If You Are Or Love An American Evangelical Christian, This One's For You.
If you remember this stallion from the 1990s, I dare you to visit his current website.
First, if you're not entirely sure what is meant by "evangelical," take a minute to read this thorough, succinct definition.
If you consider yourself an evangelical, particularly a conservative evangelical: HEY-O! Thanks for continuing to read despite my occasional irreverence and swearing. Carman thanks you, also.
If you used to consider yourself an evangelical but now consider yourself Some Other Sort of Christian: HI! ME TOO!
If you fit into neither of those camps, odds are you know (and maybe love) at least one evangelical person. What comes next might get a little churchy, but hang in there.
Evangelical Christians Often Feel Nervous About “Social Justice”…
So. Many white people are defensive or skeptical about "institutional racism." But—for a mélange of reasons—white conservative evangelical Americans are especially skittish around the notions of structural racism and social justice, nervous that it’s part of “the liberal agenda.” Nervous that terms like systems and power are leftist and worldly. Nervous that engaging in these conversations and movements is a slippery slope to becoming a godless hippie. I understand this nervousness, because it pervaded my childhood.
As a result, I've had difficulty explaining my adult beliefs about social justice to my evangelical friends and family. It feels like we focus our mental energy at wildly disparate scales: "systems" and "oppression" on my side, "the heart" and "sin" on theirs. And this has driven me crazy, because I see a clear biblical mandate for work toward social justice, and evangelical people do not play with biblical mandates. If evangelicals attacked institutional racism with the same fervor that they do the other Big Evangelical Issues...well, social justice would have a lot more extremely capable boots on the ground. (Also, I don't think that 81% of them would have voted for President Trump, but that is more than we have time for today.)
…But It’s Right In Their Wheelhouse.
This deep longing for more evangelicals to join la lucha is often at the back of my mind as I read and think about justice.
Case in point:
In Between the World and Me, the brilliant Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about white adherents to the American Dream: “In the Dream they are Buck Rogers, Prince Aragorn, an entire race of Skywalkers. To awaken them is to reveal that they are an empire of humans... It is to stain their nobility, to make them vulnerable, fallible, breakable humans” (143).
That is: In order to bring about racial justice, white Americans would have to admit that we are individually and collectively flawed (not perfect) and human (not heroic). Coates riffs often on this idea, always fatalistically. Who, he seems to say, would willingly make the leap from believing themselves perfect to understanding themselves as fallible?
OOH OOH OOH PICK ME! PICK ME!!!
Y’all. If any group in this country is equipped with the language and traditions necessary to identify, name, and repent of fallibility—even, or perhaps especially, where it formerly claimed perfection—it is white evangelical Christians.
Because: white evangelical churches are serious about fallibility. Doggedly and deliberately conscious of humans' "fallenness." Always willing to confess and repent of selfishness in individual people's motivations, in culture, in the world at large.
But Between the World and Me isn’t sold in most evangelical church bookstores, and there’s still the skittish-about-lefty-language problem. What we need is a well-respected heavy hitter to lend evangelical credence to the notion of structural racism.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you John Piper. John Piper. JOHN. TO. THE. PIPER.
You May or May Not Want to Read His Column.
Quick intro: John Piper is an extremely respected thought-leader among American evangelicals who share his theology and dedication to serious biblical study. In this piece, Piper offers a Bible-based, theologically conservative case for the existence of structural racism. I respectfully disagree with many elements of Piper’s general theology and am uncomfortable about aspects of this particular piece (I wish, for instance, that he’d also address structural sexism or heterosexism, and that he’d offer more robust practical suggestions). But it’s a start, and strangely enough, the very evangelicals most likely to vocally dismiss the existence of institutional racism are also extremely likely to trust John Piper’s perspective.
So.
If you’re a conservative or moderate Christian leery about using liberal-sounding phrases like “structural racism,” please read Dr. Piper’s thoughts about it.
Dance for us, Amy. You have my heart and always will. Source
If you find yourself struggling through conversations with Bible-literate Christians who suggest that yes-racism-is-a-problem-but-all-this-talk-of-systems-is-dangerous-and-unfaithful, maybe you want to just print a few copies of this column, keep them in your pocket, and distribute them like candy.
If you are post-evangelical and triggered by language like “horrific human insurrection” (!) and “this present darkness” (!!) and “the glory and ignominy of man” (!!!), maybe just skim the piece, and then drink a comforting bottle of wine. Also, here's Amy to soothe your frazzled nerves.
If you have zero or scant experience with American neo-reformed evangelical sin-language (and are still reading this; thanks!), probably just sit this one out lest your head get spun off.
xo