These are dangerous days to talk about race. If you try to raise the subject in polite company you’re likely to face some averted glances or rolling eyes. In impolite company, well, who knows? For some, talk of race is a pretext for a political agenda. For others, the failure to talk about race is an admission of darker motives.
It’s time to talk, though, and I’d like to think the church is the best place for us to have this discussion.
Why? First, because the Christian story has always been about overcoming the walls that divide us.
Ruth, the Moabite woman, crosses into Israelite society and restores a family’s fortunes. Jonah reluctantly brings good news to Ninevites. Jesus sits with a Samaritan woman. The Holy Spirit bursts into an international gathering on Pentecost and creates a new community. Paul declares that “Christ is our peace. He made both Jews and Gentiles into one group. With his body, he broke down the barrier of hatred that divided us.” (Ephesians 2:14, CEB).
We shouldn’t be afraid of an honest encounter about race. When we confront it in Christ, it generally means good things are going to happen.
Secondly, the church is a place where we don’t have to pretend we’ve got it all together. We are broken people living in a broken land. A people of unclean lips. That’s what Sin does to us. And one of the manifestations of that Sin is Racism, the demon who haunts everything that happens in our scarred nation.
I’ll confess that I have avoided discussions of race for fear that I’ll do it wrong. I’ll say the wrong thing. Cause unintended hurt. Expose myself as less than I want to be. I don’t want to be racist.
But as a white man living in a society and a church still deformed by racial ideologies, I don’t have the luxury of being pristine. Racism is in me. Dealing with that means a lifelong confession, awareness, and commitment to crossing boundaries to begin relationships that can emerge despite the awkwardness of our limited vocabulary around race.
I’m writing this from a conference sponsored by the United Methodist Church’s General Commission on Religion & Race called Facing the Future. Clergy from around the country are here talking about their experiences in cross-racial and cross-cultural ministry settings. The theme is “In the Midst of the Storm.”
There is realism and hope here:
“The paradigm of white racism is already dead,” Bishop Greg Palmer said in the opening worship. “But there are still a few minor rebellions against the reign of King Jesus.”
That sums it up. Racism doesn’t have a future because Christ has “broken down the barrier of hatred.” But there are still a few minor rebellions and they still cause pain and real injury. And some of those rebellions are within us.
I’m grateful for the steps that courageous lay and clergy folks on the Eastern Shore have taken to help us acknowledge what racism has done to us, I’m grateful for the places on the Shore where clergy and churches are living out cross-racial and cross-cultural ministry. And I know there is more to do. Why shouldn’t it start in the church?
Heartlands 