Hope insists on a color-blind church

(This essay was pubished by the United Methodist Connection, Baltimore-Washington Conference and United Methodist News Service on November 19, 2009.)

Recently, I was invited by a seminary in Baltimore to give a lecture dealing with the matter of the church and race relations over the past forty years, and whether it is possible - or even desirable - for us to strive to become color-blind. In my reflections, I recalled some of what was occurring in American in the late 1960’s. It was a time of great racial tension in America. In 1968, the Kerner Commission Report, which President Lyndon B. Johnson had requested in light of the riots that had broken out in several cities across the United States, summarized the state of race relations in America by noting that “America is a nation of two societies, one black and one white, separate and unequal.”

The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on April 4, 1968 spawned a proliferation of violence in cities across the United States. In cities like Detroit, Washington, DC and Baltimore, in the aftermath of King’s death, we witnessed communities turn upon themselves in acts of violence and destruction. The images of large business corridors, residential communities and places of worship being looted and burned are still vivid in many of our memories.

A closer look at the state of race relations in the church - and society - today leads us to reflect on what might have been the hopes and dreams of those who engaged in earlier efforts toward racial reconciliation. Today, 40 years after the assassination of Dr. King, I suspect that many persons of all races would have hoped and expected that racism would no longer exist, and that perhaps the churches would be color-blind. We know that this is not the case.

In many ways, a pall remains over much – if not most - of today’s church with regard to how we have dealt with the race problem in America. In their 2001 book, Divided by Faith, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith developed a theory to explain why churches are racially exclusive enclaves despite Christian’s ideals about being inclusive: Americans choose where and with whom to worship; race is one of the most important grounds on which we choose; so the more choice we have, the more our religious institutions are likely to be segregated.

The authors point out that ninety-five percent of churches are effectively segregated, with 80 percent or more of their members being of the same race. The result is that about 5 percent of religious congregations in the U.S. can fairly be considered multicultural/multiracial, with the majority of Christians choosing to congregate with “birds of the same feather,” with their congregations reflecting ethnoracial particularism.

The recent presidential candidacy and election of Senator Barak Obama as the 44th president of the United States has served as a historical milestone for our nation. While Obama’s election as the first president of African descent has renewed the hope of many persons across the nation and the world, his candidacy offered a vivid snapshot of the state of race relations in the churches today. Much of the political discourse leading up to the election focused on Obama’s race and whether the nation was ready for a black president. These questions were raised almost 400 years after the first African slaves arrived on what would become America’s shores, and almost 150 years after the legal emancipation of slaves in America.

These questions were also raised against the backdrop of Obama’s former membership at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, and his 20 year relationship with Rev. Jeremiah Wright. On the surface, many of the concerns levied with regard to Obama’s relationship with Rev. Wright, centered on comments that Wright made in several sermons which offered pointed, and what many believe to have been derogatory, critiques of the Bush Administration in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks and in light of the current war in Iraq.

What seemed to be lost in the discourse – at least to some degree – was that Obama found spiritual resonance and a way of living out his Christian faith in a mainline congregation – Trinity UCC – which is deeply rooted in community activism and prophetic engagement. Also often lost in the discourse surrounding Obama’s candidacy is the fact that Senator Obama, as an African American, was a highly qualified presidential candidate who rose from an impoverished upbringing to become a person of exemplary achievement as a student at two Ivy League institutions, and as a community organizer and legislator.

One of the images that remains etched in my memory of the days leading up to the election are words that were displayed on a large marquee of a Lutheran Church (Missouri Synod) in Bel Air, Md. The message on the marquee prominently announced the sermon for the two Sundays prior to the election, “Does God Love Obama?” As I drove by the sign on several occasions and pondered the question, it was evident that race continues to matter in America, and that we are not yet color-blind.

I sense that the election of Barak Obama as president offers hope for a society that finds itself on the brink of nihilism – where a certain hopelessness has made our collective future a bit murky. But as much as Obama’s election offers hope, it remains the churches’ primary task to speak and live hope amidst the critical moral and social issues of the contemporary age. It is the churches’ theological task to articulate a framework for thinking and speaking about God amidst apparent hopelessness. A question that we must continue to ask is one posed by Howard Thurman in his seminal work, Jesus and the Disinherited, “What does the religion of Jesus have to say to people who have their back against the wall?” In other words, how does Christianity today offer hope to the disinherited among us – the poor, the violated, and the oppressed?

A part of the churches’ task is also to be self-critical as it pertains to issues such as the proliferation of the prosperity gospel, the lack of activism in many circles and the inability or unwillingness of the churches today to speak prophetically on matters of contemporary concern such as the war in Iraq, the widening gap between the rich and the poor in America and around the world, the ongoing proliferation of racial bigotry, and the marginalization of others in our society, along with the generally violent and misogynous nature of hip hop and other forms of popular culture.

Near the end of his life, Martin Luther King, Jr. published a book entitled, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? In it, Dr. King reiterated a point he had made on several other occasions. He pointed out that we are faced with a choice in our life together, and that we will either learn to live together as brothers and sisters, or we will die together as fools. The church of today looks quite different from the church of 40 years ago. Progress can be seen in many areas, and yet there is still much work that lies ahead of us- we are not yet color-blind.

Though segregation continues to abound in many churches (as it does in many other sectors of society), I believe that the election of Barak Obama offers a glimmer of hope that someday the church and society might be color blind. My hope is rooted in the possibilities that we will continue to discover ways to capitalize on those experiences and encounters that lead us to being intentional and inclusive community. This is the hope that must be realized if we are to be the church – the Beloved Community - that Christ calls us to become.