I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Prophetic Christianity)

by Chanequa Walker-Barnes

To some degree, then, the theology of racial reconciliation that emerged through the PK rallies shaped—and was shaped by—the dominant evangelical paradigm. Central to this paradigm was a belief that racism is a form of sin that results from division based on socially constructed categories of racial identity. Critical here is the idea that separateness—particularly that separateness evident among Christians during Sunday morning worship—is the “problem.” The “solution,” then, is togetherness. In Dear White Christians, Jennifer Harvey refers to this as “the reconciliation paradigm.” She states: On the one hand, the reconciliation paradigm seems to claim that racial identities do not innately pertain to who we are as human beings created in God’s image. This version of reconciliation assumes that our separateness betrays a failure to understand our shared humanity as something that transcends our differences. The implications of this assumption seem to be that reconciliation would come if we honored the truth that at our core we are one and the same. On the other hand, these Christians argue that we must do better at learning about, understanding, and appreciating real differences among racial groups. This claim assumes that separateness comes from failing to value diversity enough. Reconciliation in this version becomes a matter of genuinely embracing particularities, or the ways in which we are not the same.15 Consistent with the evangelical emphasis on Christian identity ...