Attorney General Eric Holder said it like it is: when it comes to race relations, the US is a nation of cowards. (for full text see link above; Att. Gen. Holder refers to then-Senator Obama’s speech on race in an interview after his speech.) What made me wonder as I read (and then watched) the speech was, how far have we come in the church concerning race relations.
Basically, there seems to be a certain unease when it comes to discussing matters of “race”. Comments and conversations sometimes become more forced and somewhat rehearsed. They lose their spontaneity and ease—which they may have just had, while bantering about the Premier League, Superbowl, cars, or…. (I apologise for examples that may seem more male-oriented.) But as soon as the topic switches to race—or “religion” or, sometimes, “death”—there is an unease. Why? At first I thought it’s because white people do not like to talk about it. They think it is no longer relevant, with all the civil rights, affirmative actions, and now Barack Obama.
I think there is a profound discomfort that is often expressed in phrases like “but I didn’t own slaves” because we do not like to be identified as belonging to the perpetrator group. It’s the same unease I used to feel as a German when other Europeans talked about the war and (sometimes expressively) made me feel like I had started the war. In addition, most white people never had to directly confront racial issues. They live in a bubble of privilege that has largely insulated them from confronting such matters. After all, in America a white person (with citizenship) is an American. Black Americans are “African-”Americans. White is the norm. Even in our Bible illustrations Jesus is usually (mis-)represented as a man with unmistakably European features. If the world around me reflects “my group”, and rendered quasi “race-less”, then why should I have to invest effort into addressing “race” issues. Race becomes an irritant. However, we too easily forget who invented the “race” scheme, segregation, slavery (not even to mention the genocide on Native Americans). White folk never had to address, let alone digest, the mess they created.
Black people (and other non-whites) in America, on the other hand, have always known “race”. From childhood they learn that they are different, and that the difference is a disadvantage. Race is a daily, unavoidable, reality. However, it seems that even black folk are ill at ease to talk about race. Not, of course, when they are among themselves; but when in the presence of people-of-no-colour, the conversation sometimes loses it’s natural flow, and, just like with white folk, becomes rehearsed.
These are generalisations, and I hope that there are so many exceptions that the exceptions will become the rule, and my general deliberations here will be sidelined as an exception.
What is saddening is that this trend is also found in the church. The Seventh-day Adventist church in North America is essentially a church of cowards. In the boardrooms of conference, union and division committees (I guess) we find a delicate and elaborate dance around the issues that still divide us—if they are addressed at all. How often do the “brethren” interact with each other outside the meetings, after church, during the week, in their leisure times? How often have we had the painful conversation about past (!) and present (?) racism in the church? Have we sat and listened to the person with a different experience than our own, and not just in the administration sphere… How many pastors mingle in diverse crowds of colleagues (not just members)? Do our kids play together, our wives sit and chat together? How many churches are mingling together across the divides? Are there any meetings for white churches during Black History Month, where State and Regional congregations meet and mix, and learn not from a text book, but from a real person who was there back then, marched, got hosed down and got up again?
Do we have the guts to reach across the divides? A nation looks to its leaders, listens to presidents and attorney generals, but a church ought to look at her Saviour, and be changed by Him. Do we have the guts to go there? Will we allow Him to change us from a church of cowards to a church of change?
