to celebrate or lament. Likewise, without knowing our history, it can be difficult to know what needs repairing, what needs reconciling.
came to realize that I was the first and only African American person many of them had ever worked with. As a person of color, I’d integrated within their majority culture.
I was comfortable and familiar with White culture, but they’d never had to learn about the history or culture of my people. If I quoted a line from The Color Purple or Doug E. Fresh, my friends were lost. And because I was the only Black person in so many of their lives, I became the go-to source for answers to all their questions about hair and music and all things Black. It felt as if people had saved all their “ask a Black person” questions for me, and they unloaded until it almost drove me insane.
I invited my White friends to watch the movie based on Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple.
the ways they might have been complicit in racism.
You’ll need to correct and instruct when necessary and will need to recognize the effort of those trying to cross the bridge, even if imperfectly. After all, the work of racial reconciliation is anything but perfect.
Do you approach conversations of racial reconciliation as if you have all the answers? Do you approach those conversations with a willingness to be corrected? What do you think it looks like for participants to approach those conversations in humility?
Some of my White friends thought color shouldn’t matter in the body of Christ, an easy thing for them to say. I’d ask them to imagine themselves in an all African American context, attending services where they
never heard music by Hillsong, Bethel, Chris Tomlin, or Elevation Worship, just to name a few. Wouldn’t that create a cultural shock?
On an almost daily basis, White people asked whether I was wearing my “natural hair” or noted how articulate I was (meaning “for a Black person”). Difficult as it was, and with a fresh determination to stick it out, I decided it would be best to educate my friends who had never before worked with or had a Black friend. We spoke about the subtle commen...
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The typology of Black people is a racial reality in America. As a Black person in a majority-White culture, I observed people looking at me, trying to determine whether I was more assimilated to White culture or whether I was too Black for their comfort. They’d prejudge me by how I spoke and dressed and whether I allowed micro-aggressions to pass without comment. If they judged me more assimilated, more controlled by the majority-culture narrative, I was more accepted.
The more I embraced my ethnic identity, the greater the chance I’d be rejected
Enforcing a law didn’t dismantle racism. Diversity doesn’t disrupt systemic racism, I told her, nor did it kill racist views.
“Love,” I said, “brings freedom, and slaves didn’t have freedom or choice. Family doesn’t leave family in bondage.”
The truth is that each ethnicity reflects a unique aspect of God’s image. No one tribe or group of people can adequately display the fullness of God. The truth is that it takes every tribe, tongue, and nation to reflect the image of God in his fullness.
Consider these words from the apostle Paul: In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.3 This does not mean that we take a color-blind approach to community. Too many Christians believe that the ultimate goal should be seeing the world without color, and some even pretend to already be
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In the love of the family of God, we must become color brave, color caring, color honoring, and not color blind. We have to recognize the image of God in one another. We have to love despite, and even because of, our differences.
we can’t fix what we don’t understand or acknowledge.
If we avoid hard truths to preserve personal comfort or to fashion a facade of peace, our division will only widen. Jesus can make beauty from ashes, but the family of God must first see and acknowledge the ashes.
Forgiveness and healing cannot begin until we become aware of the historical roots of the problem and acknowledge the harm caused.
They oppressed the natives, stole their resources, and brought diseases that decimated the native populations. Yet to this day, Christopher Columbus has his own national holiday.
Her role was to listen and learn. By becoming aware of the realities of racial division, she could grow in empathy, and empathy is the first step toward racial solidarity. Empathy would allow her to sit in someone else’s pain.
Truth frees us to grow. Frees us to see. Frees us to be aware. Frees us from the bondage of racial sin. Frees us to have courage for the difficult conversations.
Lord, you ask us to shine your light of truth into the darkness of sin, both in the world and in our own lives. We need your truth to cut away our nation’s long-standing racial inequity, our idolatry of whiteness and nationalism, and any form of injustice or oppression. Lord, let us bravely cling to the truth of your love, truth that leads us to speak against all forms of hatred toward people created in the imago Dei. Amen. —HEATHER WINDELER
Awareness of the truth is useless without acknowledgment of our complicity or its effects on us.
We can’t shy away from the conversations just because they’re uncomfortable or awkward or unpleasant. We can’t change the subject because issues of racism make us feel bad. Instead, we have to have the hard conversations so we can move to a place of deep lament.
What is the purpose of lament? It allows us to connect with and grieve the reality of our sin and suffering. It draws us to repentant connection with God in that suffering. Lament also serves as an effort to change God’s mind, to ask him to turn things around in our favor. Lament seeks God as comforter, healer, restorer, and redeemer. Somehow the act of lament reconnects us with God and leads us to hope and redemption.
Willful ignorance of the facts, willful bias and prejudice—these things keep us from the awareness that leads to full acknowledgment and lament. They keep us from moving into the hard work of racial reconciliation.
If we follow her example, we’ll find ourselves drawn out of complacency and complicit behavior and into the hard work and sorrow that lead us to repentance.
Lord, as we become aware of the intensity of the racial divide, our hearts are broken. Help us not to rush from this place of hurting to triumphalism or repair but rather lament as you call us to do. May our lament be a form of worship, a joining of our hearts with yours, as we grieve the lack of your kingdom justice here on earth. Strengthen us for this path, as without you, the overwhelming depth of the problems that must be addressed and acknowledged would be devastating. We know that you mourn with us and comfort us as we mourn with one another. In Christ’s holy name, amen. —ELIZABETH
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We can’t bypass the weight of our guilt and shame if we intend to arrive at true reconciliation and justice.
without truth-informed perspectives, we’ll never build bridges of racial reconciliation.
let’s not hide from the communal shame and guilt of racism; let’s acknowledge it and step from its shadow and into the light. Own whatever history you or your church may have with racism, painful as it might be. And if you’re a person of color, please don’t be ashamed or feel guilty for the color of your skin, for the ways your ancestors were subjugated or for the ways you’ve been treated by the systems of power. There’s no shame in wanting to be treated equally, no guilt in using your voice to shine a light on the history of racism. You can step out of the shadows. You can speak truth to
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before we can move forward toward racial healing, we need to examine our own family histories, our systemic advantages and disadvantages, and our personal participation or capitulation in acts of racism.
Bridge builders don’t refuse confession just because the wrong done to them feels greater than the wrong they’ve done.
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says: “I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action”; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of
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those who’ve inherited the power and benefits of past wrongs should work to make it right for those who’ve inherited the burdens and oppression of the past.
