The Church and Race Relations

One of the many challenges that the Christian Church has been faced with in a very intensive way in recent times is that of race relations.  This is not to say that this has not been an issue in the past. Any good student of both secular and Church history knows that this issue is nothing new.  As a matter of fact, the New Testament itself makes reference to issues of discrimination based on ethnicity and race.  The one situation is where the Greek members of the first century Church lodged a complaint that their widows were not being as well taken care of and provided for as were the Jewish members of the Church.  The other situation was where God gave Peter ( a Jew turned Christian) a vision of unclean meats descending from heaven and commanding him to eat them.  After his initial resistance in which he stated that he did not eat anything unclean, God told him not to classify anything as unclean that God had cleansed.  This vision was given to Peter in preparation for his encounter with Cornelius, a Gentile affiliated with the Roman Army.  The Apostle Paul on one occasion had to call Peter to task for playing both sides of the fence with Jews and Gentiles, associating with one group while disassociating from the other, at different times. 

So we ask, then, how can the Church confront a social ill which exists within its very ranks?  How can the Church address the issue of societal racism, when racism exists within the very life of the Church itself?  How can the Church point to the issues of societal racism, when throughout its very own history, the Church has functioned as a racist institution?

The issues that have brought racism to the surface again in recent times have been that of the relationship between the African American and Latino communities on the one hand, and law enforcement on the other.  Caucasian police officers have shot and killed unarmed African Americans, and conversely, in recent times, an African American shot and killed two police officers, neither of which by the way, was Caucasian. 

Dare we as a Christian community fall into the trap of " the pot calling the kettle black?"  How can we confront something which is a very part of our institutional fabric?

While there are no easy answers to these questions, I propose the following steps (consider them baby steps or giant steps, as you wish) for the Christian community to deal with this matter.

1.  Affirm our oneness in Christ.  I do not mean this as a platitude or as a slogan.  What I mean by this is that we have to acknowledge that the reconciling acts of God in Christ were for the whole world, Gentile and Jew, African American and Caucasian, Asian, Latino, Native American, etc., and not just for a select ethnic, national, or racial group.  "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Godself," says the Apostle Paul.  We have to break down and dismantle any structures of racism which exist in our faith community.  We must also address individual racist attitudes that are rampant within the membership of the Church.  We have to ask ourselves, if, as individuals we have, if nothing else, subconscious and unintentional racist attitudes that we may not even be aware of.  For example,  I will admit that due to television stereotypes of certain ethnic or national groups involved in crime. for sometime I tended to believe that all Italians must have some type of affiliation with the Mafia or that all Irish men were either all drunkards, or had a history of having many drunkards in their families.  Again, these were subconscious attitudes due to the influence of social stereotyping.

2.  Unmask, identify, denounce (prophetically speaking) the pervasive racism which permeates society, especially here in the good ole U.S.A, "land of the free and home of the brave."  We need to call a spade a spade, regardless of whether it takes us out of our individual comfort zones. 

3.  Do everything in our power to dismantle the racist structures which are alive and well in our social institutions, church, the public school system (the school to prison pipeline), law enforcement, housing market, etc.  A prophetic message calls for prophetic action.  We need to learn to "pray with our legs," in other words, add action to our speeches.  This should not be taken as "anti-church, anti-school, anti-law enforcement," etc. as such, but rather calls for a revamping of these social entities so that they can reflect full equality and fully applied justice.

I invite you, the reader to comment on this essay.  Feel free to BYOV (Bring Your Own View) and tell us how you think we as a Christian community can confront and deal with the issue of racism.
Your comments will be very helpful.

In the Name of the Creator, and of the Liberator, and of the Sustainer. Amen.

Dr. Juan A. Ayala-Carmona