Outsiders on the Inside

Understanding Racial Fatigue, Racial Resilience, and Racial Hospitality in Our Churches

William E. Boyce

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781666719383, 9781666719390
• eBook ISBN: 9781666719406
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Discrimination & Race Relations
• Index: Social Sciences

Can Christian community be racially exclusive and still call itself faithful? In the United States, the story of Christianity has been intertwined with the story of race since the beginning. All too often, Christian leaders have fostered cultures that wound minority members instead of creating cultures that heal division. With this history of exclusion, all Christians must ask whether our churches practice the racial hospitality envisioned in the Scriptures. In this necessary conversation, minority pastors voice fatigue, signaling that church cultures are not as welcoming as they often claim to be. Outsiders on the Inside explores the history of race in the Presbyterian Church in America (PCA), comparing the denomination's core theological convictions with the experiences of Black PCA pastors. This is a story of racial fatigue and resilience, of learning to thrive in the midst of challenging environments. This study reveals areas for growth and opens up possibilities for Christians of all races and confessions to come together, creating a diverse, hospitable, and healing community.

Part I

Racial Hospitality in Scripture and Tradition

1

All Races Welcome?

What is it like to be Black in the PCA? After asking this question multiple times, the most common answer was, “It’s complicated.” For Black pastors, their ministry is marked by tension. As an ultra-minority in the denomination, they experience what W. E. B. du Bois calls “double consciousness.”1 They are fully aware of their identity as Black Presbyterians—Presbyterians, yes, but specifically Black Presbyterians. They have a right to be in this denomination—after all, Black Presbyterianism has existed in the United States since at least the year 1800.2 And yet, these seminary-trained, biblically grounded, and theologically Reformed men often feel alienated within the denomination.3

Statistically speaking, this might be expected. When one is an ultra-minority, a member of only 1 percent of the denomination’s pastors, it is likely—however lamentable—that a sense of alienation will be experienced.4 But statistics only tell part of the story. It is not simply a question of smaller numbers, but of cultural divides. Recent developments in the denomination have brought this division to light. For example, the PCA recently commissioned a study report on race and reconciliation in the denomination, but this report revealed that the denomination was divided on the very need to study the issue at all. According to the report, “Those ages 50+, those living in Southern states and those with less education rated the need [for a study on race] significantly lower than other groups. Caucasians, Latino/Hispanic and Other ethnicities rated the need significantly lower than African Americans and Asian-Americans.”5 In other words, the denomination’s leadership cannot agree on the need to have a conversation about race at all, let alone how to have it well. As a result, African American Teaching Elders in the PCA feel disconnected from the majority because of culture, not simply numbers. For a denomination that declared the church would “welcome fellow believers in Christ regardless of race,” this is lamentable.6 Given the historical roots of the denomination, however, it might not be unexpected. The story of the PCA has never been strictly doctrinal. For Presbyterians in the United States, culture often intersected with doctrine to oppose full racial inclusion.

Civil War and Southern Presbyterian Racism

To understand the PCA, we need to understand the PCA’s Southern heritage. The PCA traces its roots back to the Southern Presbyterian Church, which had a history of racial exclusion. Just months after the beginning of the American Civil War in 1861, the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America, which included churches in both North and South, adopted the Gardiner-Spring Resolution. This resolution required all churches in the denomination to support the United States federal government—the Union—or face church censure. For churches in secessionist southern states, this created an inescapable dilemma: support what was, in their minds, a foreign power, or face discipline.7 These southern churches decided to sever ecclesial ties and form a new denomination rooted in the Confederacy: the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America (CSA).8

These leaders attempted to rationalize their decision with an appeal to doctrine. For them, the Gardiner-Spring Resolution overstepped a fundamental doctrine: the “spirituality of the church.” This doctrine stated that the church as institution could only speak to spiritual matters, not political ones.9 To these leaders, an ecclesial decree requiring churches to take sides politically, pledging allegiance to a specific governing authority during a time of national fracturing, clearly transgressed the denomination’s limited authority. So, with their “Address to All the Churches of Jesus Christ Throughout the Earth,” the Confederates birthed their new church, founded upon the doctrine of the spirituality of the church.10 Yet, even within this document, it became clear that while the Confederates utilized doctrine to resist the encroachment of one culture, they equally utilized doctrine to protect the practices of their own culture.

The newly founded denomination wasted no time declaring its stance on slavery. Having declared their grievances with the Northern Church on the first three pages of “Address to All the Churches,” the Southern Presbyterians spend the next four pages detailing their justification for slavery. First, God’s word does not explicitly condemn slavery, and so the church ought not as well: “[The church] has planted itself upon the word of God, and utterly refused to make slaveholding a sin, or non-slave holding a term of communion.”11 Because, in their view, God’s word did not explicitly condemn slavery, it was ...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Key Terms and Concepts
• Part I: Racial Hospitality in Scripture and Tradition
• Part II: Racial Hospitality in the PCA
• Acknowledgments
• Bibliography