Ferguson “Weekend of Resistance,” the Bible and Christianity

Do you think racism is just a problem for African Americans? Think again.  For Christians, a racist white church is not a church, it is a racial club.

In order to save its own soul, the Christian Church must immediately make the transformation of social behavior to eliminate racism one of its top priorities.

Some Christians, as well as people of other faiths and humanist values, are starting to get this.

For the weekend of October 10-13, activists plan a “Weekend of Resistance” two months after a white police officer shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.  Whether white America likes it or not, this moment in history is not unlike the day Rosa Parks refused to move to the back of a Birmingham bus so a white person could have her seat.  The details don’t make any difference.  Black anger about white America’s continuing racism has been reinforced and inspired by this questionable shooting.

How can there be any doubt that this is a racist society.  Whites don’t need proof of police brutality.  Whites don’t need statistics of incarceration of black males.  Whites don’t need to know of the lower learning accomplishments of black or brown ghetto students.  Whites don’t need their self-justifications in response to black resistance.  All Whites need to do is examine their own smug, silently held smirks about the inferior competence and behavior of black and brown people, predominantly adults, as kids are “so cute.”

This “Weekend of Resistance,” in giving a renewed focus for black action, raises two burning religious questions about white racism in American today.

The first is why do so many people believe or assume the Bible condones or authorizes racism?  The second is why is the Christian church in America not actively outraged by the racism of its people?

People must not be reading their Bibles.  There is absolutely no Biblical basis for distinguishing among the races.  There is only one race in the Bible:  the Human Race.  Caucasians, Africans, Asians, Indians, Arabs, Orientals and Jews are not different races.  Rather, they are different ethnicities of a common human race.  Right in the very first chapter of Genesis it says, “The God said, ‘Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness…so God created humankind in his image…male and female he created them.’” (Genesis 1:26&27).

Then God sent Jesus to risk his life for all of humanity, “so that everyone…may not perish but may have eternal life.”  (John 3:16).  Jesus was outright blunt in his concluding remarks in a long passage about caring for all others when he said, “”Just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, my brothers, you did not do it to me.” (Matthew 25:45).

Biblically, then, if one treats a person with contempt, that one is mistreating a person created in God’s image.  In racist behavior, when one discriminates or marginalizes another, one is hurting somebody whom God loves and for whom Jesus died.

An irony in all this white self-justification that the Bible treats racism as a normal part of human existence is the fact that very likely Jesus himself was not white.  The scholarly consensus is that Jesus was, like most first-century Jews, probably a dark-skinned man.

Without Biblical authority for racist behavior, we come to the question of why is the Christian church in America not actively outraged by racism?

Part of the answer, of course, lies in the fact that no later than the third century, Christianity was co-opted as the philosophical foil for the spread of empire throughout Europe and eventually to North America.  Further, in its preoccupation with the recruitment of followers, Christianity personalized religion, emphasizing God’s rescue of sinners and offering eternal life to believers.  Today, many white Catholics and Protestants alike, see their religion as an obligatory step toward a recognizable life after death.  Religious faith is about them, not others.

With the admirable exception of whites who have joined civil rights marches, demonstrations, and social transformation activities, the church, for the most part, does not have racism on its agenda.  How many anti-racist sermons have been heard in any given white church in the last twelve months?  How many social and political action activities to eliminate racism have been generated in white churches in the past twenty years?  Does the church believe that the election of a black American president absolves it from moral responsibility to follow the teachings of the Bible?

In a graduate class on generous listening I am taking at Chicago Theological Seminary, I had a conversation with a fellow student who happens to be black:  We had a fairly extensive conversation about white racism.  She asked me whether white folks talk with black folks out of curiosity or out of a desire to enter into relationship.  I said more of the former than the latter, but added a third option which is that most white people tend to avoid people of color altogether.

Interestingly, black church members generally concentrate on supporting one another from the ugly daily onslaughts of racism, and theologically focus on the promise of the coming of the Kingdom.

And, to make this personal, not someone else’s job, read an eye-opening piece by Paul Rauschenbush recently published in the Huffington Post.