Race in America: Liberalism’s Attack on Minorities and the Church

We live in a world at war. A war that has been waged ever since Adam defied God and abandoned Eve to Satan’s deceit to get a taste of the forbidden fruit. Unfortunately, the church too often also falls for this deceit and retreats, unable to recognize the battles lines forming around us.

Race in America: Liberalism’s Attack on Minorities and the Church examines this retreat when it comes to the current debate over race and culture. The world seeks to divide that which is whole and make whole that which is divided. Thus, the single race of mankind becomes hopelessly split into various races while the greatest of all divides, that between believers and unbelievers, is forgotten. Racism, now, primarily white racism, is said to be at the heart of racial tension in America today and the primary cause of many of the problems that minorities face.

There can be no doubt about the harm that slavery and white racism has caused to blacks and other minorities in America’s past. However, the assumption of many in the church and the world that white racism is still widespread in America and the cause of current racial tension and minority struggles ignores the history of cultural conflict from the beginning of time and denies the harm caused by theological and political liberalism, including the welfare state, to minorities and people of every color.

Race in America: Liberalism’s Attack on Minorities and the Church seeks to turn the debate away from reconciliation with the world and toward reconciliation with God, through the righteousness of Jesus Christ. This is how the kingdom of God is populated, and it is how the great cultural divide in the world between belief and unbelief will be overcome.

Here is an excerpt from the book:

CHAPTER 6: CULTURE NOT RACE

White guilt is a term used by many today to describe the response to the social and economic status of American blacks and other minority populations caused by the racism intrinsic in American whites today.

The belief in white responsibility for the plight of minorities is expressed in Becoming Beloved Community: The Episcopal Church’s Long-Term Commitment to Racial Healing, Reconciliation, and Justice:

Widespread hostility to immigrants from Latin America has led to the deportation of millions and ripped families apart. Structural poverty in indigenous communities has led to alarming youth suicides. Throughout Latin America, indigenous and Afro-Latino peoples still suffer after centuries of systematic devaluation. Videos regularly detail the detention and killing of unarmed black men, women, and children by the state. Across the United States and into Europe, people from the Middle East are profiled as terrorists and enemies of “Western” values. And human trafficking enslaves the most vulnerable in Asia, the Americas, and Europe.

It is also expressed, though in a less confrontational manner, in the Presbyterian Church of America’s (PCA) 2004 Pastoral Letter on the Gospel and Race:

we [address the issue of racism] not because it is politically correct, or out of any pressure from outward society, but simply because it is our desire that the convicting and restoring power of God’s grace in the Gospel be applied to the manifestations of racial sin of which we ourselves are guilty, and that those who experience the negative effects of these sins might know the healing power of God’s grace. (emphasis added)

The assumption in both cases appears to be that the current economic and social challenges faced by many minorities today are manifestations of white racism, past and present, and only through repentance by whites from these sins can minorities find their way out of the ghetto and into today’s prosperous, cosmopolitan society.

This focus on the guilt over the racial sins of whites and the social inequality of minorities also threatens to push aside ontological equality, i.e., the equality of men in God’s eyes. It’s almost as if the spiritual state of minorities is dependent on the repentance of whites.

Even though looking at relationships between peoples in terms of color, white racism, or oppression of blacks is the prevailing view among many secular and religious groups in America today, cultural factors play a far more significant role than racism today in the economic and social conditions of blacks and other minorities.

Thomas Sowell, in his book, Black Rednecks and White Liberals, closely examines historical relationships between those of various racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds with the intent of applying it to race relations in the U.S. today. He begins with this quote:

These people are creating a terrible problem in our cities. They can’t or won’t hold a job, they flout the law constantly and neglect their children, they drink too much and their moral standards would shame an alley cat. For some reason or other, they absolutely refuse to accommodate themselves to any kind of decent, civilized life (1).

Sowell observes that this quote is not “about blacks or other minorities, but about poor whites from the South” made in Indianapolis in 1956. He continues:

More is involved here than a mere parallel between blacks and Southern whites. What is involved is a common subculture that goes back for centuries, which has encompassed everything from ways of talking to attitudes toward education, violence, and sex—and which originated not in the South, but in those parts of the British Isles from which white Southerners came. That culture long ago died out where it originated in Britain, while surviving in the American South. Then it largely died out among both white and black Southerners, while still surviving today in the poorest and worst of the urban black ghettos (1).

Many people attempt to blame the continued existence of poverty, violence, and single mothers in black ghettos today on current white racism. But Sowell says these explanations “will not stand up under a closer scrutiny of history.” He points to the “cultural values and social patterns prevalent among Southern whites” that had their roots in Northern England and Scotland. These “included an aversion to work, proneness to violence, neglect of education, sexual promiscuity, improvidence, drunkenness, lack of entrepreneurship, reckless searches for excitement, lively music and dance, and a style of religious oratory marked by strident rhetoric, unbridled emotions, and flamboyant imagery.” It is these cultural characteristics rather than the color of anyone’s skin that led to much of the alienation of and discrimination against both Southern whites and blacks.

For instance, a “1951 survey in Detroit found that white Southerners living there were considered ‘undesirable’ by 21 percent of those surveyed, compared to 13 percent who ranked blacks the same way. In the late 1940s, a Chicago employer said frankly, ‘I told the guard at the plant gate to tell the hillbillies that there were no openings.’ When poor whites from the South moved into Northern cities to work in war plants during the Second World War, ‘occasionally a white southerner would find that a flat or furnished room had “just been rented” when the landlord heard his southern accent.’”

The situation for many blacks in the north in earlier years was entirely different, however. “In Detroit, blacks who had been denied the vote in 1850 were voting in the 1880s, and in the 1890s blacks were being elected to public office by a predominantly white electorate in Michigan. The black upper class in Detroit at that time had regular social interactions with whites and their children attended high schools and colleges with whites. In Illinois during this same era, legal restrictions on access to public accommodations for blacks were removed from the law, even though there were not enough black voters at the time to influence public policy, so that this represented changes in white public opinion.”

However, this began to change around 1900 with the influx of Southern blacks who brought their southern culture with them. Their “very different behavior patterns shocked both blacks and whites at the time, as witnessed by adverse comments from earlier black settlers and the black press, denouncing the new arrivals from the South as vulgar, rowdy, unwashed, and criminal. Nor were these conclusions without foundation. For example, a study in early twentieth century Pennsylvania found that the rate of violent crimes by blacks who had migrated there was nearly five times the rate of such crimes by blacks born in Pennsylvania. In Washington, the rate of births out of wedlock more than doubled with a large influx of Southern blacks during the late nineteenth century.”

None of this is to deny the real and significant harm caused by slavery and later racism in both the North and the South. Nor can we deny the perception by many—black, brown, and white—that racism is widespread and pervasive in society today.

Yet, understanding that the historical resentment is often caused by cultural–rather than racial–differences suggests that factors other than race and racism are shaping relationships between people in recent years and causing the poor economic and social circumstances of many blacks today.

The church today, despite its protestations, is succumbing to worldly counsel on racism. This leads many in the church to 1) lose sight of the great diversity already existing in the church today, 2) make an impatient push toward unity through diversity now in our denomination and individual congregations, and 3) misapply universal biblical passages to specific situations.

This white guilt-driven misdirection from church councils and assemblies is likely causing the same problem in individual parishes, presbyteries, churches, and members. The church needs a more scriptural understanding of the cultural challenges that orthodox Christianity faces today—including specific sins inside and outside the church—to combat this and thus be equipped to carry out “the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18) to the world given us by God through Jesus Christ.