Marginal Christianity

Again, we need to clarify our terms. “Systemic racism” merely refers to the policies and normative practices that create or perpetuate discrimination or prejudice against people on the basis of race. Such “systems” are carried out by people. People establish or defend such policies. It is people who accept racist norms, which consciously or unconsciously. Before we get to the starting line Here’s an analogy that I found helpful (though I can’t recall where I heard it). Imagine two black men are allowed to enter an Olympic race, which also includes white runners. However, due to various discriminatory practices in the past, the black runners do not receive the same coaching, training, and nutrition as the white runners, who have received years of professional coaching and hours of rigorous training. What will happen when they finally start their race?  On the surface, the rules of the race equally apply to all runners. They all must run the same distance and start when th...

What can we say about the meaning of racism? It seems like a self-explanatory term, at least until you start reading books, listening to arguments, and attempt to understand what people mean by the phrase “systemic racism.” Jackson Wu offers this counsel. Two Definitions of Racism Let’s start with race. “ Race ” refers to the categorization of people according to observable, biological characteristics (e.g., skin color). That’s a pretty standard explanation that stands in contrast to “ethnicity.” While the two concepts are related, “ ethnicity ” refers to the categorization of people based on shared cultural background (e.g., heritage, language, traditions, etc.) We are now ready to consider the meaning of racism. Two definitions are most common, though authors might differ in their precise wording. 1.                Racism = Prejudice The average person on the street will say that racism is prejudice ag...

In her article “ Why Can’t We All Just Be Individuals?: Countering the Discourse of Individualism in Anti-racist Education ” ( https://escholarship.org/uc/item/5fm4h8wm ) Robin DiAngelo lists the major dynamics of individualism: - denies the significance of race and the advantages of being white. -hides the accumulation of wealth over generations. -denies social and historical context. -prevents a macro analysis of the institutional and structural dimensions of social life. -denies collective socialization and the power of dominant culture (media, education, religion, etc.) to shape our perspectives and ideology. -functions as neo-colorblindness and reproduces the myth of meritocracy. -is only culturally available to the dominant group (as is meritocracy). -makes collective action difficult. “Am I my siblings’ keeper?” is the way the Bible poses this question for us. God’s answer is an unconditional “Yes.” White Americans are “taught” formally in many cases but al...

This story from Brother to a Dragonfly  by the late Will Campbell hits right at the heart of what it means to be a Christian today in race-torn America. Campbell was a maverick minister and civil rights activist. He was born and raised in Mississippi, and by the age of 17 he was ordained and preaching in local Baptist churches. He served as a medic in the Second World War, and then attended Yale divinity school. It was in the mid-1950s that he joined the Civil Rights movement. In 1957 he became the only white person to be invited by Martin Luther King to the inauguration of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and in 1963 he joined King’s campaign of marches and sit-ins in Birmingham, Alabama. Campbell had a good friend named Jonathan Daniels, a 26-year-old Episcopal seminarian and fellow civil-rights worker who in August 1965 was in Lowndes County, Alabama, registering black citizens to vote. On being released from jail for “agitating” (as the local folks put ...

Racism is about skin color as much as rape is about sex. In other words, not much. Both are about power. That is, the ability to make the "other" do what one wants for their own gratification or satisfaction.

I believe our problems valuing and respecting each other as people bearing different skin pigmentation has to do with our problem with God. That may seem an odd, even wrong-headed, statement to make, but let me play it out a little bit. Loving one another, which surely involves respecting and valuing others, means at bottom embracing and acting in the best interest of a person truly different from ourselves. Too often we dilute love down to embracing and caring for those who are like us. Jesus teaches us this: “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them.    If you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. If you lend to those from whom you hope to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to receive as much again.” (Lk.6:32-34) Jesus call is for his people, following him, reach out to, embrace, and act in the best interest...

The Hedgehog Review : Vol. 20 No. 2 (Summer 2018) James McWilliams The Hedgehog Review: Summer 2018 (Volume 20 | Issue 2) S omeday, when we—or our descendants—have enough distance from the present to contemplate who knows what this country will have endured, the presidential election of 2016 will evoke three words: basket of deplorables . This ill-conceived phrase, delivered by Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at a Manhattan fundraiser two months before Election Day, was the rhetorical flashpoint of a broader takedown: You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?… The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it. And unfortunately there are people like that. And he has lifted them up. 1 Those comments marked the moment when an apparently new white identity—though in fact an amalgam of new and older white identities—was ingloriously named. Within h...

Methodists have their “Five Essential Freedoms” they consider definitional for who they are. They are “Freedoms of (or for) . . .” These freedoms are: Freedom of all races to worship together. Freedom of women to be treated as equal in the church and at home. Freedom of the poor to have dignity in church and in the world. Freedom of the laity to have authority.  Freedom of the Holy Spirit to move in worship. In my opinion, these are all laudatory “freedoms.” Christians ought to be free to exercise or experience each one in their churches or Christian gatherings. They ought also, gain in my opinion, be free to advocate for and support such ways of living in the larger world to whatever degree possible. But simple “ought to’s” won’t get us there. If anything is clear in our time is that neither knowledge or moral suasion are much help as primary movers of change. We’ve tried them both for more than two centuries now as chief assumptions...

8/18/17 in Missiology Conversations   “Racial reconciliation” is all the rage. Increasingly, younger white Christians are professing their desire for unity across ethnic lines. Christianity Today recently ran a piece noting the growing tendency of white evangelicals to recognize the systemic nature of racism and to desire to do something about it. However, for white folks, racial reconciliation is often treated as one more “add-on” to self-identity, a means to “presenting” a favorable public persona. Being “for” racial reconciliation becomes one more proverbial “feather in the cap.” White folks often don’t engage in the hard, humbling work required to pursue a just reconciliation, but instead we engage with others on our own terms, which is not reconciliation at all. When we recognize the need for the decentering of white identity, we grow uncomfortable and revert to familiar patterns that reinforce mechanisms of social control and white privilege. Pursuing reconciliatio...

Why slippery slope arguments should not stop us from removing Confederate monuments The inside track on Washington politics. August 15 at 10:28 PM       Skip Following the violence in Charlottesville, Va. that was sparked by plans to remove the Robert E. Lee statue, cities across the country are stepping up efforts to pull Confederate monuments from public spaces. Cities across the country are stepping up efforts to pull Confederate monuments from public spaces. (Reuters) Following the violence in Charlottesville, Va. that was sparked by plans to remove the Robert E. Lee statue, cities across the country are stepping up efforts to pull Confederate monuments from public spaces. (Reuters) This past weekend’s violence in Charlottesville, Virginia arose from a gathering of racists, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists, whose ostensible purpose was to protest the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee . Over the last several ye...

1. Your attitude toward the plight of African-Americans in this country reflects your theology. Sekou: If you tell me what you think about Jesus, I can tell you what you think about Ferguson. Christianity in and of itself is not simply about the redemption of the world, it's about some peasant articulating a vision of the world and the state crucified him and he rose again.  Knox: God is always committed the poor and the marginalized and those who are disconnected. God is constantly rearranging power. That's what justice is. It's about rearranging power. How are we as churches rearranging power in our own lives? We need a theology from below, not a theology from above. That means taking into consideration what minorities have to teach us about life, about economics, about power, about justice. Theology from below is taking into consideration of something you don't have control of.   2. White churches don't need to become multicultural. They need to show...

"All Lives Matter" suggests we're all in this together facing a common problem. We're not. We have different problems that must be addressed in different ways. "All Lives Matter" suggests that we all get along in the world in our continuing inequitable ways, only that we stop killing each other. The latter is certainly desirable but the former is not. "All Lives Matter" is disingenuous because white lives have always mattered and no one questions that. Justice, real justice - political, social, and economic equity is the non-negotiable basis for any claim that "Black Lives Matter. Having parades together and singing "Kum Ba Yah," while important as a beginning point must be followed quickly be concrete steps in the right direction. Otherwise it's just so much hot air. Excuse me if this sounds negative. But I don't trust that white America will willingly cede power and resources to Black America. I hope that h...

-"Black Lives Matter" doesn't mean white lives do not. That's never in question in America so it seldom needs to be said. -Beyond the question of personal culpability and responsibility no one "caused" the shootings of the last few days. Racism did. It holds all of us, whether we personally hold racist views or not. It's an "us"-problem not a "them"-problem. -It's one of those "principalities and powers" thingies Paul talks about that should have functioned to keep and make h ... uman life human but rebelled against God and has distorted life in racist ways. But Christ has defeated these powers and in himself created a zone of freedom called the church which should display the new life we were created for. -politics, law, et. al will not solve racism (though their contributions will be important at various points). Only a demonstration of freedom from it in Christ will demonstrate its reality to the world. And...

By Willie James Jennings (A)theologies , Front Page , Remapping American Christianities , Stories June 26, 2015 Dylann Roof was wrong. The race war isn’t coming. It’s already here. It began the moment the very first old world (proto-European) citizen stepped on the shores of Africa and the Americas and other soon-to-be-colonized places and said, “God has given this land and these people to me. This is mine.” The belief in God-given possession flows like a vampire virus through the veins of this country. We eagerly draw lifeblood from as much of the world as possible, in land, natural resources, and cheap labor. What does it mean to be born in a place that measures your value, your worth, your very life by the calculus of possession? That calculus extends through time to us from those founding greed-filled moments invading our waking consciousness and driving us forward in a strange confession. We believe in competition born of the desire to possess. We believe in st...

The new threat: 'Racism without racists' By John Blake , CNN Updated 9:32 AM ET, Thu November 27, 2014 Source: CNN   (CNN) In a classic study on race, psychologists staged an experiment with two photographs that produced a surprising result. They showed people a photograph of two white men fighting, one unarmed and another holding a knife. Then they showed another photograph, this one of a white man with a knife fighting an unarmed African-American man. When they asked people to identify the man who was armed in the first picture, most people picked the right one. Yet when they were asked the same question about the second photo, most people -- black and white -- incorrectly said the black man had the knife. Even before it was announced that a grand jury had decided not to indict a white police officer in the shooting death of an unarmed black teen in Ferguson, Missouri, leaders were calling once again for a "national conversation on race." Bu...

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Ali Michael Rachel Dolezal is a fascinating case study in White racial identity development.* She is stuck in the immersion/emersion stage, in which White people, having learned extensively about the realities of racism, and the ugly history of White supremacy in the U.S., “immerse” themselves in trying to figure out how to be White in our society, and “emerge” with a new relationship to Whiteness. Only in the case of Dolezal, her way of dealing with the pain of the reality of racism, was to deny her own Whiteness and to become Black. She is an extreme example of a common phenomenon. The “immersion” stage is typified by White people taking more responsibility for racism and privilege and often experiencing high levels of anger and embarrassment for racism and privilege, which they sometimes direct towards other Whites. They sometimes try to immerse themselves in communities of color, as Dolezal did. She’s not alone. I definitely experienced this....

Posted on Feb 1, 2015 By Chris Hedges NEW YORK— Malcolm X , unlike Martin Luther King Jr., did not believe America had a conscience. For him there was no great tension between the lofty ideals of the nation—which he said were a sham—and the failure to deliver justice to blacks. He, perhaps better than King, understood the inner workings of empire. He had no hope that those who managed empire would ever get in touch with their better selves to build a country free of exploitation and injustice. He argued that from the arrival of the first slave ship to the appearance of our vast archipelago of prisons and our squalid, urban internal colonies where the poor are trapped and abused, the American empire was unrelentingly hostile to those Frantz Fanon called “the wretched of the earth.” This, Malcolm knew, would not change until the empire was destroyed. “It is impossible for capitalism to survive, primarily because the system of capitalism needs some blood to suck,” Malco...

  JAN. 3, 2015     The deaths of African-Americans at the hands of the police in Ferguson, Mo., in Cleveland and on Staten Island have reignited a debate about race. Some argue that these events are isolated and that racism is a thing of the past. Others contend that they are merely the tip of the iceberg, highlighting that skin color still has a huge effect on how people are treated.   Arguments about race are often heated and anecdotal. As a social scientist, I naturally turn to empirical research for answers. As it turns out, an impressive body of research spanning decades addresses just these issues — and leads to some uncomfortable conclusions and makes us look at this debate from a different angle.   The central challenge of such research is isolating the effect of race from other factors. For example, we know African-Americans earn less income, on average, than whites. Maybe that is evidence that e...