Berea Reformed Evangelical Church

The following was originally from the old blog. I am putting it up here because I want our church to get off on the right foot out of the gate by publicly condemning (or at least having its pastor condemn) what is, Biblically, a grave evil.

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I believe that in God’s world, as an objective matter of fact, racism rightly defined can never be true or right or good. God hates it. Yet I also believe that the truth is messy enough that it is often confused for error. One way in which this is really obvious is when someone in the contemporary American political context takes up a discussion of various “racially sensitive” topics. It is possible to be right, yet to look like a racist, depending on how the accuser defines “racism.” I have often been frustrated by this. And I have written in the past on such sensitive topics as the Civil War and the fact that were I transported back to 1861 in a time machine and forced to choose sides I would fight for the South. I have even written a bit on the plagiarism of Martin Luther King, Jr. So, despite the inherent problems in doing so, it’s not as though I have been afraid to walk the line between provocative contrarian opinion and racial animosity in the past. Further, I still hold these positions, and I insist vehemently that they are not racist. Far from it.

But sometimes I realize just how thin that line I’ve walked really is. It even makes me look back and wonder if I was careful enough when I walked it in the past. Is it enough for me to make all the proper distinctions in my head, and just say “tough luck” to anyone who can’t follow my brilliant argumentation? If you think I’m a racist, then you just aren’t thinking about these things carefully, I sometimes thought to myself.

Part of my error here, I think, was that I failed to take into account how much “careful thinking” is shaped by the culture, history, and ritual in which we find ourselves. My position on the Civil War may very well be right, but for me to expect, say, an African-American to abstract himself out of his own history and community so that he can evaluate my argument as some depersonalized list of propositions hanging in mid-air is unbridled foolishness (if not arrogance) on my part. My argument always occurs in a particular context, it hangs on the necks of real people, and we all bring our own baggage into such a discussion.

If nothing else, this means that we as Christians must prioritize. Defending the Southern cause might be acceptable, but perhaps it is not profitable. What does it profit the Church, if she argues impeccably for the validity of decentralized government and states’ rights and southern civility and the Confederate interpretation of the Constitution, but forfeits the souls of all those who have been wounded by those who have argued for these things in the past and, frankly, don’t have time for such nonsense?

If we’re doing a history conference, then of course I don’t think it would be inappropriate to discuss the Civil War (and I think that the way Credenda/Agenda did an issue several years ago on this by paying tribute to black confederates, for example, was rhetorically ingenious). But surely we can realize that, if we have not first laid the foundation for relationships with those who might be offended by such discussions, that we will send the wrong message. The message we intend to send is not always the message that is sent. We know this about the fallen world in which we live. Part of our calling as the Church is to take this into account when we set our priorities in what should be preached, what should be practiced, how we should bring the lost to King Jesus.

So, about those priorities. I would much rather attend a Church that holds a false view of the Civil War (i.e., naively thinks that Lincoln is a “hero” who ended slavery, thinks the war was primarily “about” slavery and nothing else, thinks the South was evil plain-and-simple, etc.) but understands the universal (i.e., trans-racial) implications of the Gospel, than one which correctly identifies the cultural and religious issues that were lost at Appomattox but which commits, or even just appears to commit, the sin of racism. It is more important to get the Christian view of racism right than it is to have the right perspective on a war that ended 140 years ago. And these are separable questions! (Obviously!)

Racism is, indeed, a sin. God hates it. Just so we’re clear on that.

That said, the South was “right,” and the War Between the States was fought over issues that are still very much with us today. The Church has to have the courage to say that if it’s true. But she also has to clearly repudiate racism every chance she gets.