Healing Racial Divides

Finding Strength in Our Diversity

Terrell Carter

• Publisher: Chalice Press
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780827215139
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

Can the church help America emerge from its racist shadows empowered to heal racial divides? Church pastor and former police officer Terrell Carter says yes.

While our faith inarguably calls Christians to unity, the hard fact remains: we're still tragically divided when it comes to race, even - and especially, many say -- in our churches. Racism pervades our faith, our relationships, and our institutions in deep, often imperceptible ways. In Healing Racial Divides, Terrell Carter, a pastor, professor and former police officer takes us on a revelatory journey into the abyss of the racial divide and shows us how we've arrived at this divisive place. Understanding racism's roots - and our place in it - we surface more committed and empowered to defeat racism once and for all.

Drawing from the Bible, scholarly research, and personal experience as a both a former police officer and a black pastor serving white congregations, Carter unpacks the deep roots of racism in America, how it continues to be perpetuated today, and practical strategies for racial reconciliation. Looking forward, he shapes a bold and faithful vision for healing racial division through multicultural communities focused on relationship, listening, and learning from each other.

With a pastor's heart and an academic's head, Carter invites us to look at where we've been-and where God calls us as spiritually mature Christians, seeking healing and true unity on earth.

In Healing Racial Divides, Terrell Carter helps us:
· Understand the roots of racism in the world, the church, and ourselves
· Gain a biblical perspective on the sin of racism, as well as the biblical call to Christian unity
· Examine how racism continues to be perpetuated in America today
· Explore the concept of "white normality" and its aftereffects
· Discover a way across the divide through the creation of multi-cultural relationships, churches and communities

1. Roots of Our Racial Division

“I still think today as yesterday that the color line is a great problem of this century. But today I see more clearly than yesterday that back of the problem of race and color, lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance, and disease of the majority of their fellowmen.”

—W.E.B. Du Bois1

When you were in high school, what table did you sit at when you ate lunch in the cafeteria? If you went to a high school such as mine, Gatesville Senior High, home of the Fighting Hornets, you had a certain table that you were expected to sit at. And, only certain people would sit at that table with you. The table where you sat symbolized your social status. It represented where you stood in the food chain of life at Gatesville High School, and everyone had a place. More specifically, everyone had a table. Athletes had a table. Preppy kids had a table. Cheerleaders had a table. The smokers stood outside by a dumpster behind the cafeteria. It would take an act of God, or by one of the cool kids, to help you move. If you tried to sit at a different table on your own, there could be severe social consequences.

So, what table did you sit at? Or, a better question may be: At what table do you sit now? You still can have certain expectations placed upon you by the group you associate with. Much of the underlying tension our nation experiences stems from this separating along social and economic lines.

Who are you not expected to sit with? What type of person makes you cringe when you see them coming your way? Is it someone with a lot of tattoos? Could it be a black or brown woman with a group of children? A police officer?

If you grew up in Gatesville, Texas, it was anyone who came from McGregor, Texas. McGregor is located 20 miles east of Gatesville, and the only good thing about the town of McGregor (to my mind, back then) was the fact that the highway that led to Waco, Texas, went through McGregor. When I lived in Gatesville, the two towns despised each other. The relationship between Gatesville and McGregor was like the Hatfields and McCoys. We did not like them and they did not like us.

Part of the reason for this was because Gatesville could not beat McGregor in anything. They whupped us in every sport. From football to basketball to baseball to track. They were always bigger than us, stronger than us, and faster than us. We were smarter and more creative than them, but nobody wanted to brag about the fact that we beat them in our regional headline writing competition. If one of our friends moved from Gatesville to McGregor, they became persona non grata to us.

This act of treating people differently based on where their family lives, or their town of origin, is not a new phenomenon. No matter how old you are, you’ve probably known a story like this since you were a child. We find multiple examples in the Book of Acts in the New Testament. Specifically, in Acts 11, the disciple Peter almost got into serious trouble with the religious people of his day for simply eating with the “wrong” people.

Imagine: instead of dirt roads from the Bible, a two-lane highway runs through town. And, instead of donkeys, there are pick-up trucks, and the local Walmart and the Texas Department of Corrections at the edge of town are the two places everyone works.

Now imagine Peter is the president of the campus Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and he’s just returned from a trip where he met with people from McGregor High School, the sworn enemies of any proud Fighting Hornet. When Peter sits down in the cafeteria for lunch, he is confronted by members of the debate team. The boys are a force to be reckoned with, and they’re keen to give Peter a piece of their minds for breaking the rules and spending time with their enemies. The head of the debate team steps forward and tells Peter they’ve heard he’s had lunch with a McGregor Bulldog.

Who Would Jesus Hate?

There was no love between Jews and Gentiles during the time of the early church. They did not like each other, and they did not trust each other. It was not that Jews and Gentiles never mixed. Truthfully, most Jews did not have a choice but to live in a world full of people who were not of their heritage. Jews and Gentiles lived life together, whether they liked it or not. Now, one of the challenges for Jews was adhering to the idea of being “clean.” For them, the idea of being clean stemmed from multiple requirements given by God in Leviticus to address certain actions that would make a person unclean and unacceptable before God. In Leviticus 11—26, God gave 613 rules the children of Israel were to follow to stay clean.

There were many things that could make you unclean, and thus unacceptable before God—things such as getting too close to a dead body, bearing a child, or eating certain foods. It was understood that no one could keep the purity laws perfectly, so there were provisions for becoming clean again. For Peter, the bigger problem was that he’d willingly gone to a Gentile’s home and eaten with him.

The purity laws lent themselves to a spiritual hierarchy between those who considered themselves close to God, and the “unclean,” who were shunned as impure sinners. Instead of expressing the holiness of God, the practice of being pure became a means of excluding people. Following these rules became a way to justify keeping certain people out and believing them far from God. By voluntarily doing what he did, Peter was bucking that system.

The traditions that have shaped our nation have been used to keep groups of people separated from each other. Specifically, they have been used to keep one group of people in power over and above multiple others. Beliefs, laws, policies, and practices have been created by whites and used to keep black people enslaved and subjugated for years. The effects of those laws are still being felt in the twenty-first century.

Before we look at this system of racial oppression, we need to define some words.

Race—A group of people possessing certain physical characteristics in common determined by heredity.

Races, historically, are the descriptions for people of color developed as white racial identity was itself being established. First came the transatlantic slave trade, and then came the scientific language of race, which helped organize Western societies around that very lucrative practice. Race is a myth biologically, but it is a political reality. Racism is the effort to create and sustain systems and structures for whites. Race is a financially incentivized anthropology designed to legitimize the buying, selling, and owning of African bodies.2

Racism–Racism is more than just a personal attitude. It is the institutionalized form of that attitude. It is “the dogma that one ethnic group is condemned by nature to congenital inferiority and another group to congenital superiority.”3

Racism as an ideology is founded on two myths, which have permeated human social relations for centuries. By myth here I mean, “a notion based more on tradition or convenience than on fact.” One myth is that there is something called European “white” civilization which over time evolved to become the highest form of human development and cultural refinement and by which standard all other races and cultures must be judged, measured or assessed. The myth asserts that this Europe...

Table of contents

• Praise for Healing Racial Divides
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• About the Cover
• Introduction
• 1. Roots of Our Racial Division
• 2. The Normality of Whiteness
• 3. Aftereffects
• 4. Finding Common Ground
• Conclusion
• Selected Resources
• About the Author