The Church's Coming Race Decision

The double standard is expiring

The national discourse on race has taken a back seat since the fever pitch of 2020, and so the church has largely toned down the discussion, too.

But, if recent history tells us anything, we’re right on time for an election year resurgence.

This time around, things are different. A lot of good-hearted people who got on board with the rhetoric in 2016 or 2020 because they want everyone to be treated fairly are seeing the fruits and thinking, “this isn’t what I signed up for.”

What fruits?

They’re seeing open racial division like the rise of the “Black National Anthem” at events as big as the Super Bowl, which is blatant, celebrated segregation.

They’re seeing the promotion of “black owned businesses” so people can give preferential patronage based on skin color.

They’re seeing quotes like this one from leading high school football recruit Jordan Seaton: “Why you not coming to Colorado? Why you not helping somebody who look like you?” referring to Deion Sanders, Colorado’s black coach.

And these good-hearted people are saying, “Wait a minute. I thought we were all agreed on promoting a society based on content of character rather than color of skin?” (Never mind that MLK Jr. himself advocated for race-based preferential treatment.)

Obviously, there’s a double standard at play.

We have a racism problem, but it’s not the one we’ve been told.

We’re currently under a system in which white Americans are expected to downplay their race while everyone else is actively encouraged to focus on racial identity and filter everything through the lens of race.

“Black pride” and “black excellence” are regular talking points. “White pride” and white excellence” are dangerous and supremacist. “I’m proud to be Hispanic” is okay, but so much as “It’s ok to be white” is seen as both offensive and absurd.

Thanks to Critical Theory’s “oppressed/oppressor” dynamics, we have situation ethics at play in which something which is wrong for the majority race is good and necessary for minority races.

In other words, racism is a sin if you’re white and a tool if you’re not. A lot of white folks are considered guilty until proven innocent with race, while a lot of folks of minority races are actively encouraged to be racist.

Too many Christians have been indoctrinated by this ideology. Many Good Christian men and women who have never treated anyone of any race with a spirit of partiality spent the summer of 2020 getting told by their preachers how racist they all are. It is their original sin in that they were born with it, and it is their mortal sin in that it cannot be repented of and forgiven, only acknowledged in a spirit of self-condemnation.

Meanwhile, Christian minority groups (“people of color,” “BIPOC,” or whatever us-against-them term the media are going with now) are being taught by the culture to elevate race to the center of their identity. They are taught to see themselves by race first and Christianity second rather than the other way around.

And many churches and Christian voices won’t address the problem. If anything, they see minority in-group partiality as a virtue rather than a problem. Not a word will be said about black Christians supporting organizations like the NAACP or the UNCF, or extolling HBCUs.

If a white preacher said he directed his son toward a college because most of the students were white, he’d be excoriated. Maybe even fired. If a black preacher said he wanted his son to go to an HBCU, nobody would bat an eye.

A massacre motivated by white supremacy draws a scathing editorial from the Christian Chronicle to let us all know we’re not doing enough about race. A massacre motivated by black supremacy (like Darrell Brooks in Waukesha, WI), or a school shooting in which the killer named white hatred as a motivation (as with the Nashville Covenant School shooting) isn’t even acknowledged.

Oceans of ink have been spilled lecturing white Christians for their support of Donald Trump, but hardly a word has been said about 95% of black evangelicals voting for a man who lit the White House up in LGBT rainbow colors. The “Christians and politics don’t mix” lecturing to which we’re subjected conveniently never calls out the political activism of black churches.

We’re also seeing a lot of rhetoric about “standing up for the oppressed” that assumes this all goes in only one direction. Yet, thanks to diversity pushes, S&P100 companies hired 300,000 employees in the months following 2020’s sea change, and only 6% of those were white. Microsoft brags about paying their white employees less. We can agree those are bad things, right? Racism isn’t limited to one group of people.

Yet some will go so far as to repeat the CRT line that it’s impossible to be racist if you aren’t the majority ethnicity. Literally only white people can be racist, in their mind.

It’s not about what’s right for those folks; it’s about CRT-driven division.

Lest I be accused of beating around the bush, I’ll say it plainly: I think racism is becoming a problem in the church again, and (generally speaking) it’s not white Christians who are engaging in it.

So this is the decision we have before us: are we going to solve the divide with God’s guidance, or the culture’s?

The path to reconciliation from the CRT side is for Christians who are white to “sit down and listen,” effectively giving up any seat at the discussion. The unbiblical, divisive tactics of Robin DiAngelo and Ibram X. Kendi drive the ideology that says it will never be enough, and there will always be an upper hand to be grabbed or given up.

Some would say the church hasn’t adequately addressed race and that’s why we have to turn to these secular voices. While we might need to say more about it, it should be from deeper study of the Word. Turning to voices who are explicitly in favor of division and partiality is not the answer, and we need to have better discernment than that.

The Bible’s path is for all of us to treat each other without partiality. What’s wrong for me is wrong for you, and vice versa. What is wrong for the white Christian is wrong for the black Christian, is wrong for the hispanic Christian, is wrong for the native American Christian, and so forth.

We should be striving to live in unity and love with one another. That means two things.

First, where there is division, we must heal it Biblically. Biblical reconciliation deals with a specific wrong done and restitution that can be made for it. These grievance politics must be rejected because they have no end in sight. Second, we shouldn’t go in search of division. Just because the TV pits us against each other doesn’t mean we have to believe we’re divided.

As to the specifics of how we navigate the ins and outs of our racial differences… that’s going to have to be a different article for a different day. We can say CRT is wrong, but the much-shared Morgan Freeman speech on ignoring our differences isn’t 100% correct, either. God made us different for a reason, and we remain different, so acknowledging it is a necessary part of getting race right. But, as I said, that’s a much longer article with many more questions to explore.

In the meantime, I’m simply calling for a consistent standard.

Is segregation bad? Are in-group preferences bad? “No for me, and yes for thee” can’t continue to be the answer.

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The qualifiers:
- Of course white people can hate others for their skin color. And when they do, it’s wrong. Almost nobody disputes that.
- No, not all black or other minority race folks hold racial hatred. It’s only that, in a world that actively encourages them to be, they will have to watch their biases even more carefully.