Everything is Backwards

Between Two Worlds has this summary of a blog post by Curtis Allen. Curtis Allen, a black man, offers some of his insights regarding black people visiting mostly white churches.

Of particular note are these four challenges to African Americans joining a predominately white congregation.

From Between Two Worlds…

Here’s an outline of part 1:

Here is a quote from Attorney General Eric Holder regarding the willingness of most Americans to enter into dialogue about race with others, particularly those of another race:

“Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot, in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards.“

Furthermore, he says this: “the workplace is largely integrated but Americans still self-segregate on the weekends and in their private lives.”

Please allow me to decode this: what he is saying is that people are willing to put up with racial differences when it is to their professional advantage to do so, such as in the workplace. But they are not willing to allow it to interfere with their personal lives. Perhaps even more troubling to me is the fact that he specifically mentions “the weekends,” which is when Christians gather for worship.

Could this be a veiled criticism of the church? I believe it is. Many have lamented the fact that Sunday morning is the most segregated hour in America. The blame goes in both directions because both whites and blacks have different reasons for not worshiping together.

Many white churches fancy themselves a place where people of all races can come to freely worship. But they make few attempts to modify their styles to accommodate others.

Black churches do the same thing. But consider this: the workplace is still a predominately white environment in most cases. This means that African Americans still feel the pressure of being a minority in a white world and they learn to adapt themselves to their environment. But when they go home, or go to church, they may seek a community where it’s safe to be black.

The process of reconciling Christians of various races will be difficult because we’re not just talking about skin color. We’re talking about entire histories of peoples from various backgrounds. Different tastes, styles, preferences.

But when the first African American Attorney General calls Americans racial “cowards,” I think this is the time for the church to say, “not us; we’re going to do whatever it takes to make sure that there is no division in the body.”

I’m sure I’ve heard that somewhere before. (1 Corinthians 12:25)

With God, all things are possible. Matthew 19:26.

The fourth reason to plant a racially reconciled church in downtown Cincinnati is this: racial reconciliation forces us to have a missionary mindset.

One of the most important things for aspiring missionaries to learn in preparation for the mission field is how to best communicate with people who are different from them. This is called contextualization. Basically, the patterns of communication that work for me in my context may not work so well in someone else’s context.

For example, I have spent two summers in Argentina leading short term mission projects. I had to speak to people who didn’t know English primarily and had different culture and customs. It was perfectly acceptable for men to kiss each other on the cheek. In fact, to not greet someone with a “beso” would have been perceived as an insult.

But they also had different customs in terms of food, time, family, and community. As missionaries, we recognized that this was their country, and to reach them we had to be aware of that fact and work within their context.

This experience has led me to a couple of conclusions regarding racial reconciliation in Cincinnati. First, we are first and foremost citizens of the city of God, and only secondarily citizens of any earthly city. God requires us to interact with one another on the basis of mutual love for each other and seek the highest good of other people.

Secondly, yielding our cultural preferences to another person is not easy to do, but can be learned with patience, practice, and accountability. Suppose a person is part of a church body that constantly urges him to consider the perspectives of a person of a different race. This person would learn to love and respect the other person because (1) he is his neighbor and (2) he is a fellow believer in Christ.

When I was in Argentina, many of their customs seemed strange to me. Yet I respected them because my purpose was to die to myself and show them Christ, not be a cultural colonialist. Likewise, there is much about the African American community that I do not understand as well. But since my citizenship is in heaven and not white America, God has called me to behave according to Christian conviction first and foremost. That’s what it means to be on mission: I respect my neighbor as a fellow bearer of God’s image before I indulge my own cultural preferences, even if I have good reason for them.

As Christians, our calling is to die to ourselves daily and follow Christ. We are to be good neighbors and not cultural colonialists. White people are terribly uncomfortable with this. What if, God forbid, we had to mix in some Fred Hammond with our Chris Tomlin? What if we had to follow a Bible study leader who votes for Obama (never!). What if this experience led us to places in our own hearts where we realize that maybe we’ve baptized white Americanism and called it Christian?

We can’t be cowards. It takes guts to consider other people as better than ourselves; to allow others to be first while we’re last. Regular American Christians don’t live this way, but missionaries do.

Here’s my prediction: a gospel saturated, Christ glorifying, self-denying, racially reconciling, poverty killing, cross-cultural church will send lots of missionaries to crazy places because the people will have developed a mind-set of gospel centered self-denial.

That’s reason #4 why I’m planting a racially reconciled church in downtown Cincinnati.

Thomas Chatterton Williams answers this question.

Black children would be able to avoid internalizing what James Baldwin called “the propaganda of race inferiority,” since every night on the news there would be a visible reminder that there is nothing whites can do that blacks cannot. That is the real change Obama offers-all of a sudden the world young black kids imagine themselves inhabiting would seem a richer place to live, one without an upper limit. To Biggie Smalls’ dismal list of career options afforded young black males-”You either slang crack rock / Or you got a wicked jump shot”-we could add the office of president. And in response to what Jay-Z cynically defined as the black man’s lot in life-”All we got is sports and entertainment/ Until we even, thievin”-we could say, No, not anymore.

The symbolism of a black man in the Oval Office would certainly advance the cause of racial equality in America. Unfortunately, we do not elect a symbol for President, we elect a man (or woman) who has a worldview and a set of policies that they wish to enact to shape the country and world to their liking.

If Obama were elected, racial reconciliation would improve in America. But the plight of the unborn will become more bleak. The black woman’s womb will be one of the most dangerous places in America, government expansion might make poverty worse in America which will adversely affect blacks, and an out of control liberal media will further their attempts to silence voices of dissension.

I wish to God I could vote for the first black Presidential to run successfully at the top of a major ticket. But I’m afraid the cost is simply too high.

One of the most refreshingly honest and penetrating albums for Christian consumption in recent memory is Derek Webb’s Mockingbird.

This album was marketed using the increasingly popular give-it-to-me-for-free-and-I’ll-pay-what-I-think-its-worth strategy. This was a good move, since most Christian bookstores wouldn’t stock it anyway because it contains such incendiary language as “sex” and “whore” and he dares criticize the Republicans as the Messianic party.

Released in 2005, this is during the 2nd Bush term where Republicans appeared poised to rule for a generation.

My, how things have changed.

There is one stanza from the song King and a Kingdom that sticks out to me:

there are two great lies that i’ve heard:
“the day you eat of the fruit of that tree, you will not surely die”
and that Jesus Christ was a white, middle-class Republican
and if you wanna be saved you have to learn to be like Him

What I find ironic is how relevant this sounded three years ago and how completely upside down and irrelevant this sounds now.

While visiting an African American church service recently, I was fascinated by how many Obama T-shirts were being worn by the attendees. Probably about the same percentage of cars sporting a “W” bumper sticker in a suburban church’s parking lot.

Another line from the song bears repeating, and this time it is directed squarely at those on the left:

My first allegiance is not to a flag, a country or a man…my first allegiance is not to democracy or blood… Its to a King and a Kingdom.

Here’s the point: George W. Bush was hailed as the standard bearer of consevative Christian idealogy and is leaving office with an approval rating hovering around  Jeffrey Dahmer’s. Obama is on the fast track to iconic status as a young and compelling black man in the nation’s highest office.

But perhaps his followers can learn from those disppointed soldiers in W’s army. To quote Derek Webb once again, “We’ll never have a savior on captial hill.”

There are so many reasons why its a good idea to plant a racially diverse church in downtown Cincinnati. Numbers one and two have already been covered, and I’ve got 8 more good reasons to write about. Three months after moving here, I’m very optimistic that this will work and that its God’s desire for this to happen.

Fortunately, I’ve identified the biggest obstacle to planting a racially diverse church in downtown Cincinnati: me. And the third reason why I’m planting a racially diverse church in downtown Cincinnati is to strip away my own barriers and, God willing, the barriers that other people have to forming genuine relationships with people of another race.

Am I willing to do what it takes to apply the gospel comprehensively to lingering and even undiscovered racial residue? If I am ready to do that in my life, the real test will be whether or not I will be willing to help expose the racial residue in others’ lives as well.

Last week, I had lunch with Chris Beard, pastor of another congregation in Cincinnati that is targeting racial reconciliation, and Sherman Bradley, a local leader in poverty ministries. This conversation challenged me that I cannot merely be content to be introspective and address issues in my own heart, I need to be an “agitator,” as Chris put it.

I believe that most Americans, both white and black, filter their perceptions of other people of different races through a grid of incorrect perceptions and assumptions that prevent genuine relationships from forming. Many white people will lock their car doors when a black pedestrian is near their car, for example. His appearance generates the perception that he is somehow a threat. Now, suppose a relationship is formed with this man and he becomes a trusted friend. All will not be remedied by this because he will simply become “one of the good ones.”

Suppose even further, then, that genuine friendships can be formed with about 10 or 12 African American men, from different neighborhoods. Now, there can be perhaps enough to begin to challenge one’s predisposition to assume that black men are a criminal threat. There need to be enough relationships formed with others of another race to change one’s overall perception of that race.

My contention is that the best place for these relationships to form is the body of Christ. This will be potentially more difficult for white people than black people, because we can easily tune black culture out and refuse to learn and understand it if we wish. BET is only one channel, and VH1 is just a click away. But black people must understand and work within white culture if they are to survive. In other words, black people already understand white culture automatically, white people can learn black culture electively.

That is where being an “agitator” comes in. I need to be the person who constantly brings up racially diverse perspectives into conversations. I need to be an advocate in the white world and refuse to allow white people to choose to ignore their black neighbors. I must not allow weak excuses for white disengagement in racial justice to go unchecked.

This will undoubtedly cost me relationships with white people and potential church members. So this is why the biggest barrier to planting this church is me: I often lack the courage to be an agitator. Planting this church forces me to face my own fears of not being liked by people who’s approval I crave. If I feel called to plant this church and am too timid and cowardly to confront white people with their racial residue, who then will do it?

The first reason why I’m planting a racially diverse church in Cincinnati: it’s biblical.

The second reason is this: The world wants racial reconciliation, but only the gospel can deliver it. Everywhere you look, from corporate advertisements to college promotional materials to fashion magazines, it is clear that people want to see a diversity of faces in the imagery. Martin Luther King, Jr. did our country a great service by helping to expose racial hypocrisy. He was (perhaps naively) convinced that white Christians would rush to his aid but most didn’t.

During the civil rights era, our country has come a long way to give all people of various races equal opportunities for advancement. Everyone is clamoring for it. You can’t watch the evening news without seeing it in the advertisements, or hearing of someone being sentences to probation and “diversity training,” or a story about someone violating political correctness with a “gaffe.” In fact, one of Joe Biden’s most recent gaffes involved referring to Obama as an African American who is “clean” and “articulate.” The world loves racial diversity.

But churches have long remained segregated.

Those who desire true racial reconciliation can only find it in the gospel. Here’s what I mean. The gospel tells us that we are all in desperate need of redemption for our sins. We have a common disease (sin) and a common enemy (Satan). Regardless of race, everyone on planet earth has this problem. Furthermore, we all have, as Pascal famously stated, a “God shaped vacuum” in our hearts that can only be filled by Jesus Christ. Our deepest longings and our highest aspirations are fulfilled in Him.

As such, Paul stated in 2 Corinthians 5 that Christ has given us the “ministry of reconciliation,” where men urge their fellow men to “be reconciled to God.” Our reconciliation to God entails new allegiances, new familial relationships, new identities based on our spiritual commonalities rather than our physical differences. Being reconciled with God should naturally lead to being reconciled to fellow children of God.

Can anything other than Christ deliver this reconciliation? Of course not. Worldly reconciliation can only be achieved through pluralism. “Diversity” becomes an idol we bow to and standards of right and wrong are made to serve this idol. As a result, it doesn’t matter what you think or how you live, as long as you demonstrate “tolerance,” which is code language for pluralism.

The gospel insists that everyone is sinful, and only Christ is worthy of universal honor. Revelation 5 highlights the 7-fold worthiness of Jesus, who is worthy to receive “power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing.”

Jesus crushes our common enemy and unites us under his glorious rule. That’s true reconciliation, and only the gospel can deliver it.

The number one reason why I’m planting a racially diverse church in Cincinnati is simply this: It’s Biblical. I’m not doing this because a focus group survey revealed a “market niche” for a racially diverse church. I’m doing this because I simply cannot escape what the Bible has to say about race.

All the way back in the very beginning of things, back when God spoke to Abraham and made a covenant with him, God promised that Abraham would be a blessing to every nation on the earth (Genesis 12). And then God gives us a flash forward glimpse into the future, when Jesus is praised in heaven precisely because he “ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation.” God’s worth is demonstrated by the diversity of His admirers.

Between these two major events in the beginning of all things and at the end of all things, God gives us the biblical story of redemption. He begins with one man, who becomes a family, which becomes a nation, through whom comes the Messiah, who is the blessing to all nations. Some of those nations were dreaded enemies of God’s people.

Jews, Samaritans and Gentiles fought their own racial conflicts in the early church as well. In Acts 2, “devout men from every nation under heaven” accept the gospel and believe in Jesus. A few chapters later in Acts 6, we find that “a complaint by the Hellenists ?arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in ?the daily distribution [of food].” There it is; racial discrimination. The minority group responded with a peaceful protest and the apostles appointed a racially diverse group of deacons to oversee food distribution. The result? “The word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly (Acts 6:7).”

The ministry God has given to us as Christians is labeled the “ministry of reconciliation (2 Cor 5).” We are first reconciled to God through Jesus, but then are reconciled to each other through Jesus.

In Jesus, God has broken down the barrier walls of hostility between the races, creating “one new man” in place of the two (Eph 2). The “mystery” of the gospel is not merely that non-Jews are part of God’s kingdom. That message is as old as the Bible itself. The “mystery” that Paul speaks of in Ephesians 3 is that there is no master race; every person derives his worth and forgiveness through Christ directly. Gentiles are just as worthy and have equal access to God through the Spirit. That, however, was a mystery.

Many Jews feared what a Gentile church would look like. Perhaps they wondered to themselves, “what if we don’t like their music? We don’t like their preaching. They are too noisy and out of control. Their theology is weak. They need to be circumcised and obey the Law of Moses. ” Perhaps the Gentiles wondered, “why are they having such a hard time simply obeying Jesus’ command to love their neighbors? We love Jesus as much as they do.”

Peter also draws Paul’s rebuke for cultural and racial prejudice in Galatians 2, where Peter favored “certain men from James” because of their cultural heritage. In Galatians 2:14, the true problem with racial division is revealed: it compromises the gospel. When Paul rebuked Peter, he did not rebuke him for breaking the “no racism” rule; Paul rebuked him for not living “in step with the truth of the gospel.” In essence, racial division in the church tells the world that Christ is good enough to save us, but not good enough to unite us.

We American Christians owe a lot to the apostles for standing their ground against racism. Because of this, we Gentile Americans are a part of the Kingdom of God. We Gentile Americans can look at Acts 2, Acts 6, Acts 15, and see the story of the oppression of a minority Christian group and identify with them as my people. The Judaizers lost control of their version of Christianity, the thing they feared most.

That’s probably a similar fear many face about a racially reconciled church. White people might fear losing their music, their traditions, their comfort. Black people might fear losing their unique and wonderful spiritual heritage through assimilation with the dominant culture.

The Bible says that perhaps both races have made idols out of their cultural religious preferences and allowed them prominence over the gospel of Christ.

Can we worship with Fred Hammond instead of Matt Redman? Can we get used to “Amens” and “Hallelujahs” throughout church? Can we get used to preaching that is louder than we’re used to? Can we worship with acoustic guitars? Can we enjoy a quiet moment of sober reflection in a worship service?

That’s the number one reason why I want to build a racially diverse church. Racial division in the body of Christ diminishes God’s glory in our lives, and I want no part of that.

Racial unity in the body of Christ tells the world that our common allegiance to Jesus is greater than any potential division. It glorifies God.

Now that we have the number one reason out of the way, I have nine other reasons that are more practical in their orientation. These will appear in the next post.

[Acknowledgment: many of these insights are the result of studying Spencer Perkins, Chris Rice (not the singer), and Tim Keller.]

Are Cincinnati’s race problems overblown? It all depends on who you ask.

I recently hosted a team of about 20 high school students from Spartanburg, SC, who were here to help me canvass the city, take surveys, and get a better grasp on the spiritual climate in Cincinnati. I made the surveys and specifically asked questions regarding race.

When asked to describe Cincinnati in one word, one lady named Mrs. Owens responded “racist.” She also said racism is the greatest problem facing the community. Margaret is African American and she said the racial problems in this city are 98 out of 100. Another African American man said 89 out of 100.

When white folks were asked the same question, they were clearly more optimistic. Bethany said racial tension is 20 out of 100, Carol gave it a 25, Matthew a 60, and so on.

I have asked that question also to many of the local people that I have met here, and the white folks all tend to think that the problem is “overblown” and the so-called riots were a “joke.” Media hype and sensationalism, they say.

Regarding the riots, Kweisi Mfume said that the riots were caused by, “more than anything else, 20 to 25 years of neglect, of frustration, of profiling, of a second-class feeling in Cincinnati. White citizens and black citizens for all that time have been pleading for somebody to take a look at what was going on there, to respond. That didn’t happen. … All of this just bubbled over, but not because of this one incident, because of a number of incidents like this over the years.”

The answer to the perception disparity can possibly be attributed to a collective refusal to acknowledge the problem. Sylvester Monroe says that we have a “growing national proclivity for avoiding even the discussion of race. But by shunning racial issues and ignoring history — including fairly recent history — we make America’s most intractable problem that much more difficult to solve.”

Here’s the landscape: most people avoid discussions of race. It belongs in the junk drawer of untouchables such as politics and religion; the feelings are just too raw. Christians have outsourced any racial ministry or even discussion to liberals who deny the Bible and see racial equality in the same light as gay rights.

Here’s the bottom line: white people don’t have to feel intimidated in a room full of other whites. White people don’t feel targeted by the police. White people live in the majority culture and issues of race can be sandwiched in between discussions of our favorite films and whether or not NAFTA is a good idea.

For black folks, it is a daily part of their lives. There is no escaping the fact that they live in as minorities in a culture where they tangibly experience racial hostilities.

So let’s cut the crap. White people can say racial issues are overblown because we have the luxury of ignoring it. African Americans live it everyday, and the ones I’ve met in Cincinnati universally agree that there’s a major problem.

Do we not have a responsibility as Christians to address this?