Becoming an Anti-Racist Church

Journeying Toward Wholeness

Joseph Barndt

• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780800664602
• eBook ISBN: 9781451411751
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Christians addressing racism in American society must begin with a frank assessment of how race figures in the churches themselves, leading activist Joseph Barndt argues. This practical and important volume extends the insights of Barndt's earlier, more general work to address the race situation in the churches themselves and to equip people there to be agents for change in and beyond their church communities.

Chapter one

Setting the Biblical Context: Reclaiming an Anti-Racist Gospel

“Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.”

—MATTHEW 24:35

Starting with Scripture

It should be clear by now that the aim of this book is to address the church with hard and critical questions about an extremely difficult subject. It is understandable if readers might feel a bit anxious about this at first and worry that someone might ask, “Who do you think you are? Who gave you the right to do this?” In response, I believe it is important to affirm that we do have the authority to undertake this bold venture. In fact, we have a mandate to do so—a mandate that comes directly from God.

We do not need to devise new holy words or invent new teachings in order to claim religious authority to work against racism or any other form of injustice. Centrally placed within the Holy Scriptures is an indelible foundational message of God’s intention for justice and peace for all humanity. The Bible and the historic Christian faith call the church and all Christians to take a stand uncompromisingly against the evil of racism and for the equality and unity of all humankind. We need to place our efforts to understand and eliminate racism in church and society squarely in the context of these teachings, allowing them to become our essential tools and primary guides in understanding racism and how it can be brought to an end. If we do not do this, but attempt instead to reflect on racism and work to end racism without the support of our beliefs and our faith, we risk making our faith irrelevant to matters most central to our lives. On the other hand, if we do take our faith with us on this journey, we will not only have authority and guidance, but we will be affirmed and strengthened to go places where we otherwise may not have the courage to go.

To help us begin thinking theologically and biblically about racism, I offer four principles concerning how the Bible and our faith can guide us. These are foundation stones upon which to build a biblically supported analysis of racism. Throughout the book, I will expand on these and invite you to add your own examples, images, and insights:

1. We are the family of God.

2. The inseparability of Jesus and justice.

3. Taking back stolen sacred stories.

4. We are called and carried on the shoulders of witnesses who struggled before us.

These four foundation stones represent the clear understanding of the Bible and the Christian faith that the whole human family is created by God to exist in unity and equality, and they represent a clear judgment that any violation of God’s intentions, including racism, is a sin against both God and humanity. The scriptural message of God’s intervention and redemption is an invitation and a command to us today to repent of our divisions, to be forgiven, restored, and empowered to rebuild God’s human family on the basis of unity, love, and justice. Let’s look at each of these foundation stones more closely.

Foundation Stone I:
We are the family of God.

God created us to be family, and, by virtue of God’s creation, we are all sisters and brothers. This may sound like an obvious statement that everyone agrees with, but, in fact, it is a very radical statement that establishes the primary rationale and motivation for working against racism. This message is central to the Bible, from Genesis, the first book, to Revelation, the last. God is our Creator/Parent, and therefore all human beings are sisters and brothers in a common family. Sisterhood and brotherhood is a God-given relationship every human being shares.¹

This familial relationship is indelible. Our sisterhood and brotherhood in the family of God is imprinted in our hearts, minds, and souls. It is part of our spiritual DNA. We did not choose it and we cannot choose to undo it. We may love it, we may hate it, we may protest it, or we may ignore it. But the truth is, regardless of our color—red, brown, yellow, black, or white—we are all in the family for good.

The reason it is so important to emphasize this first theological principle is that racism and all forms of injustice seek to deny this familial relationship and to exclude groups of people from the family. The entire story of human injustice is a history of people attempting to kick each other out of the family. We are constantly faced by one group of humans saying to another:

I don’t like you because of your race. I don’t want you in my family. I don’t like you because of your gender, your class, your tribe, your religion, your nationality, your sexual orientation, your looks, your size, your behavior. Get out of my family! You and everyone like you are no longer my brothers or my sisters.

It is even more frightening and horrifying that when one group thinks they have successfully removed these “others” from their family, they then assume the right to hurt, torture, and slaughter those people whom they have made into “aliens and strangers,” those whom they have cast out of the human family. This is the history of the broken family of God. Each of us has stories to tell about being part of a group that was cast out or that cast out others—or both. Our acts have done terrible damage to our sisters and brothers and to ourselves. The consequences are brokenness and division in the human family, God’s family. Like Humpty Dumpty, it is seemingly impossible to put us back together again.

Nevertheless, the basic scriptural message is that no matter how hard we try to end this relationship, we cannot stop being sisters and brothers. The ones we hurt, torture, and kill are never strangers and aliens outside the family, but rather our sisters and our brothers within the family. God has created this family, and this relationship between us is indelible. The central purpose of the Christian faith is to put the family of God back together again. The incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus are God’s actions to overcome brokenness and division, to restore our relationships as sisters and brothers. To participate in the restoration of the family is the central mission and calling of the church. Whenever and wherever we work for justice and peace, we are working to restore the family. Our affirmation that we are the family of God and our work to end racism are part of God’s highest priority to restore God’s family and make it whole again.

Foundation Stone 2:
The inseparability of Jesus and justice.

Justice is at the heart of the biblical message. God’s opposition to all forms of societal inequality and the call for a radically inclusive community are at the center of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus made it abundantly clear throughout his ministry that God is on the side of the broken people—the poor, the imprisoned, the blind, and the oppressed. In his first sermon, he quoted from the prophet Isaiah in announcing the central purpose of his ministry:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18–19)

In recent decades, a “theology of liberation” has emerged as an exciting new articulation of theology by churches living in the context of poverty and oppression. With its central focus on justice, liberation theology has become increasingly popular and influential in many churches, particularly in communities of color in the United States and in developing nations around the world.

Liberation theology emphasizes that the actions of God recorded in the Old and New Testaments are almost always described in terms of liberating broken and oppressed people. Moses was sent to free the Hebrew people from enslavement in Egypt. Isaiah proclaimed comfort and release to the captives of Babylon. The prophets were sent to demand justice for the poor who were being oppressed by rich countrymen. The psalmist prayed for rescue from those who do injustice. Jesus came proclaiming good news for the downtrodden and oppressed.

The central themes of liberation theology are that God takes sides where issues of justice are concerned, that God’s first option is for the broken and the oppressed of the world, and that justice and liberation should be the central focus of the ministry of the Christian church. This theological perspective insists that the gospel of Jesus Christ has always been and is still today a message of freedom intended first and foremost to reach people suffering from the injustices of poverty, racism, and other forms of oppression. Jesus himself is understood as a victim of oppression who lived and died for the sake of those who are downtrodden, poverty-stricken, suffering, sick, and dying.

Liberation theology insists that this central Christian message is unchanging and unchanged. The gospel of Jesus Christ is a gospel of freedom for oppressed people in the twenty-first century as it was for those in the first century. It is good news to those who are poverty-stricken in the ghettos of our land and throughout the world. It is the proclamation of liberty to the captives in our prisons and on our reservations. It is sight for those who cannot see, strength for those who cannot walk, community for those who are lonely, and freedom for the oppressed people of the United States and the world.²

A Radically Inclusive Gospel

Liberation theology’s understanding of the priority of Jesus for justice and his identification with poor and oppressed people does not, however, leave out the rich and the oppressor. Quite the opposite. Jesus is very explicit in his teaching that everyone is broken and in need of liberation, the oppressor perhaps even more so than the oppressed, the rich even more so than the poor.

When this becomes clear, the “exclusiveness” for the broken and oppressed that is the distinctive mark of liberation theology quickly turns around to reveal itself as a mark of radical “inclusiveness.” From the biblical point of view, “broken and oppressed” defines the reality of all humanity. We are all in need of liberation, and we are all offered the gift of unconditional acceptance, and this unconditional acceptance is seen as the true heart of the gospel of justice.

In terms of racial justice, this means that liberation in not only needed by people of color, but by everyone on all sides of the racial divide. God’s liberation is for people of all colors. For the sake of all of us, the pursuit of racial justice becomes central to the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Tension about Justice in the Church

Not everyone in the church agrees with the premise that justice belongs at the center of the biblical message. Throughout history, there have been great tensions about the place of justice in the gospel and in the mission of the church. Many Christians allow issues of social justice only at the far edges of the gospel’s implementation. Some even believe that such “earthly matters” are totally unrelated to and irrelevant to the gospel.

Tragically, in predominantly white and middle-class churches of European descent, the centrality of justice in Scripture is not usually given much prominence and is not proclaimed to be a central purpose of the churches’ ministry. In fact, in the United States the most serious theological tensions and divisions in many churches revolve around whether “social gospel” has a legitimate place in the church at all. The theological subjects of sin, salvation, and eternal life are all too often dealt with as purely spiritual matters and are kept separated and segregated from the secondary concerns of social issues and charity.

Even when there is general agreement on the importance of justice, groups within the church often stand on opposite sides of specific issues of justice. While such differences of opinion are understandable, they can have disastrous consequences. There is no clearer example of this than the tragic reality that the church has stood just as often on the side of those who endorse racism as it has been on the side of those who struggle against it

In this book there is no place for debating the question of the biblical priority of justice, including racial justice. The underlying assumption is that anyone who names the name of Jesus is called to participate in the ministry of justice in the world as a central part of the mission of the church. Moreover, no justice task is more important in the Christian church than to stand against racism and to work for the dismantling of racism in the church and in society. I am completely convinced that the weight of the biblical message and the historical theology of the church lead incontrovertibly toward this belief. In fact, I believe deeply that the temptation to maintain a church where justice, especially racial justice, can be placed on the periphery of our mission is comparable to the temptation of early Christians to place a pinch of incense on the emperor’s altar as a sign of their allegiance to the emperor. In doing so they sought to keep themselves safe from the consequences of choosing Christ above all else.

I was not taught this always, nor did I always believe it. Over the years, I have gained theological understanding that I did not get when I went to seminary more than forty years ago. I have learned to believ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Other Titles In Prisms
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Eleven O’Clock Sunday Morning
• Chapter One: Setting the Biblical Context: Reclaiming an Anti-Racist Gospel
• Part I: The Past: Racism and Resisting Racism in Church History
• Part II: The Present: Racism in the Church Today
• Part III: The Future: Shaping an Anti-Racist Church
• Notes
• Additional Resources
• Index