Editor’s Note: Denver Sheepdog is a friend of mine who wrote this to his church board as they considered a racial reconciliation messaging proposal.
Morning after, reflecting on our board meeting last night. I am glad we’ll soon be hearing a strong sermon on Christ and race, followed by a midweek roundtable on the same topic. Our pastor envisions a panel with three pastors “of color,” two black and one Hispanic.
Very worthy goal. We’re not the church if we don’t go where the need is, where the pain is, right into the hottest fire. So deep breath, in we go, God helping us. I’m all for it.
But as we prepare, may I suggest two points about how we as Christians should not approach the subject of race.
First: “Hispanic“ is not a race, anthropologically speaking.
It is a sociological or political term of convenience, and as such, subject to mischievous manipulation.
Someone named Gomez can be African-descended in the Dominican Republic, indigenous-descended in Mexico, Asian-descended in the Philippines, or European-descended in Madrid.
Four different races entirely, except for purposes of the guilt and victim trap America is now stuck in.
Second: The phrase “of color“ is not at all helpful in thinking about Christ and race.
It implies that the human situation boils down to white people versus everyone else. It sets up an endless cycle of resentment and blame. And it is untrue both theologically and empirically.
Theologically, as we all know, mankind starts with all of us as sinners in one basket, then sorts into the saved and the unsaved. Racial categories, hence racism itself, are nowhere in the Bible. The Fall and the Gospel are both colorblind. End of analysis.
Empirically, looking at income data for the USA, you can find people-groups from China, India, Korea, Nigeria, with higher average earnings than someone like you or me from Europe.
Or look at the bell curves for IQ, and we find Asians (supposedly “of color”) walking all over us dimwitted Caucasians. Harvard is being sued for trying to keep brainy Chinese applicants from swamping their entire student body. So much for white supremacy.
Closer to home, take 10 black stars from the Broncos, 10 black stars from the Nuggets, and compare their standard of living and life-advantages for their kids and wives, against 10 lower middle class Euro-American families from old Englewood and 10 more from Commerce City. So much for white privilege.
That’s not the whole story, of course. A black single mother of five, on welfare in gang-infested Five Points, compared with a BMW-driving two-income white family in Cherry Hills, illustrates the opposite (and more common) disparity.
It’s complicated—but that’s the whole point I hope we keep in mind. Simplistic “of color” categories don’t come close to describing America’s reality. And in practice they only make our national sickness of soul worse instead of better.
America is far from perfect, but we’re in no way a racist country. We do need right now what Lincoln called “a new birth of freedom,” freedom in the love of God and neighbor and in the truth of Jesus Christ.
Working together on that basis, elders, pastors, staff, and members, we can make our little Bible church part of the solution—rather than part of the problem or just another sheltered suburban bystander.
Faithfully, in Christian fellowship - DS