Be the Bridge: Pursuing God's Heart for Racial Reconciliation

by LaTasha Morrison

Ninety-two-point-five percent of churches in the United States are racially segregated.8 Still, there hasn’t been a major movement to desegregate church. Very few White churches have admitted their roles in slavery or the perpetuation of Jim Crow laws that led to segregation. Very few have called Black pastors into leadership positions. You don’t see many White people attending churches of color or ethnically diverse churches as bridge builders. Why? Maybe it’s because seeking ethnically diverse churches would highlight their complicity in structures of racism, and that complicity would bring so much shame and guilt. I’m here to say it clearly: 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 power. The church will not be a leading example in racial healing until we feel the weight of communal guilt and shame and then allow it to push us into the truth. We won’t be agents of reconciliation until, like Ezra and Daniel, we take on the gui...