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Dissertation Approval Sheet

This dissertation entitled

LIFTING THE VEIL: THE ROLE OF BLACK CHRISTIANS IN LEADING RACIAL RECONCILIATION WITHIN AMERICAN

Written by

ESSENTINO A. LEWIS, JR.

and submitted in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Ministry

has been accepted by the Faculty of Fuller Theological Seminary

upon the recommendation of the undersigned readers:

______Dr. Daniel White Hodge Content Reader

______Dr. Kurt Fredrickson Associate Dean for Professional Doctoral Programs

Date Received: August 5, 2020

LIFTING THE VEIL: THE ROLE OF BLACK CHRISTIANS IN LEADING RACIAL RECONCILIATION WITHIN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY FULLER THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE DOCTOR OF MINISTRY

BY

ESSENTINO A. LEWIS, JR. JULY 2020

Copyright © 2020 by Essentino Lewis, Jr.

All Rights Reserved

ABSTRACT

Lifting the Veil: The Role of Black Christians in Leading Racial Reconciliation within American Evangelicalism Essentino A. Lewis, Jr. Doctor of Ministry School of Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary 2020

The unique perspective of Black Christians is essential in leading racial reconciliation efforts within American evangelicalism. This dissertation will use W.E.B. Du Bois’s notion of “double consciousness,” articulated in his classic work, The of Black Folk, as a framework to examine whether Black Christians, namely the Black and Black evangelicals, should use their unique position to lead the truthful examination necessary for authentic healing and racial reconciliation within the American Evangelical Church. Du Bois observed that exist in duality—as both insider and outsider—and, as a result, are positioned to offer a distinctive critique of American life. Similarly, the and, to some degree, Black evangelicals have never been fully embraced by the evangelical mainstream and occupy a unique space within American that allows them to speak authoritatively in efforts around racial reconciliation. The Black Church and Black evangelicals are fluent in mainstream evangelical orthodoxy and orthopraxy, but are also in touch with the pain that exists at the margins of American church life and culture. Believing traditional definitions of reconciliation to be inadequate, this dissertation will articulate a new, theopolitical framework for directing reconciliation efforts. This new framework incorporates elements of biblical and political conceptions of reconciliation. This study concludes that while the reality of sin ultimately prevents the full expression of racial reconciliation, American evangelicalism must continue to press toward it under the leadership of Black Christians. The earnest seeking of reconciliation can itself contribute to a degree of harmony and healing. The theopolitical framework of reconciliation articulated in this work provides important elements for consideration in the effort, including opportunities for truth-telling, collectivism, contextualization, and reparations.

Content Reader: Daniel White Hodge, PhD

Words: 276

To

Buffalo, Florence, and La Digue the people and lands that shaped my life

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I was not always sure this dissertation would be completed. That’s just being honest. I knew the ideas would reside in my heart and mind, but whether they would ever actually make it onto paper was never a given. The demands of life and ministry sometimes conspire together to co-opt the best laid plans. I am so grateful for the many people who challenged, encouraged, and informed my work. This was a joint effort. Special thanks to my family. Cassandra, 23 years, 3 children and 7 degrees later and we’re still not sure our educational journey is over. It has been a joy to be, among other things, your career classmate and study partner. Thanks for holding it down always. Sidney, Simone and Essentino III, I appreciate your patience while I got this thing done. One of the reasons I wrote on racial reconciliation is because I hope you will inherit a much more united church and world than the one that currently exists. As you grow and assume leadership roles within the , whatever they may be, remember to honor both your beautiful melanated bodies and your spirits. Each was created in the image and likeness of God. Mom and Dad, thanks for teaching that to me. Clifton Park Baptist Church, it is my honor to be your pastor. We are leading the way, teaching the truth and experiencing the life. You guys have loved me, supported me and challenged me for the last twelve years. You have allowed me room to grow and evolve as a pastor and theologian and I will always be thankful for that. Thanks for your continued words of encouragement and prayers. To my staff: Janet, Lashanor, Glenn, Randi, Robin, Leslie and Tony—we made it. Thanks for stepping up and stepping in while I stepped away to complete this work. I could not have done this without your prayers and support. Bennett W. Smith, Sr., Guy A. Williams, Sr., and John K. Jenkins, the three I have called pastor, my ministry is an extension of each of you. Everything I do as pastor, preacher, and leader is somehow influenced by your model. This doctorate is the continuation of your legacy. I will continue to work so that “your fruit shall remain” (John 15:16). My friends—The Brethren—Matthew Watley, Daryl Williams, and Tony Lee, you guys are the best. Thanks for making it cool to be smart and love Jesus. Vaun, Ayo and Oye, thanks for your prayers, support, and understanding the last-minute cancelations and temporary pauses on our discipleship group while I got this done. It’s time to hit it hard now. To the inaugural Transformational African-American Church Leadership Cohort: we are and will forever be the first. Steven Lee, Tamla Wilson, Janella Pyles, Erinn Harris, Sabin Strickland, Marlyn Bussey, Andreton Jones—I say your names because we

iv did this together. Thanks for your of collegiality and friendship. Dr. Efrem Smith, thank you for bringing your passion for the church into the classroom. Your heart for reconciliation and, in particular, multicultural ministry challenges me in ways I cannot shake. I must deal with it and wrestle through it. And that is good. Oh, and for the catfish, fried chicken, collard greens, and cornbread you introduced us to in every greasy spoon in , , and —I say “amen.” Dr. Daniel White Hodge, you are the personification of every reason I desired doctoral study. You challenged me to rethink theology, pastoral practice, language, history, parenting, and the list goes on. Thank you for your authenticity and fearlessness. To God be the glory for it all!

Essentino A. Lewis, Jr. Lanham, July 2020

v

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv

PART ONE: DEFINING AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM, BLACK EVANGELICALISM AND THE BLACK CHURCH

INTRODUCTION 2

CHAPTER 1: DEFINING AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM AND ITS 12 RELATIONSHIP TO BLACK CHRISTIANS

PART TWO: FRAMING RACIAL RECONCILIATION IN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 40

CHAPTER 3: A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR RACIAL RECONCILIATION 55 WITHIN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

PART THREE: UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF BLACK CHRISTIANS IN RACIAL RECONCILIATION WITHIN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

CHAPTER 4: THE UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE OF BLACK CHRISTIANS IN 91 RACIAL RECONCILIATION EFFORTS

CHAPTER 5: UNAVOIDABLE QUESTIONS CONCERNING RACIAL 112 RECONCILIATION IN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

CHAPTER 6: “AM I MY BROTHER’S KEEPER?” THE ROLE OF BLACK 126 CHRISTIANS IN LEADING RACIAL RECONCILIATION WITHIN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

CONCLUSION 138

BIBLIOGRAPHY 144

vi

PART ONE

DEFINING AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM, BLACK EVANGELICALISM

AND THE BLACK CHURCH

INTRODUCTION

On July 20, 1957, over one hundred thousand spectators packed Yankee Stadium.

Casey Stangel and his American League leading baseball team, headlined by Mickey

Mantle and Yogi Berra, were on a five-game winning streak and in prime position to earn a spot in the World Series. On this day, however, the ballclub was not in town and the people had not come to watch them play. Instead, beginning at 9 a.m., the parking lots began filling up for a different kind of event. By mid-afternoon, the crowd overflowed onto the outer perimeter of the stadium and the gates were forced closed. The people had come to hear Billy Graham. The 38-year-old Baptist minister was concluding his New

York City Crusade, which had seen nearly 2.4 million people in attendance over the course of its sixteen weeks. This particular day would be the largest crowd for an evangelistic crusade in American history. It would also be the largest gathering for anything ever held at Yankee Stadium.

As Graham mounted the pulpit, he instructed his audience to be quiet. He advised them that even a whisper or the slightest movement of one person could become a distraction for thousands. The crowd was in rapt attention as he hurried to the seminal point of his message: “Tonight, before you leave Yankee Stadium, you too shall have to choose because there is no neutral ground concerning Jesus Christ. You will have to choose whether you’re going to serve God or…the other gods of America.”1 It was a message of , a clarion call to his listeners to turn from the prevailing norms of

1 Billy Graham, Billy Graham’s 1957 Crusade Sermon at Yankee Stadium, Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, July 21, 2017, YouTube Video, 5:33, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aZoqIwHsdM.

2 the day to a standard of godliness. It was a message for the masses. Interestingly enough, however, Graham could have given his exhortation just as easily to the American

Evangelical Church he represented. In particular, when it comes to the issue of race— both then and now—American evangelicalism has a choice: will it serve God or the gods of America?

The story of race within the American Evangelical Church tracks, to a great degree, the story of race in the nation. In many regards, “the gods of America” have been the “God” of the Church. Tisby observes, “while many Christian traditions and other religions have varied and valuable narratives, Protestants, especially evangelicals, have written some of the most well-known narratives of racism in the .”2 As the social conscience of America made room for slavery, so too did the theological conviction of American evangelicalism. When separate water fountains, entrances, and hotels were normative across the country, so too were separate pews and bathrooms in evangelical churches. Jim Crow came and went without collective resistance from the

American Evangelical Church. So, too, did the murders of unarmed Black men and women in Ferguson, Staten Island, Louisville, and a host of other cities across the country. In recent history, American evangelicalism has, in many regards, opted for social engineering over social justice. It is no wonder that, even today, “Though minority and White evangelical Protestants have more in common than any other Christian groups, they are deeply divided on matters of race and justice.”3

2 Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 16.

3 Robert P. Jones, “White Christmas, Black Christmas,” The Atlantic, December 22, 2014, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/white-christmas-black-christmas-evangelical-

3 Over the last four decades, the topic of racial reconciliation has gained prominence within the evangelical community. However, if American evangelicalism is ever to be truly reconciled, it will require more than informal action. It will require intentional and sustained efforts, with defined outcomes and public accountability.

Moreover, it will require leadership that understands American evangelicalism as both a beneficiary of its successes and a victim of its shortcomings. That type of leadership can come from Black Christians, specifically Black evangelicals and members of the traditional Black Church.

In his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois observed that

African Americans exist in duality. He noted, "One ever feels his twoness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body."4 Du Bois argued that this “double consciousness” of African Americans positions them to offer a distinctive critique of American life because they understand it as both an insider and outsider of the body politic. Similarly, Black Christians, who have never been fully embraced by the evangelical mainstream, occupy a unique space in relationship to the movement that allows them to speak authoritatively in efforts around racial reconciliation. The Black Church is fluent in mainstream evangelical orthodoxy and orthopraxy, but is also in touch with the pain that exists at the margins of American

christian-racial-divide/383986. A national survey conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that “despite their shared religious worldview, there are virtually no major subgroups in the American politic who disagree more than White evangelicals and Black Protestants do about the fairness of the criminal-justice system.” Two-thirds (66 percent) of White Evangelical Protestants agree that Blacks and other minorities receive treatment equal to Whites in the criminal justice system. More than 8 in 10 (82 percent) Black Protestants disagreed with the statement.

4 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Blue Heron, 1953).

4 life and culture. The same is true with Black evangelicals, who while formally integrated into American evangelical spaces, often describe the feeling of isolation and disconnection.

As a body of believers, American evangelicalism must be reconciled to itself and its highest ideals if it is to be an agent of reconciliation to the world. The Paul wrote to the Corinthian Church, a community itself existing in duality, “Now all things are of God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Jesus Christ, and has given us a ministry of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18).5 Believers are called to carry the message of reconciliation and to do the ministry of reconciliation.

There is nothing easy about the work of racial reconciliation, and attempting it requires the proper perspective. It is critical that the American Evangelical Church understand racial reconciliation is not merely fixing broken interpersonal relationships, but dismantling oppressive systems and institutions. Citing Paul’s admonition of

Ephesians 6:12, “we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places,” Walker-Barnes warns against reducing racism to how we as individuals feel about other ethnic groups.6 Instead, racism, she argues, is the

“systematic way of ordering societal systems, ideologies, and relationships so that political, economic, cultural, and social dominance accrues to Whites. It exists independent of any individual person’s feelings toward people of other races.”7 While

5 All Scripture quoted is from the New King James , unless otherwise stated.

6 Chanequa Walker-Barnes, I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 63.

5 American evangelical orthodoxy is, in many ways, oriented toward the individual, its historical captivity to racist ideologies means it must address both micro- and macro-level implications of race to truly achieve racial reconciliation.

In this regard, incremental change may not suffice, but a radically transformative response might be required. In John 3, Jesus made a similar appraisal of Nicodemus.

When Nicodemus asked about his own spiritual reconciliation, Jesus replied, “Most assuredly, I say to you unless one is , he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn

3:3). Similarly, if American evangelicalism truly desires racial reconciliation, it must confront the reality that existing systems, structures, and paradigms may be so tainted by history that restoration and reorientation of the status quo is impossible. may be the only way forward. In that case, evangelical churches and their members will be impacted, along with evangelical seminaries and parachurch organizations. Existing modes of operating, even successful ones, may need to be halted and new, just, and equitable ones rebuilt in their place. Current programmatic strategies may need to be eliminated and replaced with ones that reflect the aspirations of a reconciled and redeemed community.

It is imperative that an appropriate framework of reconciliation which establishes the right goals and charts the necessary path forward is adopted. Undefined goals and vague benchmarks militate against substantive progress. To that end, a new framework is necessary so those seeking reconciliation can have clear objectives and know whether reconciliation has been achieved. Unfortunately, in the past, evangelicalism’s varied

7 Ibid., 63-64.

6 definitions of reconciliation have allowed room for disagreement concerning the success of reconciliation initiatives.

For understandable reasons, American evangelicalism has looked to Scripture for its definition of reconciliation. Scripture is the appropriate place to begin, but seeking a complete definition cannot end there. This dissertation argues for a reimagined definition of racial reconciliation, articulated as the establishment of a new racial harmony, rooted in truthfulness and freedom of opportunity. This hybrid definition of reconciliation combines both a biblical and political view of the word. The language itself may not be novel, but incorporating an interdisciplinary approach to assess spiritual endeavors is an exception within the evangelical tradition, where Scripture is regarded as the exclusive and definitive standard of acceptable faith and practice. The greatest emphasis of the definition is placed on scriptural mandates concerning reconciliation. Still, given that the impacts of a racialized society are rooted in the social construct of race and have primarily sociopolitical consequences, it is important to take into consideration aspects of reconciliation found in political science and sociology, which directly address those impacts. This is important because the prevailing Christian paradigm for racial reconciliation centers on individual-level solutions designed to establish relationships across race. While important, these efforts almost never reach the institutional structures that undergird, reinforce, and reproduce racial inequity and inequality.

Part One of this work seeks to define the key constituents of the reconciliation conversation, American evangelicalism and Black Christians. American evangelicalism, as a movement, is nebulous in both its historical and contemporary iterations. As a result, it is difficult to pin the “evangelical” label on a particular body of believers or subset of

7 the American Church. In order to discuss racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism, definition must be given to its make-up. In the same way, Black

Christianity is diverse and varied in both its theology and practice. This dissertation will examine Black evangelicalism and the portion of the Black Church that adheres to evangelical orthodoxy. Chapter 1 traces the historical roots of modern evangelicalism and identifies the distinctive beliefs and values of the movement. In making the argument for a leadership role for Black Christians in racial reconciliation efforts, Chapter 1 also discusses the witness of the Black Church and Black evangelicals within American evangelicalism, including their distinctive history, beliefs, and practices.

Part Two articulates a new conceptual framework for understanding racial reconciliation within the context of American evangelicalism that borrows from both theological and sociopolitical conceptions. Building this framework begins with Chapter

2, which reviews essential literature and resources providing a foundation for discussing racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism. The chapter examines the intersection of political and theological understandings of reconciliation, moving toward a more robust framework for considering racial reconciliation in the Church that extends beyond the traditional theological formulation. Chapter 3 introduces full detail of a new theopolitical framework for understanding and evaluating racial reconciliation efforts within American evangelicalism. The hybrid model provides a holistic approach that addresses the complex history and multifaceted impacts of a racialized church and society.

Part Three demonstrates how specific efforts and initiatives led by Black

Christians, but embraced by the entirety of American evangelicalism, can begin the

8 process of racial reconciliation and healing. As part of this examination, Chapter 4 explores the unique position of the Black Christians within American evangelicalism, as viewed through the lens of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk. It also considers historical and contemporary movements among Black evangelicalism designed to shape thought and activity around racial reconciliation. From there, it explores whether Black

Christians, because of their distinctiveness in relationship to American evangelicalism, can play a special role in the ongoing efforts of racial reconciliation. Chapter 5 wrestles with difficult but necessary questions in the discussion of racial reconciliation within

American evangelicalism. Using the theopolitical framework of racial reconciliation articulated in Chapter 3, it sketches the contours of a racially reconciled American

Evangelical Church. From there, it delves into the seminal question: whether it is possible to actually achieve racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism. In answering that question, using the regeneration language of the Nicodemus discourse (Jn 3), it argues that the existing iteration of American evangelicalism must be “born again” as a new reconciled community, consisting of new leadership, structures, and core values.

Chapter 6 examines the necessary role of Black Christians in achieving reconciliation and concludes by providing key elements for consideration in moving forward.

It is important to note that this dissertation is written specifically to address racial reconciliation between Black and White evangelicals. In that regard, the title, “The Role of Black Christians in Racial Reconciliation within American Evangelicalism,” may be a misnomer. While the framework and conclusions articulated in this work can be applied to a broader conversation concerning the racially pluralistic American church, they have been developed with the Black/White binary in mind. Reconciliation may be necessary

9 across all racial categories. In that regard, legitimate critique of the limited scope of this work can be leveled.8 Still, the decision to treat the Black/White relationship in isolation is intentional. First, the relationship is longstanding. Black and White Christians represent the longest interracial relationship within the U.S. church. At the same time, the racial division between Black and White Christians within American evangelicalism has been one of the most enduring and intractable issues within the movement. Much has been written about it over the generations of the church, without an acceptable level of success.

This dissertation seeks to add additional substance to the reconciliation discussion.

Second, the relationship between Black and White Christians is specific. The African

American contribution, alienation, and struggle within American evangelicalism is a unique consideration that requires a particular set of solutions. To combine the present conversation with a broader racial context risks obscuring it. Finally, the relationship between Black and White Christians is personal. As a Black Christian who wrestles with evangelical identity, in part because of the racialized nature of the movement, reconciliation between Black and White evangelicals is a significant inquiry. Dealing with the particularities of the Black/White binary does not minimize the importance of

8 Similarly, this work also does not deal with the realities of intersectionality. No one exists as just a raced person, but identity is a complex combination of categories. This identity allows access to certain advantages, but, in many cases, subjects those in minority classifications to discrimination. Kimberle Crenshaw, “Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics,” University of Chicago Legal Forum 1 (1989). As Collins and Bilge note, “When it comes to social inequality, people’s lives and the organization of power in a given society are better understood as being shaped not by a single axis of social division, be it race or gender or class, but by many axes that work together and influence each other.” Patricia Hill Collins and Sirma Bilge, Intersectionality: Key and Concepts (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2016), 5. Admittedly, considering the multifaceted aspects of identity would provide a particularized examination of reconciliation efforts. Such an examination would be ideal when considering discrimination in the life of a specific individual. However, for the reasons articulated in this introduction, reconciliation based on the category of race, and more explicitly the Black/White binary, has been isolated.

10 racial pluralism in any way. Instead, it acknowledges the broad implications of racialization and the importance of individualized treatment of racial categories.

11

CHAPTER 1

DEFINING AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM AND ITS RELATIONSHIP

TO BLACK CHRISTIANS

The universal Church is large and diverse. It is composed of congregations and fellowships with a variety of theological and cultural perspectives. This dissertation discusses three particular subgroups within the Church, and it is important to give them definition. “American evangelicalism” is that group of Christians that traces its history to the revivalist movements of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and affirms

Bebbington’s Quadrilateral: conversionism, biblicism, activism, and crucicentrism.

“Black evangelicals” are those Black Christians who subscribe to traditional evangelical orthodoxy and remain connected in fellowship to the evangelical movement, whether or not they support the culture, aesthetic, and ethos of it. The “Black Church” is that body of

Black Christians, often but not always represented by the seven historic Black denominations and characterized by a commitment to and Black community.

These are admittedly imprecise definitions of flexible and fluid communities.

When this dissertation uses the nomenclature “Black Christian,” it is referring to both Black evangelicals and members of the Black Church. It includes, specifically, the part of the Black Church that affirms Bebbington’s Quadrilateral. Black Christianity is

12 certainly much larger and more diverse than the definition offered in this dissertation.

However, as this work considers racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism, isolating a cohort that adheres to the core tenets of the evangelical movement establishes a commonality in belief, practice, and purpose most likely to foster partnership in the endeavor.

American Evangelicalism as a Movement

American evangelicalism is difficult to define. Hindmarsh observes,

“Evangelicalism is one of the largest and most dynamic forms of Christianity in the modern world, but there is an amorphous quality to many words that end with the suffix

‘-ism,’ and ‘evangelicalism’ is no exception.”1 Indeed, some commentators argue there is no cohesive group of people who can be called evangelicals in North America.2 This may be an overstatement, but the sentiment contains at least a kernel of truth. Given evangelicalism’s decentralized nature, it is difficult to pin the “evangelical” label on a particular body of believers or subset of the Church. The National Association of

Evangelicals (NAE), an organization that represents millions of American evangelicals,

1 Bruce Hindmarsh, “What is Evangelicalism?,” Christianity Today, March 14, 2018, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2018/march-web-only/what-is-evangelicalism.html.

2 David Fitch, The End of Evangelicalism? Discerning a New Faithfulness for Mission (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2011). Stone asserts, “The American Evangelical movement consists of a vast and nearly indefinable coalitional movement of sometimes competing, sometimes cooperating denominations and independent churches whose ideological boundaries have been shifting since its postwar reemergence.” Jon Stone, On the Boundaries of American Evangelicalism: the Postwar Evangelical Coalition (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); Molly Worthen, of Reason: The Crisis of Authority in American Evangelicalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014)(recasting American evangelicalism as a movement defined not by shared doctrine or politics, but by the problem of reconciling head knowledge and heart religion in an increasingly secular America); George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991)(opining that “neither fundamentalism nor evangelicalism is a clearly defined religious organization with a membership list. Rather, both evangelicalism and fundamentalism are religious movements”); Steven Miller, The Age of Evangelicalism: America’s Born Again Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014).

13 concedes this point when attempting to define its own membership.3 According to the

NAE, “Evangelicals are a vibrant and diverse group, including believers found in many churches, denominations and nations. [The evangelical] community brings together

Reformed, Holiness, Anabaptist, Pentecostal, Charismatic and other traditions.”4

Denominational diversity and geography are not the only challenges in defining evangelicalism, however. Praxis is also an area of divergence. Fitch observes that

“[Evangelical] churches employ diverse worship forms and organize around different doctrinal emphases. Many evangelicals worship in distinctively non-evangelical places such as Protestant mainline and even Roman Catholic churches....Consequently, to put it mildly, the label ‘evangelical’ has its problems.”5

For these reasons, evangelicalism is often defined by appealing to core doctrinal commitments, common history, and even sociology. This, too, is not without shortcomings. While there are certainly historical and confessional linkages among evangelicals, relying on them exclusively for definitional purposes is problematic. All evangelicals do not believe the same thing, share the same history or way of relating to one another. This is highlighted by a Pew Research study of global evangelical leaders

3 National Association of Evangelicals, “What is an Evangelical?,” accessed on February 20, 2020, https://www.nae.net/what-is-an-evangelical.

4 National Association of Evangelicals, “What is an Evangelical?” Noll suggests, “Much of the complexity [in defining evangelicalism] arises from the necessity to define evangelical alongside a number of other terms like Pentecostal, charismatic, fundamentalist, apostolic and indigenous that are often used in conjunction with the term.” Mark Noll, “Defining Evangelicalism,” Global Evangelicalism: Theology, History & Culture in Regional Perspective, eds. Donald Lewis and Richard Pierard (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2014).

5 Fitch, The End of Evangelicalism?, 13.

14 conducted at the Third Lausanne Congress of World Evangelization.6 While the survey found broad agreement among evangelical leaders concerning the beliefs and practices considered essential to being “a good evangelical,” it also revealed areas of substantial disagreement, even in areas as significant as biblical literalism.7

These divergences forced Smith to ask, “Is Evangelicalism really a (unified) movement or even a family with common core beliefs and practices or just a social construct?”8 Evangelicalism is more than a social construct. It is a movement with a well- defined history and contemporary culture, ethos, and aesthetic around which its membership coalesces.

While a precise definition of evangelicalism may be elusive, looking to history and practice provides some clarity in the effort. American evangelicalism as a movement can trace its beginnings to the pietistic revivals of the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.9 From its inception, an evangelical orthodoxy has emerged which

6 Pew Research Center, “Global Survey of Evangelical Protestant Leaders,” June 22, 2011, https://www.pewforum.org/2011/06/22/global-survey-of-evangelical-protestant-leaders.

7 Pew Research, “Global Survey.” The report found “a high degree of consensus on some core theological matters, such as the belief that Christianity is the ‘one, true faith leading to eternal life’ and that the Bible is the word of God. But it also finds a number of subjects on which evangelical leaders are divided, including whether everything in the Bible should be read literally, whether it is necessary to believe in God to be a moral person and whether it is acceptable for evangelical Christians to drink alcohol. On many questions, the evangelical leaders’ opinions vary substantially by region, reflecting the differing contexts in which the leaders live and work.”

8 Greg Smith, “The Routledge Research Companion to The History of Evangelicalism,” Journal of Contemporary Religion, 34:1 (April 23 2019): 213, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13537903.2019.1585050.

9 Mark Noll, “Defining Evangelicalism.” Hutchinson and Wolffe explain, “The origins of evangelicalism, like those of any great historical movement, are much debated. A widely accepted narrative dates its emergence, in the English-speaking North Atlantic world at least, quite precisely to a few years in the mid to late 1730s. Others, however, would trace its history much further back, at least to the later seventeenth century, or even see it in essential continuity with the of the era.” Mark Hutchinson and John Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 25.

15 encompasses the core convictions of the movement. While evangelicals may diverge on some spiritual issues, there is essential agreement on major tenets of faith. In particular, evangelicals almost universally believe in conversionism, a high view of Scripture, activism, and crucicentrism.10

A Brief History of American Evangelicalism11

During the mid-seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, two simultaneous movements took place: the Wesleyan revivals in Europe and the Great Awakenings, which swept across the American colonies. These revivals ushered in a dramatically increased emphasis on the outpouring of the and “born again” sinners having a personal conversion experience.12 In America, “The and its ‘gospel urgency’ and ‘new spirit of cooperation’ began to create a unified movement out of a diverse Protestant crowd.”13 Ultimately, “with the maturation of revivalism and the evolution of a distinct revivalist methodology aimed at converting people en masse, the age of evangelicalism had arrived, with Protestants leading the charge.”14 Since

10 David Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain: A History from the 1730s to the (London: Routledge, 1993), 2-17.

11 Space does not permit an exhaustive history of evangelicalism. For a deeper treatment of evangelical history see Mark Hutchinson and John Wolffe, A Short History of Global Evangelicalism.

12 Thomas S. Kidd, The Great Awakening: The Roots of Evangelical Christianity in Colonial America (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007).

13 Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005), 30.

14 University of , American Studies, “The Second Great Awakening and Rise of Evangelicalism,” accessed February 20, 2020, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma95/finseth/evangel.html.

16 Protestantism was by far the dominant religion in eighteenth-century America, evangelicalism was able to influence almost every denomination in the United States.

Evangelical influence was not without challenge. The shifting cultural landscape of the early twentieth century brought on a major crisis within the movement. Merritt recounts that “The carnage of two World Wars and a raised questions about whether God existed, and if so, whether God was both powerful and good. In addition, modern science raised doubts about the viability of Christianity’s explanations for the origins of life.”15 In response to these pressures, evangelicalism, which was already only a loosely held together coalition, split into two wings. On one hand arose a more liberal branch, willing to accommodate modernity’s questioning of historically accepted evangelical orthodoxy, namely and substitutionary atonement. On the other hand, a militant conservative faction, taking the name fundamentalism, emerged to counter “liberal” theology and fight what it perceived as a leftward turn toward cultural values and beliefs. Fundamentalism and the broader evangelical movement remained a complicated coalition drawing from multiple denominations.

Core Beliefs of American Evangelicalism

While American evangelicalism has no official statement of faith, the movement is held together by several core beliefs. Noll identifies evangelicals, generally, as

15 Jonathan Merritt, “Defining Evangelical,” The Atlantic, December 7, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/evangelical-christian/418236/. The case, State of v. Scopes (aka “The Scopes Monkey Trial”), in which a high school teacher was convicted for teaching evolution, was a watershed moment in both American and evangelical life. Much more than a legal case, Scopes put the merits of American fundamentalism on trial. In doing so, it widened the fissure between conservative evangelicals and those willing to engage modernity.

17 “Protestants who, beginning about three hundred years ago, placed a heightened emphasis on experiencing the redeeming work of Christ personally and on spreading the good news of that message.”16 Because evangelicalism is, at base, a commitment to several core convictions, Bebbington’s almost universally-accepted “quadrilateral” provides an important guidepost in understanding the movement. According to

Bebbington, evangelicalism is characterized by four main qualities:

Conversion: Evangelicals stress the need for a definite turning away from self and sin in order to find God in Jesus Christ;

The Bible or “Biblicism”: Evangelicals may respect church traditions in varying degrees and may use schooling, reason and science to assist in talking about Christianity, but the ultimate authority for all matters of faith and religious practice are the Christian Scriptures;

Activism: Evangelicals have historically been moved to action—to works of charity, sometimes to works of social reform, but above all to the work of spreading the message of salvation in Christ—because of their own experience of God;

The Cross or “Crucicentrism” (cross-centeredness): a stress on the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross as making possible the redemption of humanity.17

Conversionism

Conversion has been core to evangelicalism since the earliest days of the movement. Rooted in evangelicalism’s revivalist beginnings, conversionism stresses repentance from sin and a turning to Christ. Charles Spurgeon articulated the evangelical hope of conversion as a “great inner work producing a very wonderful change in the

16 Noll, “Defining Evangelicalism,” 20.

17 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 2-17.

18 subject of it.”18 Evangelicalism is not monolithic, but for all its diversity, its commitment to seeking spiritual conversion and redemption is remarkably uniform.

Biblicism

Fitch observes, “[The inerrant Bible] remains a central tenet around which evangelicals gather as a people and practice their faith. It has formed the ethos of the evangelical Christian community’s presence in society.”19 The commitment to a high view of Scripture serves as a binding agent among disparate evangelical organizations and churches who claim a similar belief in the Bible, but practice that belief very differently.20 Noll states that, on an individual level, emphasizing Scripture over establishmentarian alternatives has led to

lay activism, lay ownership of Christian enterprises, great evangelistic energy, a considerable measure of lay-initiated social reform, vigorous participation in , extraordinary opportunities for non-elites to receive theological training, skillful exploitation of popular media to communicate the

18 Charles Spurgeon, “Is Conversion Necessary?” (Freebook Publisher), accessed May 14, 2020, https://web-a-ebscohost- com.fuller.idm.oclc.org/ehost/ebookviewer/ebook/bmxlYmtfXzIwMDkwNzRfX0FO0.

19 Fitch, End of Evangelicalism?, 52. Smith rightly observes that not “all American evangelicals are biblicists. Some are not. And some others mix biblicism with other forms of authority, such as personal ‘leading of the Holy Spirit.’ Many simply assume a kind of background biblicism without giving it much systematic thought. Many academic and more thoughtful evangelicals also tend to be more selective and careful in the way they articulate their biblicism.” Christian Smith, The Bible Made Impossible: Why Biblicism is Not a Truly Evangelical Reading of Scripture (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2012), viii.

20 Fitch notes, “The inerrant Bible (and its variants) holds together a wide variety of institutions and churches that have very little in common in terms of their practice except of course the desire to self- identify as evangelical. Groups as diverse as the National Association of Evangelicals, many Pentecostal groups, Christianity Today, numerous televangelists, Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Community Church, Willow Creek Community Church, Saddleback Community Church, the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, Moody Bible Institute, World Vision, and Wheaton College all claim one of the evangelical inerrancy variations to articulate what they believe about the Bible. Yet the differences in versions of the gospel preached and their actual practice of it in each setting are multitudinous.” David Fitch, End of Evangelicalism?, 55.

19 gospel, and ‘not least’ widespread assimilation of biblical values in the lives of active (even individualistic) readers of Scripture.21

Activism

According to Marsden, at its origins, “social reform was not really a secondary consideration [of evangelicalism]….The assumption that Christianity was the only basis for healthy civilization was basic to evangelical thinking—as essential as the belief that souls must be saved for the life to come.”22 While early American evangelicalism was essentially a religious movement, it had an unmistakable commitment to social progress, specifically the ability of social reform to perfect society. Evangelical denominations were instrumental in shaping American culture in the nineteenth century, including major reform efforts, such as antislavery and temperance. Evangelicals were also influential in the development of American schools and colleges and were vocal in setting dominant

American moral standards.23

Crucicentrism

The cross is central to evangelical orthodoxy. Bebbington notes,

Evangelicals have consistently stressed as the heart of Christian faith the death of Christ on the cross and then the resurrection of Christ as a triumphant seal for what was accomplished in that death. Evangelicals have regularly emphasized the substitutionary character of this atonement between God and sinful humans

21 Mark Noll, “Evangelical Advantages: A Review of ‘The Bible Made Impossible,’ and ‘How to Go from Being a Good Evangelical,’” First Things, February 2012, https://www.firstthings.com/article/2012/02/evangelical-advantages.

22 George Marsden, Fundamentalism and American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 12.

23 George Marsden, Understanding Fundamentalism and Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1991), 2.

20 whereby Christ receives the punishment due to human sins and God gives spiritual life to those who stand “in Christ.”24

The centrality of the cross has been so fixed within evangelicalism that Brunner opines that, since the beginning, “The cross, and the doctrine of the atonement associated with it, eclipsed all other doctrines in evangelicalism, including the incarnation.”25 While there has not been uniform agreement regarding the doctrine of substitutionary atonement in the evangelical tradition, there has been a common belief that the cross, and all the cross essentially implies, is important to ethics and Christian living. As the word crucicentrism connotes, the cross has been central to evangelical orthodoxy.

American Evangelicalism Today

Depending on how one defines the term, evangelicals represent between 7 and 47 percent of the United States population.26 This represents a critical mass of America’s religious community. Each weekend, millions of evangelicals fill churches of various denominations. In addition to its religious activity, Evangelical Protestantism is responsible for significant social and charitable engagement. Church and parachurch organizations, such as World Vision, Compassion International, Bread for the World, the

24 Bebbington, Evangelicalism in Modern Britain, 2-17.

25 Daniel Brunner, “The ‘Evangelical’ Heart of Pietist Anthony William Boehm,” Faculty Publications – Portland Seminary 109 (2016), https://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/gfes/109.

26 Jonathan Merritt, “Defining Evangelical.” According to the 2014 Pew Research Center study, 25.4 percent of Americans are evangelical Protestants. Pew Research Center, “Religious Landscape Study,” 2014, http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study. For Pew’s definition of “Protestant evangelical” see www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/appendix-b-classification-of-protestant-denominations. According to Barna’s more restrictive criteria, evangelicals represent only 6 percent of the population. Barna Group, How we Got Here: Spiritual and Political Profiles of America, May 23, 2017, https://www.barna.com/research/got-spiritual-political-profiles-america.

21 Evangelical Environmental Network, and Evangelicals for Social Action, are on the leading edge of shaping issues of social concern.

There is a fight today for the theological and cultural of the evangelical tradition. Smith correctly points out the issue when he cites the “current debate as to whether the word [evangelical] and the movement it represents have become a toxic brand. On social media one can follow numerous discussions about whether evangelicalism will survive much longer in the twenty-first century or fragment, disintegrate, and disappear or, as some evangelicals fear, be secularized and ‘corrupted’ by the world.”27 This struggle for identity has been intensified by the emergence and ascendance of a White conservative Christian movement within evangelicalism that dominated the political and cultural consciousness in the 1980s, and mid-, and makes it difficult to recognize historical evangelicalism within today’s iteration.

On a theological level, a new fundamentalism has arisen within evangelicalism that is pushing out moderate voices. This shift has not been overt, but its presence is undeniable. Olson observes that “adherents [of neo-fundamentalism] are not exactly like the older fundamentalists, so it’s not easy to identify them. For one thing, they don’t call themselves fundamentalists. They call themselves conservative evangelicals and attempt to style themselves as mainstream evangelicals, even ‘confessional evangelicals.’”28 In the end, neo-fundamentalism is not traditional evangelicalism, which is historically moderate. Instead, it seeks to insert into evangelicalism an ultraconservative orthodoxy

27 Smith, “The Routledge Research Companion to the History of Evangelicalism.”

28 Roger Olson, “What Distinguishes ‘Evangelical’ from ‘Fundamentalist?’” Patheos (blog), April 19, 2012, https://www.patheos.com/blogs/rogereolson/2012/04/what-distinguishes-evangelical-from- fundamentalist.

22 that “requires adherence without mental reservation for salvation or at least for discipleship.”29

A second challenge within contemporary evangelicalism is its alignment with

Republican politics.30 Beginning with Jerry Falwell’s “Moral Majority” in 1979, continuing with and Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition of America,

James Dobson of Focus on the Family, Gary Bauer and Tony Perkins of the Family

Research Council, and Franklin Graham of Samaritan’s Purse, new fundamentalism, cloaked in evangelical nomenclature, has leveraged White Christian discomfort with the country’s growing secularism and pluralism to call for a return to what they envision as

America’s Protestant roots.31 The 2016 Presidential election in which 81 percent of self- identified White evangelicals voted for the Republican nominee, Donald Trump, is an excellent example of the evangelical-Republican alignment.32 What’s more, prominent evangelical leaders invoke Christian faith as a principle reason for voting Republican. In many ways, evangelicalism has been recast as a political term, colloquially called the

29 Olson, “What Distinguishes ‘Evangelical’ from ‘Fundamentalist?’” Olson provides five indicators of neo-fundamentalism; it tends to: (1) spend much energy searching for and identifying heresies among evangelicals, (2) focus a lot of attention on identifying “evangelical boundaries” and solidifying them by demonstrating that some evangelicals are “outside the boundaries,” (3) add non-essential doctrines to the essentials of evangelicalism, (4) find nothing of value in non-—especially philosophy, psychology, and sociology, and (5) attempt to frighten the faithful about “doctrinal drift” and “defection from the faith” where those do not exist.

30 Zauzmer and Bailey suggest, “After Trump and Moore, some evangelicals are finding their own label too toxic to use,” Julie Zauzmer and Sarah Pulliam Bailey, “After Trump and Moore, Some Evangelicals are Finding their own Label too Toxic to Use,” The Washington Post, December 14, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/social-issues/after-trump-and-moore-some-evangelicals-are- finding-their-own-label-too-toxic-to-use/2017/12/14/b034034c-e020-11e7-89e8-edec16379010_story.html.

31 Robert Jones, The End of White Christian America (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016).

32 Jessica Martínez and Gregory Smith, “How the Faithful Voted: A preliminary 2016 analysis,” Pew Research, November 9, 2016, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful- voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis.

23 . Zauzmer and Bailey note, “For years, believers have debated whether

Republican politics and culture-war battles have diluted the essence of the label

‘evangelical’—which means spreading the gospel.”33 In an interview with the

Washington Post, Jen Hatmaker summed up the natural consequence of this political orientation by saying, “The term [evangelical] feels irreversibly tainted, and those of us who don’t align with the currently understood description are distancing ourselves to preserve our consciences.”34

American evangelicalism has a problem with race. American evangelicalism is seen as White, even though a critical mass of evangelicals in America are not White.

According to a recent LifeWay study, African Americans are twice as likely to hold evangelical beliefs (30 percent) as Whites (13 percent) and Hispanics (13 percent).35

Even with this reality, Rah correctly observes, “For most of its history (but particularly in the last fifty years), American evangelicalism has more accurately reflected the values, culture, and ethos of Western White American culture than the values of Scripture.”36

Brandi Miller agrees in stating pointedly that American evangelicalism was “conceived

[and shaped] by White men.”37 As a result, White evangelical orthodoxy pushes out

33 Zauzmer and Bailey, “After Trump and Moore.”

34 Ibid.

35 Bob Smietana, “Many Who Call Themselves Evangelical Don’t Actually Hold Evangelical Beliefs,” LifeWay Newsroom (blog), December 6, 2017, https://lifewayresearch.com/2017/12/06/many- evangelicals-dont-hold-evangelical-beliefs/.

36 Soong-Chan Rah, The Next Evangelicalism: Freeing the Church from Western Cultural Captivity (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2009), 20.

37 Brandi Miller, “Lecture on Race, Theology, Christianity and Whiteness,” North Park University, 2017.

24 theological thought and expression of minority groups; “American evangelicalism remains enamored with an and a value system that reflect a dated and increasingly irrelevant cultural captivity and are disconnected from both global and local reality.”38

The issue of race within American evangelicalism is not simply one of sustainability. There is a cultural divide between Black and White evangelicals that while longstanding in nature has garnered more attention in recent decades. Conversations have taken place within American evangelicalism since the late about bridging the racial divide. These have met with varying degrees of receptivity. Today, the evangelical movement is facing several issues as it transitions into the next generation, and race may be chief among them.

While much of American evangelicalism’s past and present have been understood through the lens of its White majority, important and enduring contributions have been made by evangelicalism’s nonwhite minority. In evaluating the specific and unique relationship between American evangelicalism and its Black membership, it is important to consider the place of Black Christians within the movement.

The Black Church and American Evangelicalism

In many ways, defining the Black Church is as challenging as defining evangelicalism. Lincoln and Mamiya observe,

the burden of the conventional views regarding the Black Church and Black religion has to do with the uncritical assumption that the Black experience in religion is but the replication of the White experience, shadowed by an African

38 Rah, The Next Evangelicalism, 12.

25 patina predisposing it to an inordinate exoticism and emotionalism which distorts to a significant degree the proper expression of the faith.39

This kind of misconception is easy to understand, given that the Black Church, as an institution, and Black religion, as a phenomenon, are often discussed, and even critiqued, without being universally defined or understood.40

While Black Christians, generally, and the Black Church, more specifically, tend to be evangelical in their theology and orientation, many Black Christians do not consider themselves a part of the American evangelical movement. Sharpe notes that as early as the 1960s, “despite holding theologically evangelical beliefs, the vast majority of the mainline Black churches were not the least bit interested in being known as evangelicals.”41 For many Black Christians, “evangelicalism” speaks to a particular sociocultural location to which they do not belong. The Black Church, like evangelicalism, is more than a set of convictions, but an ethos, culture, and aesthetic.

This matrix of factors does not overshadow the Black Church’s theological orientation, but it informs the outworking of it. In many ways, the Black Church has seen its institutional and cultural perspective as incompatible with American evangelicalism.

39 C. Eric Lincoln and Lawrence H. Mamiya, The Black Church in the African American Experience (Durham: Press, 1990), xi.

40 See Thabiti Anyabwile, Reviving the Black Church: A New Life for a Sacred Institution (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2015). While Anyabwile acknowledges that defining the Black Church remains “a quixotic quest” and that “the Black Church really exists as multiple Black churches across denominational, theological, and regional lines,” Anyabwile, who calls for careful differentiation, succumbs to the uncritical assumption articulated by Lincoln and Mamiya.

41 Isaac Sharp, “Diagnosing an ‘Unholy Alliance’: The Radical Black Evangelical Critique of White Evangelical Nationalism,” Black Theology Papers 4, no. 1 (2018): 1.

26 A Brief History of the Black Church

The Black Church has a rich history and legacy. Born out of struggle, the Black

Church has been a source of Christian hope, a public witness of sacrificial love and an important corrective in the movement toward national justice and equality. Emmett Price observes that “from its emergence during slavery, the Black Church was a response to the systemic and obstructive oppression at the hand of those with political power and economic means.”42 Early on in African American history, organizations to help Blacks economically, politically, or educationally did not exist because of segregation and racial injustice. As a result, African American people rallied around the pulpit where pastors preached gospel truth and cultural hope.43 The Black Church “was the creation of Black people whose daily existence was an encounter with the overwhelming and brutalizing reality of White power.”44

Lincoln and Mamiya note that “Reliable investigators have consistently underscored the fact that Black churches were one of the few stable and coherent institutions to emerge from slavery.”45 Beginning in the 1770s, the impact of the “Great

Awakening” could be seen in the South with an increasing number of slaves being converted to Protestant evangelical traditions such as and .

According to historian Albert Raboteau, Methodist records reflect growth in membership

42 Emmett G. Price, III, The Black Church and Hip Hop Culture: Toward Bridging the Generational Divide (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2012), xi.

43 Barbara D. Savage, Your Spirit Walks Beside Us: The Politics of Black Religion (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2012).

44 James H. Cone, Black Theology & Black Power (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1969), 92.

45 Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church, 8.

27 of over ten thousand Africans between 1786 (the first year records were distinguished by race) and 1790.46 However, many White plantation owners and within these congregations preached an adulterated gospel, which affirmed strict obedience, and insisted on slave attendance at White-controlled churches, fearing that independent worship services would foment slave revolt and rebellion. In the face of this, “many

Blacks saw these White churches as a mockery of the ‘true’ Christian message of equality and liberation as they knew it.”47 Consequently, “through signals, passwords, and messages not discernible to Whites, [slaves] called believers to ‘hush harbors’ where they freely mixed African rhythms, singing, and beliefs with [the] evangelical Christianity” of their masters.48 Pinn suggests,

Africans who embraced Christianity did so on their own terms, making it a unique expression of their questions and hopes, while rejecting versions of the gospel that appeared to justify slavery. Using their cultural memory of African practices, European notions of Christian faith, and reflection on the hardship of their enslavement, Africans produced their own form of Christian expression.49

This was the beginning of the Black Church in the South.

At the same time, in the North, where free Blacks had a degree of control over their religious expression, aid societies and churches were among the first institutions created by Black people for solidarity and mutual support.50 Their creation began with

46 Albert Raboteau, Slave Religion: The “Invisible Institution” in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 97.

47 Laurie Maffly-Kipp, “The Church in the Southern Community,” Documenting the South, May 2001, https://docsouth.unc.edu/church/intro.html.

48 Maffly-Kipp, “The Church in the Southern Community.”

49 Anne Pinn and Anthony Pinn, Fortress Introduction to Black Church History (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2002), 8.

50 Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church, 8.

28 what Woodson refers to as “The Independent Church Movement,” during which Blacks seceded from largely White congregations that would not embrace them.51 For example, the Free African Society, a self-help and benevolent association founded by Richard

Allen and in 1787, gave birth to Mother Bethel A.M.E. Church in

Philadelphia in 1794. Six years later, a group of Black Methodists in broke from their White parent church to form the first African Methodist Episcopal Zion congregation. At this same time, prejudice against free of color in the north led many Blacks within that denomination to establish their own churches within which to worship. On May 14, 1809, thirteen Black Baptists desiring to worship separately formed the African Baptist Church in Philadelphia.52 Presbyterians and Episcopalians also saw the division of their memberships into White and Black denominations, with each having one hundred thousand members by 1900.53

Seven major historic Black denominations emerged from within the Black

Church: the African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) Church; the African Methodist

Episcopal Zion (A.M.E.Z.) Church; the Christian Methodist Episcopal (C.M.E.) Church; the National Baptist Convention, U.S.A., Incorporated (NBC); the National Baptist

51 Carter G. Woodson, The History of the Negro Church (Washington, DC: The Associated Publishers, 1921), 64.

52 Woodson, The History of the Negro Church, 73. Independent church initiatives in the north followed a pattern of activity already taking place in the south. For example, The Harrison Street Baptist Church was organized at Petersburg, Virginia in 1776; another Black Baptist Church at Williamsburg, Virginia in 1785; the First African Baptist Church at Savannah in 1785, with a second Baptist Church in that city following fourteen years later; the African Baptist Church of Lexington, Kentucky in 1790; and a mixed Baptist Church in the Mound Bayou, Mississippi district, in 1805, by Joseph Willis, a free Black born in in 1762.

53 African American Registry, “‘The Black Church’: A Brief History,” accessed May 20, 2020, https://aaregistry.org/story/the-black-church-a-brief-history.

29 Convention, U.S.A., Unincorporated (NBCA); the Progressive National Baptist

Convention (PNBC); and the in Christ (COGIC).54 These denominations make up the independent, historic, and totally Black controlled denominations, founded after the Free African Society of 1787.55 By 1936, the Black Church, comprised predominantly by these denominations, included over thirty thousand church buildings and roughly five million members.56 Three decades later, the Black Church had grown to over ten million members in the United States and hundreds of thousands abroad.57

Since its inception, the Black Church has been unrivaled in its impact within the

Black community. Principally, the Black Church has stood as a sacred place where Black

Christians could forge a spiritual space with room enough to think though the gospel in light of their particular needs. However, it has also been a location where the line between the sacred and secular is often blurred. The Black Church has been instrumental in establishing institutions of higher education, it has served as a hub of community and economic development, it has been a center of cultural activity—serving as a training ground for myriad artists of varied genres. The Black Church has been a social gathering place and a center of political action.

54 See Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church; Michael Battle, The Black Church in America: African American Christian Spirituality (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006); Price, The Black Church and Hip Hop Culture.

55 Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church, 1.

56 Pinn and Pinn, Black Church History.

57 Ibid.

30 Black Church Distinctives

Having Black faces in the pews, alone, does not define the “Black Church.” This is especially true as predominantly Black congregations maintain connections to majority

White communions such as American Catholicism, , the United Methodist

Church, and nondenominational fellowships.58 Additionally, Black congregations exist in the full spectrum of Holiness, Pentecostal, and Apostolic traditions.59 The Black Church is not defined only by its complexion, but by a distinctive culture and ethos.

In The Black Church in America, Michael Battle identifies communal spirituality as the essential theological character of the Black Church.60 He describes communal spirituality as a worldview which acknowledges the uniqueness of every person, but balances individuality and personal freedom against the destiny of the community. The predisposition toward community and relationship is affirmed in the Christian image of the triune God, who exists as separate but interrelated persons (i.e., community): Father,

Son, and Holy Spirit. Culturally, the Black Church inherited its communal focus from ancestral Africa where individuals do not see themselves as existing apart from community. This orientation toward community is not unique to Black Churches; however, as a theme, it stands in stark contrast to Western Enlightenment thinking that informs much of White and stresses categories of individualism and personal piety. The communal nature of the Black Church distinguishes it in terms of

58 Battle, The Black Church in America, xii.

59 Cheryl J. Sanders, in Exile: The Holiness-Pentecostal Experience in African-American Religion and Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996).

60 Battle, The Black Church in America.

31 orientation, but also expression. Within the spiritual life of the Black Church, there has been a natural embrace of dynamic and corporate worship, which “flows from the community to the person, whereas in White America there is often an inverse flow of meaning originated in the individual that only sometimes leads to community.”61

The Black Church has also been defined by its historical commitment to the oppressed. Efrem Smith correctly notes, “The organic theology of God identifying with the oppressed drives the core identity of the Black Church, shaping the justice and that is essential to this church.”62 In that regard, “Today, the term

‘Black Church’ encompasses many churches of differing denominations and diverse traditions, worship styles, political views, and theologies. However, for many, it is less about ethnicity and more about the human experience.”63

To a large degree, Black Church ministry has always been contextualized to systemic oppression. The very existence of the Black Church was not a function of choice, but a product of necessity. It had the task of redefining African American identity, theologically, within the context of slavery. That responsibility persisted through injustices during Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement and, in many ways, continues in the social justice efforts of today. During an interview for The Black

Church in the African American Experience, one African American pastor reported, “The

61 Battle, The Black Church in America, 67.

62 Efrem Smith, The Post Black & Post-White Church: Becoming the Beloved Community in a Multi-Ethnic World (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012), 108. Smith sees this historical focus and commitment as a gift and challenge to the universal Church. He states, “The church can be liberated and better positioned to reach a multicultural reality when it is willing to rethink theology from the perspective of historically marginalized and oppressed people.”

63 Eileen Scott, “Defining the ‘Black Church,” The Ivy League Christian Observer, June 28, 2010, http://involve.christian-union.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=7719.

32 ministry of Black and White preachers is the same: the saving of souls.... Skin color is of no great significance in relating the message of Jesus…. [Still], since we are oppressed

[we] have to deal more with what religion really means. We have to deal with practical [needs].”64 This commitment to oppressed and marginalized people cemented the role of the church within Black America. Even today, there is still no serious challenger to the Black Church as the central institution within Black communities.

Black Evangelicalism

James Earl Massey explains, “Almost since the beginning of the Black presence in this country, African Americans have responded to a biblically based gospel that they have tested and proved. They have shared spiritual experiences and passed on the evangelical heritage with concern, creativity, and gusto. The development of Black evangelical churches and denominations stands as historical proof.”65 Black evangelical

64 Lincoln and Mamiya, The Black Church, 170. Cleophus LaRue explains, “Powerful Black preaching has at its center a biblical hermeneutic that views God as a powerful sovereign acting mightily on behalf of dispossessed and marginalized people. A belief in this God, an awareness of the sociocultural context of the Black experience, and the creation of a sermon that speaks in a relevant and practical manner to the common domain of experience in Black life, when taken together, ultimately result in a powerful sermon that resonates in a potent and meaningful way with those listening in the congregation. Cleophus LaRue, The Heart of Black Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 6. Some commentators misunderstand and/or fail to appreciate the appropriateness and value of the Black Church’s contextual ministry. For example, Thabiti Anyabwile suggests LaRue’s above statement on Black preaching “fails to convey the absolute centrality and urgency of the biblical text…plac[ing] an emphasis on a particular hermeneutic.” Anyabwile, Reviving the Black Church, 34-35. In response, Cone writes, “Unfortunately, even Black theologians have, more often than not, merely accepted the problems defined by White theologians. Their treatment of Christianity has been shaped by the dominant ethos of the culture…There is, then, a need for a theology whose sole purpose is to emancipate the gospel from its ‘whiteness’ so that Blacks may be capable of making an honest self-affirmation through Jesus Christ.” Cone, Black Theology & Black Power, 32.

65 James Earl Massey, “African Americans and Evangelicalism,” accessed January 8, 2018. https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/african-americans-evangelicalism.

33 churches are an important part of the American evangelical landscape. In addition, Black evangelicals play significant roles within majority White and multiethnic congregations.

While sociologists and political scientists are quick to separate nearly all African

American Protestants when discussing American evangelicalism, in reality Black

Christians tend to be evangelical in their theology and orientation.66 According to the

Public Religion Research Institute, 75 percent of African Americans are Christians, 67 percent of those are Protestants, and 42 percent are evangelicals.67 Black Christians often express their evangelical identity differently, however.

Key distinctions exist between Black and White evangelicals. The core commitment to sharing the gospel is consistent across race, but the outworking of faith and conviction may differ. Throughout American history, Black evangelicals as a group have practiced a brand of evangelicalism that incorporates their unique experience as a racial minority in America into traditional evangelical orthodoxy. Roberts observes this distinction in the practice of Black and White forms of evangelicalism even from the early days of the nation’s history:

[African Americans] who took on leadership positions in the late eighteenth century established an evangelicalism distinct from the dominant society…Black evangelicalism was both sacred and political; it involved a firm commitment to the evangelical principles of a Bible-centered religion that stressed the conversion

66 An example of this is the Pew Research Center “U.S. Religious Landscape Study,” which separates African American Christians into essentially two large groups: Historically Black Protestant (53 percent) and Evangelical Protestant (14 percent). Pew Research Center, “U.S. Religious Landscape Study.” See also Frank Newport and Joseph Carroll, “Another Look at Evangelicals in America Today,” Gallop News Service, December 2, 2005, http://news.gallup.com/poll/20242/another-look-evangelicals-america- today.aspx.

67 Daniel Cox and Robert Jones, “America’s Changing Religious Identity,” Public Religion Research Institute, September 6, 2017, https://www.prri.org/research/american-religious-landscape- christian-religiously-unaffiliated. The PRRI study defined evangelicals as persons who self-identify as both Protestant Christians and as evangelical or born again.

34 experience as central to the Christian life. At the same time, Black evangelicalism centered on biblical precepts that asserted equality and freedom.68

Mathews finds the same pattern of melding Christian faith and personal experience among Black evangelicals in early twentieth-century America.69 She observes that between and World War II, “African Americans created their own traditionalist conservative evangelicalism. It drew heavily from what they perceived as traditional Protestant doctrines but could also include more progressive notions as well.”70 Emerson and Smith observe the same tension between Black and White forms of evangelicalism today:

only one thing separates White and Black evangelicals, but it makes all the difference in the world: vastly different experiences of structural and systemic oppression. White evangelicals generally do not experience such systemic oppression. Most White evangelicals don’t prioritize or even see the thousands of references in the Hebrew Scriptures and about structural and systemic injustice. Accordingly, the gospel—and by extension their evangelism—is about only one thing: Personal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ, who died for their sins, and a personal relationship with him.

Black evangelicals also have personal faith that Jesus’ death paid for their sins, but their gospel doesn’t end with personal (and individual) salvation.71

Black evangelicals are not only distinctive in American evangelicalism, but, in many regards, they must also be distinguished from the traditional Black Church. Tisby

68 Rita Roberts, Evangelicalism and the Politics of Reform in Northern Black Thought, 1776-1863 (Baton Rouge: State University Press, 2010), 3.

69 Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews, Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism Between Wars (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2017).

70 Ibid., 2.

71 Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith (emphasis original), as cited in Denise Oliver Velez, “Let’s Talk about Black Evangelicals and Social Justice Ministries,” Daily Kos, Sept. 10, 2017, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/9/10/1695694/-Let-s-talk-about-black-evangelicals-and-social- justice-ministries.

35 warns against using the term “Black evangelical” to identify every Black Christian who holds traditional evangelical theological views, particularly those Black Christians within the Black Church.72 He writes, “Historians and other analysts may use the phrase

‘Black evangelical,’ but it is important to note that this term is often not an actor’s term.

It may be helpful as an analytical tool, but its overuse elides critical distinctions of race and theology.”73 He goes on to suggest that “the most salient factor of [Black evangelicalism] is its proximity to White evangelicals. BEs [Black evangelicals] go to

White churches, are part of White [denominations], White college ministries, etc.”74

Tisby makes the argument that Black evangelicalism exists as an outgrowth of White evangelicalism and that Black evangelicals are identified as such because they have adopted the cultural ethos of the movement and not just the evangelical theological worldview. While Tisby’s characterization fits some Black evangelicals, it is not true of them all. As has been stated, some Black evangelicals operate within majority-White evangelical spaces, but have not adopted the cultural aspects of White evangelicalism.

Other Black evangelicals attend Black evangelical churches and do not frequent mainstream evangelical spaces. Finally, there is an entire cadre of Black Christians who would consider themselves Black evangelicals, but attend traditional Black churches.

These differing Black evangelical factions can exist because Black evangelicalism,

72 Jemar Tisby [@JemarTisby] (December 22, 2019) [Tweet]. https://twitter.com/JemarTisby/status/1208825625391304705.

73 Ibid.

74 Ibid.

36 while connected historically to its White counterpart, maintains its own unique theological and cultural footprint.

Black evangelicals and the Black Church can both benefit from a reconciled

American Evangelical Church. Black evangelicals are historically connected to the evangelical movement. While the Black Church has resisted that connection, it shares solidary with evangelicalism’s conservative theology, to a large extent.

In fact, in terms of evangelical orthodoxy, Black Christians, as a group, embody the four identifiers of Bebbington’s quadrilateral at least as well, but in many cases more than any other racial group, including Whites. When it comes to biblicism, the

Pew Research Center reported that, “Compared with the population overall, African-

Americans are more likely to believe in God with absolute certainty (88% vs. 71% among the total adult population) [and] interpret Scripture as the literal word of God

(55% vs. 33%).”75 Concerning the centrality of the cross, Noll suggests, “Black

Christians are the ones who have experienced the Cross most traumatically in American history.”76 Third, each historically Black denomination has a longstanding commitment to seeking personal conversions as an essential aspect of Black denominational life.77

75 Neha Sahgal and Greg Smith, “A Religious Portrait of African Americans,” Pew Research Center, January 30, 2009, https://www.pewforum.org/2009/01/30/a-religious-portrait-of-african-americans.

76 Anthea Butler, “A ‘New’ History of Evangelicalism—Black Evangelicals and American Evangelicalism,” Fuller Theological Seminary, YouTube video, 25:23, February 3, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4UqpBnuCvI&t=1s.

77 The doctrine statements of the African Methodist Episcopal (AME), African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AMEZ), Christian Methodist Episcopal (CME), National Baptist Convention, USA Inc. (NBC), (COGIC), and National Baptist Convention of America (NBCA) all include express language citing salvation through faith in Christ. The Progressive National Baptist Convention (PNBC) statement is less definitive, encouraging member churches to be “soul-winning” (see “The Progressive Baptist Church – What We Believe,” http://theprogressivebaptistchurch.org/about- us/what-we-believe).

37 Lastly, regarding activism, there is hardly an equal to the Black Church. Battle observes that, in its public life, the Black Church nurtured the civil rights movement which sought to create a Beloved Community, establishing opportunities and relationships among oppressed people in America and the rest of the world.78

Black Christianity in the United States represents a broad spectrum of theological belief and ecclesiastical tradition. After its commitment to God, the Black Church, in particular, has maintained a faith contextualizing the realities of the African American experience in America. This has been core to the Church’s national and global impact. It has also, in ways, placed the Black Church at odds with American evangelicalism, which has largely embraced the American ethos, even its most racialized aspects. At the same time, Black evangelicals have found room for operating within the broader American

Evangelical movement. If racial reconciliation is to be realized within American evangelicalism, it will require the efforts of at least these three communities—the Black

Church, Black evangelicals, and the broader American Evangelical Church.

78 Battle, The Black Church in America.

38

PART TWO

FRAMING RACIAL RECONCILIAITON WITHIN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

Mennonite theologian John Paul Lederach wrote, “To take up the journey of reconciliation…we have to keep our feet on the ground, connected to the challenge of current realities, and we need our heads in the clouds, with the capacity to live into a new reality of more just, equitable, and peaceful relationships.”1 Unfortunately, discussions around reconciliation are often skewed in only one direction, either on the ground or in the clouds. Reconciliation efforts resting completely in the hopes and possibilities of

Scripture run the risk of being so aspirational that they can never be fully realized, while the same work anchored solely in sociology and anthropology never challenges humanity to push beyond its natural order and inclinations. Reconciliation initiatives need a multi- directional approach.

This dissertation proposes a new framework which intentionally brings into balance the earthbound and heavenward orientations of reconciliation discourse.

The American Evangelical Church has been mired in racial division since its inception. Black and White Christians, though called to biblical unity and accountability,

1 John Paul Lederach, Reconcile: Conflict Transformation for Ordinary Christians (Harrisonburg, PA: Harold Press, 1999), 26 (emphasis original).

40 have never been able to achieve it. There are many reasons for this. One reason is that the definition often used for reconciliation does not provide sufficient direction or accountability for reconciliation efforts. This literature review will examine racial reconciliation as a concept applied to the Church. In particular, it will draw out themes to serve as a basis for a new definition of racial reconciliation and an appropriate framework to evaluate racial reconciliation efforts.

This literature review will take place in two parts: first, a review of selected material will be conducted to contextualize racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism. Second, because the framework forwarded in this dissertation includes aspects of political reconciliation, a brief review of key material from that field will be undertaken. There is considerable writing on reconciliation. While a broad spectrum of that literature has been consulted, this review will focus on selected materials that address racial reconciliation within the American Church, and, when possible, the American

Evangelical Church. Additionally, as this dissertation focuses on Black Christian leadership in racial reconciliation efforts, this literature review will focus on Black

Christian contributions to the racial reconciliation conversation.

Of note, much of the literature on racial reconciliation within the Church is written by advocates of the multiethnic church in support of a vision for multiethnic ministry, as examples: Smith,2 Boesak and DeYoung,3 and Rhodes.4 While the majority

2 Efrem Smith, The Post Black & Post-White Church: Becoming the Beloved Community in a Multi-Ethnic World (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012).

3 Allen Boesak and Curtiss DeYoung, Radical Reconciliation: Beyond Political Pietism and Christian Pietism (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2012).

41 of these multicultural church advocates express an appreciation for the important role and unique voice of the Black Church, there is a clear orientation toward multiethnic congregations. This dissertation does not express an opinion for or against intentionally multiethnic churches. Instead, it seeks ways of achieving racial reconciliation within the

American evangelical movement, which consists of both multiethnic and predominately single-race congregations.

Contextualizing Reconciliation within American Evangelicalism

Reconciliation is a broad topic with broad application. It includes race, but encompasses more than race. Successful churches and congregations “are not fully reconciled unless they are addressing other places of alienation, marginalization, and injustice.”5 Having said that, the area of racial reconciliation has emerged as a dominant theme within reconciliation literature.

The Beloved Community: Racial Reconciliation within the Church

“The Beloved Community” is an idea first conceived in the early twentieth century by the philosopher/theologian Josiah Royce, who founded the Fellowship of

Reconciliation.6 The idea, however, captured hearts and minds within the Church when it was popularized by Dr. King, Jr. The Beloved Community, as King

4 Michael Rhodes, “Arranging the Chairs in the Beloved Community: The Politics, Problems, and Prospects of Multi-Racial Congregations in 1 Corinthians and Today,” Studies in ¸ June 26, 2019, https://journals-sagepub-com.fuller.idm.oclc.org/doi/pdf/10.1177/0953946819859715.

5 Boesak and DeYoung, Radical Reconciliation, 91.

6 The King Center, “The Beloved Community,” accessed June 1, 2020, https://thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy.

42 articulated it, is a comprehensive global vision, which includes social, political, and economic elements, but on the specific issue of race imagines “racism and all forms of discrimination, bigotry and prejudice will be replaced by an all-inclusive spirit of sisterhood and brotherhood.”7 The greatest value of the Beloved Community motif for the Church is its embodiment of the biblical imperative of unity and harmony within the

Body of Christ. In that regard, the literature reflects that the Beloved Community serves, for many, as a proxy for racial reconciliation as it is envisioned in Scripture.

Indeed, because it mirrors the teachings of Scripture, many reconciliation advocates, in both evangelical and mainline traditions, point to the Beloved Community for inspiration in their efforts to achieve racial reconciliation within the American

Church. In The Post-Black & Post White Church, Efrem Smith, in arguing for multiethnic churches as the model for racial reconciliation, says “God’s love rescues people from the matrix and sin of racial division and delivers us into the reconciling spirit of the beloved community.”8 DeYoung suggests that Beloved Community is a “call for a new humanity much like the apostle Paul’s theological vision of ‘one new humanity’ reconciled through the crucifixion and .”9 Citing the biblical mandate of racial harmony, the Presbyterian Church (USA) issued a policy statement entitled Facing Racism: A

Vision of the Beloved Community in which they assert, “We violate God’s intention for the human family by creating false categories of value and identity, based on identifiable

7 Ibid.

8 Smith, The Post-Black & Post-White Church, 5.

9 Boesak and DeYoung, Radical Reconciliation, 91.

43 characteristics such as culture, place of origin, and skin color.”10 Others who find linkages between King’s vision, the work of reconciliation and Scripture include Marsh and Perkins,11 and Hill.12

However, some see issues with how the “Beloved Community” is often applied in the Church. In Martin & Malcom & America, James Cone, considering the entirety of

King’s life and thought, wonders whether those who cite King’s Beloved Community understand it in its fullness.13 Raphael Warnock, the current pastor of Ebenezer Baptist

Church (Atlanta), where Dr. King served, suggests that increasing diversity within

American churches is only a “potential…signifier of what Martin Luther King, Jr. called

‘the Beloved Community.’”14 He argues that more than diversity is required of the

Church.15 To that point, Jennifer Harvey, in her book, Dear White Christians, observes

10 Initiative Team on Racism and Racial Violence, Facing Racism: A Vision of the Beloved Community (Louisville: Office of the General Assembly, 1999), 1.

11 Charles Marsh and John Perkins, Welcoming Justice: God’s Movement Toward Beloved Community (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2018), 55. “From the very beginning of God’s movement in the world, God has been interrupting people with his love—disturbing our false peace in order to make real peace possible. Jesus drives a wedge in the status quo to create space for something new. If we have ears to hear, the invitation is open for each of us: come and be part of the beloved community that God makes possible in Jesus Christ.”

12 Johnny Bernard Hill, The Theology of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Desmond Mpilo Tutu (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 51-87. He writes, “It must be said early that King did not explicitly use the language of reconciliation. His vision of the beloved community was expressed in the language of ‘freedom,’ ‘justice,’ ‘equality,’ and ‘human dignity;’ [however] the beloved community serves as an exemplar, more faithful to the Christian idea of reconciliation as presented in scripture.”

13 James Cone, Martin & Malcolm & America: A Dream or a Nightmare (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1991).

14 Raphael Warnock, The Divided Mind of the Black Church: Theology, Piety & Public Witness (New York: New York University Press, 2014), 188 (emphasis added).

15 King wrote, “Our ultimate goal is integration, which is genuine intergroup and interpersonal living. Only through nonviolence can this goal be attained, for the aftermath of nonviolence is reconciliation and the creation of the beloved community.” Martin Luther King, Jr., Stride Toward Freedom: The Montgomery Story (New York: Ballantine, 1958), 196.

44 that “Not only do White Protestants tend to skip over King’s latter days, in which he became much more pessimistic about the state of the White soul and the realization of beloved community, but they also tend to understand desegregation and integration in ways that miss the deeper theological realities required to conclude integration [racial reconciliation] has truly been made manifest.”16 Harvey argues that given the history of

Black and White relations, traditional concepts of “reconciliation” are insufficient and a new paradigm is required.

A comprehensive analysis of King’s beloved community is not the subject of this dissertation. However, it is appropriate to cite King’s vision, not only because the literature suggests it serves as a theological base for many who operate in the racial reconciliation space, but also because the same disagreements that surround King’s vision appear in racial reconciliation conversations today. Namely, how is reconciliation defined and how do we know when it has been achieved? Advocates for racial reconciliation within the Church are correct in pointing to Scripture for direction in their efforts.

However, commentators like Walker-Barnes and Harvey are right to be suspicious about the application of current models for assessing the effectiveness of reconciliation initiatives.

In I Bring the Voices of My People, Chanequa Walker-Barnes challenges the dominant evangelical reconciliation paradigm that views racism as “a form of sin that results from division based on socially constructed categories of racial identity.”17 This

16 Jennifer Harvey, Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014).

17 Chanequa Walker-Barnes, I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019), 28.

45 paradigm tends to understand racial discord as predominantly interpersonal such that the solution is simply to heal relationships among individuals across race. Walker-Barnes argues that true racial reconciliation is far reaching and must dismantle the complex structural barriers that prevent equity and equality more broadly. In this regard, the

Beloved Community is not only constituted by the people who inhabit it, but also the systems, institutions, policies, and practices that undergird and support it. Applying an intersectional approach that highlights the perspectives of women of color, Walker-

Barnes “reject[s] outright the notion that reconciliation can be reduced to interpersonal relationships [and] refute[s] the notion that mere intercultural contact will reduce prejudice and increase harmony.”18 She demands “reconciliation that confronts inequalities in power, privilege, and access. Its telos is not simply the cessation of racial hostility; it is the establishment of justice and liberation for all women and men…regardless.”19

Similarly, Harvey challenges the notion that racial reconciliation is primarily an interpersonal issue. In doing so, she rejects the “reconciliation paradigm,” which she describes as the Christian community’s vision of “‘being one in Christ,’ employing metaphors about family, about brotherhood and sisterhood, to talk about who we should be to one another and what our fellowship should be like.”20 Like Walker-Barnes, Harvey recognizes that limiting racial reconciliation to an issue between individuals is inadequate to address the broader implications of racial division. Harvey articulates a “reparative

18 Ibid., 35.

19 Walker-Barnes, Voices of My People, 35.

20 Harvey, Dear White Christians, 19.

46 paradigm” that requires redress for “unaddressed violence, oppression, subjugation, and devastation for which those of us who have benefitted have yet to apologize.”21 She advocates for eliminating reconciliation as a goal or consideration altogether, stating that a reconciliation paradigm implicitly ignores the injustices of the past, which can only be addressed through reparations.

The Beloved Community provides a vision for harmonious relationships within the church. This is an appropriate goal for American evangelicalism as it seeks racial reconciliation, which is why many cite it as foundational for their work. It is important, however, as commentators have suggested, that while addressing interpersonal relationships, racial reconciliation efforts also seek to address the systemic and institutional implications of a racialized church and society.

Toward a Definition of Reconciliation

One of the challenges facing advocates of racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism is the lack of consistent and uniform definition. Racial reconciliation is a difficult proposition under ideal circumstances, and the inability to define clear parameters and measures of success adds an additional burden. The lack of definition is not for lack of effort as much as it is a result of disparate understandings of what reconciliation requires and differing approaches to the reconciliation enterprise.

Several approaches to defining reconciliation in the Church have emerged over time. Black Church leaders like Dr. King, , and a host of other civil

21 Ibid., 4. Harvey identifies three touchstones of her “reparations paradigm”: race as a social construction; a particularist ethic that insists we respond to (and frees us to respond to) our distinct relationships to injustice; and repair as a living, breathing work of reconstructing our interracial relationships.

47 rights activists provided some of the early reconciliation language in the and

1960s, Dr. King’s “beloved community” perhaps chief among them. American evangelicals did not arrive to the racial reconciliation table until the late 1960s, as the

Civil Right Era was concluding. However, the Black evangelical thought leaders who came did so armed with what they saw as the solution to racial problems plaguing the nation: Racial Reconciliation Theology. Racial Reconciliation Theology established a definition of reconciliation rooted almost exclusively in Scripture. According to Alumkal,

“Proponents of this theology drew upon New Testament passages proclaiming that Jews and Gentiles had become one body in Christ (e.g., Ephesians 2:11-12 and Galatians 3:28) and argued that the same unity was possible for Blacks and Whites,” through the common lordship of Christ.22 In 1970, Tom Skinner argued in How Black is Your

Gospel? that racial reconciliation was only available “through the cross.”23 That same year, Columbus Sally and Ronald Behm authored Your God is Too White, in which they contended that unity across race and class was the function of a “biblical, Christian pattern.”24

Since the late 1980s, the evangelical community has witnessed a flurry of books published on the topic of racial reconciliation in American evangelicalism, including

Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice, More than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the

22 Antony Alumkal, “American Evangelicalism in the Post-Civil Rights Era: A Racial Formation Theory Analysis,” Sociology of Religion 65:3 (Autumn 2004), 195-213.

23 Tom Skinner, How Black is Your Gospel? (Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1970), 97.

24 Columbus Sally and Ronald Behm, Your God is Too White (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1970), 98.

48 Gospel;25 Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein, Breaking Down the Walls: A Model of

Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife;26 Glen Usry and Craig Keener, Black Man’s

Religion: Can Christianity be Afrocentric?;27 John Perkins and Thomas Tarrants, He’s

My Brother: Former Racial Foes Offer Strategies for Reconciliation;28 William Pannell,

The Coming Race Wars? A Cry for Reconciliation;29 and George Yancey, Beyond Black and White: Reflections on Reconciliation.30 Despite all these resources, a definition of reconciliation remained unsettled.

In 2015, Brenda Salter McNeil wrote Roadmap to Reconciliation, which took direct aim at (re)defining reconciliation.31 In similar fashion to her evangelical predecessors, McNeil states clearly, “Reconciliation is possible only if we approach it primarily as a spiritual process that requires a posture of hope in the reconciling work of

Christ and a commitment from the church to be and proclaim this type of reconciled community.”32 She does not stop at identifying the source of reconciliation, however. She

25 Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice, More than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993).

26 Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein, Breaking Down the Walls: A Model of Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994).

27 Glen Usry and Craig Keener, Black Man’s Religion: Can Christianity be Afrocentric? (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1996).

28 John Perkins and Thomas Tarrants, He’s My Brother: Former Racial Foes Offer Strategies for Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994).

29 William Pannell, The Coming Race Wars? A Cry for Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993). 30 George Yancey, Beyond Black and White: Reflections on Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996).

31 Brenda Salter McNeil, Roadmap to Reconciliation: Moving Communities in to Unity, Wholeness and Justice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Press, 2015).

32 Ibid., 21-22.

49 goes on to provide one of the clearest biblical definitions of reconciliation in the literature: “Reconciliation is an ongoing spiritual process involving forgiveness, repentance and justice that restores broken relationships and systems to reflect God’s original intention for all creation to flourish.”33 McNeil’s definition is comprehensive.

While rooted in a biblical foundation of reconciliation, it incorporates an acknowledgment of sociological constructs (i.e. “systems”).

The definition offered in this dissertation adds a decidedly sociopolitical component to McNeil’s definition. Both McNeil’s definition and the definition of this work are grounded principally in the Scripture. However, this dissertation’s theopolitical hybrid allows for a fuller treatment of the sociological implications of racialization, whereas McNeil only connects with those issues in passing.

While the vast majority of evangelical reconciliation literature, including those mentioned earlier, give a clear articulation of the theological elements of reconciliation, a more robust discussion of the sociological components is necessary. There are important considerations from the field of political science that can add to the purely theological understanding of reconciliation most often applied to the Church.

A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation

Politics, sociology, and anthropology are not sufficient to bring about racial reconciliation in American evangelicalism. The root cause of racial division is spiritual and requires a spiritual response. McNeil is correct, then, when she states,

“Reconciliation is possible only if we approach it primarily as a spiritual process that

33 Ibid.

50 requires a posture of hope in the reconciling work of Christ and a commitment from the church to be and proclaim this type of reconciled community.”34 The approach taken to racial reconciliation must be, therefore, primarily spiritual. Such is the case with the framework offered by this dissertation. The inclusion of concepts from political philosophy do not alter its essential spiritual foundation; instead it provides nuance and additional capacity for directly addressing the political and sociological ramifications of racial division within the evangelical movement.

Political reconciliation is the process of rebuilding damaged political relationships. In A Moral Theory of Reconciliation, Colleen Murphy says, “Political reconciliation is widely recognized to be one of the most important challenges for societies attempting to democratize following periods of repressive rule or civil conflict characterized by widespread and systematic human rights abuses.”35 Political reconciliation is an essential aspect of peacemaking globally. In the same way, if rightfully applied, political reconciliation can be an important aspect of racial reconciliation in the Church.

Murphy explains what can be done to nurse divided communities back to health.

Her political analysis concerning fractured nation-states, in many regards, is applicable to historically divided communities of all sizes. Eiskovits summarizes Murphy’s observations by stating, “Three aspects of political relationships are damaged during conflict and under repressive government: the idea of the rule of law, political trust, and

34 McNeil, Roadmap to Reconciliation, 21-22.

35 Colleen Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 1.

51 citizens’ basic capabilities. The erosion of each category harms our ability to act as moral agents and to base our relationships with fellow citizens on reciprocal exchange.”36

Of particular relevance to the context of racial reconciliation is Murphy’s treatment of political trust. She says, “By trusting our fellow citizens and officials we respect them, because we presume they are competent and possess basic decency. We demonstrate a commitment to reciprocity by presuming of others what we would like them to presume of us….[When trust breaks down,] the attitudes of citizens and officials toward each other fails to express the respect and commitment to reciprocity realized in trusting political relations.”37 When we trust others with whom we are in relationship, we assume their goodwill toward us, which Moellendorf describes as their “willingness to play fairly by social rules and norms, and an absence of desire to do harm.”38 Trust is difficult enough in relatively stable democratic politics, but it is more pressing when there has been a history of severe injustice.

In relationships, political or otherwise, where trust has been broken, successful reconciliation demands a process to re-establish it. This begins with what Moellendorf describes as “political regret.”39 He states,

Denial of past injustice seems incompatible with reconciliation….[Injustices] must be recognized for what they were….Additionally, when citizens of societies in transition from severe injustices do not enjoy full justice due to the legacies of

36 Nir Eiskovits, “A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation,” Human Rights Quarterly 34:4 (November 2012), 1211-1214.

37 Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation, 42-43.

38 Moellendorf, “A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation,” Ethics 122:1 (2011): 198-203.

39 Darrel Moellendorf, “Reconciliation as Political Value,” Journal of Social Philosophy 38 (2007): 205-21.

52 injustice, they should have reasonable expectations of political and social conditions that conduce to hope in a more just future.40

Truth-telling is essential to re-establishing trust in broken political relationships.

Whittaker, speaking about political reconciliation in El Salvador, states plainly, “Central to the whole operation of resolving conflict is the public establishment of the truth.”41 In his memoir, No Future Without Forgiveness, , the former

Chairman of ’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission opined that “To accept national amnesia…would in effect be to victimize the victims of a second time around.42

Given the history of racial division within American evangelicalism, any process of racial reconciliation within the movement must include, if not begin with, the

(re)establishment of trust. While some of the existing scholarship on racial reconciliation within the Church includes elements of truth-telling, the framework proposed in this dissertation elevates truth-telling beyond what is typically required. Instead of informal truth-telling, consideration of formal structures for airing truth and storytelling are envisioned.

In the end, the framework offered by this dissertation is primarily biblical in its orientation, but not purely. It borrows from sacred (theology) and secular (sociology and political science) disciplines. There are aspects of political reconciliation that are incompatible with the concept of reconciliation we find in Scripture. Some of those

40 Moellendorf, “A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation.”

41 David Whittaker, Conflict and Reconciliation in the Contemporary World (New York: Routledge, 1999), 11.

42 Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Random House, 1999), 29.

53 outliers will be identified and rejected in later chapters. However, where synergies exist, they will be explored in hopes of achieving a more robust approach to racial reconciliation in the American Evangelical Church.

54

CHAPTER 3

A NEW FRAMEWORK FOR RACIAL RECONCILIATION WITHIN AMERICAN

EVANGELICALISM

The only way to properly formulate a framework for racial reconciliation within

American evangelicalism is to consider the specific context of the broken relationship between Black and White evangelicals and build an architecture around it. The requirements of reconciliation are generally understood, but the elements and demands of what it means for two particular parties to be reconciled often depends on the details of their relationship. For example, racial reconciliation among believers within the Church may look different than political reconciliation between nations or communities.1 Context matters. Sometimes a correlation exists across contexts, but not always.

For the purposes of this dissertation, reconciliation is defined as the establishment of a new racial harmony, rooted in truthfulness and freedom of opportunity. This definition combines biblical and political understanding of reconciliation. The definition

1 August acknowledges the distinctions in political and ecclesiastical reconciliation when he observes that “whereas the South African public has politically come through a process of Truth and Reconciliation in the post-apartheid democratic dispensation, the church [has to determine whether there is] a correlation between political reconciliation and the church’s understanding thereof in our context.” KTh August, “Reconciliation in the South African Political Context: A Challenge to the Church for Community Building,” Scriptura 88 (2005): 14-29.

55 accounts for the demands of Scripture, which remain primary. At the same time, it addresses the implications of racialization, which are rooted in the social construct of race.2

Reconciliation in the Scriptures

The basic idea of biblical reconciliation is “the restoration of friendly relationships and of peace where before there had been hostility and alienation.”3 Biblical reconciliation ordinarily requires the removal of the offense which caused the disruption of peace and harmony.4 This definition emanates from the five passages of Scripture where reconciliation is envisioned and directly mentioned. It is important to note that in the biblical text, reconciliation is not primarily interpersonal but contemplates restoration of fellowship between humans and God. This can be a limiting factor in applying a strictly “biblical” framework of reconciliation to the relationship between Black and

White evangelicals because the kind of clarity necessary to provide benchmarks and accountability for interpersonal relationships are not always clear.

2 Benjamin Bowser, The Black Middle Class: Social Mobility—and Vulnerability (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006)(arguing structural barriers cause the seemingly comparable Black and White middle classes, while inextricably linked, to exist on entirely different economic planes); Joe Feagin and Zenobia Bennefield, “Systemic Racism and US Health Care,” Social Science & Medicine 103 (February 2014): 7-14 (concluding “institutionalized White socioeconomic resources, discrimination, and racialized framing from centuries of slavery, segregation, and contemporary White oppression severely limit and restrict access of many Americans of color to adequate socioeconomic resources–and to adequate health care and health outcomes”); Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: The New Press, 2010)(arguing that the implications of racial disparities within criminal justice have social impacts which include employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service).

3 Walter Elwell, “Reconciliation,” Baker Encyclopedia of the Bible: Vol 2. (Grand Rapids: Baker Book, 1988), 1823.

4 Ibid.

56 Reconciliation in the

appears in the Old Testament is (כפר) The only place the word reconciliation within the context of Daniel’s Seventy-Weeks prophesy (Dan. 9:20-27), and there in only limited translations.5 According to the prophesy, within 490 years, God would complete six things for Israel. The first three concerned sin, and the second three related to the kingdom. Regarding reconciliation, Daniel predicted God would cover or expiate the sins of Israel through the atoning work of Christ on the cross. J. Dwight Pentecost notes that

“this , then, is concerned not with world history or church history, but with the history of Israel and the city of Jerusalem.”6 To the extent this passage contributes to a general biblical definition of reconciliation, it introduces these themes: to patch, to appease, make amends, make atonement, make good.

An understanding of reconciliation in the Old Testament cannot be achieved simply through word study, however. Instead, it requires a more comprehensive approach, which takes into account several biblical themes that impact the discussion. In particular, the concept of peace (shalom) is central to Old Testament theology and its discussion of reconciliation. Peace is the prevailing narrative of the creation account in

Genesis. And after the fall of humanity in Genesis 3, when disharmony, enmity, and fractured relationships enter the world, the remainder of the biblical text concerns restoration of God’s original design and reconciliation between God, humanity, and

as “reconciliation.” The ESV, NIV, NRSV render it “atone כפר The KJV and NKJV translate 5 for.” The HCSB, “wipe away.”

6 J. Dwight Pentecost, “Daniel,” The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, Vol. 1, eds., J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 1361.

57 creation. Peace and reconciliation are, therefore, not simply items the Bible discusses in passing, but a preoccupation of biblical theology.

Reconciliation in the Old Testament is not only a function of restoring broken relationships. In other words, it is not enough that people just “get along.” Pang observes,

peace and reconciliation are often inseparable from justice and righteousness which involve divine judgment and arbitration. ... Justice is such an indispensable part in the restoration of peace and reconciliation that it could even be said that the latter is unobtainable without the former. It is therefore not surprising that the prophet Amos in his address to a strife-stricken community should require justice and righteousness from the oppressors and offenders ‘let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream’ (Amos 5:24).7

Tisby notes, “Under Old Testament law if a person wrongs another person, the wrongdoer should confess the sin. But saying, ‘I’m sorry’ is not enough. Expressing remorse may begin the process of healing, but somehow that which was damaged must be restored.”8 Injustice obligates reparation. In this way, reparation is not punitive or charitable; it is a matter of justice.

Reconciliation in the New Testament

The crux of the four New Testament passages9 that contain the word reconciliation (καταλλαγή) is the “wiping away” or atoning for sin.10 Pauline theology contains a clear focus on forgiveness of sin and reconciliation to God through the

7 Choog Chee Pang, “Peace and Reconciliation: Biblical Themes in the East Asian Context,” in Peace and Reconciliation: In Search of a Shared Identity, eds. Sabastian Kim, Pauline Kollontai and Greg Hoyland (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008), 52.

8 Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2019), 198.

9 Cf. Rom 5:10ff; 2 Cor 5; Eph 2:11-16; Col 1:19-22.

10 Reconciliation language in the New Testament appears exclusively within the Pauline corpus.

58 sacrificial death of Christ (Rom 5:1; 2 Cor 5:19; Eph 2:14,15; Col 1:20). For Paul, reconciliation primarily concerns restoration of right relationship to God, and only secondarily between groups of people, namely Jews and Gentiles. Though Paul writes about reconciliation to the Divine, there remains application to the broader discussion of interpersonal reconciliation. Ian Paul opines that for the Apostle Paul, “reconciliation amongst people never stands as a separate activity, or a goal in itself, separate from the reconciliation of humanity to God.”11 Still, he concludes that “God’s goal and purpose for humanity is to break down every dividing wall of hostility which [exists between humans].”12 To that end, the Pauline conception of reconciliation suggests that authentic reconciliation to God should be evinced by reconciled interpersonal relationships within the Church. Constantineanu concurs when he writes,

any adequate inquiry into the theme of reconciliation in Paul's theology cannot in any way be limited to a single word study since there is every reason to think that [Paul]...describes reconciliation in cases where he does not use the word. [Second], Paul's teaching and understanding of reconciliation is larger in its scope than the reconciliation of men with God, and includes further social implications. [Finally,] it is neither possible nor desirable to limit the theme to forgiveness and reconciliation with God, for all kinds of human relationships, personal, religious, social, and international are suggested by it.13

Constantineanu’s analysis, while opening possibilities for broader understanding of biblical reconciliation, particularly as provided for in Pauline theology, highlights the highly interpretive nature of defining reconciliation biblically. Two parties seeking clarity

11 Ian Paul, “Reconciliation,” Psephizo, May 5, 2015, https://www.psephizo.com/biblical- studies/reconciliation.

12 Ibid.

13 Corneliu Constantineanu, The Social Significance of Reconciliation in Paul’s Theology: Narrative Readings in Romans (New York: T & T Clark, 2010), 32.

59 on the requirements of reconciliation in practice might be helped by seeking extrabiblical assistance.

Commentators have attempted to establish the parameters of biblical reconciliation. August speaks to the importance of repentance to reconciliation by asserting, “The most dangerous legacy of the Christian understanding of reconciliation is the desire to reduce reconciliation to a matter of forgive and forget.”14 He points out that in the Scriptures, sin is the root of broken relationships. When the Apostle Paul writes on reconciliation, he is careful not to gloss over sin, but to make clear that reconciliation requires that all sin be acknowledged and addressed. It is the acknowledgement of the transgression and the willingness to repent from it that provides foundation for reconciliation and restored fellowship.

Reconciliation in the New Testament often included an aspect of restoration.

Repentance is not simply a change of mind in relation to one’s sin and in expectation of

God’s forgiveness, but it also entails tangible compensation made to the offended party or parties, in order to demonstrate one’s sincerity and seriousness (Lk 19:8-10).15

Significantly, the expression of reconciliation in the New Testament, particularly in the

Gospels, took social implications into account:

One of the striking things about the narratives of Jesus’ healings and deliverances is the way that restoration to wholeness is frequently followed by restoration of relationships and communities. In the brief account of Jesus healing Simon Peter’s mother-in-law (Mark 1:30-31), her restoration to her role in the household as host follows on from her physical healing. The man with a skin disease is likewise returned to his ritual community upon healing (Mark 1:40-44). The Gerasene demoniac, living on the outer fringes of human community when Jesus

14 August, “Reconciliation,” 22.

15 Pang, “Peace and Reconciliation,” 52.

60 meets him, is not only delivered from demonic possession but is also restored to his own community: ‘Go home to your own people…’ (lit ‘to your household and your [people]…’) (Mark 5:19).16

While biblical reconciliation does not require reparations in the political sense, it does require affirmative steps to alleviate the vestiges of the broken relations.

Applying Biblical Reconciliation to Race in American Evangelicalism

Scripture is the appropriate place to begin in formulating a working framework for racial reconciliation within the American Evangelical Church. Both the Old and New

Testaments provide important insight. First, according to Scripture, biblical reconciliation is primarily heaven-focused in that it calls God’s people to be reconciled to Him, as priority. As individual believers ensure a personal connection to the Lord, harmony with fellow man is said to flow naturally. This ideology is consistent with notions of individual responsibility, which is an evangelical hallmark. Unfortunately, the individual- centered approaches to achieving racial reconciliation have been largely unsuccessful, as they rarely adequately account for redressing institutional or systemic causes of racial division. Secondly, biblical reconciliation is multifaceted in that it includes restoration of relationship, but also encompasses notions of justice and righteousness. This is extremely important when considering racial reconciliation because it allows for acknowledging and redressing the unjust impacts of a racialized society and Church. American evangelicalism has struggled with this. It has often sought reconciliation without dealing with the historical causes of racial tension within the Body. Instead of doing the difficult work of addressing the still-festering wounds of the past, the desire has often been to

16 Ian Paul, “Reconciliation.”

61 simply cover up historical trauma and discrimination and move on. It has not worked.

Finally, biblical reconciliation leaves room for reparation. To the extent that reconciliation is to be forward-looking and effective in creating an environment of unity, it must move beyond simply acknowledging past wrong, but also take affirmative steps to mitigate the vestiges of past behavior.

Scripture is the appropriate place to begin crafting a framework of reconciliation to be used in the Church, however the work cannot end there. Even if one believes racial division in the American Evangelical Church has a completely theological root—namely, sin—the sociological impacts of that division, both past and present, must be addressed.

Eliminating sin in the present does nothing to redress the generations of negative consequences of a racialized Church. While biblical reconciliation does include restorative aspects, it might be helpful to consider other forms of conciliative work. For example, significant work has been done in reconciling nation-states and communities.

These sociopolitical activities have met with varying degrees of success. They alone do not hold the key to mending racial division in the Church. However, much can be learned from their efforts.

Political Reconciliation

Interest in reconciliation as a moral and political value is relatively recent. In the wake of South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy in the 1990s, political and legal scholars began to explore in greater detail the process of dealing with issues that arise in the aftermath of wrongdoing in post-conflict and post-repression societies.

Political reconciliation has a desired outcome, the restoration of relationship, but also a

62 heavy process orientation. Aspects of the processes used in political reconciliation efforts can be instructive in seeking racial reconciliation in American evangelicalism.

The Elements of Political Reconciliation

Murphy defines political reconciliation as “the process of rebuilding political relationships… [She stresses that] such repair has a complex set of requirements and entails both institutional and interpersonal changes.”17 Several elements coalesce to constitute political reconciliation. First, and perhaps most importantly, political reconciliation concerns the collective. It deals primarily with governments, institutions, systems, and structures. Individuals benefit from corporate action, but the movement toward reconciliation is not reliant solely on individual will. This provides a counterbalance to biblical reconciliation which is rooted almost exclusively in individual transformation. Second, political reconciliation is contextualized. Successful political reconciliation can look different depending on the circumstances. Significantly, political reconciliation makes room for the presence of continued conflict. Biblical reconciliation, on the other hand, contemplates something more complete, objective, and absolute.

Finally, truthfulness is an essential aspect of political reconciliation. Central to resolving political conflict is the public establishment of truth. Biblical and political reconciliation share this in common.

17 Colleen Murphy, A Moral Theory of Political Reconciliation (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010) (emphasis added). Philpott notes that political reconciliation “involves a broad portfolio of practices that redress the multiform wounds that massive political injustices inflict,” Daniel Philpott, Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 6.

63 Collective Nature of Political Reconciliation

The goal of political reconciliation is harmony among groups of people.

Whittaker contends that political reconciliation “goes beyond resolution to refer not just to political arrangements to resolve differences and hostile action but to the psychological process whereby understanding and tolerance lead to readiness to live together in a new framework of peace and well-being.”18 Political reconciliation is concerned with healthy and functioning entities that stretch beyond the individual. Its measures of success are institutional and structural rather than personal. Ultimately, “a reconciled community assimilates rather than discriminates, promulgates humane and legal rights, does its best to dissolve alienation and fear, encourages people to share values and develop congenial relationships and promotes a hope that material benefits will accrue as a product of peaceful transactions and independence.”19 Political reconciliation is a useful framework when addressing issues like the impact of racialization that have systemic implications.

Indeed, the corporate nature of political reconciliation could be a valuable addition to the discussion of racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism.

Political reconciliation operates under a basic assumption that individuals have a personal interest in collective peace. Schaap opines that “The basis of political association…depends on our common interest in security. Political society is conceived in terms of a voluntary association through which individuals agree to abide by the sovereign so that the life, liberty and property of each can be collectively secured.”20 The

18 David Whittaker, Conflict and Reconciliation in the Contemporary World (New York: Routledge, 1999), 1.

19 Whittaker, Conflict and Reconciliation, 8.

64 major emphasis of political reconciliation is not so much concerned with restoring healthy relations between any one individual and their community as it is with creating a community in which there is peace, in general. This collectivist orientation of political reconciliation can add significant value to the way racial reconciliation is viewed within

American evangelicalism. Emerson and Smith speak in much detail about the individualistic worldview cultivated by evangelical orthodoxy and held by many White evangelicals.21 Political reconciliation paradigms can provide an important corrective by requiring harmony within the entire evangelical community and not only in individual relationships.

Contextualized Nature of Political Reconciliation

Political reconciliation involves negotiated outcomes. There is no such thing as a one size fits all solution when dealing with political conflict. Instead, political reconciliation incorporates a process whereby the parties determine what reconciliation looks like for them. Murphy suggests that to achieve the appropriate result political reconciliation should have at least three components:

First, it should describe the ways in which relationships have been damaged. Second, it should specify the desired right or corrected relationships and draw attention to the dimensions along which relations must change. Finally, an analysis should provide prescriptions for how to repair the damage to relationships, so as to cultivate the desired or ‘right’ relations.22

20 Andrew Schaap, Political Reconciliation (New York: Routledge, 2005), 4-5.

21 Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 63.

22 Colleen Murphy, “Political Reconciliation, the Rule of Law, and Genocide,” The European Legacy 12:7 (November 2007): 853-865.

65

She concludes, “There are many different kinds of reconciliation that might be pursued in the aftermath of systematic and egregious wrongdoing, such as reconciliation among individual perpetrators and victims.”23 As a practical example, reconciliation looked different in post-Apartheid South Africa than it did after conflicts in Cambodia or

Northern Ireland.24 In each of these cases, a country-specific process had to be undertaken, which took into account the particular people and history involved, along with the resources available in seeking resolution.

Part of the contextualized nature of political reconciliation is the recognition that obtaining complete unity within a given community may not be possible. This is a significant departure from biblical reconciliation in which the normative outcome, at least on an individual level, is absolute peace and harmony (2 Cor 5:18-21; Col 1:20-22).

Political reconciliation is alive to the inherent risks of politics. That is to say, it leaves room for the possibility that conflict within a given community may be irreconcilable.

Schaap asserts that true political reconciliation

cannot be conceived in terms of an ahistorical ideal of harmony or consensus according to which discord and antagonism would be stilled once and for all. Rather, it must be understood as a striving for a sense of commonness that might be disclosed from the clash of perspectives we bring to bear on the world in our historical relation to each other. As such, reconciliation would not be about transcending the conflicts of the past by striving for social harmony. Rather, reconciliation would condition the possibility of politics by framing a potentially agonistic clash of worldviews within the context of a community that is ‘not yet.’25

23 Ibid.

24 For in depth discussion see Whittaker, Conflict and Reconciliation.

25 Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 5. Maddison calls this “a profoundly pragmatic approach to conflict, which contests a normative aspiration to peace, and instead advances a framework that recognises a disorderly mixture of peace and conflict in which democratic politics and other forms of political expression, including contentious politics, are able to coexist.” Sarah Maddison, “Transforming Conflict:

66 The latitude political reconciliation gives to explore whether reconciliation is possible in certain political contexts is important to the discussion of racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism. It is a bitter pill to swallow, perhaps, but it is time to seriously ask whether Black and White evangelicals can ever be reconciliated to one another. That question will be addressed directly in Chapter 5. Applying the standard of biblical reconciliation, which affirms “with God nothing will be impossible” (Lk 1:37), prevents an honest exploration of whether evangelicalism, with its very difficult history and in its current racial challenges, is irreconcilable.

Truthfulness in Political Reconciliation

Seeking truth is foundational to most processes of political reconciliation. Truth telling has been the starting point of attempts at political reconciliation across the globe.

As examples, Whittaker writes about the process of reconciliation in El Salvador:

“Central to the whole operation of resolving this conflict was the establishment of the truth about what happened.”26 Concerning South Africa, perhaps the best-known instance of truth as part of reconciliation, he writes, “The underlying rationale stated that instead of forgetting the past there must be truthful acknowledgment of what had happened.”27

Schaap states plainly, “Without a shared acknowledgement of the brute facts…a polity lacks a common starting point from which to initiate political reconciliation.”28

The Challenge of Political Reconciliation,” ABC Religion & Ethics, November 24, 2016, https://www.abc.net.au/religion/transforming-conflict-the-challenge-of-political-reconciliation/10096312.

26 David Whittaker, Conflict and Reconciliation, 10.

27 Ibid.

28 Andrew Schaap, Political Reconciliation, 127.

67 Truth-telling is a critical part of the reconciliation process and allows both parties to come to terms with their shared past. Reconciliation is built on truth. Scheurs asserts,

“Reconciliation is a relationship between people, a relationship that presupposes trust.

Trust has its roots in the past. The sincerity of the present and future relationship must not be blocked by the burden of an unclarified and undigested past.”29 of the truth removes one barrier to trusting relationship, even if it does little to ameliorate the pain that often accompanies full disclosure. Truth-telling allows often silenced victims to be heard on equal footing as those who have victimized them.

It is important to recognize, however, that truth telling does not of itself guarantee reconciliation, instead it creates the environment in which reconciliation can take place.

The purpose of seeking truth is to acknowledge and bring to light hidden parts of an individual’s and a society’s past. And yet, truth, as Nesiah observes, is a “notoriously difficult category, and invariably [those seeking it] have to grapple with the complexities of contested and plural truths—irreconcilable truths we may say.”30 Even after a shared understanding of truth is ascertained, there is still much work to do. This is because

“truth” is much more than the recitation of facts and events. An integral aspect of seeking truth is establishing the meaning and significance of what is uncovered. On this point, with respect to processes of political reconciliation undertaken by truth-seeking commissions, Norquist observes:

the full responsibility of making an analysis of the history does not lie with the commission. It is a challenge for individuals as well as groups and politically

29 Nico Schreurs, “Truth and Reconciliation: Is Radical Openness a Condition for Reconciliation,” Forgiveness and Truth, eds. Marcel Sarot and Alistair McFadyen (New York: T & T Clark, 2001), 132.

30 Vasuki Nesiah, “Coming to Terms with Irreconcilable Truths,” Roads to Reconciliation, eds. Elin Skaar, Siri Gloppen et al. (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 271.

68 responsible actors in a society to do their own analysis, and draw their conclusions. This is one of the points in having a truth commission. The commission can give space for reflections, and in this way allow for a society to formulate and interpret its own history. 31

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa heard confessions from more than seven thousand perpetrators of racial violence and discrimination and about twenty thousand statements from victims.32 It was up to the South African people, however, to interpret what those statements would mean for the continuation of their society. Tutu summed this up when he said, “Healing is a process. How we deal with the truth after its telling defines the success of the process.”33

Truth-telling is not only an essential part of political reconciliation, but it is also an indispensable part of biblical reconciliation as well. History and Scripture both reveal that there can be no reconciliation without repentance, no repentance without confession, and no confession without truth. Unfortunately, truth-telling has been a challenge for the

American Evangelical Church. As Tisby notes, “all too often, Christians, and Americans in general, try to circumvent the truth-telling process in their haste to arrive at reconciliation.”34 If there is ever to be racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism, there must be a commitment to the process of truth telling.

31 Kjell-Ake Nordquist, Reconciliation as Politics: A Concept and its Practice (Eugene, OR: Pickwick 2017).

32 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa Report, Vol. 1, presented to President ,” October 29, 1998, http://www.justice.gov.za/trc/report/finalreport/Volume%201.pdf.

33 David Smith et al., “Special Report: Truth, Justice and Reconciliation,” The Guardian, June 24, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/24/truth-justice-reconciliation-civil-war-conflict.

34 Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise, 15.

69 While political reconciliation is, by definition, contextualized, it may be helpful to see it applied to a situation of political division. Perhaps the best-known case of racial reconciliation is South Africa’s dismantling and recovery from the Apartheid regime. Of note, South Africa’s framework, while primarily political, included spiritual elements as well, mediated by its Truth and Reconciliation chairman, Bishop Desmond Tutu.

A Model of Political Reconciliation: South Africa

On July 19, 1995, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (the

“Commission” or “TRC”) was established with the passage of the Promotion of National

Unity and Reconciliation Act 34 of 1995.35 The stated objective of the Commission was to “promote national unity and reconciliation in a spirit of understanding which transcends the conflicts and divisions of the past.”36 The Commission was a political entity; however, the ethical implications of its work were well understood. According to

Dullah Omar, the former South African Minister of Justice, “A commission [was] a necessary exercise to enable South Africans to come to terms with their past on a morally accepted basis and to advance the case of reconciliation.”37 There are aspects of the

South African experience that can be helpful in the quest for racial reconciliation in

American evangelicalism, particularly as it relates to the application of the political reconciliation paradigm.

35 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act 34, Republic of South Africa Government Gazette, Vol. 361 no. 16579, Cape Town, July 26, 1995, https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201409/act34of1995.pdf.

36 Ibid.

37 Helena Águeda Marujo and Luis Miguel Neto, eds., Positive Nations and Communities: Collective, Qualitative and Cultural-Sensitive Processes in Positive Psychology (Berlin: Springer Science & Business Media, 2013), 151 (emphasis added).

70 Truth and Reconciliation in South Africa was decidedly restorative in nature. The process, which centered on an offer of amnesty for any politically-motivated violence perpetrated between 1960 and 1994, sought to be forward-looking, such that perpetrators of even the most violent crimes against humanity received absolution as long as they gave a full account of the material facts relating to the offense.38 No expression of remorse was required.

Because of this amnesty, many claimed that the Truth and Reconciliation process did not achieve justice. Instead, they argued, it encouraged impunity, allowing those who had committed heinous crimes to walk away scot-free. Desmond Tutu, the Commission’s

Chair, defended the Commission by saying,

We contend there is another kind of justice, restorative justice, which was characteristic of traditional African jurisprudence. Here the central concern is not retribution or punishment. In the spirit of ubuntu, the central concern is the healing of breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships, a seeking to rehabilitate both the victim and the perpetrator, who should be given the opportunity to be reintegrated into the community he has injured by his offense.39

In this regard, amnesty becomes the tangible manifestation of forgiveness. Amnesty was not offered to innocent people or those who claimed to be innocent, only those who made a confession of guilt. The practical result, in many cases, was a “new culture of responsibility and accountability.”40 While accountability may not have been the result of

38 Where the offense was a gross violation of human rights (as defined by the statute—abduction, killing, torture, severe ill-treatment) the confession had to occur at a public hearing, unless such a hearing would lead to a miscarriage of justice.

39 Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Random House 1999), 54-55. Ubuntu, which is difficult to render in English is loosely translated, “A person is through other persons.” It is shorthand for prizing community and harmonious relationships.

40 Ibid.

71 state-sponsored pressure, the public nature of the trials allowed the community to exact its own justice. Individuals made public confessions, revealing their previously undisclosed activities in support of the apartheid regime. These in many cases led to public humiliation, loss of public support for their businesses, and, in some cases, the break-up of families and marriages. More importantly, the full airing of the truth allowed families affected by the atrocities of apartheid to find closure in a way that retribution could not offer. Families who lost loved ones in police detention and forced disappearances received truthful answers that allowed them to grieve fully and begin the process of moving on. It is important to note that the confessions did not just concern crimes committed by Whites against Blacks, but included those of Blacks against other

Blacks, Blacks against Whites, and the African National Congress (ANC) against its own members.41 Within this context, a measure of healing, even if not complete reconciliation, began to emerge.

Finally, another key aspect of the restorative justice offered through the Truth and

Reconciliation process was reparations. The TRC reported, “Without adequate reparation and rehabilitation measures, there can be no healing and reconciliation, either at the individual or a community level.”42 To that end, all those designated as “victims” were offered reparations from the South African government. In addition, the Commission recommended communal reparations, understanding that in many cases communities were impacted by the apartheid regime along with individuals. Finally, the Commission

41 Dennis Thompson, Truth v. Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000).

42 Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness, 58.

72 recommended that streets and schools be named after fallen heroes of the apartheid resistance. They advocated for the erection of community centers, clinics, and monuments in honor of those lost in the struggle for freedom.

While American evangelicalism is not a political entity and its history with racial division does not closely approximate that of South Africa, there are elements of restorative justice in South Africa’s story that can be instructive for the Church. The problem of race within American evangelicalism can be traced, at least in part, to its complicity in the creation of the racialized architecture of the United States.43 Hall, when speaking about the Southern Baptist Convention, acknowledges that “Long before the founding of the Southern Baptist Convention in 1845, White Baptists in the south were laying the foundation for a society built on racial hierarchy.”44 Indeed, from the earliest days of Colonial America, through the institution of chattel slavery, Jim Crow, the Civil

Rights Movement and well-into the current Era of Trump, American evangelicals have often practiced a form of Christianity that tolerates, if not supports, systems, policies, and leadership that marginalize and oppress people and, more specifically, Christians of color.

43 Tisby argues, “Given the history, complicity is a weak word for describing how American Christianity has often interacted with race…Complicity connotes a degree of passivity—as if Christians were merely a boat languidly floating down the river of racism. In reality, White Christians have often been the current, whipping racism into waves of conflict that rock and divide people of color. Even if only a small portion of Christians committed the most notorious acts of racism, many more White Christians can be described as complicit in creating and sustaining a racist society.” Tisby, The Color of Compromise, 17 (emphasis original).

44 Matthew Hall, “Historical Causes of the Sin of Racism in the Southern Baptist Convention,” Removing the Stain of Racism from the Southern Baptist Convention: Diverse African American and White Perspectives, eds. Jarvis Williams and Kevin Jones (Nashville: B&H Publishing, 2017), 8.

73 As was the case in South Africa, restorative justice within American evangelicalism must begin with truth telling. Truth-telling provides an environment for healing and accountability. Much of the racial division that continues to exist in

American evangelism is because Black and White evangelicals are unwilling to listen to each other’s stories. In this regard, the South African framework of confession and amnesty is instructive. The offer of amnesty allowed perpetrators of political violence to confess and speak truthfully without fear of retribution or reprisal. It was an authentication of the process’s restorative purpose. American evangelicalism must create an environment where both Black and White members can speak freely about race with the goal of restoration and without fear of condemnation. Truth-telling can create an environment for healing and accountability.

Unfortunately, as Walker-Barnes notes,

Within the racial reconciliation movement, there has been no large-scale attempt to provide people of color with space to tell their truths without worrying about the impact that such truth-telling will have upon the feelings of White people. And when people of color have tried to create this space for themselves, it is often met with resistance and accusations of being separatist and counter to reconciliation.45

Truth-telling requires space for Black Christians to speak their truth freely. At the same time, truth-telling must include room for White Christians to do the same, to include space to confess, without judgment, the “ways that they have participated in and benefited from [racism] and to commit to the ongoing work of systemic and structural reform necessary to eliminate racism.”46

45 Chanequa Walker-Barnes, I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019), 210.

46 Ibid., 2018.

74 Finally, restorative justice in American evangelicalism must include reparations.

This was also a major element of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation process. As the goal of reparation is to make the aggrieved party whole, it is important for the American

Evangelical Church to consider how its policies and practices have disadvantaged its

African American members. This needs to take place across evangelical institutions, including churches, academic institutions, and denominational bodies.

Analysis of Political Reconciliation in the Context of Race in

American Evangelicalism

Elements of political reconciliation can be used to support racial reconciliation efforts within American evangelicalism. Contextualization will allow a process to be developed that takes into account the unique circumstances, history, and relationship between Black and White evangelicals. Truth-telling, in a political sense, encourages a formal process for storytelling and exchange. Finally, reparations are an essential aspect of political reconciliation that can be, but is not always, missing from the biblical reconciliation paradigm.

Perhaps the greatest value of introducing the concept of political reconciliation to a framework for addressing racial division within American evangelicalism is that politics is not saddled with the limitations imposed by theology. Biblical reconciliation is, by definition, transcendent and otherworldly. It relies on the work of God within an individual’s heart. It presupposes an individual’s capacity to yield their human will to divine inspiration. It further assumes an ability of reconciled individuals to create

75 collective change. While this is a wonderful aspiration, none of it is guaranteed in practice.

Striving for biblical reconciliation as the answer to racial division within society and the Church has proven costly for African Americans and Christians of color.

Christian conversion and discipleship will not solve every social issue. For generations,

Christians have espoused what Emerson and Smith call the “miracle motif,” the

“theologically rooted idea that the more individuals become Christians, social and personal problems will be solved automatically.”47 There may be truth to this thinking on an individual level. That is to say, perhaps individual relationships can be reconciled when individual people have authentic Christian transformation. However, this does not account for the institutional and structural aspects of society. Even if individuals are able to make the personal transition necessary to achieve biblical reconciliation on an interpersonal level, it seems hopeful to believe this transformation would lead to substantive change in the aggregate. After all, America has considered itself “Christian” for its entire existence, yet systemic problems persist. Tocqueville put his finger on the issue when he wrote, “An isolated individual may surmount the prejudices of religion, of his country, or of his race, and if this individual is a king, he may effect surprising changes in society; but the whole people cannot rise, as it were, above itself.”48

The obvious response to this critique is to suggest the Church is fundamentally different than broader society and that American Christians, unlike Americans in general,

47 Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 117. One female member of a Congregational Church reported to Emerson and Smith, “If you’re a Christian, you’re going to accept other people. Never mind what color or race, you’re going to accept them as equal.” Another respondent suggested, “If everybody was a Christian, there wouldn’t be a race problem. We’d all be the same.”

76 have the capacity to achieve biblical reconciliation because of their relationship to Christ.

However, the entire history of the American Evangelical Church has shown that while the capacity for transformation may exist, willingness to be transformed, particularly in the area of race, does not.49 In this regard, American evangelicalism is not so different than

America as a whole. The position of the Church with respect to race has been almost indistinguishable from the larger American population.50

The Scriptures tell us that biblical reconciliation will indeed be realized one day; all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues will stand together before the throne of God (Rev

7:9). That is something to look forward to. However, there must be something for marginalized and oppressed communities to hold on to until then. If not, those people will never find the healing and restoration they need and desire. Instead, they will be relegated to a position of waiting for those in power to have a change of heart. Unfortunately, when it comes to race, this has been the story of America and the American Church: oppressed people waiting for change to come.

Political reconciliation provides a framework that could be helpful. Adding aspects of political reconciliation to the traditional understanding of biblical reconciliation can provide a pathway for addressing racial challenges—past and

48 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, eds. Harvey Mansfield & Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002).

49 Tisby asserts, “Christians participated in the system of White supremacy [in America]—a concept that identifies White people and White culture as normal and superior—even if they claim people of color as their brothers and sisters in Christ.” Tisby, The Color of Compromise, 16. He goes on to say, “Historically speaking, when faced with the choice between racism and equality, the American church has tended to practice a complicit Christianity rather than a courageous Christianity.”

50 Ibid.

77 present—within the American Evangelical Church. This can occur without losing a commitment to the teaching of Scripture.

A Theopolitical Framework for Racial Reconciliation in American Evangelicalism

Much has been written about potential solutions to the racial divide within

American evangelicalism. Before solutions can be entertained, however, it is essential to determine the goal. Historically, biblical reconciliation has been identified as the mission.

This should be rethought. A more appropriate objective is one that addresses the unique issues, challenges and history of race within the American Evangelical Church. A framework rooted in biblical reconciliation but incorporating elements of political reconciliation accomplishes that.

To that end, a proper theopolitical framing of racial reconciliation is the establishment of a new racial harmony, rooted in truthfulness and freedom of opportunity. This framework represents a hybrid of biblical and political forms of reconciliation. According to this framework, effective racial reconciliation must (1) be contextualized, (2) address collective (i.e., systemic and institutional) as well as individual aspects of the racialized community, (3) allow for the public establishment of the truth concerning the history and present implications of race relationships within

American evangelicalism, and (4) be reparative and not simply restorative in nature. It is important to note that there does not need to be one solution that satisfies each of these criteria, but any approach to racial reconciliation in American evangelicalism must include elements that, when taken together, address each concern.

78 Beyond the Bible: Exploring the Need for a New Way of Evaluating Racial

Reconciliation in the Church

To offer a new framework for reconciliation is not to suggest that Scripture is deficient. Instead, political reconciliation concretizes aspects of reconciliation that are necessary and essential in the area of racial reconciliation, generally, and racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism, particularly. Moreover, because individual evangelicals occasionally read the details of Scripture differently, even the biblical requirements of reconciliation, appealing to an outside source with definitive elements, that have little to do with one’s religious convictions, might be helpful.

Political reconciliation offers clarity and, in some cases, demands more than what is required in the Scripture. In that regard, the addition of elements from political reconciliation has the effect of going beyond the Bible.

A Contextualized Approach

As the framework suggests, racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism must be characterized by a “new racial harmony.” In reality, Black and White evangelicals have never existed harmoniously within the American Evangelical Church, so any truly reconciled relationship would be new. Notions of restoring fellowship, reviving or refreshing what once existed do not apply within this context.

American evangelicalism has a very difficult history concerning race. Anthea

Butler observes that “the history of American evangelicalism suffers from the problem

79 of whiteness.”51 Evangelicalism itself is a racialized term. Like its fundamentalist cousin,

The men who coined the term were White and in their worldview, and indeed in the worldview of most of the era, Christianity was defined by the goals and aspirations of White, middle class, educated Protestants…Christianity represented the highest achievement of White civilization, and their understanding of the purest form of Christianity— conservative evangelical Protestantism—was a reflection of that viewpoint.52

Since its inception, American evangelicalism has stood in support of many policies and practices rooted in White supremacy. In commenting on the current state of

American evangelicalism, Labberton concedes that, in many respects, “culture rivals the gospel in defining evangelical political vision; [evangelicals’] sociological frame speaks louder than [their] theology. This is not new to American evangelicalism (nor mainline

Protestantism)…For a movement that has been about the primacy of Christian faith, that is a crisis.”53 Indeed, the melding of faith and culture is not new. As America was embroiled in the debate over slavery in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, missionaries carefully crafted messages designed to maintain the social and economic order. They manipulated the gospel, tailoring it to reinforce its hold on society.54 During the mid-nineteenth century, many Christians supported slavery to the extent they were willing to risk their lives, fighting with the Confederacy, to defend it. Evangelical pastors

51 Anthea Butler, “A ‘New’ History of Evangelicalism—Black Evangelical and American Evangelicalism,” Fuller Theological Seminary, YouTube video, 25:23, February 3, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4UqpBnuCvI&t=1s.

52 Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews, Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism Between Wars (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2017), 5.

53 Mark Labberton, Still Evangelical (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Press, 2018), 1-2.

54 Tisby, The Color of Compromise, 38.

80 in both the North and the South owned slaves, including some of those most venerated today. Kelly Baker argues that in the early twentieth century, the Ku Klux Klan, which terrorized Blacks in the South, and was filled with leaders and members of the

Evangelical Church, “was not just an order to defend America but also a campaign to protect and celebrate Protestantism. It was a religious order.”55 Lynchings and beatings of

Blacks often took place after Sunday services and on church grounds. In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the rise of the Religious Right solidified the

American Evangelical Church as a movement with little regard for the plight of people of color. From Ronald Reagan’s “War on Drugs” to Donald’s Trump’s “Make America

Great Again,” White evangelicals have used faith as for supporting policies and positions with devastating impacts on minority communities.

In light of this, the current racial division within American evangelicalism can be understood as the logical result of a pattern of behavior. It is fruit cultivated over centuries. Accordingly, the same intentionality given to erecting the systems and structures of White supremacy within the church must be given in dismantling them.

While leadership in this effort can be provided by Black Christians, primary commitment and responsibility must come from Whites.

The wounds from centuries of complicity and neglect from White evangelicals are fresh for Christians of color. This makes reconciliation difficult. Cone articulated the sentiment by saying,

I cannot accept a view of reconciliation based on white values. The Christian view of reconciliation has nothing to do with black people being nice to white people as

55 Kelly Baker, The Gospel According to the Klan: The KKK’s Appeal to Protestant America, 1915-30 (Lawrenceville, KS: University of Press, 2011), 6.

81 if the gospel demands that we ignore their insults and their humiliating presence. It does not mean discussing with whites what it means to be black or going to white gatherings and displaying what whites call an understanding attitude— remaining cool and calm amid racists and bigots…We black theologians must refuse to accept a view of reconciliation that pretends that slavery never existed, that we were not lynched and shot, and that we are not presently being cut to the core of our physical and mental endurance.56

Any attempt at reconciliation must be contextualized to the historical complexities of Black/White race relations in America and the American Evangelical Church.

Collective Approach to Reconciliation

Evangelical orthodoxy is largely individualistic. That is a problem, particularly as it relates to broader social concerns. Generally speaking, White conservative

Protestants are accountable freewill individualists.57 That is to say, for them, individuals exist independent of structures and institutions, have freewill, and are individually accountable for their own actions. Stark and Glock note,

Underlying traditional Christian thought is an image of man as a free actor, as essentially unfettered by social circumstances, free to choose and thus free to effect his own salvation. This free-will conception of man has been central to the doctrine of sin and salvation. For only if man is totally free does it seem just to hold him responsible for his acts.58

This individualism heavily affects the White evangelical worldview as it comes to race.

Emerson and Smith observe that “the popularized version [of evangelicalism] for White evangelicals has emphasized mainly the individual-level components, leaving the larger racialized social structures, institutions, and culture intact.”59 White evangelicals tend to

56 James Cone, God of the Oppressed (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997), 207-8 (emphasis added).

57 Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 58.

58 Tom Skinner, Black and Free (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1968), 39.

82 believe that racial reconciliation can be achieved if individual Christians would simply treat everyone equally and without bias. They see no need for reshaping social structures, such as laws, the ways institutions operate, or forms of discrimination.

Emerson and Smith concluded that suggesting social causes of the race problem challenges the theological constructs around which White evangelicals understand life.

Wilson-Hartgrove states,

this is why so many noble efforts at reconciliation fail. They pretend that broken people with the best of motives can simply opt out of hundreds of years of history through individual choices and relationships. Such relationships are necessarily dishonest, both because they ignore real material conditions that weigh on people’s lives and because they offer a false sense of relief from White guilt.60

Evangelicalism’s individualistic orientation impacts other aspects of its worldview. Its “evangelism at all costs” mentality has served to inhibit social progress.

At its core, the evangelical tradition is rooted in a worldview and ideology that highlights spreading the “good news” of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.61 Commitment to the gospel anchors evangelical identity in belief. However, when married to the generally individualistic nature on evangelicalism, the emphasis of evangelism can overshadow other important aspects of Christian commitment. As an example, Charles Finney, the revered abolitionist of the mid-1800s, ardently preached against slaveholding. In fact, he was one of the first to use his pulpit to preach against the evil. He went as far as withholding communion from slaveholders arguing they were not Christian. But his

59 Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 52.

60 Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Press, 2018), 156.

61 National Association of Evangelicals, “What is an Evangelical?,” accessed on February 20, 2020, https://www.nae.net/what-is-an-evangelical.

83 views were complicated by his primary concern for evangelism.62 Ultimately, “Finney came to see the abolitionist movement…as a cause that had grown too big, and one that incorrectly relegated preaching the gospel to a secondary role. Simply put, abolition was a detriment to evangelism.”63 Finney became estranged from the movement, believing saving the soul of slaves was more important than rescuing their bodies. Finney’s story is emblematic of a prevalent issue in American evangelicalism. Too often, the concern is only about “leading people to eternal life through Christ,” and not enough about shaping the Kingdom of God on earth. Those two goals are not always mutually inclusive, but both must be addressed.

Public Establishment of the Truth

Racial reconciliation efforts in American evangelicalism must be, as the framework suggests, “rooted in truthfulness.” Authentic reconciliation is built on truth, and any hope for enduring relationship between Black and White evangelicals must flow from an honest reckoning with the history of the American Evangelical Church.

Truthfulness must begin with acknowledging (and ultimately repenting of) past transgressions, but the conversation must continue until an understanding of the present is reached. Only then can there be the prospect of a reconciled future.

Some of the difficult work of truth-seeking has begun within the American

Evangelical Church. The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest evangelical denomination in the United States, has within the last thirty years made efforts to at least

62 Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith, 58.

63 Ibid.

84 generate conversation around its troubling racial past. In 1995, on its 150th anniversary, the Convention adopted a formal resolution on racial reconciliation. In the resolution, the

Convention acknowledged the role slavery played in the formation of the Convention, including the fact that “many…Southern Baptist forbears defended the right to own slaves, and either participated in, supported, or acquiesced in the particularly inhumane nature of American slavery.”64 It went on to describe the convention’s historical opposition to many issues of concern for African Americans in general, and Black evangelicals in particular. These included the convention’s “support, and in some cases

[opposition to], legitimate initiatives to secure the civil rights of African-Americans” and the exclusion of African Americans from worship, membership, and leadership.65 The

Convention went on to acknowledge that their “racism profoundly distorts our understanding of Christian morality, leading some Southern Baptists to believe that racial prejudice and discrimination are compatible with the gospel.”66 The resolution concluded with an apology to African Americans within the Convention, a request for forgiveness and a commitment to “eradicate racism in all its forms from Southern Baptist life and ministry.”67 The 1995 resolution was important and noteworthy. Conspicuously absent, however, was any commitment to participate in efforts to impact racist institutions and systems that persist in broader society.

64 Southern Baptist Convention, “Resolution on Racial Reconciliation on the 150th Anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention,” 1995, accessed February 19, 2020, http://www.sbc.net/resolutions/899/resolution-on-racial-reconciliation-on-the-150th-anniversary-of-the- southern-baptist-convention.

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 Ibid.

85 More recently, in December 2018, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, the oldest seminary of the Southern Baptist Convention, made its own foray into truth-telling.

Its “Report on Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological

Seminary” acknowledged,

The founding faculty of this school—all four of them—were deeply involved in slavery and deeply complicit in the defense of slavery. Many of their successors on [the] faculty, throughout the period of Reconstruction and well into the twentieth century, advocated segregation, the inferiority of African-Americans, and openly embraced the ideology of the Lost Cause of southern slavery.68

Among its specific findings, the report confessed that the Seminary’s most important donor made his fortune from the exploitation of mostly Black convict-leasing laborers and during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries the seminary supported the belief in White supremacy. Unlike the 1995 Convention resolution, the Seminary report made no commitments to African Americans based on its findings.

Truth-telling opportunities like the ones engaged in by the Southern Baptist

Convention and the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary are essential to the process of racial reconciliation. If taken seriously, they can serve as a basis for positive change. It is important to note that, while the groups charged with seeking truth for the Convention and Seminary were multi-racial, both organizations are predominantly White. Truth- telling must allow for the authentic voices and reflections of Whites and Blacks. It is also important to note that the truth-telling within the Convention and Seminary were both done on an institutional level, which is promising given the challenge evangelicals

68 Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, “Report of Slavery and Racism in the History of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary,” Louisville, December 18, 2018, http://www.sbts.edu/wp- content/uploads/2018/12/Racism-and-the-Legacy-of-Slavery-Report-v4.pdf.

86 typically have in conceding systemic forms of discrimination. Still, in order for truth- telling to realize its greatest value, it cannot be oriented only in the past, but there must be an understanding of how past conduct impacts current realities. In each case, both within the Convention and the Seminary, past racism and discrimination have enduring consequences for Black churchgoers and seminarians. Acknowledging the need to deal with the vestiges of past racial animus is often one of the more difficult parts of the truth- telling process. Jones recognizes this as a missing element of many racial reconciliation efforts initiated by White Christians.69 He calls it

“the white Christian shuffle,” a subtle two-steps-forward-one-step-back pattern of lamenting past sins in great detail, even admitting that they have had pernicious effects, but then ultimately denying that their legacy requires reparative or costly actions in the present. It’s a sophisticated rhetorical strategy that emphasizes lament and apology, expects absolution and reconciliation, but gives scant attention to questions of justice, repair, or accountability.70

Acknowledgement must lead to reparation.

Theology and Politics: A Reparative Approach to Racial Reconciliation

Many racial reconciliation efforts establish outcomes that are primarily restorative in nature. These outcomes, as Whittaker suggests, are designed to reaffirm the dignity of victims of oppression and discrimination. This is evident in the reconciliation efforts of the Southern Baptist Convention. Great pain was taken to emphasize the humanity of

African Americans. The resolution read, in part, “Eve is the mother of all living (Genesis

3:20), and that God shows no partiality, but in every nation whoever fears him and works

69 Robert Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2020).

70 Ibid., 56.

87 righteousness is accepted by him (Acts 10:34-35), and that God has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth (Acts 17:26).”71 It goes on to acknowledge “the Bible’s teaching that every human life is sacred, and is of equal and immeasurable worth, made in God’s image, regardless of race or ethnicity (Genesis

1:27), and that, with respect to salvation through Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female, for (we) are all one in

Christ Jesus (Galatians 3:28).”72 This is all important. Oppression and discrimination are often designed to strip dignity from their victims, and therefore, reconciliation must include efforts to publicly restore persons to their rightful station. However, restorative efforts alone are not enough; “reconciliation taking shape in head and heart cannot ignore the pocket.”73

The primarily restorative nature of reconciliation caused Harvey to advocate throwing out the term “reconciliation” altogether. Arguing for a “reparative paradigm,” she asserts that “framing and pursuing responses to race through a vision of reconciliation, as we do in justice-seeking Christian contexts, has proven to be a fundamentally flawed approach. As long as we persist in it, reconciliation itself will remain out of reach.”74 There is support for her position in political science. Whittaker asserts, “Mere disclosure (even if absolutely full and without reservation) coupled with

71 Southern Baptist Convention, “Resolution on Racial Reconciliation.”

72 Ibid.

73 Whittaker, Conflict and Reconciliation, 28.

74 Jennifer Harvey, Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 1.

88 an apology is not enough. It needs to go further than the restoration of a victim’s humanity and dignity…[Action] must be ‘affirmative’ and ‘corrective’ with precise targets and calculated outcomes.”75

In order for racial reconciliation efforts to truly provide “freedom of opportunity,” they must be reparative. That is to say, in addition to affirming the dignity and humanity of victims, there must also be provision made to return some of the tangible benefits lost through historical discrimination. Hall observes, “The symbols and artifacts of racial injustice are all around us…They are the names of buildings many of us walk in and out of every day. They are tied to the fortunes that propped up many of our institutions.”76

Racism (or at least the byproduct of racialization) has led to, among other things, the denial of access to positions of power and authority for Black evangelicals within the evangelical movement, lack of culturally competent curricula and faculty in evangelical colleges and seminaries, and failure of major evangelical publishing houses to retain representative numbers of Black authors or produce materials centered on the Black evangelical experience. Reconciliation efforts must include corrective measures.

For all these reasons, a framework to guide reconciliation efforts must be rooted in the Scriptures, as racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism is primarily spiritual in nature. However, adding elements from political reconciliation provides a level of clarity that Black and White evangelicals need. Benchmarks become more easily identifiable and accountability is more readily achieved.

75 David Whittaker, Conflict and Reconciliation, 28.

76 Hall, “Sin of Racism in the Southern Baptist Convention.”

89

PART THREE

UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE OF BLACK CHRISTIANS IN RACIAL

RECONCILIATION WITHIN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

CHAPTER 4

THE UNIQUE PERSPECTIVE OF BLACK CHRISTIANS IN RACIAL

RECONCILIATION EFFORTS

Definition and structure were offered for racial reconciliation in Parts I and II. In

Part I, the subjects of reconciliation—American evangelicalism, including its Black and

White membership—were identified. Part II described the framework by which reconciliation should be pursued. Part III turns toward those best suited to lead the racial reconciliation effort: Black Christians.

Black Christians can offer a unique perspective to American evangelicalism. Rah correctly observes that “African-American Christianity and theology are a profound and essential theological marker that has been largely ignored by U.S. Evangelical

Christianity. Intersection with the African-American Christian narrative would benefit

U.S. Evangelicalism.”1 The perspective of Black Christians is informed by their theological and sociocultural relationship to the church and broader society. This relationship is marked by an internal struggle identified by American historian W.E.B.

1 Soong-Chan Rah, “In Whose Image: The Emergence, Development, and Challenge of African American Evangelicalism,” (PhD diss, Duke University, 2016), 1-2.

91 Du Bois as “double-consciousness.” This unique perspective has animated a faithful critique of the American evangelical movement by many Black Christians over time.

Understanding The Souls of Black Folk

In 1903, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois published his groundbreaking work

The Souls of Black Folk (hereafter Souls). The book, like much of Du Bois’s effort, was

“an attempt to understand both the socio-historic condition facing ‘Black folk’ in the

American twentieth century, and the impacts of those conditions on the consciousness and ‘inner world’ of the human beings subject to them.”2 In his own words, he sought to capture the “strange meaning of being Black.” Du Bois concluded that “the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line,” even as he offered insight into the progress of Black Americans, obstacles to that progress, and an assessment of the potential for the national future. Du Bois’s reasoning for his work went beyond mere understanding, however. As he told an audience at the third annual meeting of the

American Negro Academy in 1900, “The secret to social progress is wide and thorough understanding of the social forces which move and modify your age.”3 For him, social progress could only be achieved by apprehending the social construct of race and the racist thought and practice it produces.

2 John Pittman, “Double Consciousness,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, March 21, 2016, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-consciousness.

3 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Present Outlook for the Darker Races of Mankind,” in The Oxford W.E.B. Du Bois Reader, ed. Eric Sundquist (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1996), 47-54.

92 Among the contributions Du Bois makes in Souls are the concepts of “the veil” and “double consciousness.”4 Lister summarizes them well:

Du Bois theorized that Black people were viewed behind a metaphorical ‘veil’ that consisted of three interrelated aspects: the skin as an indication of African Americans’ difference from their White counterparts, White people’s lack of capacity to see African Americans as Americans, and African Americans’ lack of capacity to see themselves outside of the labels White America has given to them. This, according to Du Bois, resulted in the gift and curse of ‘double consciousness,’ the feeling that one’s identity is divided.5

According to Du Bois, African Americans live forever within the tension between self- consciousness and culture; born with a “veil,” never being able to see their true self- revelation, except through the co-opted lens of dominant White culture. That same veil, at the same time, serves as a partition that prevents Whites from seeing the truth of Black humanity and identity. The result of this veiled experience creates a scenario for Blacks where “One ever feels his twoness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two reconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body."6

Du Bois suggests that the double conscious duality comes with a gift and a curse.

The obvious curse is the ever-present struggle to merge competing realities, American and “negro,” while maintaining a certain fidelity to each. Along with that challenge, however, Du Bois identifies a gift which emerges as African Americans’ unique positionality is stimulated and directed, thereby allowing for a heightened awareness and

4 “Double Consciousness” was an idea Du Bois first explored in an 1897 Atlantic magazine essay entitled “Strivings of the Negro People,” which was later republished, with revisions, in The Souls of Black Folk.

5 Toiya Lister, “The Soul of Black Opera: W.E.B. Du Bois’s Veil and Double Consciousness in William Grant Still’s Blue Steel,” Graduate Thesis Collection (MM Thesis, Butler University, 2018), 508, https://digitalcommons.butler.edu/grtheses/508.

6 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Blue Heron, 1953), 5.

93 discovery. He argues that because Black people live as both insiders and outsiders of the

American sociocultural mainstream, they acquire a unique perspective he called “second sight.” He explained that “Once in a while through all of us there flashes some clairvoyance, some clear idea, of what America really is….We who are dark can see

America in a way that White Americans cannot.”7 Du Bois suggests that blackness, because of the unique experience that comes with it, creates an insight and clarity that allows for a unique and fulsome critique of their racialized context.

Brodwin observes that Souls was “not only a force in awakening Black pride, but also a spiritual guidebook for Whites, most of whom had little awareness of the genuine strivings and psychic realities in Black folks.”8 In this same regard, the themes of Soul, specifically the veil, double-consciousness, and second sight, can be instructive to

American evangelicalism as it seeks to overcome “whiteness” and find racial reconciliation. Given the unique perspective of Black evangelicals and the Black Church, rooted in their own “double-conscious” relationship to American mainstream

Christianity, in general, and American evangelicalism, in particular, American evangelicalism would be well-served to allow Black Christians room to lead racial reconciliation efforts.

The Veil and American Evangelicalism

According to Du Bois, a veil, or partition, exists between Blacks and Whites that prevents Blacks from achieving a true self-awareness independent of the influence of

7 W.E.B. Du Bois, “Criteria of Negro Art,” The Crisis 32 (October 1926), 290-297.

8 Stanley Brodwin, “The Veil Transcended: Form and Meaning in W.E.B. DuBois’ The Souls of Black Folk,” Journal of Black Studies 2:3 (March 1972), 303-321.

94 dominant White culture. At the same time, the veil obscures the true identity of Blacks in the sight of Whites. The Du Boisian conception of the veil is operative in American evangelicalism and affects both Black and White evangelicals, albeit in different ways.

Describing what he calls “the diseased theological imagination of American evangelical Christianity,” Rah identifies the impact of the veiled relationship of Black and White evangelicals as preventing White evangelicals from “engag[ing] with the social, historical, theological challenge offered by African-American evangelicalism, resulting in dysfunctional racial dynamics evident in twenty-first century evangelical

Christianity.”9 He argues that entrenched White supremacist ideologies within Western

Christianity—from notions of exceptionalism to a dysfunctional (“White

Jesus”) have resulted in a racialized identity that elevates the value of the dominant culture over and against other cultures. As a result, White evangelicals are unable to recognize the true nature and value of their Black Christian brothers and sisters.

According to Jennings, this creates “a warped Christian imagination that projects whiteness as normative and as exceptional [giving] power to White Christianity to project a defining negative image of the other.”10

This sense of exceptionalism has shaped not only the imagination of White evangelicals, but it also impacts Black believers. Kelly Brown Douglas states plainly,

“Inasmuch as a White stereotype of blackness influences—wittingly or unwittingly—the black psyche, Black people are still relating to themselves through the lens of a White

9 Rah, “In Whose Image,” 1-2.

10 , The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 6.

95 gaze.”11 Citing Du Bois’s “veil,” she suggests that both inside and outside the church, a narrative of civility exists according to which Black people, to avoid the stereotypes of blackness, live against their own bodies, values, and ways. Ultimately, “The way in which White people view Black people still controls the way in which Black people view their bodies and themselves.”12 This urge for White acceptability was “born in the soil of

White culture,” but nurtured within the context of the evangelical faith narrative and even embraced and legitimized by the Black Church.13 In other words, Black Christians are unable to disentangle themselves from the veil even in the church.

Double-Consciousness and Black Evangelicals

Du Bois suggested that as a result of living behind the veil, African Americans struggle with a “double-consciousness,” an identity divided between their cultural reality and who they are intrinsically. Life becomes managing this duality, on one hand, and reconciling it, on the other. This is often reflected in the Black experience of navigating

White evangelical spaces.

Tisby describes the challenge faced by many Black evangelicals who attend

White churches.14 As a foundational matter, he notes that integrated church environments typically require Blacks to attend majority White congregations and rarely the other way

11 Kelly Brown Douglas, Black Bodies and the Black Church (London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 169-170.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 Jemar Tisby, “Jemar Tisby on Race and the American Church,” interview by Mark Labberton, Fuller Theological Seminary, August 14, 2019, https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/jemar-tisby-on-race-and-the- american-church/.

96 around. In this regard, Blacks remain in minority status in almost all multiethnic congregations. Secondly, because most White evangelical environments implicitly demand that Black people assimilate in order to integrate, American evangelicalism requires more than assenting to a set of theological beliefs, but encompasses a culture, aesthetic, discourse, and worldview. He concludes, “Many Black Christians do not count ourselves as evangelicals if that means downplaying our racial and cultural heritage in favor of White-centered norms and expectations.”15 This double-consciousness leads to a bifurcated church life: “In an integrated church that is still predominantly White, Black

Christians have to seek out places where we can be ourselves. These are communities within communities, where people of color gather in shared sense of their past and their present social condition.”16

The double consciousness of many Black evangelicals is not only felt in churches, but extends to other predominantly White evangelical environments. In his book,

Reconciliation Blues, Edward Gilbreath shares his experience of being a Black evangelical within White academic and parachurch institutions.17 He recounts that at

Judson College, a Christian College outside Rockford, , he received a profound call to deeper relationship with the Lord, but was also forced to confront the isolation that comes with being a Black believer in a White Christian environment. That reality became even more pronounced upon graduation when he accepted a position as the first

15 Jemar Tisby, “One Black Man’s Experience with White Evangelicalism,” Jemar Tisby (blog), August 14, 2019, https://jemartisby.com/2019/08/14/one-black-mans-experience-with-white- evangelicalism/.

16 Tisby, “Jemar Tisby on Race and the American Church.”

17 Edward Gilbreath, Reconciliation Blues (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 28.

97 African American on staff at Christianity Today. He shares, “I got a rude awakening once I began to ascend the professional ranks at White evangelical institutions. After a period of racial hibernation, I awoke to the reality of my otherness. I realized once and for all that, as an African American evangelical, I am a Black Christian in a White

Christian’s world.”18 Gilbreath is not alone in this realization, but reported that “many” of his Black “integrators” harbor doubts and frustrations being Black within White evangelicalism.19 In the end, Gilbreath determined to remain committed to evangelicalism, but admits that “Many days the weight of it all leaves me exasperated.

Sometimes in the silent thumping of my heart, I am haunted by the thought that I will always carry the mantle alone—terrified by the realization that, on a daily basis, if I do not speak up to voice the nonwhite perspective, it will go unheard, like a tree falling in a deserted forest.”20

The “Other” Perspective: Seeing American Evangelicalism through the Reality of

Black Christians

Reconciliation, racial or otherwise, cannot be present in the absence of belonging. According to Powell, “Belonging means more than just being seen.

Belonging entails having a meaningful voice and the opportunity to participate in the design of social and cultural structures. Belonging means having the right to contribute

18 Ibid.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., 29.

98 to, and make demands on, society and political institutions.”21 Belonging is not simply a social or political concept, but has deeply theological implications, particularly concerning the interrelated nature of the Church. In 1 Corinthians 12, for example, when speaking of the Church, Paul states clearly, “For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is

Christ…Now you are the Body of Christ, and members individually” (1 Cor 12:12, 27).

Scripture suggests that not only the Christian witness, but also the proper internal functioning of the Body of Christ relies on a unified Church, in which every member is recognized and regarded for their gifting and Godly perspective.

Unfortunately, “ often fails to see how non-Western expressions of Christianity can actually contribute to the theological imagination in positive ways. Because European culture has been the container for orthodoxy and culturally acceptable Christianity, White Western identity is associated with Christian identity.”22 This has been the case with American evangelicalism, in which Black

Christians, the Black Church, and expressions of faith and practice typically associated with the African Diaspora have not been embraced and have often been delegitimized.

This “othering” process has marginalized Black Christians on the basis of perceived group differences.

Like Du Bois’s double-consciousness, the “othered” status of Black Christians is both a gift and a curse. The historical marginalization of African Americans in

21 John Powell and Stephen Menendian, “The Problem of Othering: Towards Inclusiveness and Belonging,” Othering & Belonging Journal 1 (Summer 2016), 14-40.

22 Rah, “In Whose Image,” 131.

99 mainstream White conservative expressions of U.S. Christianity is a painful reminder of the rejection of Black humanity in society overall. From that pain, however, the

Black Church has developed a perspective and inimitability which uniquely positions it to minister more effectively to the world, the global Church, and American Christianity.

Marginalization: The Burden of “Otherness”

Racialization is baked into the evangelical movement and, by extension,

American evangelicalism. Washington rightly notes, “Modern evangelicalism was shaped during eras that avowed a hierarchical distinction among ethnic groups. Inevitably, prominent theologians of these eras incorporated these presuppositions into their theological methods.”23 Martin Luther, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, and many other prominent voices in the formation of evangelical thought maintained contextual presuppositions about race that informed the development of evangelical orthodoxy.

These ideologies—active and latent—have been influential in the growth and expansion of American evangelicalism and persist today. In other words, what it means to be a

“good evangelical” is grounded in a privileged interpretation of life and Scripture. This reality has negatively affected the perception of Black Christian thought, even as that thought is largely evangelical in orientation.

To a large extent, Black and White evangelicals share orthodoxy.24 They, however, do not share social location. As a direct consequence, “Their cultural and

23 Brandon Washington, “Black and Evangelical: Why I keep the Label,” Christianity Today, March 28, 2019, https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2019/march-web-only/black-and-evangelical-why-i- keep-label.html.

24 Pew Research Center, “A Religious Portrait of African Americans,” January 30, 2009, https://www.pewforum.org/2009/01/30/a-religious-portrait-of-african-americans.

100 experiential differences [have] resulted in divergent theological methods, which explains the disagreements regarding orthopraxy.”25 American evangelicalism, to a great degree, has been unwilling to make room for alternative evangelical cultural expressions—Black or otherwise—but has instead pushed those expressions to the margins. Consequently, the sociopolitical marginalization of Black Christians in broader society has led to sociotheological marginalization in the American Evangelical Church. As Black believers have tried to make sense of their lived experience, putting forward an evangelical orthodoxy which takes it into consideration, they have become further rejected by the evangelical mainstream majority.

This marginalization is captured well in the standard trope against the Black

Church, a version of which is offered by Thabiti Anayabwile in his book, Reviving the

Black Church.26 Anayabwile systematically pulls apart Black Church life, including its preaching, worship, pastors, and leaders. He, like too many other critics of the Black

Church, attempts to force it into a modality that fits the context of White experience.

Instead of doing the difficult work of interrogating the complexity and broad spectrum of the Black Church, Anayabwile levels a critique rooted in traditional White-centered evangelicalism, diminishing the value and uniqueness of the Black Church and pushing it to the margins. This is the Black Church’s burden of “otherness.”

25 Washington, “Black and Evangelical.”

26 Thabiti Anyabwile, Reviving the Black Church: A New Life for a Sacred Institution (Nashville, B&H Publishing, 2015).

101 Perspective: The Benefit of “Otherness”

American evangelicalism is almost exclusively concerned with personal salvation, such that it never stops to ask the question how spiritual transformation is contextualized in the lives of individual people. Brandi Miller explains that one of the great weaknesses of American evangelicalism is its lack of a “theology of the body.”27

The Black Church has little problem considering a contextualized application of biblical principles.

Many Christians of color want to know how their belief and relationship with

God informs their interaction with the world, within black skin. Body politics influences a wide range of issues, secular and sacred. James Cone puts his finger on the problem when he makes the broader observation that “during the course of 2,000 years of Christian history, [the cross] of salvation has been detached from any reference to the ongoing suffering and oppression of human beings…Until we can see the cross and the lynching tree together, until we can identify Christ with a ‘recrucified’ black body hanging from a lynching tree, there can be no genuine understanding of Christian identity in America.”28

Living in black skin provides African Americans with a unique worldview. Du

Bois suggested that as those who exist both inside and outside a world centered in whiteness, Blacks inherit what he called “second sight.” He reasoned that social conditions force Blacks to understand the mindset of the White power structure, while

27 Brandi Miller, “Lecture on Race, Theology, Christianity and Whiteness,” North Park University, 2017.

28 James Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011), xiv-xv.

102 perceiving it from a different perspective. Blacks have no choice but to navigate a racialized world that is skewed against them. Forney puts a finer point on it saying,

“[As] victims of bigotry, [African Americans] possess a special capacity to recognize race in the United States as an ‘idol of worship’ that diverts attention from the ‘Christ- like Gospel of Sacrifice.’”29 To Cone’s point, the intersection of blackness and

Christianity affords great opportunity to see the nexus between the cross and contemporary suffering and oppression. To the extent there is a benefit to “otherness,” it is found in African Americans’ ability to perceive along the broad spectrum of human experience.

Du Bois argued, on the other hand, “The White person in America, by contrast, contains but a single consciousness and perspective, for he or she is a member of a dominant culture, with its own racial and cultural norms asserted as absolute. The

White person looks out from themselves and sees only their own world reflected back upon them.”30 Emerson and Smith suggest, using the metaphor of a cultural tool kit, that a similar single-sightedness exists for White evangelicals; they say, “White evangelicals’ cultural tools and racial isolation curtail their ability to fully assess why people of different races do not get along, the lack of equal opportunity, and the extent

29 Craig Forney, “The Souls of Black Folk and the Soul of W.E.B. Du Bois,” The Souls of W.E.B. Du Bois: New Essays and Reflections, eds. Edward Blum and Jason Young (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009), 99-100.

30 Donald Morse, “William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963),” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, eds. James Fieser and Bradley Dowden, accessed May 26, 2020, https://www.iep.utm.edu/dubois/#H4.

103 to which race matters in America. Although honest and well-intentioned, their perspective is a powerful means to reproduce contemporary racialization.”31

Inimitability: The Blessing of “Otherness”

The position as both insider and outsider does not only provide Black Christians with a unique perspective, but it also allows for a singular critique of the evangelical movement. Said plainly, no other group of people can provide the kind of insight into

American evangelicals and American evangelicalism as Black believers. Rah makes this point emphatically and succinctly:

The diseased theological imagination of the U.S. Evangelical church requires a challenge that cannot arise from within its own community. In the same way that Evangelicals believe that individual salvation requires redemption to come from an external source, redemption for a diseased theological imagination will also require an external source. The interaction with an otherness that challenges the status quo would be a necessary precondition to the salvation of the soul of Evangelicalism. African-American Christianity and theology is a profound and essential theological marker that has been ignored by U.S. evangelical Christianity. The story of African-American evangelicalism confronts categories found in U.S. evangelical theology that need the intersection of the African- American experience.32

Said plainly, American evangelicalism needs the Black Church and Black evangelicals if it truly desires to achieve racial healing and racial reconciliation. The role of Black

Christians must be one of leading the effort and not of simply participating.

Du Bois made clear that the dual consciousness of Blacks and the perspective it creates are essential and inimitable in the nation. The same is true within the Church.

Double-consciousness allows African Americans to grasp the essence of racial privilege

31 Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 89.

32 Rah, “In Whose Image,” 179.

104 and expose it. Ultimately, “The destruction of ‘whiteness’ in this way leaves Whites open to the experience of African-Americans, as a privileged perspective, and hence it also leaves African-Americans with a breach in the culture through which they could enter with their legitimate, and legitimating, perspectives.”33

The institutional Black Church is singular in its relationship to American evangelicalism. Massey suggests, “The relationship of African Americans with American evangelicalism, while steady, has never been sentimental; the Black critique has always been geared to correct so as to heighten an evangelical influence in American life.”34

From the very beginning of the Black Church in America, there has been a reflection of an evangelical ethos. Over time, the Black Church and Black evangelicals have used their unique positioning to influence the evangelical mainstream and press it toward a fuller embodiment of biblical fellowship. This has met with varying degrees of success. If

American evangelicalism desires to not only survive, but thrive, it must appreciate and embrace not only the historical commitment, but the unique perspective of the Black

Church and Black evangelicals.

The Black Christians Witness in Modern Evangelical Reconciliation

Thought and Activity

There is little transformative value in having a different perspective, but never articulating it. Indeed, within the Du Boisian construct, the significance of second sight is not in having it alone, but in employing it to dismantle systems of oppression. An

33 Morse, “William Edward Burghardt Du Bois.”

34 James Earl Massey, “African Americans and Evangelicalism,” accessed January 8, 2018. https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/african-americans-evangelicalism.

105 essential aspect of the Black presence within American evangelical circles is its ability to participate in shaping thought and practice. Over the course of American evangelical history, there have been many people of color who have combined their platform and perspective to address the issue of racial reconciliation, and the corollary challenges of social justice, equality, and equal opportunity that undergird it. While their personal stories are not the central purpose of this work, it is important to provide a few key examples of the unique Black evangelical and Black Church voices in reconciliation thought and activity within American evangelicalism.35

Tom Skinner and his Urbana 70 Address

Perhaps the greatest example of Black evangelical truth telling within the context of American evangelicalism is Tom Skinner’s Urbana 70 Address.36 Offered to over eleven thousand attendees at the 1970 InterVarsity Student Missions Conference, the speech, entitled “The U.S. Racial Crisis and World Evangelism,” was a pointed challenge to the evangelical community from one of its own. Skinner’s love for Jesus, the message of the Kingdom, and the evangelical mission are clear throughout; condemnation was not

35 The list of contributors to the conversation is numerous, but includes: Spencer Perkins and Chris Rice, More than Equals: Racial Healing for the Sake of the Gospel (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993); Raleigh Washington and Glen Kehrein, Breaking Down the Walls: A Model of Reconciliation in an Age of Racial Strife (Chicago: Moody Press, 1994); Glen Usry and Craig Keener, Black Man’s Religion: Can Christianity be Afrocentric? (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1996); John Perkins and Thomas Tarrants, He’s My Brother: Former Racial Foes Offer Strategies for Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1994); William Pannell, The Coming Race Wars? A Cry for Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1993); George Yancey, Beyond Black and White: Reflections on Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1996); Efrem Smith, Post-Black & Post-White Church (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012); Brenda Salter McNeil, Roadmap to Reconciliation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2015).

36 Tom Skinner, “The U.S. Racial Crisis and World Evangelism,” InterVarsity Student Missions Conference, 1970. The full audio and transcript of the address can be found at https://urbana.org/message/us-racial-crisis-and-world-evangelism. All quotations in this section are from that speech, unless otherwise specified.

106 the goal. Instead, Skinner used a combination of personal storytelling, national history, and culturally competent biblical exegesis to deconstruct evangelical mythology. As a result, the speech is a sterling example of how the duality of blackness—insider and outsider—can be used to educate, challenge, and redirect majority communities.

Skinner begins the speech by suggesting that the only way to understand the mission of the evangelical church, the message of Christ, and the subversive problem of race within the movement is to acknowledge America’s then 350-year—now 400-year— history of racism. He recounts that history in remarkable summary, but through the eyes of blackness. That perspective allows him to build a bridge between his lived experience as a Black man and the racialized evangelical tradition of which he and his audience are a part. His double-consciousness—American evangelical on one hand and African

American on the other—is operative and provides a perspective the majority of his listeners do not have. He reports that double-consciousness factored prominently in his initial struggle accepting Jesus. He says, “I had a problem with this guy Jesus…All the pictures of Christ were pictures of an Anglo-Saxon, middle-class, Protestant

Republican…And I said, ‘there is no way I can relate to that kind of Christ.’ I said, ‘He doesn’t look like He would survive in my neighborhood.’”

Skinner’s struggle was not just with the evangelical image of Jesus, however. His racialized existence created an impression regarding evangelicals themselves, who he deemed “cowards”:

He called himself, and I quote, ‘a Bible-believing, fundamental, orthodox, conservative, evangelical Christian,’ whatever that meant. He had half a dozen Bible verses for every social problem that existed. But, if you asked him to get involved, he couldn't do it. If you went to him and told him about the problems of , he would come back with a typical cliché: ‘What those people up there

107 need is a good dose of salvation. And while that might have been true, I never saw that cat in Harlem administering that dose.

Skinner argued that, to a large extent, when it comes to the issue of race, the

American Evangelical Church throughout its history—from the time of slavery to present—has been a movement satisfied to accept the status quo; “It supported slavery; it supported segregation; it preached against any attempt of the Black man to stand on his own two feet. And where there were those who sought to communicate the gospel to

Black people, it was always done in a way to make sure that they stayed cool.”

Invoking the names of Dick Gregory, Malcom X, Stokley Carmichael, Rap

Brown, and “the brothers,” Skinner argued for a revolution in evangelical thought that takes into consideration the lived experience of all humanity and not just its White suburban majority.37 This, he advised, is the only acceptable gospel:

There is no possible way you can talk about preaching the gospel if you do not want to deal with the issues that bind people. If your gospel is an "either-or" gospel, I must reject it. Any gospel that does not talk about delivering to man a personal savior who will free him from the personal bondage of sin and grant him eternal life and does not at the same time speak to the issue of enslavement, does not speak to the issue of injustice, does not speak to the issue of inequality—any gospel that does not want to go where people are hungry and poverty-stricken and set them free in the name of Jesus Christ is not the gospel.

Tom Skinner died from an acute and aggressive form of leukemia in 1994, at fifty-two years old. 2020 represents the Fiftieth Anniversary of his Urbana speech and his

37 Skinner identified a secondary issue with American evangelicalism in its unwillingness to hear truth from certain sources. “But you see, the problem that we have is that we tend to think that truth can come only from those people we recognize to be anointed by God. That is the reason why when Martin Luther King came along and began to buck the system and began to do some things to help liberate Black people, immediately we evangelicals wanted to know, ‘Is he born again? Does he preach the gospel?’ Because you see, if we could just prove that Martin Luther King was not a Christian, if we could prove that he was not born again, if we could prove that he did not believe the Word of God, we could dismiss what he said. We could dismiss the truth. My friends, you must accept the fact that all truth is God's truth, no matter who it comes from.”

108 words are as relevant today as they were then. Skinner offered American evangelicalism access to a personal perspective that could only be offered by a Black Christian. That insight continues to serve as motivation for Black evangelicals and their allies in the movement toward racial reconciliation, racial justice, and racial equality.

Eric Mason and The Woke Church

In 2018, Eric Mason wrote Woke Church as a contemporary challenge to the

American Evangelical Church.38 Like Skinner before him, Mason has connection to the evangelical movement and its culture and orthodoxy. From that platform, he has chosen to offer a critique using the “second sight” gained as both insider and outsider. He has evangelical credibility and he is African American; both realities inform his relationship to the Church.

Itself a “second sight” term, “woke” is a phrase often used by the Black community to express a cultural awareness concerning systemic, sociological, and economic disenfranchisement of African Americans. To be woke is to be tuned into the community and its needs. Mason connects “wokeness” to the Du Boisian conception of consciousness, except that he extends the idea to include a clear spiritual component.

Whereas Du Bois puts forward a double-consciousness framework, Mason adds a third consciousness, which he calls the Christ consciousness. He argues that this third consciousness “elevates our awareness to our responsibility to care for and love our brothers—even those that don’t look like us.”39

38 Eric Mason, Woke Church: An Urgent Call for Christians in America to Confront Racism and Injustice (Chicago: Moody, 2018).

39 Ibid., 27.

109 Herein lies Mason’s challenge to the Church. He expects this third consciousness to compel the Church to see issues in our society that others do not. Unfortunately, as

Mason observes, “The church in America is not awake to the reality of what is happening in communities across this nation, and we are missing out on our calling to shine the light into these places of darkness for Christ’s glory.”40 While this is a message to the Church universal, Mason makes a specific appeal to the American Evangelical Church, which he suggests is asleep. He wonders “when such lament will come from the church body of our White brothers and sisters…Where is the collective voice, the emotive, empathetic, impassioned cry in response to their Black brothers and sisters who are suffering and experiencing trauma?”41

This call for wokeness is a message that relies heavily on Mason’s insight as a

Black male and Black Christian. In an address to students at Dallas Theological

Seminary, Mason spoke directly to conservative evangelical orthodoxy, which has not historically left room for social justice concerns. He argued that “In the church, we have to engage justice as a theological issue and not as a sociological issue, first.”42 He went on to explain that theology should always find its way into the matrix of intimacy in our heart and lead to praxis, not just proclamation.

Eric Mason is among the new wave of Black Christians pushing for transformation within American evangelicalism. Woke Church was an important work in

40 Mason, Woke Church, 22.

41 Ibid., 24.

42 Eric Mason, “Woke Church,” YouTube Video, 32:52, December 7, 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnS6c9oOf9g.

110 this regard. American evangelicalism must take seriously authentic voices like Mason’s, which are informed by personal experience and ministry practice, if it desires to achieve racial healing and reconciliation.

Black Christians, because of their unique positioning within American society, can offer much to the leadership efforts of racial healing and reconciliation within

American evangelicalism. W.E.B. Du Bois’s conceptions of “the veil,” “double- consciousness,” and the resulting second sight is helpful in understanding the perspective of Black believers. While all Black Christians do not think the same, there is often commonality that arises among those who understand both the reality of blackness, but also the intricacies of operating within White-dominant spaces.

Still, in considering the issue of racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism, one must wrestle with difficult, but necessary, questions. The most significant questions are whether racial reconciliation is possible and, if so, what it looks like. We turn our attention to answering those questions.

111

CHAPTER 5

UNAVOIDABLE QUESTIONS CONCERNING RACIAL RECONCILIATION

IN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

As the Church pursues racial reconciliation, several difficult, but unavoidable, questions must be asked. Among them: Is racial reconciliation even possible within

American evangelicalism? If so, what does a racially reconciled Church look like? Does racial reconciliation envisage a fundamentally different Church than exists today? These questions are not rhetorical, but need to be addressed.

What Does a Racially Reconciled American Evangelical Church Look Like?

In Chapter 3, a framework was proposed to provide the parameters and elements of racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism. As part of that framework, a definition of reconciliation was offered that incorporates aspects of both biblical and political conceptions. Reconciliation is the establishment of a new racial harmony, rooted in truthfulness and freedom of opportunity. Applying this definition allows for a broad outline of what a racially reconciled American Evangelical Church would look like.

112 A reconciled American Evangelical Church must be characterized by racial harmony. Harmony implies agreement, shared commitment, and mutual understanding.

Scripturally, it includes the restoration of relationship, characterized by friendship and peace. As challenging as this standard may be for American evangelicalism, it must be achieved in order to be considered a truly “reconciled” community. Some forms of political reconciliation allow room for parties to maintain a degree of conflict and still consider themselves “reconciled.” South Africa, where complete harmony does not exist between Black and White South Africans, is an example of this. However, the framework put forward in this dissertation does not make such accommodation in the context of the American Evangelical Church. Instead, it requires a new racial harmony.

Reconciliation, at its core, requires restored communion and fellowship. To the extent that the American Evangelical Church is a body of believers claiming reconciliation to God, it must not settle for anything less than authentic reconciliation to one another. What’s more, evangelicals, who claim Scripture as authoritative, cannot demand of themselves anything less than Scripture requires.

Racial harmony can only be achieved if it is contextualized and rooted in truth.

Harvey’s challenge rings true. She argues, “If we continue to live in an unacknowledged history of brutal injustice, harm done, White hostility to and violence against communities of color—histories with legacies that are alive and well in the present—then speaking of reconciliation may do more harm than good, may cover more than it discloses.”1 True reconciliation will require both an acknowledgement and

1 Jennifer Harvey, Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014), 4.

113 treatment of evangelicalism’s troubling racial history and the systems and structures it produces.

Addressing the broad implications of American evangelicalism’s racialized history has posed a problem in the movement’s reconciliation efforts because Blacks and Whites, generally, see the implications of race differently. White evangelicals tend to view the sources and impacts of racialization through the lens of the individual, while Black Christians have a more communal orientation. Both inclinations are necessary. Racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism must take place both individually and collectively because the impacts of racialization are both individual and collective. Evangelicals have been impacted by the effects of racial discord in their individual lives. At the same time, racialization within American evangelicalism has led to collective challenges including corruption of the teaching and practices of the faith, mass exoduses of Black believers from churches they helped build, shifting the allocation and availability of resources, and reducing of leadership opportunities in both evangelical churches and institutions. Generations of discrimination have led to a compounding affect that shapes the environment in which Black and White evangelicals live and worship today. Micro-level responses alone are insufficient to alleviate these pressures.

A racially reconciled American Evangelical Church will provide freedom of opportunity and must, therefore, focus on reparative outcomes. Within the context of

American evangelicalism, reparative efforts will provide redress to Black evangelicals for generational inequities within the body. These impacts are difficult to quantify and may not be monetary in nature. The impacts are almost certainly rooted in lost opportunity.

114 For example, the Southern Baptist Convention’s racial reconciliation effort included acknowledging its historical leaning toward White supremacy. While important for truth telling, that is not enough. Racial reconciliation must also acknowledge that those tendencies stripped Black evangelicals of employment opportunities, publishing contracts, and mission dollars, among other benefits. Similarly, Southern Baptist

Theological Seminary’s historical embrace of racist theologies concerning the inferiority of Blacks militated against the hiring of Black faculty and administrators. These are just examples. The evangelical movement is not limited to the Southern Baptist Convention or Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and the impacts of discrimination in American evangelicalism are widespread and enduring.

Finally, within American evangelicalism, particular attention must be given to the way racial bias has shaped theological thought. This is both restorative and reparative.

Because of its historical biases, White evangelical orthodoxy has marginalized the theological thought of minority groups. As a result, Black voices are not prevalent among evangelical pulpits, Black scholars are not mainstays on evangelical campuses and faculties, and Black authors are not in demand through evangelical publishing houses.

This reality keeps Black evangelicals on the margins and must be repaired.

Benchmarks of Success

In considering benchmarks for the racial reconciliation effort in American evangelicalism, it may be helpful to consider other prominent examples of racial reconciliation activity. A theopolitical framework of racial reconciliation has been intentionally adopted for application to the American Evangelical Church, as it best

115 addresses the sociocultural implications of race. In this regard, South Africa’s journey through Truth and Reconciliation, while not directly analogous to the Church, offers important insight concerning benchmarking.

The South African Truth and Reconciliation experience has much to commend to

American evangelicalism. First, as South Africa did in selecting Nelson Mandela and

Bishop Desmond Tutu, American evangelicals must identify committed and credible leaders, grounded in the spiritual nature of the reconciliation enterprise. The reconciliation effort will only be as successful as the capacity of its leadership. A multi- racial coalition is most appropriate. However, it is important that primary leadership and direction come from within the Black Christian community. The Black Church and Black evangelical voice are unique and distinctive in the life of evangelicalism and offer a singular and inimitable perspective. Too often, the Black Christian voice is marginalized within multiracial groupings.

The South African reconciliation experience proves that reconciliation, political reconciliation at least, is possible in even the most intractable contexts. South Africa was committed to the work of healing its citizens. Evangelicalism must be committed to its work as well.

It is difficult to imagine widespread racial reconciliation resulting from localized efforts. While an important part of the process, church-level and even regional efforts would be disparate and lack continuity of outcomes. A macro-level initiative must be undertaken. South African Truth and Reconciliation was a formal, nationalized process established expressly for the purpose of bringing together a divided nation. Perhaps the

Church needs something akin to a truth and reconciliation commission. Admittedly, this

116 would be difficult given that evangelicalism is decentralized, unlike the South African nation-state. Still, as a benchmark, it is important to see a formal process of reconciliation put in place. In the end, however, a formal process would only be the first step in a much longer and larger effort. Ultimately, Bishop Tutu was correct when he said,

“[Reconciliation] has to be a national project to which all earnestly strive to make their particular contribution—by learning the language and culture of others…working for a more inclusive society where most, if not all, can feel they belong—that they are insiders and not aliens and strangers on the outside, relegated to the edge of society.”2

Truth-telling is another important benchmark of the racial reconciliation process.

Truth-telling provides an environment for healing and accountability. Much of the racial division that continues to exists in American evangelicalism is because Black and White evangelicals are unwilling to listen to each other’s stories. As stated earlier, many White evangelicals often do not acknowledge any issue of race within the Church. In this regard, the South African framework of confession and amnesty is instructive. The offer of amnesty allowed perpetrators of political violence to confess and speak truthfully without fear of retribution or reprisal. It was an authentication of the process’s restorative purpose. As a benchmark, American evangelicalism must create an environment where both Black and White Christians can speak freely about race with the goal of restoration and without fear of condemnation. American evangelicalism does not need truth-telling as a way of remaining mired in the Church’s troubled history; instead, truth-telling can create an environment for healing and corrective action.

2 Desmond Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness (New York: Random House 1999), 247.

117 As stated earlier, another important benchmark for reconciliation efforts is reparations. This is almost always a challenging proposition. Tutu wrote, “Without adequate reparation and rehabilitation measures there can be no healing and reconciliation, either at the individual or community level.”3 Evangelicals acknowledge a historical leaning toward a theology that embraced White supremacy, they must also acknowledge that those ideologies stripped Black Christians of tangible and intangible benefits. It is important that American evangelicalism not simply acknowledge the past.

On balance, that is the easy part. It must take steps to alleviate the present implications of past behavior. The ultimate concern is “healing the breaches, the redressing of imbalances, the restoration of broken relationships...”4

Major Challenges to Racial Reconciliation

Sin is the greatest challenge to reconciliation. The implications of racism are predominantly social and political; however, the root cause of racism is fundamentally spiritual. In his book, America’s , Jim Wallis states,

The language of ‘America’s original sin’ helped me understand that the historical racism against America’s Indigenous people and enslaved Africans was indeed a sin….This helps to explain a lot, because if we are able to recognize that the sin still lingers, we can better understand issues before us today and deal with them more deeply, honestly, and even spiritually—which is essential if we are to make progress toward real solutions.5

3 Tutu, No Future Without Forgiveness, 58.

4 Ibid., 54-55.

5 Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege and the Bridge to a New America (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2016), xx.

118

Wallis is correct in his assertion: racism is sin. However, it is important to recognize that not only is the result of racism sin, but the cause of racism is sin. This distinction is important because acknowledging sin as the root cause of racism helps establish expectations in addressing the problem. If we understand that racism and racialization are the direct result and consequence of the sin condition of humanity, then we must also acknowledge that the only way to extinguish racism on a large scale is to fundamentally alter the spiritual condition of humanity—to remove all sin. Anything less is simply papering over the real issue.

It is also critical to understand that the sin of racism does not manifest itself only in compromised interpersonal relationships, but “the powers of evil can co-opt everyone and everything—every individual, community, and culture; every social structure, policy, and practice.”6 Acknowledging the systemic implications of sin is essential to reconciliation efforts. Walker-Barnes notes that the traditional evangelical emphasis in reconciliation initiatives has focused almost completely on (1) transforming interpersonal relationships between Christians of different ethnic backgrounds and (2) establishing racially diverse congregations.7 Reducing the influence of sin to its impact on interpersonal relationships misses the substantial structural and institutional effects sin has on achieving equity and equality. Racial reconciliation within the American

Evangelical Church, if it is to be achieved, must address both interpersonal and institutional sin.

6 Chanequa Walker-Barnes, I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2019), 67.

7 Ibid., 29.

119 The institutionalization of systemic racism extends beyond the church. A major impediment to racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism is its unwillingness to engage the effects of racialized society. The killings of unarmed Black men and women has brought this into sharp relief. White evangelicals have remained essentially silent, while the majority of Black Christians have responded viscerally to these events.

There are many reasons for this dissonance. Suffice it to say, the lack of solidary with respect to racial pain works against racial reconciliation efforts. In an article describing the growing cleavage between Black evangelicals and the American Evangelical Church, the New York Times reported,

Black congregants…had already grown uneasy in recent years as they watched their White pastors fail to address police shootings of African-Americans. They heard prayers for Paris, for Brussels, for law enforcement; they heard that one should keep one’s eyes on the kingdom, that the church was colorblind, and that talk of racial injustice was divisive, not a matter of the gospel.8

Racial reconciliation cannot happen without willingness to openly and honestly acknowledge and discuss the implications of race.

Finally, another major challenge to racial reconciliation is the momentum of the current racial hierarchy. Centuries of investment into systems and structures designed to perpetuate the shape and condition of American culture, including the church, have bred comfort and satisfaction, indeed privilege, for some. Others are simply tired of fighting against the entrenched status quo, resigned to the current state of affairs. Peeling back

8 Campbell Robertson, “A Quiet Exodus: Why Black Worshippers are Leaving White Evangelical Churches,” The New York Times, March 9, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/us/blacks- evangelical-churches.html.

120 that cultural apparatus is not an easy task, and for many it is not even desirable.

Reconciliation cannot happen without a fundamental reshaping of the church.

Is a Racially Reconciled American Evangelical Church possible?

Most well-intentioned, hopeful, and committed Christians want to believe that racial reconciliation in the Church is achievable—I am certainly in that category.

However, history and theology tell us differently.

As stated in the preceding section, the root cause of racism and racial division is sin. Sin keeps humanity self-centered and unable to effectively love your neighbor as yourself (Mt 22:39). True biblical racial reconciliation would require the elimination of sin. Joy Moore recounts,

I do believe there exists a genuine desire among many to move beyond the divisions that separate us. I have been encouraged by the students I teach as well as members of the congregations I have served that there are in this generation Christians who desire for the work of the Holy Spirit to convert us and the communities we inhabit. The difficult thing about biblical reconciliation is its requirement that we no longer regard one another from the perspective of human categories.9

Moore articulates the challenge in achieving biblical reconciliation: it requires of humanity what it cannot give. Foster puts a finer point on it by saying, “A chief difficulty in grasping the concept of Christian reconciliation is that it is not a human undertaking— at least not in its power and initiation…only God has the power to originate and effect a

9 Joy J. Moore and William E. Pannell, “Working Together Toward Racial Reconciliation,” Fuller Studio, accessed June 9, 2020, https://fullerstudio.fuller.edu/working-together-toward-racial-reconciliation (emphasis original).

121 reconnecting—to save us from our sin.”10 In this regard, the earthly realization of biblical reconciliation will always be aspirational because sin will always be present in this life.

The Church has preached conversion as the solution to the sin problem and, by extension, the problem of racial division. Accordingly, some will respond that the Church has the capacity to eschew sin and thereby achieve racial reconciliation because of its relationship to Christ. Passages like Romans 6:11, which says, “likewise you also, reckon yourself to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” are cited as support for this proposition. It is true that Christians are not captive to sin, in a spiritual sense. However, the entire history of the American Evangelical Church has shown that while the capacity for inward transformation exists among believers, the willingness to be transformed practically, perhaps particularly in the area of race, does not. Progress in the area of race has been made, on both an individual and collective level, but biblical reconciliation is absolute and to envision it on a large scale is difficult.

Despite the odds being against true biblical reconciliation in the Church,

American evangelicalism must continue to press toward it. It is important that the movement always aspire to the standard set for it by Christ. Even if racial reconciliation is never achieved in its fullest biblical sense, significant advancement can be made. The

10 Douglas Foster, “Reclaiming Reconciliation: The Corruption of ‘Racial Reconciliation’ and How It Might Be Reclaimed for Racial Justice and Unity,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 55:1 (Winter 2020), 63-81.

122 earnest seeking of reconciliation can itself contribute to a degree of harmony and healing.

This, too, is the history of American evangelicalism: incremental progress.

Understanding this, a secondary benefit of the theopolitical framework offered in this dissertation is that it establishes benchmarks that can be achieved through human initiative. Political reconciliation is not characterized necessarily by an inward spiritual change, but by a modification in behavior that can be motivated by a variety of interests.

While biblical reconciliation should always be the goal of believers, making an allowance for a theopolitical framework shifts outcomes from aspirational to achievable.

John 3:3-4: Must the American Evangelical Church be Reborn

in Order to Achieve Racial Reconciliation?

Incremental change will not produce racial healing and reconciliation in American evangelicalism. Radical transformation is required. In John 3, Jesus made a similar appraisal of Nicodemus. When asked about reconciliation, Jesus responded, “Most assuredly, I say to you unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God” (Jn

3:3).

By way of analogy more than exegesis, Jesus’s statement rings true regarding the

American Evangelical Church’s pursuit of racial reconciliation as a kingdom principle. If evangelicalism desires to “see” a reconciled community, it must confront the existing systems, structures, and paradigms that undergird this currently divided condition.

Confrontation is not enough, however. Some pieces of evangelicalism’s infrastructure and foundation may be so tainted by its racialized history that restoration and

123 reorientation of the status quo is impossible. Regeneration—death and recreation—may be the only way forward.

One must seriously ask the questions, Why is it that Black Christians, many of them evangelical, and White evangelicals share so many biblical convictions, but apply those convictions so differently? Why does American evangelicalism, with all its geographic and denominational diversity, almost exclusively reflect the ethos of its White membership? How can Tom Skinner’s challenges to the evangelical church of fifty years ago sound like a message that could be preached with the same relevance and currency today?

A good case can be made that evangelicalism in its current form cannot untangle itself from its racialized past. From its support of slavery, to its tacit participation in domestic terror during reconstruction, to its silence and opposition during the Civil Right

Era, to its clamoring for “law and order” leading to mass incarceration of black and brown bodies during the Nixon and Reagan years, through its overwhelming support of

Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” propaganda, perhaps racial division is an inextricable stain in the evangelical garment. Maybe this particular evangelical wineskin has outlasted its usefulness and needs to be replaced.

Evangelicalism can be born again, in which case, evangelical churches and their members will be challenged to new—still faithful—ways of thinking. The same is true with evangelical seminaries and parachurch organizations. Existing modes of operating, even successful ones, may need to be halted, with new, just, and equitable ones reestablished in their place. Current strategies may need to be eliminated and replaced with ones that reflect the aspirations of a reconciled and redeemed community.

124 Evangelical orthodoxies and ideologies, some of them rooted in empire, privilege, and power, may need to be re-examined to take into account the lived experiences of the community’s multiracial constituency.

Difficult questions sometimes yield difficult answers. When it comes to racial reconciliation within American evangelicalism, this is certainly true. However, a faithful attempt at answering these important questions can yield a way forward for the movement.

125

CHAPTER 6

“AM I MY BROTHER’S KEEPER?” THE ROLE OF BLACK CHRISTIANS IN

LEADING RACIAL RECONCILIATION WITHIN AMERICAN EVANGELICALISM

In In Whose Image: The Emergence, Development and Challenge of African-

American Evangelicalism, Soong-Chan Rah describes the current era of American evangelicalism as in transition from a Western, White-dominated ethos to an ethnically diverse demographic.1 He notes that despite the transition in complexion and identity,

U.S. evangelicalism is hampered by entrenched assumptions of White supremacy, rooted in a compromised theological imagination. American evangelicalism, he promises, is not without hope. Instead,

The diseased theological imagination of the U.S. Evangelical church requires a challenge that cannot arise from within its own community. In the same way that Evangelicals believe that individual salvation requires redemption to come from an external source, redemption for a diseased theological imagination will also require an external source. The interaction with an otherness that challenges the status quo would be a necessary precondition to the salvation of the soul of Evangelicalism. African-American Christianity and theology is a profound and essential theological marker that has been ignored by U.S. evangelical Christianity. The story of African-American evangelicalism confronts categories

1 Soong-Chan Rah, “In Whose Image: The Emergence, Development, and Challenge of African American Evangelicalism,” (PhD diss, Duke University, 2016).

126 found in U.S. evangelical theology that need the intersection of the African- American experience.2

Rah agrees that Black Christians, given their unique relationship to American evangelicalism—as both insider and outsider—can offer perspective, insight, and leadership to heal the American Evangelical Church. In the process of that healing, racial reconciliation can also take place.

Important questions must be asked, however. First, is it the responsibility of Black

Christians who, in many respects, have been marginalized and, in the case of the historic

Black Church, rejected to engage racial reconciliation as a project (again)? Second, assuming Black Christians answer the first question affirmatively, do they have capacity to lead such an effort? Finally, what is a model for moving forward?

The Responsibility of Black Christians to American Evangelicalism?

It is painful to suggest that Black Christians who have been shaped and victimized for so long by racism within the Church have a responsibility to lead in dismantling that racist system. Cheryl Sanders argues that “Racism is the premier context for the formation of the social consciousness of African-Americans, because all have been victimized in some way by racial discrimination, regardless of religious affiliation. By the same token, the Christian Church has generally failed to dismantle and disarm the White racists within its own ranks.”3 It is unfortunately true that the majority of White evangelicals, who maintain the bulk of the power and resources within the movement, are

2 Rah, “In Whose Image,” 179.

3 Cheryl Sanders, “How We Do Church: Worship, Empowerment & Racial Identity,” The Gospel in Black & White, ed. Dennis Okholm (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 143.

127 unwilling to acknowledge, much less change, the racialized system needing address.4 As a result, racial reconciliation appears destined for failure.

Walker-Barnes identifies the issue with many racial reconciliation efforts within the church in observing that

solutions to racism, then, tend to emphasize efforts that remain within their [White Christians’] comfort zone: establishing cross-racial friendships and multicultural congregations. This, however, is not reconciliation. It does nothing to repair the harm of systemic racism or to dismantle the system of White supremacy. It is a therapeutic approach designed to make White people feel better about the unjust system in which they live and with which they are complicit. In that sense, it is a continuation of White supremacy, one that caters to the needs of White people while relegating the needs of people of color to the background.5

Still, Black Christians do have a responsibility to the Church. Not because White evangelicals will ultimately listen or even because racial reconciliation efforts promise to be successful, but because reconciliation is an essential element of Christian duty to the

Lord. The Apostle Paul wrote, “All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us a ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:18-19). Followers of Jesus have been given a ministry and message of reconciliation.

That being said, the work of racial reconciliation is not primarily the responsibility of Black Christians. To the extent that Black Christians participate, much less lead, in the effort, they are offering a gift to the church. Racism within American

4 Michael Emerson and Christian Smith, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

5 Chanequa Walker-Barnes, I Bring the Voices of My People: A Womanist Vision for Racial Reconciliation (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2019), 182.

128 evangelicalism was not and is not the creation of its Black membership and should not fall on Black Christians to fix. Still, existing racial reconciliation strategies are often

“geared toward the comfort of Whites because it implies that [Whites] are only half of the problem and that some of the responsibility for racism lies with people of color.”6 Racism within the church has been constructed over centuries by White Christians such that they benefit from it even when they do not actively or consciously participate in it.”7 To force

Black Christians to “mitigate the impact of this truth upon the oppressor is in itself an act of violence and oppression.”8

Racial reconciliation is, therefore, inherently risky work. It requires transparency, exposure, and the investment of emotion. It requires confession, repentance, and forgiveness. Maria Gariott is correct in stating, “Only the gospel enables us to forgive those who wound us and to ask others for forgiveness when we wound them. The power to practice unconditional love can’t be willed into existence. Racial reconciliation will bring suffering, so we need to be prepared for that. Our capacity to engage in racial reconciliation ministry depends on our capacity for suffering.”9

Racial reconciliation not only depends on the capacity for suffering, but also the capacity to hope. Lederach refers to it as “embracing the paradox.”10 Those engaged in

6 Ibid., 201.

7 Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9 Barna Group, “What is the Church’s Role in Racial Reconciliation,” Research Releases in Culture & Media, July 30, 2019, https://www.barna.com/research/racial-reconciliation.

10 John Paul Lederach, Reconcile: Conflict Transformation for Ordinary Christians (Harrisonburg, PA: Harold Press, 1999), 136.

129 racial reconciliation are at once caught between the realities of what they see around them and the dreams they have for a better future. Black Christians in America have always lived in that tension. From the earliest days on the plantation until now, the odds of achieving racial reconciliation on a large scale have seemed low. Yet, history books are replete with names of Black Christians who have committed their lives and ministries to reconciliation work. As Noel Erskine concludes, “Faith as the power of reconciliation becomes faithfulness to God as one lives out one’s commitment for a restored and reconciled community. Faith in the mission to create the reconciled and restored community becomes the goal of history.”11

Black Christian Capacity to Lead Racial Reconciliation within

American Evangelicalism

Having established that Black Christians are uniquely situated to offer a necessary critique of American evangelicalism and lead the journey of racial reconciliation within the movement, the question of capacity must be addressed: do Black Christians have the ability to lead such an effort? The answer to that question lies in the fact that Black believers, both Black evangelicals and members of the traditional Black Church, are already leading significant racial reconciliation efforts across denominations and platforms, and have been doing so for decades.

Much of the very best work in the racial reconciliation space is being done by

Black women. This provides an even more layered approach to the issue, as Black women provide a unique vantage point from which to view the complex dynamics at the

11 Noel Leo Erskine, King Among the Theologians (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 1994), 9.

130 intersection of race, gender, power, class, privilege, and oppression. In her book,

Unreconciled, Andrea Smith shares stories of many of these women, who are not only challenging existing paradigms of race relations, but reshaping the movement with “the most expansive politics within evangelicalism.”12 They include the following:

Christena Cleveland’s work on antiracism was featured at the 2016 Southern

Baptist Convention’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission conference. She often advocates for an intersectional approach to power relationships and critiques the “color- blind” ideologies within American evangelicalism. In her book, Disunity in Christ, she challenges believers to enter the cultural space of others. She writes, “People can meet

God within their cultural context but in order to follow God, they must cross into other cultures because that’s what Jesus did in the incarnation and on the cross.”13

Lisa Sharon Harper of Freedom Road, the former Chief Church Engagement

Officer at Sojourners, has organized on issues as diverse as Black Lives Matter to immigration and gender justice. A Bridge Award winner from The Selma Center for

Nonviolence, Truth and Reconciliation, Harper is dedicated to closing the racial divide and building the beloved community.

Chanequa Walker-Barnes’s work centers the marginalization of women of color within evangelical racial reconciliation movements. Her most recent work, I Bring the

12 Andrea Smith, Unreconciled: From Racial Reconciliation to Racial Justice in Christian Evangelicalism (Durham, Duke University Press, 2019), Kindle loc. 5690 of 11062, Kindle.

13 Christena Cleveland, Disunity in Christ: Uncovering the Hidden Forces that Keep us Apart (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Books, 2013), 21.

131 Voices of My People, provides an intersectional analysis of White supremacy to bear on racial reconciliation efforts within American evangelicalism.14

Brenda Salter McNeil, Director of the Reconciliation Studies program at Seattle

Pacific University, has over two decades of experience in racial, ethnic, and gender reconciliation, and is a pioneer in the reconciliation space. Her book, Roadmap to

Reconciliation, not only provides a theoretical framework for understanding reconciliation, but articulates practical steps for getting there.15

These are only a few of the Black women operating in the reconciliation space who, if given opportunity, could lead and contribute to a largescale racial reconciliation movement within American evangelicalism. They are not alone. Others include Zakiya

Jackson of The Expectations Project, Austin Channing Brown, Latasha Morrison, and

Velda Love.

Black men have also been leading efforts toward racial reconciliation. These contributors include early pioneers like William Pannell, whose book My Friend, the

Enemy16 was among the first to bring the issue of race to the collective conscience of

White evangelicals in the late 1960s. John Perkins and Tony Evans were also early contributors to racial reconciliation efforts. A new wave of reconciliation advocates has emerged in the succeeding generations. Edward Gilbreath, executive editor of

InterVarsity Press, wrote Reconciliation Blues, which chronicles his personal journey as a

14 Walker-Barnes, I Bring the Voices of My People.

15 Brenda Salter McNeil, Roadmap to Reconciliation: Moving Communities in to Unity, Wholeness and Justice (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Press, 2015).

16 William Pannell, My Friend, The Enemy (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1968).

132 Black evangelical in Christian colleges and the evangelical publishing world.17 David

Anderson and Efrem Smith are both African American pastors seeking racial reconciliation through the multiethnic church. Grammy Award-winning rapper Lecrae’s music bridges gaps between White and Black Christians, and he speaks authoritatively concerning evangelicalism’s deficiencies in the area of race, despite his well-known

“divorce” from the movement.18 There are many others.

The capacity of Black Christians to lead in the area of racial reconciliation is not found within a list of names. Specific personalities have been provided only to testify to some of the public reconciliation work already being accomplished through Black

Christian leaders. Black Christians have been engaging the difficult work of bringing people together across race on the local level as well. Unnamed pastors and community leaders of color have been working every day to heal the racial division within the

American Evangelical Church. Black scholars and theologians have been pressing forward in the academy to educate an increasingly diverse evangelical community. Black

Christian artists, across various media, are using their platforms to influence conversations around racial justice.

The appropriate question is not whether Black Christians have the capacity to lead racial reconciliation efforts, but whether the White evangelical mainstream will follow.

17 Edward Gilbreath, Reconciliation Blues (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006).

18 Truth’s Table Podcast, “Facts about Lecrae,” Sept. 30, 2017, https://podtail.com/en/podcast/truth-s-table/facts-about-lecrae.

133 A Model for Moving Forward

Having established that Black Christians are essential to leadership efforts toward racial reconciliation and that Black Christians have capacity to lead meaningful change within the evangelical movement, it is important to identify elements of a potential model for moving forward. A comprehensive program for racial reconciliation is not the intent of this section, but should be the product of further deliberation. Instead, this section provides a basic outline for moving forward and key considerations.

Among the primary challenges to any racial reconciliation effort in American evangelicalism is the decentralized nature of the movement. There is no denominational meeting to convene or hierarchical structure to tap into. Instead, evangelicalism, as was discussed in Chapter 1, is a loosely held together coalition of churches, who self-identify with a history, theology and, to some degree, ethos. As a result, great attention must be given to a method and plan for galvanizing and mobilizing the movement around racial reconciliation. Evangelicalism has the capacity to be moved, as has been seen in recent history, with a coalescing around other social issues and political movements. The

Promise Keepers Movement had some measure of success in bringing racial reconciliation to the fore among evangelical men during the 1990s. So, it can be done.

While evangelicalism is decentralized, there are key institutions and organizations that can be marshalled for support. This will require work as each, to a great extent, is autonomous. Among these influencers are denominations, evangelical academic institutions, major parachurch organizations, prominent churches, and individual evangelical personalities. Exposure alone does not promise success of reconciliation

134 efforts, but the work, if desired on a large scale, becomes exponentially more difficult without it. Identifying strategic institutional partners is a key initial step.

While evangelicalism is decentralized, a comprehensive racial reconciliation effort cannot be. Another important consideration must be designing an operational infrastructure. Racial reconciliation needs organization and leadership. There are exceptional nonprofits and parachurch ministries doing important work in the reconciliation space, but their efforts have not produced a sustained global movement.

This is, in part, because a national movement requires a national network. As argued throughout this work, but particularly Chapters 4 and 5, the leadership of the movement should be multiethnic, but headed by Black Christians. Black Christians have a unique perspective that makes them invaluable to the process. It is not enough for them to simply be participants in the process, but it is important that they be the ones shaping and defining it.

An implementation plan must be developed. This can take several forms.

However, it should include at least the following three elements: education, empowerment, and reparation. The study conducted by Emerson and Smith, which has been cited frequently, suggests a significant divide among evangelicals and their perception of race and racialization. Many White evangelicals do not acknowledge the reality of institutionalized and systemic forms of racism.19 Consensus may never be achieved on this matter; however systemic and institutional reform becomes very difficult without some level of agreement. An effort to educate evangelicals on racialization and

19 Emerson and Smith, Divided by Faith.

135 its history and impact is vital. A 2019 Barna report is encouraging.20 It revealed an increasing acceptance of the idea of institutionalized racism in younger generations of

Christians. Moreover, younger Christians have a greater expectation of the Church to participate in addressing the impacts of racialization.

In addition to education, any implementation plan for racial reconciliation should include a component of empowerment. Because evangelicalism is a localized movement, racial reconciliation efforts, to be sustainable, must be brought down to local churches and communities. Local faith communities must be given the tools necessary to encourage and facilitate relationship-building across race, which includes truth-telling.

Finally, there must be a reparative aspect of racial reconciliation. Efforts must be engaged to erase the current manifestations of racism and White supremacy. It is not enough to simply forgive and forget. If the ultimate goal is justice and equity, attention must be given to leveling the field and providing for lost opportunity. This will be different depending on context. Local communities will need to determine how the reparation paradigm applies to their specific histories and circumstances. However, the reparation discussion must extend beyond the local context into the broader evangelical movement. Evangelical denominations, seminaries, publishing houses, parachurch organizations, and nonprofits also need to consider their histories with Christians of color and engage in reparative work.

Finally, the racial reconciliation process must be memorialized. It is not enough for conversations to take place. A record needs to be created. There needs to be a

20 Barna Group, Where Do We Go from Here?: How U.S. Christians Feel about Racism—and What They Believe it Will Take to Move Forward, Research Reports (Barna Resources, 2019), e-book.

136 centralized repository that documents the racial reconciliation effort. This is for posterity and accountability. Serious consideration should be given to formalizing agreements, covenants, and resolutions that bind, at least spiritually, those who commit to them. This element is especially significant given that common commitment is a value that holds evangelicalism together.

137 CONCLUSION

The unique perspective of Black Christians must be an integral part of leading racial reconciliation efforts within American evangelicalism. The American Evangelical

Church has a decision to make. It is one of the most impactful movements in the history of the nation. At the same time, it is an institution with one of the most unfortunate records in the area of race. This record has not only contributed to the brokenness of broader society, but it has strained the relationship between Black and White Christians.

Over the years, American evangelicalism has struggled to overcome racial division within its body. The last five decades have witnessed increased momentum around racial reconciliation in evangelical circles. Despite the added activity, much remains undone. To achieve a greater degree of success, reconciliation efforts have to address two significant deficiencies that have impeded progress. First, racial reconciliation efforts within evangelicalism are often led by White evangelicals who lack the capacity to move the Church beyond its current cultural captivity. Evangelicalism must be willing to face the challenge of race that can only be found at the intersection of the African American Christian experience. Black Christians must be put in places to lead

American evangelicalism through the reconciliation process. Black Christians did not create the architecture that supports and promotes racism within American evangelicalism, and are not obligated to fix it. The willingness of Black Christians to lead the reconciliation effort is a gift to the movement. It is a gift American evangelicalism must be willing to receive and embrace. Second, the frameworks employed to guide racial reconciliation must be designed to deal with the multifaceted nature of

138 racialization. Too often, reconciliation frameworks provide an aspirational target, but lack the clear benchmarks and identifiable goals necessary to pursue reconciliation in tangible ways.

Scripture provides important guidance for racial reconciliation work. Both the Old and New Testaments supply a vision of reconciliation that includes restored association and harmonious relationship with God and then with fellow humans, by extension. This conception of reconciliation has application to the work of racial reconciliation within

American evangelicalism, but it also has limitations. The biblical approach to reconciliation, which focuses primarily on micro-level relationships, does not always translate well when considering institutional and systemic issues. Racism and White supremacy must be addressed through a framework of reconciliation that can account for the broad social and cultural implications of race. Looking to Scripture as the primary source of acceptable faith and practice is a hallmark of evangelical philosophy, yet it is necessary to recognize when additional insight can be gleaned from secondary resources.

By augmenting the biblical conception of reconciliation with elements taken from political models, a more robust framework emerges that can be used to guide racial reconciliation efforts within American evangelicalism. The goal and design of political reconciliation efforts is to specifically address complex macro-level issues that arise in post-conflict and post-repression era states and societies. Political reconciliation incorporates notions of contextualization, which tailors the reconciliation effort to the unique circumstances, history, and relationships between the parties. Through truth- telling, parties are encouraged to engage formal strategies for creating safe spaces for

139 storytelling and exchange where confession and restoration can take place. Finally, a reparations paradigm is essential to political reconciliation.

A new, theopolitical framework for addressing racial reconciliation in American evangelicalism was proposed by this dissertation. The framework combines biblical and political understandings of reconciliation. According to the framework, reconciliation is the establishment of a new racial harmony, rooted in truthfulness and freedom of opportunity. This definition includes the basic understandings of reconciliation found in

Scripture, but goes beyond it in an attempt to provide clear benchmarks for moving forward and creating accountability. It encourages a contextualized approach that takes into account the existing culture of American evangelicalism and its difficult history with race. It moves the American Evangelical Church past its traditional individualist modality to a collective approach to reconciliation. Because the framework is rooted in truthfulness, it challenges Black and White evangelicals to engage in authentic exchanges around emotions and experiences, creating formal and informal truth-telling. Finally, it recognizes that true reconciliation cannot happen without reparative action designed to restore not just relationship, but lost opportunity.

Proper leadership is as essential as having the proper framework. The second key contribution of this dissertation is in its identification of Black Christians as the only group of believers who can lead an effective racial reconciliation effort. For the purposes of this work, Black Christians are defined as Black evangelicals and members of the traditional Black Church who adhere to traditional evangelical theological positions, whether or not they embrace the evangelical culture, aesthetic, or ethos. Black

140 Christianity is much more diverse than the limited definition created for this work, which is designed to be descriptive and not prescriptive.

In his seminal work, The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois argued that Black

Americans, because of their position as both insider and outsider of the mainstream

American body politic, are blessed with an ability so see the details, implications, and realities of racialization with a unique and inimitable clarity. Black Americans know what it is like to be considered included, but relegated to the margins. Black Christians understand the reality of being similarly situated within American evangelicalism. From their earliest days within the movement, Black evangelicals have managed this duality.

Black Christianity offers a profound and essential theology that has been ignored by

American evangelicalism, to its own detriment. Racial reconciliation in American evangelicalism will only be as successful as the movement’s embrace of Black Christian leadership.

Black Christians have been doing the work of racial reconciliation for decades. If

American evangelicalism desires to make real, sustainable progress in bridging the gap between Black and White evangelicals, it must make room for Black Christians to lead a largescale effort within the movement. This effort should begin with identifying formal leadership from among Black Christians. A coalition of evangelical partners, including prominent evangelical churches, organizations, and institutions should be formed to mobilize American evangelicalism, which is largely decentralized. From there, an implementation plan must be developed, which should take into account the elements articulated in the theopolitical framework provided in this work, or one like it. It is

141 imperative that any plan for racial reconciliation includes a restorative and reparative structure.

Important questions remain open for consideration. Future work should consider the broader context of the racialized Church and how reconciliation efforts can lead to restored relationships. Specifically, this dissertation intentionally treats only the relationship of Black and White evangelicals, which has been an enduring challenge for the evangelical movement since its inception. The theopolitical framework articulated in this work was developed with the Black/White binary in mind. However, that being the case, there may be broader application for the framework within the American

Evangelical Church. Future work might include applying the framework of this text, which includes biblical and political conceptions of reconciliation, to relationships among other racial categories in the Church.

The generational aspect of racial reconciliation work is another area for future consideration. This dissertation represents a snapshot in time. Effective reconciliation efforts are contextualized. Time is a key aspect of context. Almost all the research suggests that the upcoming generations approach race very differently than those currently in positions of major leadership within the American Evangelical Church. This has significant implications for this study. First, it dates it. This study is rooted in Du

Bois’s double consciousness framework, which is operational in this moment. Individual experiences associated with racialized society shift, even if the racialization itself does not end. That is to say, our nation is still gripped by racism and White supremacy, but their impact on individual lives has changed over time. As the new crop of Black

Christian leaders emerge, it will be important to explore how their interface with

142 racialization shapes their positionality with respect to Du Bois’s conception of double- consciousness. In other words, a new question arises: will the next group of Black

Christians be situated as both insider and outsider, affording them the same unique perspective on the Church?

In the end, the value of this study is in proposing a framework for doing the work of racial reconciliation and identifying a leadership with the unique perspective, vision, and capacity to lead the effort. Ultimately, it is up to the American Evangelical Church whether racial reconciliation is an effort worthy of pursuit.

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