I was raised in a very conservative Christian church. I remember at one point in the early 1980s my Dad saying he embraced the term Fundamentalist. The term has changed a lot since then and he has since left it behind, but I think it fit.
But even though the term “Fundamentalist” may have fit the church of my youth, I don’t believe the word “racist” could ever be applied to him, his ministry, or the churches I worshiped in then or now.
The vision of the church now and of the future of the church that was presented to me has always multi-ethnic.
My Dad loved the multi-ethnic, multi-racial church community that formed as he pastored a small, wealthy, bedroom community church. An African-American family joined the church and became part of the leadership in the vastly white neighborhood. A Japanese family joined. An African family joined. A Hispanic family joined. A Jewish family joined. Together they represented the biblical image of the people of God that had been presented to me by the Scriptures and my church community.
I was told of Gen. 12:1-3, where Abraham was promised a family that would be a blessing to all nations, not just the Jewish people.
I was told of David’s “mighty men” who were drawn from so many of the nations around Israel (2 Sam. 23).
I was told of the Great Commission, where we are sent by Jesus himself to make disciples of “all nations” (Matt. 28:18-20).
I was told of Pentecost, where the apostle Peter preached to a crowd of numerous ethnicities and the early Christians miraculously spoke the languages of these different people groups (Acts 2).
I was told of Stephen and other non-Jewish Christians becoming the first “deacons”because the non-Jewish widows hadn’t been treated as well as the Jewish widows, thereby heading off a potential racial/ethnic division in the early church (Actds 6:1-6).
I was told of how Peter stopped eating meals with non-Jews when he felt pressure from a group from Jerusalem to only eat with Jewish Christians. And I was told how Paul confronted him and put a stop that racist activity (Gal. 2:11-13).
I was told how the Galatians were requiring non-Jews to undergo circumcision in order to become Jews. And I was told how Paul put a stop to that racist activity, suggesting that it’s OK for each of us to maintain our ethnic identities while being a part of the united people of God.
I was told of the crowd that gathers in heaven around the throne of God, a crowd comprised of every nation, tribe, tongue, and people group (Rev. 7:9).
Because of this vast biblical imagination of a multi-ethnic, multi-racial people of God, I expected to be friends with people regardless of their racial/ethnic background. And guess what? I was. I was often a racial minority as a white boy among my friend groups throughout junior high and high school. But who was keeping track? They were my friends.
When I worked for a magazine in Illinois during a gap semester from college, I brought a date over to the apartment I shared with my friend Dennis. Afterward, she said, “You never told me Dennis is black.” It had never occurred to me to do so. Dennis is Dennis. He is my friend. He isn’t my “black friend.”
When I pastored a small Presbyterian church in a small, very white community in Oregon, the only African-American man in our congregation became an elder. There was no tokenism about it. He was loved by the church which nominated and elected him to serve as one of its leaders.
When I went to a pastors’ retreat with about 80 other Oregon pastors, a number of them were grieved that they had no minorities on their church staffs. Black Lives Matters was still years away. It was their own self-evaluation that caused them to say, “We don’t like this about ourselves. We need to change.” I prayed along with them for that change to come, forgetting that my youth pastor, Faith, is African-American. As our youth pastor, Faith brought all of who she is as one of four black kids adopted by white parents who raised them to be as part of black culture as they wanted to be (and they all embraced it).
I have had bad experiences with people of all ethnicities and racial groups, but I never generalized negativity against any of those groups. Firstly, I had way more positive experiences with other people from those groups that generalizing the negative experiences never made sense. Also, I had this Genesis-to-Revelation biblical story of God creating all racial and ethnic groups and bringing them together in heaven. Why would I not live “on earth as it is in heaven”?
I love that I’ve had the privilege of baptizing people from numerous racial/ethnic groups, incorporating them into the one people of God. Never was the color of the skin that any were born with talked about. The only thing that we talked of and celebrated was new birth into the family of God. Baptism asserts that we have the same Father and are brothers and sisters, bringing all of the blessings of our diversity into our massive loving family. Paul put it this way:
So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus (Gal. 3:26-28).
In Eph. 2:11-16, Paul shoots down racial/ethnic division within the people of God, the church. He acknowledges that there had been a “wall of hostility” dividing people into insiders and outsiders. But he says Jesus blasted that wall all to pieces. It’s gone. Jesus wanted it gone and woe to anyone who would rebuild it. Paul continues on the same theme through all of chapter three of Ephesians, but I’ll only quote the beginning of his argument here. (You can read the rest in your own Bible.)
Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called “uncircumcised” by those who call themselves “the circumcision” (which is done in the body by human hands) — remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.
For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility.
So, are white evangelical Christians racist? They shouldn’t be. If they were raised as I was raised — with a high view of the Bible, a strong vision of heaven, and the Great Commission calling us to make fellow brothers and sisters of every race and nation — then I don’t fathom how they could be. If they are, it didn’t come from their biblical faith. It couldn’t. It only could have come from an outside infection perverting their faith.
There is simply no room for racism among those who value the Bible as the very Word of God, because it has no room for racism.
Even the nations that had mistreated and beaten up Israel left and right are included among the people of God in one of the most shocking psalms, sitting right in the very middle of the Bible. Here’s my rendering of Ps. 87 from my book Everyday Psalms. I’ll end this post with it.
God built his city on holy Zion,
His favorite place on earth.
No other house is quite like his home.
Wondrous things,
Shocking things,
Beautiful things
Are said of you, city of God.
(Pause. Prepare yourself.)
“I will write down these names
Among those who know me:
Monstrous Egypt and Babylon.
Not only those,
But Philistia, Tyre, and Ethiopia.
I’ll say of them,
‘You were born in Zion.'”
It’s stunning but true,
But this too will be said of Zion:
“Women and men of every kind
Were all born in her.
For it’s the Great One who sets the rules.”
Yes, Yahweh himself will write their names
In the book of citizenship:
“Even that guy was born in Zion.”
(Pause. Let that sink in.)
There will be dancing and singing.
“My life is a fountain,
Springing from you.”