What Now, White Evangelicals?

I admire my neighbors so much. The morning after the election, as I walked John to school, I saw people going about their business, many as if nothing had happened. They were headed to work, or taking their kids to school. Some smiled and laughed. Others talked in whispered tones about the disastrous events of the day before. Many were silent.

The quiet fortitude and love of people accustomed to oppression stood in marked contrast to the fear and selfishness that propelled white evangelicals toward their deathly embrace of a new king to rule over them. While my neighbors appeared unbowed by a man threatening violence and oppression against them, white evangelicals appeared to be scared of their own shadows. Behind every corner lurked another possible threat to their privileged position in American life. And so, on Tuesday, they were vigilant.

Let's talk about those white evangelicals.

One of the worst mistakes white evangelical Trump supporters could make is to assume that the blowback they're receiving right now from their fellow Christians is political. It's not; at least, not primarily. For decades, Christians of color have been urging white evangelicals to repent of racism. That repentance--a broad and thorough phenomenon if it is real--is still nowhere in sight. For decades, Christians of color have been demanding that White evangelicals enact systemic reforms in their colleges and churches. Those reforms have usually been too little and too late. For decades, Christians of color have been warning white evangelicals to stop perverting the gospel. The perversion continues apace.

In much of evangelicalism, whiteness has spiritual authority. In these spaces, whiteness connotes theological maturity and biblical literacy. Theology rooted in the specific cultural contexts of American white supremacy is rendered as the default and normative theology, its racial origins and implications made invisible. If a person of color toes the line, preaching the same individualistic theology with its attenuated understanding of sin, society, and redemption, he (and yes, it's usually a he) is eagerly celebrated:

"Look at our model minority."

"Look at our exceptional Negro."

If that person of color seeks to dismantle the social, economic, and spiritual authority of whiteness within the church or institution, all manner of stonewalling and obfuscation ensue:

"This was never the plan. We wanted you on display. We didn't want you to change us."

This broader context of theological error and systemic sin made this week's political events possible. White evangelicals turned out to be Trump's core constituency. Preliminary data indicate that 81% voted for Trump, a higher number than even George W. Bush received. We can debate until we're blue in the face just how much awareness they had of what they were doing. What is clear is that the general environment of racism and ignorance in the communities in which they live and worship prevented them from seeing their fellow Christians as equally valuable human beings. Even more, the humanity of immigrants and Muslims and many others appeared to be little more than collateral damage in white evangelicals' quest to protect themselves.

As my former pastor in Chicago wrote this week, "most ethnic and religious minority American citizens feel that a Trump election is a vote against their identity. It says to them that "America doesn't want you here". It feels like a vote to go back to the way things were (Make America Great Again), when they were treated even worse then they are today."

Some white evangelicals surely knew this and voted for Trump anyway. Others literally did not know. In either case, they have an enormous amount of listening, learning, and reflecting to do.

But what of the nearly 1 in 5 white evangelicals who opposed Trump? We have our own problems:

One of the worst mistakes white evangelical Trump opponents could make is to use this occasion to declare our divorce with evangelicalism. I've already seen people I respect take this route. But you know what? People of color don't need us to assert our innocence. When we look at white evangelicalism and say, "I'm not that!" I understand that we might mean it as a statement of solidarity with people of color, but I worry that we are really making this declaration for ourselves. We don't want to be associated with white nationalism. But if we huffily announce that we're not evangelicals, how does that help people of color? Seriously, what good does it do them? They don't need us to loudly signal to the world our virtue and enlightenment. They need us to be missionaries to our communities where white nationalist idolatry has overrun the church.

We, as white evangelicals who claim to oppose racism, are the people best positioned to bring our white evangelical brothers and sisters to repentance. It's not anybody else's job to do it. This is all on us. This is our inheritance. Shouldn't we stay and try to make it right? When we bail out, loudly declare that we're done with evangelicalism, we become yet another set of critics lobbing stones from the outside. What good are we then?

Look, I'll be the first to admit I don't know what this means for me or how exactly we should go about these things. When you fight racism as a white evangelical, you will be accused of being too harsh, of being too patient, of being too wishy-washy, of being too radical. You will be constantly misunderstood. The only certainty is that you won't have a comfortable home within white evangelicalism. But maybe we can stay within its fold anyway? I'm struggling through this.

There's another mistake to which a third group of white evangelicals are vulnerable. These evangelicals have tried to keep their head down and bring peace to warring factions, desperately wanting both pro- and anti-Trump evangelicals to get along for the larger good of the church. The worst mistake these moderates could make is to think that there are two morally equal sides suffering from a temporary political disagreement. When the white evangelical church in its predominant expression is living in open and unrepentant sin, bowing down to the gods of whiteness and nationalism, what does it really mean to be a peacemaker? It must not mean giving equal comfort to the oppressor and the oppressed.

This is an exciting time to be a follower of Jesus. More than ever before, I feel assured that the great work of God is proceeding far from the centers of white nationalist Christianity. As God has introduced himself to us as a defender of the needy and a warrior on behalf of the oppressed, let that also be our calling card.

A Final Appeal

Tomorrow we face perhaps the most consequential presidential election since 1864. Two great questions were at stake in that contest over 150 years ago:

Would the republic survive?

Who would be included in it?

Echoes of those questions face us today. Voting for Trump—for authoritarian White nationalism—aligns us with the most destructive political tradition in American history.

Though I’ve always been interested in politics, I’ve never before spoken out about an election as I have this year. But never has someone so completely unfit in every possible way been this close to the presidency. His comprehensive ignorance and foolishness are disqualifying by themselves. Combine that with his cruelty and his publicly declared plans to oppress people, and we have a dangerous brew. His oppressive plans are not abstractions to me. I can't assume it's all talk. I know the people he has maligned. They’re friends and neighbors.

Our community is full of good people. It is not the hellhole of Donald Trump's racist imagination.

I am shocked and grieved that so many American Christians are willing to follow the oppressor because he might be on their team and appoint supreme court justices to their liking. This dream is so consuming that Christians are willing to trample on their neighbors in their rush to see it brought to reality.  

A vote for Donald Trump is a vote for new kinds of oppression, with no realistic prospect of reducing its existing forms. Tomorrow, please care for others and protect your integrity by voting for anyone but him, or abstaining.

The Radicalism that Enables Trump

Human beings are complicated creatures. Many Trump voters are probably more upstanding in their personal character than I am. Yet, as a collective political force, Trumpism represents the barbarian horde at the gate. If they break through, it's not clear our civic institutions can withstand the damage.

The Course of Empire -- Destruction. Thomas Cole. 1836

Trump is the warlord leading this frenzy, but he did not start it.

A growing sense of fragmentation in our society and declining trust in our institutions are broad-based, bipartisan, and long-term phenomena, as Daniel Rogers has shown in his book, Age of Fracture.

But the radical conservative movement (a contradictory phrase) has deliberately catalyzed this disintegration. Stoking fear and paranoia, an alternative media apparatus has joined with radicals in congress to tell Americans that science is a hoax, that academia is a secular cesspool, that mainstream media is too biased to have any use, and that the Democratic Party is trying to destroy the country. Now, in the internecine conflict of the Republican Party, we see the radicals eating their own. There is no natural end point to this orgy of destruction.

Last night on Twitter, Matthew Yglesias wrote, "My guess is that in a Trump administration angry mobs will beat and murder Jews and people of color with impunity."

If you're familiar with Yglesias, you know that he is frequently snarky and ironic. So in this case, I assumed he was joking. He wasn't.

If you're not tuned in to political twitter, you might not be aware of what I'm about to tell you. Jewish journalists and journalists of color are being bombarded daily with genocidal racism from Trump supporters. I won't repeat the depravity here. But these journalists have never experienced anything like this before. It's unprecedented. And Trump's campaign knows full well exactly what is happening. Not only have they declined to discourage it, Trump and his son have retweeted some of these White supremacists.

If you were confronted by thousands of people online saying they want you to die, and the Republican nominee encouraged their behavior, how would you feel about the prospect of him becoming president?

It's easy enough to see how this sense of impunity would migrate from the online world to the real one. As President, Trump would have enormous power, the levers of federal law enforcement at his hands. We know that he is vindictive and cruel, a man ruled by his passions. This is an incredibly dangerous combination. At a time when there is broad understanding that police reform is needed, Trump has called for new oppression, more "tough" policing, and nationwide stop-and-frisk. Trump's language and demeanor is perfectly calibrated to create a culture of impunity, not only for police but for ordinary White citizens. And with his plans to oppress people of color publicly declared, Trump has won the support of law enforcement. So it's not just what Trump would do. It's about the permission structure he would create for thousands of police officers who chafe against current restraints.

A Trump presidency is not an abstraction. It would mean new kinds of oppression, and no prospect of mitigating its existing forms. It would mean more death. But Trump supporters can't see this because their radicalism has produced an alternate reality.

On the far right, the following claims are routinely thought to be true:

Democrats are trying to destroy the country.

Democrats who support a moderate kind of capitalism tempered by a social safety net are actually hard leftists or communists.

Barack Obama has purposely stirred up racial tensions.

Whites face more discrimination than people of color.

Voter fraud is a big problem.

There's a Christian twist on this radicalism too. It's a world where "liberal" is an antonym of "Christian" and you can be "pro-life" without actually supporting policies that would reduce abortions.

This post-truth, post-Christian politics enables Trump. If the other side is trying to destroy the country, the logic goes, then we are justified in burning down their institutions in order to save the country. What about the harm to poor people and racial and religious minorities? For some Trump supporters it's just collateral damage. For others, hurting people of color is precisely the point.

I have not given up hope that there are still people on the fence, and even Trump supporters, who will yet do the right thing and withdraw their support. For those who stay with him, have the courage of your convictions as the White supremacists do! Instead of voting for Trump while saying you take racism and sexism seriously, just admit that you aren't prioritizing these concerns.

I know that abortion looms large for many Christians. But if that's the single issue on which you're voting, go ahead and make that honest case. I still haven't heard anyone make this argument.

If people think that the dim prospect of reducing abortions under a President Trump is more important than all other forms of injustice put together--his racism, his misogyny, his gross ignorance, his intention to commit war crimes, his plans to oppress immigrants and Muslims and promote tougher policing--they should say so. What they must not do is wave all this away and create a fantasy world in which Trump didn't run a racist campaign and revel in his own ignorance and cruelty. If White evangelicals think we should elect a biblical fool to the presidency, they should say so, and they should explain why. What we're getting instead is a Maoist approach to truth, where what is true is whatever lie the party has declared for the day. Trump's campaign isn't racist like there was no famine in the Chinese countryside in 1959.

The seriousness of pro-life voters can be measured by the range of solutions we are willing to support. If we can tolerate an ignorant demagogue to advance our anti-abortion politics but cannot tolerate wealth redistribution and health care policies that would reduce the demand for abortions, our politics is not as pro-life as we imagine. Even if you're a single-issue abortion voter, I still think Trump is the wrong choice.

Are you willing to look people of color in the eye and tell them you don't care about them? Because that's what it feels like if you vote for Trump. Are you willing to tell them that they're wrong to be concerned, that you know more about their lives than they do?

There is still time to do the right thing.

(My standard disclaimer: I'm not urging people to vote for Clinton. I'm simply urging Christians not to vote for Trump, and to use our vote, or abstention, to put the interests of others ahead of ourselves).

Christians and Politics: The Abstention Option

Amid the arguments swirling around us in the year of Trump, what if Christians simply abstained from politics? What if we stopped arguing, stopped criticizing, stopped sharing social media memes? What if we simply didn't vote? What if we abstained from politics?

Sound appealing?

I'd like to suggest that perhaps there is a right way and a wrong way to go about this.

First, a right way.

I grew up with a deep familiarity and appreciation for a Christian tradition that shunned the American political process entirely. On my mother’s side we come from Amish roots. My great-great-grandfather left the Amish church and started the conservative Mennonite church in which my mom grew up. I have fond memories of the Bible school I attended there each summer as a kid. Cape dresses, head coverings, and a capella singing were the order of the day. We boys could wear jeans to Bible school, but never shorts. And during the breaks in the lessons, we’d all go out to the back of the church and play freeze tag in the dimming light of evening. It was delightful.

When at Grandma and Grandpa’s house, someone might come to the door and suddenly Grandma would be speaking in a language I didn’t understand (it was Pennsylvania Dutch). It is impossible for me to convey the dignity and reserve with which my grandparents carried themselves, especially because they also seemed to be so joyful. Grandpa liked to laugh. Their house was a place of peace. If we were there on a Sunday, we might ask to turn on the computer, but we couldn’t expect that request to be granted. We could expect, instead, good conversation, good food, and the inevitable nap on the couch.

I now think the peace that Grandma and Grandpa radiated was a direct consequence of their theological convictions. For Grandma and Grandpa, running for political office, serving in the military or police force, voting, or employing violence of any kind was just out of the question. They followed someone who said “my kingdom is not of this world,” and “he who lives by the sword will die by the sword.” Amid the rough-and-tumble of politics and power grabs, Grandma and Grandpa were quiet witnesses to a different path: a way of being in the world that did not reach for power, and did not fear those who possessed it, for they too would fade like the grass, while the word of the Lord would endure forever.

I can’t say Grandma and Grandpa were wrong.

Suffice it to say, were they alive today they would not be on Facebook talking about how bad Donald Trump is. But their silence might obscure how radically subversive their posture actually was. In their rejection of state power they resisted the heretical conflation of God and country that has dogged the church since Constantine. Lest you think this is a minor point, try to imagine how the Nazi state would have made war if its churches had been incubators of Christian conscientious objectors instead of German patriots. And so, under different circumstances, Grandma and Grandpa’s abstention from the institutions of the state would have been deeply political.

Maybe we need more of that kind of subversiveness. As millions of Americans thrill to the cry of Make America Great Again, I fear that our churches have created nearly as many patriots as Christians.

One might assume that Grandma and Grandpa were irresponsible for refraining from the political process. Think of all the good Christians could do by exercising their right to vote. Isn't it wrong to discard that influence? Yet look at where we are. Three-quarters of White evangelicals are getting ready to vote for Trump. This is a self-inflicted mockery of Christian faith more thorough than any skeptic or critic ever imagined. The theory was that Christians would influence politics. The reality looks more like being captured by it. Grandma and Grandpa's abstention looks appealing in comparison.

A theologically-rooted rejection of politics involves the humble recognition that power corrupts the church and prevents it from embodying Jesus Christ to the world. A power-seeking church cannot possibly represent the God-man whose earthly life was marked by poverty, sorrow, and homelessness. Instead of standing in solidarity with the poor and needy, such a church becomes obsessed with maintaining its prerogatives. It becomes a client of the state.

In a way, the abstention option is about self-preservation. But this is not the self-preservation of defensive and power-seeking Christians desperately searching for a president to take their side. This is self-preservation with a specific purpose in mind: when the state seeks to mobilize its citizens toward oppression, a mass Christian collective will stand uncowed by the state's power and unmoved by its claims. The church creates spaces where the normal methods of power become inoperative. The weak are protected, the poor are empowered, and the rich humble themselves--or else. In these spaces, repentance and humility count for infinitely more than money, power, education, or class. In these spaces, the state is frustrated in its aims.

Now, let's talk about a wrong way to go about it.

A lot of people don't like politics. They find it confusing or irrelevant. Or the process seems dirty and corrupt. Others believe what's happening at the political level simply isn't very consequential. These attitudes make abstention easy, but not necessarily Christian. Principled, theologically-grounded abstention reckons with the reality that politicians are making life and death decisions that affect our lives. It does not pretend that politics is unimportant. It recognizes that withdrawing from politics does not bestow innocence or absolve responsibility. In the face of these realities, it still chooses to abstain.

But too often, Christians withdraw from politics not because of a well-considered theological ethic, but because of a narrow understanding of Christian responsibilities. Certain strains of white evangelicalism have a long tradition of being reluctant to think about systemic sin and systemic solutions. They hold up individual conversion as a cure-all. They express concern for the individual but too often discount the social forces shaping the individual. Faith becomes personal rather than communal, and piety becomes the measure of obedience. The biblical demands of social justice recede to the background and matters of basic Christian duty are coded as merely political.

As Dr. King said of white Christians during the civil rights movement:

In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

We must be careful not to fall into this trap. As we grapple with the disgraceful and dangerous candidacy of a racist strongman, assuming a posture of irenic detachment is not necessarily a Christian response. Is our position embedded in a broader ethic of concern for others? Or is it a convenient screen for complacency? Is it counterfeit abstention? If we are going to be silent in this dangerous moment, it cannot be because of our own desire to maintain an illusory sense of purity. It cannot be because we think the gospel doesn’t have anything to say about oppression.

We can talk about God’s sovereignty. We can declare that the prospect of a Trump presidency leaves us unimpressed and unafraid. We can reaffirm Christian cliches about how Jesus will still be doing his work regardless of who wins a presidential election. That's all fine. But we cannot be indifferent to the rise of a man who promises to oppress our brothers and sisters made in God’s image.

When those of us who are unlikely to be targets of the demagogue adopt postures of calm neutrality, it doesn't necessarily look like trusting God. It may look more like a lack of love for our neighbors.

As this year began, I was prepared to sit back and observe this election in a spirit of nonpartisan equanimity. See here, for example. But we haven't seen such a radically destructive and anti-christian candidacy before. Donald Trump is unprecedented. He is a threat to our neighbors. He is a threat to the world.

So I choose to engage.

I can't escape the idea that the same Bible that taught Grandma and Grandpa to abstain from politics teaches me to jump in: “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy.” This kind of righteous action has always been political. It always will be. When the Hebrew prophets brought the word of God to the people, they spoke of politics: “Woe to those who make unjust laws, to those who issue oppressive decrees, to deprive the poor of their rights and withhold justice from the oppressed of my people, making widows their prey and robbing the fatherless.”

Oppression is perpetrated through politics. Justice--at least the imperfect version of it we can reach for in this disordered world--is enacted in part through politics. And this, too, is clear: Donald Trump seeks power so that he may oppress.

In the face of this unusually evil candidacy, I want to either have the kind of radicalism my grandparents had, or stand up and forthrightly join the political process to defeat Trump, but I want to avoid the complacency and ambivalence of the moderate middle.

Those of us who speak out cannot do so simply because we like politics and enjoy jumping into the partisan fray. It cannot be because we have been captured by the partisan process and are under the illusion that Hillary Clinton represents Christian ethics. It cannot be because we're in the habit of criticizing Republican candidates. Many of us have cried wolf too many times in past elections, and now that we really do face a historically dangerous candidacy, our words ring hollow because of past hyperbole. Mitt Romney, I'm sorry for every bad thing I ever said about you!

Whatever we do, it must not be for our own interests. Beneath the apparent differences of engaging or disengaging from the political process lies the deeper question of whether our posture is self-focused or other-focused. Perhaps the most pernicious way to be captured by the political process is to vote for our own interests. Of course, this is what is expected of us in a democracy. People voting for their interests is precisely how this system is supposed to work. But why should Christians play by these rules? Why would we want to?

Wayne Grudem is Wrong: Don't Vote for Trump

Polls show about 4 out of 5 White evangelicals are preparing to vote for Donald Trump. A recent article by the evangelical theologian Wayne Grudem shows us why. It's long, but read it for yourself. Read it and weep.

One hardly knows where to start with this article, but three overarching characteristics stand out.

1) It is intellectually dishonest.

"His many years of business conduct show that he is not racist or anti-(legal) immigrant or anti-Semitic or misogynistic..."

Grudem presents Trump as a flawed but basically normal nominee. I honestly don't have the gumption to argue about this. I don't know if the first person Grudem deceived was himself, or if he is engaging in calculated deceit. In either case, anyone open to the idea that Grudem might be wrong can simply do a 5-minute google search and see that he is. So let me outsource this. On racism, check out Nicholas Kristoff's recent column. And for a blow by blow account of Trump's disgraceful and unprecedented behavior as he seeks the presidency, follow James Fallows' amazing "time capsule" series. He's at #65 and counting. Read them all. Seriously.

Donald Trump is a demagogue with authoritarian instincts. He is a man governed by appetites, not thoughts. He does not give considered judgments; he excretes passions. To say this is not to claim any special insight into his character. It's only to say that I'm a sentient being with an interest in the news. There are two groups of people who don't know that Donald Trump is unfit for the presidency. The first are ordinary people with better things to do than pay attention to politics. As they begin to tune in to the election this fall, they can be persuaded. The second are people who do pay attention to politics and choose not to know the truth. That's Grudem. And I'm not under the illusion there's anything that could be said to change his mind. But perhaps we can persuade those who are still persuadable.

People have difficulty, I think, fully grasping how dangerous Donald Trump is. The logic of the demagogue, and what this would mean for a Trump presidency, is still not well-understood. Demagogues stoke fear and anger against marginal groups of people in order to gain power and popularity. The process continues without end, because it is the lifeblood of the demagogue’s power. Without a heightened sense of threat, the demagogue is just a tick without a host. And so the threat must remain. The only thing that’s certain about a Trump presidency is that he will scapegoat and persecute whole groups of people. The only question is how far he’ll go. This is the logic of the authoritarian demagogue.

Trump makes his appearance on stage at the Republican Convention, July 18, 2016.

Ordinarily, ideology is very important in a presidential election. You vote for the candidate you agree with on the issues. But ordinarily, both candidates have some measure of competence, display normal amounts of human decency, and appear capable of feelings such as shame and guilt. Ordinarily, both candidates believe in democracy and human rights. There's little evidence Trump possesses any of these qualities or beliefs. This has never happened before. In these circumstances, ideology recedes and our common humanity moves to the fore.

We’ve never seen such a radically anti-Christian figure come this close to the pinnacle of power in the United States. His most profound theological statement was when he declared he had never had reason to ask God for forgiveness. Trump is the negation of Christianity personified. He is a man who "breathes out violence," as Psalm 27 so evocatively puts it. His recklessness and contempt for human life is too obvious to take his "pro-life" claims seriously.

I would like to see an intellectually honest defense of Donald Trump from an evangelical Christian. I imagine it would go something like this: "I'm voting for the dangerous racist because he might appoint justices who might reduce abortions." Or, "I'm risking war and global turmoil in hopes that Trump will make the abortion rate, which has trended down during Obama's presidency, go down faster." As much as I would disagree with that choice, it has a coherent internal logic and accords with reality. It's a plausible scenario. And if that's where you're at, I haven't thought of a good argument to convince you otherwise. But I've yet to hear anyone make that argument. And I think that's telling. Grudem was either unwilling or unable to make an honest defense of voting for Trump. Why?

Another intellectually honest case for Trump would be something like: "I'm voting for the incompetent demagogue because at least he'll be on our side." That brings us to point number two.

2) It is selfish.

"a Trump-appointed Supreme Court, together with dozens of lower court judges appointed by him, would probably result in significant advances in many of the policy areas important to Christians. It would also open the door to huge expansion of influence for the many Christian lobbying groups..."

Superficially, Grudem frames his case as a disinterested defense of what is best for the country. He quotes the scripture about seeking the welfare of the city in which you are in exile. In the same way, he says, we should seek the welfare of the United States. Grudem poses this question to guide our decision: "Which vote is most likely to bring the best results for the nation?"

At a time when many Christians are invested in unchristian attachments to patriotism and American exceptionalism, this is a dangerous question to serve as our guide. It invites Christians to vote through the lens of nationalist hierarchy (my nation first) rather than cultivating equal concern for all human life.

But leave that aside for now. Even on his own terms, Grudem fails dramatically. As the article goes on it becomes increasingly clear that for Grudem, the biggest reason to vote for Trump is that he will be on team White evangelical. He openly speculates that a Trump administration will lead to "huge expansion of influence for the many Christian lobbying groups." Does that sit well with you? Christians as just another interest group jockeying for position?

After his introduction explaining that a) Christians should vote, and b) Christians should vote for Trump, the meat of the article explores "the results we could expect from a Clinton presidency with what we could expect from a Trump presidency." Well over one-third of the ensuing analysis is devoted to the protection of so-called religious liberty for White evangelicals.

Grudem is deeply concerned about protecting the traditional prerogatives of a certain kind of conservative White Christianity. He does not acknowledge that this might have trade-offs, that the same judges likely to support restrictions on abortion and special protections for evangelicalism are also likely to harm women and workers and erode the rights of LGBT people, African Americans, and immigrants. As long as a policy seems good for his own community, Grudem shows no apparent interest in its consequences for others.

Grudem's Christianity appears insular, embattled, defensive. Preoccupied with lost power and declining cultural authority, it desperately reaches for an anti-Christian strong man to restore its fortunes. This is a Christianity so self-absorbed that its posture toward the broader polity is described by words such as take and impose, rather than give and sacrifice.

Grudem's article has a short section on "minorities." Apparently all "minorities" are indistinguishable and have the same concerns. You have to read it to believe it. Almost all of this section either paraphrases or quotes directly Donald Trump's convention speech. Because if there's one thing we know, it's that we can take Donald Trump at his word. For the varied problems facing over one-third of the nation's population, Grudem has a grand total of two original sentences:

Two of the deepest causes of poverty among minority groups and racial tensions in our country are failing public schools in our inner cities and lack of available jobs...[quotes Trump]...By contrast, Clinton will bow to the teachers’ unions and oppose school choice at every turn, and she will continue to strangle businesses with high taxes and regulations, preventing job growth.

It's not a coincidence that these sentences read like every boilerplate Republican speech you've ever heard. That brings us to point number three.

3) It bows the knee to a political party. 

"this election is not just about Hillary Clinton. It is about defeating the far left liberal agenda that any Democratic nominee would champion..."

It's hard to convey here how thoroughly Grudem outsources any sense of Christian conviction toward the end of the article. He runs through a litany of issues, offering a veritable cliffs notes version of the Republican Party platform. Grudem is a theologian. But here he trades in his theology card so that he can adopt the posture of a partisan hack. Behold! A miraculous congruence between the will of God and the GOP! 

Why doesn't Grudem's cliffs notes list of policy areas mention issues of importance to other groups of people? What about voting rights, criminal justice reform, the war on drugs, Native land rights, deportations of families, police brutality, and so on? Is it because Christian theology has nothing to say to those who are affected by these issues? Or is it because the GOP has so little to say?

This almost defies belief, but Grudem notes that his largest disagreement with Trump is on trade policy. He found a way to excuse Trump's racism, misogyny, and violence, but he couldn't get past Trump's heresy on trade. Hatred can be explained away, but God forbid that he should defy GOP orthodoxy on trade policy.

This is not bold and prophetic Christianity. This is a co-opted Christ ready to be put into service for a political party.

Conclusion

As 4 of 5 White evangelicals prepare to vote for Trump, Grudem's article almost perfectly captures why they are going to do so. It is dishonest, selfish, and partisan while claiming to be honest, selfless, and Christian. It is an exercise in selling one's soul and calling it conviction.

I probably shouldn't write all this without going on the record myself. I can't write about co-opted Christianity without being at least dimly aware of how my own faith is bound by time and place, shaken by fear, corrupted by desire for approval. My own faith constantly stumbles toward something more comfortable, more palatable, more understandable to other people, than the kind of life Jesus invites us to discover. So is this a message from one co-opted Christian to another?

For the record, because I am a Christian I cannot support many of Hillary Clinton's positions, especially those pertaining to abortion, war, and the death penalty. She is far too ready to take life, and far too complacent about protecting it. Nor can I support her brand of nationalism and her insufficient concern for the poorest and most vulnerable people.

Don't vote for Hillary Clinton if such a vote violates your conscience. There is ample reason to withhold your vote from her. But in the same spirit, do not vote for the most dangerous and unchristian nominee of our lifetimes, a man who literally makes our fellow citizens and people around the world fear for their lives. People say this is a lesser-of-two evils election. For the Christian voter, that’s the only kind of election there is. If you think you’ve ever participated in another kind, you left your Christianity behind somewhere.

Revisiting the Gospel and White Evangelicalism

I'd like to revisit my last post. In particular, I received some helpful pushback from a current professor at Moody Bible Institute for what he saw as my unfairness toward Dwight L. Moody. He had some good points to make. And, it must be said, he knows much more about Moody than I do. He noted that Moody associated himself with a variety of progressive causes, founded an integrated school in Massachusetts, privately expressed displeasure with segregation, and was supported by some Black southerners. Including all of this in my last post, I think, would have strengthened the argument I was trying to make.

If people read what I wrote about Moody and Edwards and Whitefield and concluded, "Wow, I didn't realize these guys were so monstrous; let's disown them," my post had the opposite of its intended effect. Rather, for White evangelical readers in particular, there is an urgent need to embrace the totality of our history and inheritance. The point is not that Moody was horrible. The takeaway ought to be that I have little reason to assume I'm any less blind than he was. It's probably just blindness about different things.

When we pay attention to what Black Christians were saying in Moody's time and others, we can begin to see that our inheritance is a distinct brand of White Christianity, with its own foibles, idioms, and blind spots. This is less a shocking indictment than an obvious reality of any human community of faith. We are culturally located. We are not the normative group by which other Christians can be measured. There is no fault in having never heard the sordid details I shared in my last post. But we can know the outlines of our own tradition. We can become students of our own community, knowing some of its errors and biases, including, especially, its idolization of Whiteness and American nationalism.

Some Christians seem to be concerned that we might focus on the negative side of past heroes to the exclusion of the good they did. I understand this concern. But the much greater danger is that in ignoring their sins, we will repeat them. When we build up people of the past to mythical status, we encourage a culture of arrogance and unwarranted self-satisfaction. Scripture doesn't do this. The so-called heroes of the faith in the biblical narrative are usually presented as scoundrels and cowards, the better to emphasize the grace of God.

Ida B. Wells, 1862-1931

Let's return to Moody. How are we to interpret his disapproval of segregation? Does that make his segregated meetings better? Or, indeed, does it make them worse? That Moody did what he did in service of the Gospel, as he understood it, is precisely the point. His belief that individual conversion would ultimately undermine segregation was not just naive; it was a view his privileged position made easy, and a luxury that many Black Christians facing questions of life and death felt they couldn't afford. Moody's understanding of the gospel was narrow, culturally specific, and White. In refusing to speak and act publicly against the anti-Christian society of the American South and the greatest social evil of his time, Moody compromised the Gospel.

Consider the contrasting fortunes of Moody and Ida B. Wells. Moody toured the South to widespread acclaim, preaching to many thousands of White southerners. Just a few years later, Wells had to flee the South for her life because she had spoken out against lynching. Moody's public silence won him praise, but what did it cost him? What was the cost to the integrity of the Gospel and the church? What are we to make of a message that was more readily accepted by the oppressors than by the oppressed? How can such a message be anything other than a perversion of the teachings of Christ?

While Moody's Gospel allowed White southerners to believe they could love Christ while remaining indifferent to their brother, Wells did the much harder work of clinging to faith while grappling with the world as it actually was. "The heart almost loses faith in Christianity," she wrote, "when one thinks of...the countless massacres of defenseless Negroes...O God, when will these massacres stop?"

Was this a cry of despair? Perhaps, yes. It was also a cry of faith in which the key word was "almost." We would do well to come closer to Ida B. Wells, to meditate on evil committed in the name of Christ, to question and struggle to the point of "almost." If this means lost certainty and self-assurance, it may also lead to unexpected compensations. Not least, the discovery that "God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble."

Recovering the Gospel from White Evangelicalism

I received my undergraduate degree from Moody Bible Institute. A small evangelical college in Chicago, MBI was founded by the evangelist Dwight L. Moody in the late nineteenth century and became a major player in the fundamentalist movement of the early twentieth century. Though the college no longer enjoys the outsize influence of its earlier years, it remains a well-regarded institution in evangelical Christian circles.

As a kid, I learned about the career of the great Dwight L. Moody, perhaps the most famous evangelist of the late nineteenth century. I suppose any self-respecting evangelical has at least heard of Moody. While at MBI, I learned more about the school's founder. He traveled around the country and across the Atlantic preaching to huge crowds. His commitment to the Gospel and passion for sharing his faith were legendary.

Dwight L. Moody, 1837-1899

But what I didn't learn about Moody is crucial to understanding White evangelicalism in our own time. I didn't learn that as Moody preached across the South in the 1880s there were Black churches boycotting his crusades. Moody held segregated meetings, emphasized reconciliation among Whites after the civil war, and told folksy stories associating African Americans with dirt and poverty to illustrate his sermons. He emphasized his respect for White southern ideals and did not discuss Black aspirations for freedom.

Black clergy protest segregated revival, Galveston, 1886.

One member of the African Methodist Episcopal Church wrote of Moody, "His conduct toward the Negroes during his southern tour has been shameless, and I would not have him preach in a bathroom, let alone a church." As southern Whites lynched African Americans and kept their body parts as souvenirs, Moody ventured South preaching that they could have their Christ and White supremacy too. The  anti-lynching crusader Ida B. Wells said Moody had "encouraged the drawing of the color line in the churches," the very last place it ought to exist. Frederick Douglass agreed. "Of all the forms of negro hate in this world," he declared in disgust, "save me from that one which clothes itself with the name of loving Jesus."

Moody prioritized national unity and racial hierarchy over Christian doctrine, perverting the good news he claimed to preach. Moody could not have been unaware of basic Christian teaching found in the Bible he loved. Christ had declared in no uncertain terms that he would enact eternal judgment on the basis of how his followers treated the most vulnerable and despised people in their society (Matthew 25). And his disciple John had bluntly warned that people who claimed to love God while hating human beings were liars (1 John 4). But Moody refused to apply the Gospel to his own country.

At the very end of his life, after his influence had waned, Moody finally stopped holding segregated revival meetings. But by then the damage had been done. And Moody had been overtaken in popularity by other preachers who were more overt in their commitment to White supremacy.[1]

We can trace a similar theme both forward and backward in time from Moody's position in the late nineteenth century. White evangelicals revere the profound theological reflections of the eighteenth-century minister and theologian Jonathan Edwards. We know much less about the people he enslaved.[2] White evangelicals have drawn inspiration from the astonishing zeal and oratory of the eighteenth-century evangelist George Whitefield. We know little about his lobbying efforts to institute slavery in the colony of Georgia.[3]

Moving forward in time, White evangelicals laud the most famous evangelist of the twentieth century, Billy Graham. If we know anything about his stance on racism, it is likely a triumphant narrative about how he desegregated his crusades (leaving aside the question of why they were segregated to begin with). Despite desegregating his crusades, Graham did not aid the civil rights movement. Worried that the movement threatened national unity and provided an opening for communism, Graham called for a more moderate course. When Martin Luther King wrote to Graham seeking his help in the battle against Jim Crow, Graham did not even respond. The task of brushing King's plea aside was left to one of Graham's lieutenants.[4]

White evangelicals do not generally know these stories. In this forgetting there is more than institutional protection and group bias at work. In the dominant White evangelical imagination, all these stories, if they are recalled at all, do not touch upon the essence of these men or their ministries. As long as these giants of the faith preached repentance and salvation through Christ alone, they can be heroes. This unchristian narrowing of theological vision allows the bonds of Whiteness and nationalism to go unexamined in many evangelical circles.

While White evangelicals venerate Moody and Whitefield and others, they erase from the story Christians who clung more faithfully to the Gospel. During these men's lifetimes fellow Christians were rebuking them for perverting the good news! These Christians believed, alike with Moody, that human beings are sinners in need of God's grace through Jesus Christ. But they also insisted on applying scripture to American society. We don't know the stories of those Christians or respect their theological insights because they were Black.

During my years at Moody, I'm not aware of having been assigned to read any theologian of color. Though my theological training was distinctly White in its cultural orientation and value system, and the campus culture strongly nationalistic, I was taught that what I was learning was simply biblical Christianity. This is perhaps the central conceit of my evangelical heritage: that a faith so bound up in modern categories of race and nationalism is somehow an unmediated expression of "true" Christianity rooted in the early church of 2,000 years ago.

This is the context in which we ought to read polls showing strong White evangelical support for Donald Trump. A new CBS poll has Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump 43% to 37% among all registered voters, while Trump leads among White evangelicals 62% to 17%.

Trump is running the most aggressively anti-Christian campaign of our lifetimes, with execrable displays of racism, contempt for women, and disregard for refugees. He shows no concern for the poor. He directs his venom against the very groups God, according to the Christian scriptures, chooses to identify with. And when it comes to protecting the lives of unborn children, Trump seems even less sincere than the usual degree of insincerity from GOP politicians.

Many White evangelicals are prepared to vote for Trump because they're heirs to a cultural and theological tradition that binds race and nation to faith. Trump may not offer a clean-cut portrait of Christian character, but he is surprisingly forthright in his White nationalism. It is a mistake to assume that Trump's irreligious persona doesn't carry a religious message. To make America great again, to restore America's racial hierarchy--these are religious goals of an idolatrous people.

Many White evangelicals are still under the impression that America is a new chosen nation, like the Israelites of old. They still don't know that the biblical narrative of the Exodus offers America a closer parallel: the blasphemous enslavers, the Egyptians. Many White evangelicals still haven't discovered that scripture is filled with God's constant claims that he identifies with those society despises. They still haven't realized that God's compassion for the oppressed and wrath for the oppressor is not a message of comfort to White, Christian America, but of judgment.

I know many White evangelicals who are too busy experiencing the grace of God in their daily lives to be enthralled by White nationalism. They are building health clinics, adopting children, running summer camps for poor children, raising scholarship funds to send students of color to college, working against gun violence, and living in poor communities as neighbors rather than gentrifiers. I know well all the good evangelicalism can do.

But we've seen, as well, the evil it can do when fused with political power and drained of the good news Jesus declared. In this extraordinary political season, I feel it is important to lay down a marker. The political "Christian right" is likely to follow Trump into the abyss. But many millions of Christians refuse to go there, and we insist that this so-called Christian political mobilization does not speak for us.

We claim that White nationalist Christianity is a perversion of the Gospel, and we invite everyone to receive the message of our savior, who came preaching liberation rather than hatred:

 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

_____________________
[1] My account of Moody relies on Edward J. Blum's excellent book, Reforging the White Republic: Race, Religion, and American Nationalism, 1865-1898 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press). See especially chapter 4. 

[2] See for example Richard A. Bailey, Race and Redemption in Puritan New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011).

[3] Jessica M. Parr, Inventing George Whitefield: Race, Revivalism, and the Making of a Religious Icon (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2015). 

[4] Curtis J. Evans, "White Evangelical Responses to the Civil Rights Movement," The Harvard Theological Review 102 (2009): 245-273.

A Few Things for Christians to Keep in Mind When We Vote

Little-known fact: Jesus would make a horrible president.

Presidential primary season is upon us. Around this time every four years, Christians on both the left and the right engage in a lot of motivated reasoning to explain why their political ideology is the most appropriate expression of Christian values in our American democracy. Perhaps this post isn't so different from all the others, but I'd like to think it is at least a little bit. I have three simple thoughts that it seems to me ought to help inform our vote. You might come up with a different list, but I'm increasingly struck by the extent to which our political system runs on the values of self-interest, nationalism, and incumbent wealth. I emphasize these three factors not for their comprehensiveness, but for the dearth of attention paid to them. Because these issues cut across partisan boundaries and structure the very terms of political debate, they are often overlooked. Too often, we rush into partisan debate without realizing that the mainstream positions of both parties are troubling.

Each party in its own way appeals to the following values that are, at best, irrelevant to the life Jesus invites Christians to discover. 

1) Self-interest. This is the most basic form of political appeal. Candidate A says her policies will benefit you more than those of candidate B. This kind of appeal should not move Christians in the least. It is not enough to start from self-interest and then produce rationalizations explaining that the interests of others mysteriously align with yours.

2) Nationalism. Both parties, the Democrats in their diplomatic way and the Republicans in their more militaristic tone, assure voters that they will do whatever it takes to protect the national interest. But Christianity has nothing to do with nationalism. Imagined solidarities based on the modern nation-state have no bearing on the valuation of human beings in the kingdom of God. Any hint that, say, an Iranian life is less valuable than an American one is heretical to Christians. It is not enough to start from nationalism and then produce rationalizations that what is best for the U.S. happens to be best for the world.

3) Incumbent wealth. Both parties go out of their way to emphasize their determination to protect and promote the interests of those who are already successful. Whether it is the Democrats talking incessantly about the middle class or the Republicans praising job creators, both parties try to avoid talking too much about the social and economic groups about which Christianity is most concerned: the poor and marginalized. It is not enough to start from middle-classness and only then come up with rationalizations for why what's best for the wealthy will somehow be best for the poor.

Some will read this as vulgar emotionalism. Don't I know that democracy, though it thrives on self-interest, is the best form of government we've managed to find in this broken world? Don't I know that the nation-state is a bulwark of protection in dangerous times? Don't I know that middle-class success really is crucial for the alleviation of poverty?

These are complicated issues. But I emphasize what we Christians don't seem to know well enough: that the entire ethic of the Kingdom of God challenges the most taken-for-granted allegiances and structures of the modern world. So when--or, indeed, if--we walk into the voting both, my hope is that we will do so with a substantially more subversive frame of mind than we have thus far imagined.

Christian Hope In A World of Injustice

In Minneapolis, protests continue over the police killing of Jamar Clark, an unarmed Black man police claim scuffled with officers but some witnesses claim was handcuffed when shot.

In Cleveland, citizens await the near-certain exoneration of Officer Timothy Loehmann, the murderer of Tamir Rice. Having upheld the principle that police officers are entitled to different grand jury proceedings than ordinary citizens, prosecutor Timothy McGinty's sympathies are clear.

In Palm Beach Gardens, Florida, the officer who killed Corey Jones after Jones' car broke down on the highway has been fired. His arrest is far from assured.

In Wilmington, Delaware, there are still few answers for why police shot and killed Jeremy McDole, a wheelchair-bound man in clear distress. The video looks damning. It is not known whether a serious investigation is being conducted.

In Chicago, people are on edge as they prepare for today's release of the video of the shooting of seventeen-year old boy Laquan McDonald. Officer Jesse Van Dyke shot him sixteen times. The city paid out a five million dollar settlement as part of its efforts to keep the video under wraps. Now a judge has ordered the city to release the video. In a remarkable "coincidence", Van Dyke will reportedly be charged with first degree murder today.

I'll stop there.

What are we supposed to do with this information? I'm not sure.

I've been thinking about the popular American notion of "the rule of law." We've all heard this. America is a nation of laws, we're told. We're governed not by the whims of people but by the dictates of law. This ideal is important, and it has made a material difference in the lives of millions of Americans. It has given us a standard to which we can appeal. It is also, in a more basic sense, an obvious fiction. From the founding of the country on stolen land and labor to Prosecutor McGinty's depraved behavior, we've operated by the dictates of cold and cruel power.

And it's worse than that. For injustice often comes not through flouting the law, but enforcing it. What are we to do when the law is not designed to do justice?  Prosecutor McGinty is not doing anything illegal. Nor did officer Loehmann when he shot Tamir, our legal system will soon declare. What are Black Americans to do when the law has never, and does not now, contain the protections necessary for full citizenship in a racist society?

One of the oddest characteristics of much American Christianity is that we don't think of our country as a place where oppression occurs in any serious way. We read in the Bible about oppression and injustice but we don't make the obvious connection. This is in part because so many American Christians are nationalists at heart. Nationalism is not a Christian value, but many have made it an integral part of their faith, bolstered by the false and offensive myth that this country is or ever was a Christian nation. Our failure to apply Christian notions of oppression to an American context also has a lot to do with our Whiteness. But many Christians are so invested in it they don't even know it's important to them. They just think it's "Christianity."

I've been thinking a lot about Tamir. We already know how this is going to go. The grand jury will decline to recommend charges. If by some miracle they do favor a lesser charge, he will not be convicted at trial. This is not fatalism. Remember, America is a place of oppression. I've been wondering what Tamir might have been thinking as he bled out on the ground. Did he wonder why no one was helping him? Was he conscious of his sister's screams as the officers tackled and handcuffed her? Was he hoping he would see his mom again?

And I've been thinking a lot about my childhood. To put it more precisely, I've been thinking not only about Tamir's murder, but about the likelihood that it was always going to be him and not me.

Tamir had a toy gun. The orange tip was off. From a distance, it looked real. I've been thinking about the toy gun my brother had. It shot little plastic BBs. It didn't have an orange tip in the first place. It was all black. Sleek. Looked like the real thing.

Tamir seemed to point his toy gun at some passersby.  I've been thinking about all the times my brothers and I must have pointed that gun at each other even though we were told not to. It was so cool. Looked so real. It was a fun game to play.

A man called the police about Tamir, but noted that the gun was probably fake. Tamir was in a public park across the street from his house. It was his front yard. I've been thinking about all the crazy stuff we did in our "public park," our expansive yard in rural Western Maryland. There was no one there to see us. No one called 911.

It's not hard to understand why Tamir, a Black boy, played with his toy gun in a public park in a decaying rust belt city with an oppressive police force while I, a White boy, played with mine in a bucolic rural setting where police were unknown. But people don't want to understand.

I know many people will seek to justify Tamir's murder, or at least soften the blow by noting, like the experts' reports, that the shooting was "lawful." As if what is legal has a good track record in American history. For Christians, such reasoning is an abdication of our responsibility. This is another oddity of American Christianity: many of us think we can have conventional White American opinions about racial issues and be faithful to Christ at the same time. We're deluding ourselves.

I've also been thinking back to the day a jury acquitted George Zimmerman. I remember how people defended him. Some of us, a little less entranced by racist tropes and pro-gun mania, had always regarded Zimmerman's poor character with relative certainty, a judgment that has been borne out in his subsequent behavior. Though I had not expected a conviction, the weight of the acquittal hit me with unexpected force. And I remember it very well, because I had what I guess I would describe as a nearly mystical experience. I did not feel self-righteous, looking down my nose in anger at the jury members or the people defending Zimmerman. I just felt an incredible sense of grief, a grief that encompassed not only everything outside me but everything within me as well. In other words, I lamented my own injustice. Yet at the same time, I felt a bizarre sense of closeness to God, as though the sadness I felt was a taste of what he feels in every moment. It was as though God himself pulled up a chair and said, "Here, Jesse, let me show you something."

I know this all sounds incredibly odd to those of you who have different beliefs. But there it is. And it brings me to what I suppose is my final point: Christian hope. What are we to do with the injustices above? One popular answer, masquerading as the Christian answer, is to emphasize the positive. Keep a good attitude! Stay positive! Look at that police officer hugging that cute child! That's often little more than an attempt to change the subject. Christian hope is something else. It allows us to face injustice without looking away. It allows us to fight it without despairing. And it allows us, as I knew for at least one night in my life, to stand against injustice without believing we're really any better than the evil we face.

There's a psalm that says, "I would have despaired unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." That's not an opiate. That's strength to stay in the fight. Because we will see his goodness one day. American lawlessness will not have the last word. No American court will give the last word on the value of Tamir's life. 

Christian hope is the understanding that there is a place for the wrath of God, however archaic that concept sounds in our culture. We can fight injustice without giving in to vengeance and violence because we know that God will repay. I know this sounds naive to many who have different beliefs, and even to many Christians it is just an abstraction. But ask some Black Christians about it. They tend to know more than we do about Christian hope. 

The 59th chapter of Isaiah's prophecy presents an image of Yahweh as a warrior-God preparing for battle against injustice. I've shared it many times in the past few years, but it's worth sharing again.

The Lord looked and was displeased
    that there was no justice.
He saw that there was no one,
    he was appalled that there was no one to intervene;
so his own arm achieved salvation for him,
    and his own righteousness sustained him.
He put on righteousness as his breastplate,
    and the helmet of salvation on his head;
he put on the garments of vengeance
    and wrapped himself in zeal as in a cloak.
According to what they have done,
    so will he repay
wrath to his enemies
    and retribution to his foes;
    he will repay the islands their due.
From the west, people will fear the name of the Lord,
    and from the rising of the sun, they will revere his glory.
For he will come like a pent-up flood
    that the breath of the Lord drives along.

When Christianity Stops Being Good News

This is what the scriptures have to say about my savior:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
    because he has anointed me
    to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
    and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
    to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

And the image to the right is what I see today on the website of a popular organization of the Christian Right. Of course it is astonishingly tone-deaf and offensive. Amid the violence of our country and our world, someone thought this was appropriate imagery? This is what happens when Christianity becomes more of a cultural marker of identity than a lived faith. As its adherents fear they are losing "their" culture, their posture becomes increasingly vindictive and self-absorbed.

More than that, this is theologically abhorrent. Christianity is good news to all who are needy. It is not a blood-spattered declaration of war on the culture. If there's any blood on the floor, metaphorically or otherwise, it ought to be ours--gladly given for the good of others.

Confessions Of A Former Confederate

In a moment of heated debate, it is useful for me to step back and consider the myriad beliefs I hold that are incorrect, immoral, or just plain stupid. Of course, this is something close to an exercise in futility because I don't know what those misguided beliefs are. If I did, I suppose I wouldn't claim them as my own. Yet the mere admission--if sincerely contemplated--that such beliefs have no doubt found a home in me is a useful check on overweening pride and judgment of others. And I can go a step further. My current error may be extremely hard to discern, but I can see my past sins with relative clarity.

One of those sins is directly related to the debate over the Confederate flag. So let's have some real talk.

As a teenager, I was a devotee of the Confederacy. Call it my own peculiar brand of adolescent rebellion if you like. I devoured popular military histories of the Civil War, including Shelby Foote's monumental classic. I read the book precisely as Foote wrote it--lustily cheering for the underdogs (more about this in a moment). My favorite movie was Gettysburg, a sprawling epic that hit all the high notes of popular myth: the civil war as tragedy, of noble brothers bonded by valor, of invisible African Americans. I labored through a book purporting to show that the South did not secede because of slavery, and I prided myself on reading every word of what seemed to be a very academic book. I played the Civil War General computer game and enjoyed destroying the Yankees at Fredericksburg. I went to bed at night pondering what might have been if only Stonewall Jackson had not ridden out in the dark that fateful night to be shot by his own men. Ahh, the possibilities!

As a 17-year old taking an English 101 class at the local community college, I declared that the historical figure I would most like to meet was Robert E. Lee--not only because of his military prowess, but because of his extraordinary character. I evangelized to my friends, explaining to them that the war was not about slavery and that the South was in the right. I lamented the expansion of federal power that the war wrought. A couple years ago, I found my notes from a 2004 sociology class. I was the hapless Confederate roped into a group project on racial disparities in modern America. Scrawled across the pages of evidence gathered by my classmates were my words: "Not true!" "False!" I knew my classmates were wrong not because I gathered counter-evidence, but because they had to be wrong.

Though I myself did not wear or fly the Confederate flag, its absence was by circumstance rather than conviction. Being a collector of books rather than memorabilia, I simply never got around to buying one.

We can talk about all sorts of reasons I may have had so many mistaken beliefs, but the real root of it is deceptively simple: In my mind, Black people were abstract. They were something less than fully human. I gave intellectual consent to their existence without any difficulty. But they were people to be talked about more than talked to. They were people on the news (and it usually wasn't flattering). They did not sweat and bleed and dream and hope in precisely the same way I did. They appeared in history as disembodied slaves. Not enslaved people, just slaves. They appeared as the aggregate labor force of King Cotton, not as the stooped backs and bloodied hands picking that cotton. They were "servants" and slaves with a better diet than many European peasants (this was, for some reason, a very important point). They were not parents and children separated by sale; they were not liars and truth-tellers and heroes and failures and murderers and saints and all the other things that human beings are. Mostly, they just weren't in my picture at all. My enthusiasm for the underdogs extended not to the real underdogs, but their oppressors.

There is a rather simpler way of talking about all this. I was racist. (And, no doubt, still am by the way). But to simply say that I was a racist is to miss the nuances of what this racism consisted of. It was not, in fact, animus toward Black people. (True to form, I could honestly say at the time that my best friend was Black, and it was literally true.) It was, rather, a pervasive overlooking of Black people, Black culture, Black history, a dismissal so total that it constituted the dehumanization of an entire class of human beings. This was all invisible to me. If I said I had nothing against Black people, I wasn't putting on airs. If I said I saw and treated all people equally, I said it with all the certainty of an unexamined conscience. And when I praised the Confederacy, it literally didn't occur to me that this had much at all to do with Black people.

In 2005, I moved to Chicago for college. I met a wonderful young woman (now my wife) who mercifully did not dismiss me out of hand when I casually mentioned that I was a fan of the Confederacy. She began to have her effect on me. And over the years, Black Christians and Black neighbors have been so patient, so winsome, so manifestly human, that my unexamined and unconscious racism was ruthlessly exposed.

Once a process of repentance began in my life, I began to see that many of my beliefs about the Civil War, African Americans, and the Confederacy were factually wrong. But the deeper transformation was a moral one. I came to see that my moral failing preceded my intellectual error. Believing fake history did not make me racist as much as being racist made fake history seem plausible. My moral awakening exposed my intellectual incoherence and quickly caused it to crumble.

Who is to blame? We like to assign culpability, right? This was my sin. It's completely on me, and I have to answer for it. Yet we must keep another truth in mind at the same time. My sin was only practical, only conceivable, in a society of White supremacist imagination. My beliefs had no rational basis, and we do not, as a matter of course, wander off into random irrational beliefs. Rather, our beliefs are structured by the boundaries of the plausible in a given society. Evil embedded in the foundations of a society is hard to recognize. It appears, in fact, as nothing at all. It is natural, invisible. It is what allowed me to breathe in American air and exhale profound indifference for my fellow human beings.

I bring this experience to the Confederate flag debate. That's my bias. I don't think I'm particularly noble. I don't think I'm particularly monstrous. I'll let you work out the implications.

Black Lives Matter

On St. Patrick's Day, Martese Johnson, a student at the University of Virginia, was arrested for public intoxication. This is what he looked like after the police took him to the ground:


 Last night, hundreds of UVA students rallied and marched in protest.

They're just not going to take it any more. This is the kind of thing that gives me hope. I don't believe any of that "millenials are less racist" hype. But there is something more substantial going on. My generation does not remember the civil rights movement. We don't even remember Black Power and the controversies of the 1970s. We honor the achievements of the civil rights generation. They transformed the country for the better. But a critical mass of this generation is done living in their shadow. We're done comparing America to the White supremacist state it was and saying that because it's not that anymore everything is ok. We're ready to compare America to basic standards of justice, decency, and humanity. And when we do that, we find it wanting. We're not going to take it anymore.

It's still a small number of people who feel this way. But (people don't realize this) it was a relatively small number of people who made the civil rights movement happen. Most people did not march. Most people did not protest. We don't need most people. We just need a motivated and mobilized minority to achieve the change we seek.

There was a time not long ago when what happened to Martese Johnson would have gone unnoticed. Not anymore. Many people have woken up, and many people have been radicalized by what they have seen. It matters little that Michael Brown has been a less than perfect exemplar for the movement, any more than the deliberate misrepresentations of Rosa Parks in the 1950s delegitimized the civil rights movement. The movement, and the righteousness of its demands, was bigger than any one individual and story.

Last week, someone shot two police officers in Ferguson. Within four days, officials made an arrest and brought charges (amid allegations that they beat the individual). There are still questions about whether he event meant to shoot at the police. Meanwhile, we have killers on video, whose identities have been known for months, and no arrests have been made.

Tamir Rice's killer has not been arrested or charged.
Jason Harrison's killers have not been arrested or charged, and they are back on duty.
Eric Garner's killers are likewise free.
Antonio Zambrano-Montes' killers are free. 

In contrast to the Michael Brown case, these instances are on video. They show inexcusable and reckless violence. We're not going to take it anymore. The police have felt unfairly accused and criticized of late. That's understandable. But it could hardly be otherwise when the state tasks police with the job of enforcing an unjust status quo. From education to housing to employment, the racist structures of our society wrongfully harm millions of people. Sometimes, when police pull the trigger, they are only the final actors in a long process of the state denying the equal humanity of certain classes of its citizens. We had become accustomed to a situation in which the state exercised its monopoly on violence with relative impunity. But we're not going to take it any more. Now we demand accountability. Now we say that manslaughter and murder should be prosecuted regardless of who commits it.

Those who oppose the rule of law for all citizens don't seem to understand this: our view of the police has become more negative not so much because of specific incidents of bad behavior, but because those behaviors have been defended by police officials. In a country of 320 million people, you can find people abusing authority every day. What has been shocking is that police at the highest levels have publicly defended the indefensible all over the country. By doing so in cases like Tamir's and Eric's, they fail in their responsibility to exercise the state's power with restraint and fairness. By defending their own no matter what, they approach the issue with all the moral sophistication of a common street gang. We refuse to accept that this heavily armed group that has been given the power of violence should not be held to a higher standard.

I shouldn't let this go without saying that surely most police officers are good and decent people. But I can't emphasize enough that this misses the point entirely. Most educators are good and decent people. Yet our education system is racially segregated. Most homeowners are good and decent people. Yet our communities are segregated. Most Christians are good and decent people. Yet our churches are racially segregated. We are not attacking individual police officers. We are attacking a system of racism.

Here's another thing, the biggest thing, that gives me hope. Even though the majority of the White evangelical church still slumbers in its sin, a minority has woken up. Christians all over the country are quietly living and working in the neighborhoods that most Americans shun. People of color are taking leadership roles. And a growing number of evangelicals are discovering that passionate concern for things like Black Lives Matter is not less than orthodoxy; it is orthodoxy. A growing number are rejecting the syncretisms of our age: the materialist, feel-good faith, the nationalist faith, and most of all, the attempted union between Whiteness and Christianity. Growing numbers recognize that while the Gospel is more than the Old Testament prophetic tradition, it is certainly not less than that. Growing numbers are willing to reclaim biblical language of shalom, peace,  and mishpat, justice, and insist on their relevance today.

I mentioned to an elder from whom I am receiving spiritual instruction that I did not even recognize the Old Testament prophetic tradition of God's care for the weak and wrath toward oppressors until I was an adult. He, an utterly orthodox, conservative, elderly White man, simply said, "Well that's because oppression is our pet sin. Oppressors don't talk about oppression. And White folks have done a lot of evil things in this country." There was no trace of guilt or angst in his response, just simple Christian honesty and humility. A growing number of evangelicals are embracing this honesty.

At my alma mater, Moody Bible Institute, a bastion of historic fundamentalism, the president has unequivocally spoken about the unjust advantages White people have in the United States. For those who know a little of the history of Moody and of White fundamentalism more broadly, this is an astonishing change. The Gospel Coalition, an influential network of evangelical leaders, hosts honest discussion of racism on its website and is holding a big conference on the subject later this year.

It's too early to say that any of this is yet mainstream in White evangelicalism. But the ground is shifting beneath our feet. As a historian, I admit that I am not at all sure the Black Lives Matter Movement will amount to much. As a Christian, however, I have great hope. We need to pray more fervently, act more diligently, and call the church to rise up. What group or organization is better positioned to act locally in thousands of communities across the country? What group is better positioned to know its community's needs and the reforms that are needed? What group is better able to encourage spiritual depth and responsibility, and bring good news to the poor that is more than the empty, soulless materialism of the American Dream?

In the last movement, the White evangelical church reluctantly accepted the changes that had taken place. It followed. Now it is time to lead.

Sometime History Echoes. This Time It's Screaming At Us.

Perhaps the most startling aspect of the Ferguson city government being caught with its white supremacist pants down is how precisely familiar all of this is to anyone who has studied the civil rights movement. I expect history to rhyme. But I'm still surprised when we get rote repetition.

The repetition is this: the leaders of the Ferguson city government are genuinely confused by the storm that has descended around them, just as White citizens in hundreds of local communities across the nation from the 1950s to the 1970s were baffled when "their Negroes" began to protest. I can't emphasize enough that White Americans of that era were not monstrous people who lied about what they knew to be true. They were utterly ordinary. The lies they told, they told first and most vigorously to themselves.  As most White Americans looked frowningly at the activism and protest in their communities, they pointed out that Blacks committed more crimes. They noted the soaring rate of illegitimacy. They demanded personal responsibility, a little more bootstrappin' and a little less complaining. Lies have a way of working on you until you come to need them, until they distort your ability to understand the world you live in. In 1963, living in an apartheid nation, large majorities of Whites told Gallup that Blacks were treated "the same as whites" in their community. We will never be able to quantify the psychological and spiritual carnage White Americans produced by their contortions. The devastation gathers slowly and invisibly, while the lie settles in so comfortably.

One way to look at it, even if not exactly quantify it, is to see the same incapacity for truth in their descendents. It would be a mistake to think that the current leaders of Ferguson (and many of their White constituents) are surprised because there is objective cause for confusion, as if the moral lines have become unclear. No, the surprise stems, as it did in the civil rights movement era, from a set of assumptions that has nothing to do with actual conditions in the real world. Chief Jackson of the Ferguson Police Department literally said, "There is not a racial problem in the police department." You might reasonably thereby conclude that Chief Jackson is a monster. That would make it easier on all of us, but it's not so easy. No, I'm quite sure that Chief Jackson is normal. He's probably even a devoted public servant.

Can you see how banal human evil is? We all go looking for Hitlers to condemn so that we don't have to admit that we need no introduction to the evil that has been documented in Ferguson. We need no introduction. People caught up in oppressive systems do not self-identify as oppressors. Defenders of White supremacy do not see themselves as such. One person's oppression is just another person's "the way things are." If we never wake up to the heartbreaking process of discovering our own lies, how can we be sure we won't participate in the kind of wrongs we've witnessed in Ferguson?

We're wrestling with a dubious inheritance. Whites of past generations grudgingly acquiesced to certain changes, but the lies, it has become all too clear, live on in mutated forms. Recent polling has shown that a majority of White Americans believe they face more discrimination than Black Americans. How can we possibly know ourselves, how can we possibly live at peace in the world, in the face of such depraved thinking? How can we be Christian? Make no mistake, we couldn't get these polling numbers without many White Christians thinking this way. This is a theological scandal.

But listen: the Gospel covers that too. There is forgiveness ready and waiting. And I suspect God sees what is less easy for us to see: that our thinking is not ours alone, that we are swept up in a current that we waded into before we knew better, that our group allegiances will not be undone lightly. There is grace for us, thank God. Yet some of us, by now, should know better. We must work against White supremacy and all forms of oppression of the poor with all the strength and wisdom we can muster. Sometimes, when I think about all the ways God has shown me mercy, and the experiences I've had, and then what I've done with them--well, I sometimes think I'm courting judgment.