Race and Barriers

The current blog theme—citing the words of Ronald Kalifungwa—is that “we must examine the patterns within our churches that erect barries to other races and endeavour to remove those barriers with the help of God.” The editor then asks what some of those barriers might be.

I find the question difficult to answer. I suspect part of the reason is that, as Rick Phillips suggests, the answers will be different in different churches. An urban church in New Orleans is going to face a different set of issues than a rural church in Redfield, South Dakota. The issues will be different for a churches surrounded by different races, cultures, ages, etc. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer because there are multiple situations. We also know that it’s not as if we can just stop practice X, Y, or Z and people will come flooding through the front doors of the church.

One of the most common answers to the question—at least from what I’ve been able to discern in the way that some black Reformed friends have spoken—is that it comes down to the principle of “no harmonization without representation.” In other words, it’s very difficult to expect to attract African Americans to a predominately white church with all-white leadership. Therefore, there is a move in some quarters of the church to aggressively seek minority candidates for pastoral positions.

In order for that to work, I think our churches have to back up a step and ask about pastoral training. What are we doing to train young minority pastoral candidates? Are we developing scholarship funds to send minorities to seminaries? Are our pastors intentionally discipling and encouraging and equipping men of promise? Let me offer myself as an example here—not of someone to emulate, but in order to avoid my mistake. A few years ago a young African American guy in our church approached me about getting together to read through some theology books and to discuss them. I regretably told him that at that point in time I couldn’t take on that additional commitment. I’ve regretted that ever since.

The flip side of the coin here is that churches must be careful not to go overboard in their zeal to rectify wrongs. There is no biblical mandate that every church must be diverse, and we must not try to invent one in order to achieve a noble goal. Diversity, like homogeny, can be idolatrous. And we must commit to fleeing all idols.

One of the most helpful pieces articles on race that I’ve read was by Shelby Steele. (I find Steele, John McWhorter, and Thomas Sowell to be among the most perceptive writers—Christian or non-Christian—addressing these issues today. And yes—that sound you just heard was Carl Trueman’s keyboard exploding!) In an article in the WSJ in the aftermath of the Trent Lott scandal, Steele argued that the senator’s actions were “a failure of what might be called a democratic imagination.” He went on: 

The great anxiety for minorities of color is that those in the majority cannot or will not achieve full human identification with them, and therefore will not bond with them as equals. When Sen. Lott . . . makes bad jokes that seem to pine for segregation, he seems to be a man who has never imagined himself in the place of blacks. Without this imaginative effort he is only white and bereft of the common humanity that would connect him to blacks as true equals. Conservatives in the civil rights era failed to see themselves in the Negro, failed to imagine themselves into his plight. Had they imagined themselves there, they would have made themselves the measure of the rights blacks should receive. But conservative principles, entrepreneurial in so many ways, lost this opportunity to a lack of imagination.

Democracies expand individual rights past the barriers of race, class and gender precisely by encouraging imaginative identification with difference--by asking men to put themselves in the shoes of women, whites in the shoes of blacks, and so on. And minorities are always asking others to put themselves in their place because they know this is how equality will be experienced and become undeniable. Minorities also know that racism and bigotry are always a failure of this kind of imagination. In the face of difference, imagination is the only way to common humanity. Thus minorities also know that racism and bigotry are the perfect collapse of imagination.

I found this very helpful from a practical standpoint. It’s not primarily about achieving a certain racial balance in the church or atoning for “white guilt.” It’s about using my moral imagination—which is really just another way of saying “love your neighbor as yourself.”

So one practical step we can take to address the question of barriers is to imagine ourselves in another’s shoes and ask what might prevent me from going to this church. Related to that is active listening—actually talking with those who perceive barriers and asking for their perspective.

That, it seems to me, is at least a good place to start.