“There is no subject that is more in need of dispassionate analysis, careful factual research and a fearless and honest discussion than is race.” – Thomas Sowell
With sacred Scripture as our lens, in the midst of the overwhelming cacophony of voices in our culture, what can we know for sure about racism in America?
First, only the Gospel can bring reconciliation: Ask Paul, the Hellenistic Jew and apostle to the Gentiles, how we know when the crucified, resurrected and reigning Lord Jesus is truly present among his people? He would answer: when, as the Old Testament prophets foretold, Jew and Gentile are having a meal together in peace (see, e.g., Gal. 2; Eph. 2). Why would he say this?
Not only was it a matter of prophetic fulfillment, it was a matter of human impossibility: the Jew-Gentile rift was too ancient, too entrenched, too embroiled in vicious cycles of reciprocity. Quite simply, if reconciliation were ever to happen, it would literally take a miracle.
That miracle was the early church: the earliest followers of Jesus, epitomized in the church of Antioch, were a “third race”—an unprecedented “motley crew” of tribes, tongues, peoples and nations.
If we’re not engaged in humble prayer and winsome hospitality, especially with those with whom we disagree, then we are part of the problem, regardless of our political views.
Many public voices (e.g., Ta-Nehisi Coates) today are very cynical about racial reconciliation. They should be. Because they don’t (yet) know the gospel. They haven’t (yet) witnessed the matchless power of the gospel to reconcile.
Second, the horrific story of slavery and segregation in America must always be told: The Old Testament is the story of the seemingly hopeless people of God; when it’s not embarrassing, it’s almost unbearable: personal, institutional, and national/ethnic sin and injustice run throughout the story.
Unsurprisingly, our nation, even with its Christian influences and its truly miraculous “awakenings,” has similar ingredients in its story, and it must always be told. If you’re unfamiliar with that story, in his fascinating book Ethnic America: A History, esteemed Afro-American economist Thomas Sowell has a chapter that provides an incredibly good summary.
Every American, but especially every Christian, regardless of ethnicity, should know this story, just like they should know the horrific story of abortion in America.
Third, the Bible teaches that humans are characterized by both solidarity and individuality: Most political progressives in America tend to underscore human collectivity and can be tempted to reduce persons to an “identity” in terms of their gender, “race,” class, etc., seeing them primarily as pawns of overwhelming societal forces. By contrast, political conservatives tend to underscore human individuality and are tempted to reduce persons to an “agency” that minimizes a person’s affiliation with their ancestors or the impact of a person’s context on their behavior.
Both Matthew’s Gospel and Luke’s provide extensive genealogies for Jesus precisely to show his identity within the larger story. His ethnic, vocational, and socio-economic identity are important, situating Jesus within a much larger story. And this identity informs (vs. negates) his agency as one who came “to do the will of the Father.” Importantly–and in line with Israel’s prophets and leaders before him (like Isaiah or Nehemiah), Jesus identified with the sin of his people (Mt. 3.13-15). If Jesus, though sinless, identified with the sin of his people, surely we should too.
Further, while the Bible speaks of the category of ethnicity (persons of a shared ancestry), it does not speak of “race”—a concept that exists only as a perverse fiction, created and sustained by greed and hubris. (While “race” is sometimes used synonymously for “ethnicity,” strictly speaking, the two are very different.) For Christians, one’s identity comes, in part, from a person’s lineage, but never from a person’s looks, for the Bible explicitly forbids judging others on the basis of appearance of any kind (e.g., James 2.9; thus, racism is a particular form of what the bible calls partiality, προσωπολυμψία).
Given the power of the Gospel to save even the vilest sinner, it is beyond dispute that, depending upon a particular person’s (or church’s) past or region, the need to repent of racism may well be expected, whether as an active individual agent or as a passive agent in solidarity with unjust institutions or social spheres (see Gal. 1.14). Such an individual’s confession should be before God and others, but it need not be paraded or repeated; it may, however, be humbly shared on occasion when edifying. Paul urges the Corinthians to deal with unaddressed egregious sin in their congregation (1 Cor. 5), but he also warns against “shaming” the repentant sinner (2 Cor. 2).
Fourth, through the power of the Gospel an astonishing degree of racial reconciliation has been achieved in America: It is incontrovertible that what is often called the “civil rights” movement was, in fact, at heart a religious—specifically, Christian—movement. To cite from my previous post: In his book A Stone of Hope: Prophetic Religion and the Death of Jim Crow, regarded as one of the most important works on the civil rights movement, David Chappell states:
“The black movement’s nonviolent soldiers were driven not by modern liberal faith in human reason, but by older, seemingly more durable prejudices and superstitions that were rooted in Christian and Jewish myth. Specifically, they drew from a prophetic tradition that runs from David and Isaiah in the Old Testament through Augustine and Martin Luther to Reinhold Niebuhr in the twentieth century.”
Chappell, a non-Christian, devotes an entire chapter to arguing that the civil rights movement was a “religious revival,” comparing it to the “Great Awakenings” in American history. (Importantly, he then devotes a chapter to the many failures of the church in the South.)
So how significant was the social and political impact of those whom God used to bring about this awakening? He concludes, “Measured by historical standards of realism, their achievement was extraordinary—arguably the most successful social movement in American history, one that has been an inspiration from Soweto to Prague to Tiananmen Square.”
In short, to deny this extraordinary achievement—to fail to know and tell this story as well or to assert a “new Jim Crow”—is to deny the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit and engage in not only revisionist history but revisionist church history. While setbacks and tragedies are surely to be grieved and addressed, there is, as the 24-year-old Afro-American author Coleman Hughes argues, a very reasonable case to be made for Black optimism (here). Far too many today are ignorant of what life was like for Afro-Americans in the Jim Crow South. (For the “lived experience” of one Afro-American woman living in Charleston, SC, in that era, read this beautiful memoir here.)
Fifth, Christians are to love their neighbors by living locally and by listening to both eye witness and expert witness: Loving begins with listening, and especially in this matter it is important to listen to—and, if appropriate, lament—the lived experiences of all our neighbors, whether they are black or white, a cop or a (supposed) convict. And especially in matters of justice and testimony Old Testament law clearly forbids (1) following the crowd (Ex. 23.2) and (2) favoring either the rich/privileged or the poor/under-privileged (Lev. 19.15).
Jesus’ incarnation enabled him to empathize with us; it “perfected” him, enabling him to serve as our high priest. Apart from this listening and lamenting, any attempt to speak liberating truth will likely fail.
But Jesus came not only as an empath (priest), but as an expert (prophet and sage), speaking wisdom that at times confirms our “lived experience” but all too often confronts it: Christian are to lean not on their own understanding (Prov. 3.5). Such a perspective directly challenges a central subconscious mantra of many college graduates and 20-somethings today: “always trust your feelings” (see here).
As such, Christians are also to listen to “expert witness,” seeking to identify speculation and “spin” and giving heed to rigorous, dispassionate scholarship, especially when scholars themselves are in disagreement. Crucially, “eye witness” accounts help us to know and feel what individual persons see (and so fulfill the command to “weep with those who weep”), but they can never be the primary basis for just policy.
As an example of this, in a recent Wall Street Journal article, Harvard economist Roland Fryer, Jr., who at age 30 became the youngest Afro-American to receive tenure at Harvard, summarized his research into the use of force by U.S. law enforcement:
“We didn’t find racial differences in officer-involved shootings…No matter how we analyzed the data, we found no racial differences in shootings overall, in any city in particular, or in any subset of the data…. When a shooting might be justified by department standards, are police more likely actually to shoot if the civilian is black?… The answer appears to be no.”
Given these findings (which many would find astonishing, even unbelievable), what Fryers says next is extremely important for how we think about the relationship between “eye witness” (or lived experience) and “expert witness”:
“I have grappled with these results for years as I witnessed videos of unmistakable police brutality against black men. How can the data tell a story so different from what we see with our eyes?… Our analysis tells us what happens on average. It isn’t average when a police officer casually kneels on someone’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds. Are there racial differences in the most extreme forms of police violence? The Southern boy in me says yes; the economist says we don’t know.”
(Importantly, Fryer’s research did find racial disparities in use of nonlethal force by police. But even here he very rightly refuses to conclude that this is necessarily evidence of racism. Rather, such disparities cannot simply be dismissed by conservatives–they are altogether alarming. At the same time these disparities are not the “smoking gun” that progressives assume them to be, as if they prove systemic racial animus within law enforcement.)
Finally, based on OT law, Christians believe strongly in due process and in the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Eye-witness testimony, esp. by non-experts, can be incredibly (even if unintentionally) deceptive, and to rush to judgment based on, e.g., mere smartphone video is an act of overweening pride in which we have appointed ourselves judge, jury and executioner, declaring, “Why do we need any more witnesses?” (Mark 14.63).
James reminds us: “There is only one Lawgiver and Judge… But you—who are you to judge your neighbor?” (James 4.12). In tragic cases like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown voices from government and media prematurely and uncharitably judged the situation, so that when subsequent due process and independent investigation presented a very different interpretation, it hurt not only race relations but an already fragile Afro-American confidence in the justice system itself.
Sixth, political disagreement among Christians is a crucial occasion for unity and love: The Scriptures make clear that, while government is a divinely ordained institution, providing very important “goods” to humanity, its ability to be an instrument of redemption—of true “justice and righteousness”—is limited in the extreme; rather, from Exodus to Revelation, political power is generally portrayed in a negative, even sinister light, as we learned from Revelation in a recent sermon series on the news media.
As such, Christians of differing political perspectives are to unite in regarding the church of Jesus Christ as the agent of personal and cultural redemption and renewal. Rooted by this unity, Christians should engage in humble yet rigorous discussion on issues of social and political policy, providing both an example of and a venue for civil discourse on controversial matters. A phenomenal example of such loving yet spirited debate is found in Cornel West and Robert George (e.g., here).
Further, as mentioned in my previous post, Revelation portrays the Evil One’s desire to deify political power and so make policy matters of first-order importance to human flourishing; this is a lie, intended to divide/distract the church of Jesus Christ from its true mission. In short, the bible makes clear that “justice and righteousness” is a first-order issue; but it also makes clear that political power/policy is, at best, a third-order instrument to attain a holistic “justice and righteousness.”
Firmly rooted within this commitment to unity and this framework of policy as a non-first-order matter, Christian leaders should humbly and carefully investigate both eye witness and expert “testimony” and teach/preach their positions to their people, speaking truth penitently, irenically, yet boldly, recalling Jesus’ warning, “Woe to you when all men speak well of you.” Let us pray that churches in America become noted as venues of humble, respectful, spirited social and political discourse.
So in that spirit, let me share my own perspective.
The topic of race and racism in America is overwhelming in its complexity, demanding humility and significant devotion to study and dialogue. Over the past seven years I have read from the works of the following experts (whose political ideologies vary greatly): Randall Kennedy, Glenn Loury, Roland Fryer, Jr., Stuart Buck, Karen Fields, Barbara Fields, Thomas Sowell, John McWhorter, Mark Noll, Shelby Steele, and Charles Murray, along with a good number of others, many of whose opinions were diametrically opposed (see here for a more complete annotated bibliography of my own reading).
Based on perspectives and conclusions of these experts (most of whom are Afro-American, and whose ideological perspectives are quite diverse), I believe that:
(1) though hardly without exception, systemic racism is not a major problem in America, and that far too often “statistics” presented as evidence of it (e.g., in average income, personal/commercial financing, medical care, or law enforcement) are upon further examination found to be misleading (methodologically), sadly unbeknownst to those who use them—e.g., the poorly trained, lazy or biased journalist or the well-intending John/Jane Doe advocating social justice issues on social media (see here);
(2) America is indeed divided, but overwhelmingly along the lines of class and ideology, not “race”: today white America is plagued with most of the same ills as black America (see, e.g., here and here).
As a pastor, with respect to George Floyd’s tragic death and the events that have ensued, I would echo the sentiments of Corey Brooks, an Afro-American pastor in south Chicago (here); with respect to the plight of Afro-Americans in general, I find a legitimacy to the heartbreaking perspective of John McWhorter, made over 20 years ago (here). As for Afro-American attitudes toward local law enforcement, I think there’s real merit to the perspective of this Harvard PhD graduate, Michael Fortner (here). With respect to the current protests against police brutality, I’m in accord with Heather Mac Donald’s recent testimony before Congress (here), as well as this incredibly nuanced article by Afro-American Coleman Hughes (here) and this telling yet cautious summary of research conducted by the youngest Afro-American economist to teach at Harvard, Roland Fryer, Jr. (here).
I’m not remoted opposed to the peaceful protests, although I would protest something else first: as Afro-American Rhodes scholar and Harvard Law Professor Randall Kennedys states, “blacks have suffered more from being left unprotected or under-protected by law enforcement authorities than from being mistreated as suspects or defendants, although it is allegations of the latter that now typically receive the most attention” (see here). With respect to the trend of white “wokeness,” I’m perhaps most sympathetic with Afro-American authors Charles Love (here) and Shelby Steele (here).
Reader, I would love to hear from you, especially if your perspective is different from my own. I’m truly praying that churches throughout America will be communities whose love and unity are illustrated by their healthy, humble dialogue on this and all other matters.
The local church is a family, and families talk lovingly, vigorously, even argumentatively around the dinner table!! If we know brothers or sisters in our church whose views differ from our own, now is the time for us to move closer to (not farther from) them.
The only point I would want to highlight is this: If one vehemently disagrees with a perspective like mine (as outlined above), they must take in account that they are also disagreeing with the scholars listed above, the majority of whom are (as mentioned already) Afro-American and highly degreed, teaching at some of the most prestigious universities in America. In other words, the matter is anything but “cut and dried,” and to pretend otherwise is to risk being deluded and divisive.
Seventh, Christians find peace and true reason to pray and persevere in the reality of present and future divine justice: The Scriptures speak often and ominously of divine judgment: in love, God is anything but apathetic to injustice. The despised and downtrodden barren wife Hannah declares, “the LORD is a God who knows, and by him deeds are weighed” (1Sam. 2.3). \
Three times in the Psalms God is presented as laughing; in all three cases he is laughing at evil-doers, whether they are political leaders, nations, or individuals. Why is he laughing? David tells us: “because he knows their day is coming” (Ps. 37.13; see Pss. 2.4; 59.8). Soberingly, apart from the cross, no one will get away with anything.
Further, God’s wrath is portrayed both as a present phenomenon, in the giving of sinners over to their own destructive devices (see, e.g., Pss. 7, 81, 106; Rom. 1), and as a future terrifying reality (e.g., Mt. 25, Rev. 6). As with Christ, the oppressed Christian can “entrust himself to the One who judges justly” (1 Pet. 2.23).
This divine justice is liberating, enabling the Christian “not to fret, because of evildoers” (Ps. 37.1) nor to “take revenge.” Rather, “leaving room for God’s wrath,” they can courageously give food and drink to their enemy when they hunger or thirst, praying for oppressed and oppressor, recalling Jesus’ promise, “Will not God bring about justice for his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he keep putting them off? I tell you, he will see that they get justice, and quickly.” (Luke 18.7-8).
Such a vision of divine justice empowers Christians to be both doggedly persistent and soberingly realistic in their efforts to promote “justice and righteousness” until our Lord Jesus returns in glory.
Hope Unbroken 