Racial Reconciliation is Essential to Discipleship
By: Won Kim
Tags: North America, Race, Discipleship, Racial Reconciliation, Christianity

In my personal discipleship journey, hearing personal accounts of racial injustice opened my eyes. Reading about the massive scale of racial oppression throughout this country’s history was a punch in the gut. Divided by Faith by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith is perhaps the most important book I read on the state of race relations in America and why it matters to the American Church. Published in 2000, the hard truths from their research still resonate today. Emerson and Smith unpack the deep cultural forces that divide White and Black Americans and why this gulf is even more significant among Christians—particularly evangelicals. If you have not read it, stop reading and go buy that book.

As I read the book, the Spirit prompted me to repent many times for my own complicity in racism, discrimination, and segregation. I repented of taking advantage of my Korean-American male privilege. I also started praying that God would open the eyes of the American Church to the ways that we have enabled and furthered systemic and individual racism and that we would repent. Every book I read on the list below and every account of injustice I heard or read led me to deeper repentance.

Racial injustice is a discipleship matter because God intends for all of creation to be reconciled to Him, flourish, and reflect His glory. When a culture teaches dehumanization and diminishing of any people as “less than,” it is an affront to our Holy God. Instead of trusting what our culture says about people and the world, we need to look to Scripture for the truth.

Throughout the Old Testament, God called on the Israelites to remember the exodus from Egypt and how He saved them from slavery. God did this because He wanted the Israelites to remember who they were, where they came from, and who rescued them. He calls us to do the same today. A crucial part of Christian living is remembering. A congregation that doesn’t regularly remember where they came from and how far God has brought them will forget who they are and to whom they belong.

As American Christians, we obey God when we call for our nation to remember its history. We call to memory that the very foundation of this country’s formation and growth were erected upon the bodies of subjugated and slaughtered Indigenous Peoples and dehumanized and enslaved African peoples. White imperialism’s form has changed and evolved over the years, but it still thrives today. The devastating effects of segregation, federally-mandated housing discrimination,³ unequal access to quality education, and uneven enforcement of the law literally shape many of our cities today.

Yet, there seems to be a national amnesia about the atrocities visited upon Black and Brown people throughout history. Perhaps the most visceral example of America’s terrorism of its own citizens is lynching. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, over 4,000 cases of “racial terror lynchings” occurred in 12 southern states and many more in other states between 1877 and 1950.⁴ This ugly history is largely glossed over, but the sins of the past do not stay dormant. Countless recent stories of nooses used to intimidate and threaten Black people across the country show that the specter of lynching is alive and well. In fact, according to theologian James Cone, the lynching tree is a powerful corollary to the cross.⁵ Lynching is a visceral reminder that America is Babylon to many of its citizens.

Because of our national sin of forgetting, discipleship in America means that we are responsible for learning this history, practicing deep and ongoing repentance for our racial sins, and confessing our complicity in those sins. We must specifically repent for how some of us have grown very comfortable and have enjoyed our culture’s benefits at the expense of our Black and Brown brothers and sisters. God desires to form us as people who glorify His Name and spread His justice and shalom, not to be beneficiaries of injustice.

The Church’s Work: Repairing by Submitting

In the face of hundreds of years of oppression and the concurrent work of our culture to form us to forget or downplay that oppression, what can one pastor or congregation do? For this, we look to ancient Church practices. We should repent, grieve, and lament regularly and together. When we gather in worship, our Christian habits and practices of singing praise, praying, greeting each other in the Name of the Lord, taking communion, and hearing from God wash us of the ways that the enemy and our culture tries to direct our desires. In worship, the Holy Spirit disciples us, transforms us, and reorients us back toward God and His Kingdom.

In addition to worship, here are some health checks for your church to see if you disciple all people. Is your worship hospitable to everyone? Who is asked to stretch? In other words, who is made to feel uncomfortable most of the time? If it’s just non-White people, then there’s a good chance your church practices are conforming to unhealthy cultural norms, not to the Kingdom of God’s. Pastor Duke Kwon posted a diagram (below) that I find extremely helpful in discerning your church’s posture toward people of different races. The example on the left does not acknowledge the reality that American churches, particularly majority-White ones, default to White cultural norms. The example on the right depicts a more hospitable approach that acknowledges the challenges people of color face in White-dominant spaces.

Unity/Diversity vs. Equity⁶

Some tangible practices to critically consider are preaching illustrations and examples, musical styles, and liturgies. Assess which groups stay at your church and which leave. People of color will often leave churches without being forthcoming about why they are leaving. However, many reported leaving majority-White churches in the absence of prayer or discussion of the impact on people of color after the 2016 election, police shootings of young Black men and women, or disparaging immigrants.⁷

In all facets of worship, we need to teach that God is the Protector of foreigners, refugees, widows, and the poor. It is God’s will and delight to protect the marginalized. That means that we must share, believe, and elevate the stories of suffering and resilience of our Black, Latin, Asian, and Middle Eastern sisters and brothers. This means that we repent for and confess individual sins such as sexual impurity and greed, and for how our collective sin manifests in systemic forms. Just as I should have immediately believed my friend’s stories of hostile police encounters, we need to believe and elevate the stories and experiences of the marginalized and oppressed because we know that our culture can tell lies about them.

If you aren’t sure where to start, I suggest reading books on the list below, particularly the selections from “lived experiences of people of color.” I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to give you fresh eyes and an open mind. In addition to reading these accounts, reach out to Christians of different backgrounds than your own and submit to them. Give them authority to speak into your life and influence your point of view. One option is to seek a spiritual director from a different racial background.

Finally, and perhaps the most difficult step, share leadership and submit to people of color. Consider the make-up of your church’s pastoral staff, elder boards, and lay leaders. How many are women? How many are people of color? Who has the power in your church? Until people of color have prominent and regular authority and decision-making power to lead your church, your church’s discipleship posture will not be hospitable enough.⁸ A more diverse leadership body brings you closer to that great multitude of every tribe, nation, people, and language.

Jesus calls us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, to make disciples of all nations and to teach them to obey everything He commanded.⁹ The church is to fulfill the cultural mandate and spread God’s diverse and splendid image across all of creation. In doing this, you will be questioned, misunderstood, and vilified. Then you will know you are where you should be. This is hard Kingdom work, but it is in this good work that our hearts will find rest in God.

Discipleship: You Are What You Love (Smith), A Long Obedience in the Same Direction (Peterson), Liturgy of the Ordinary (Warren)

Important American History: Divided by Faith (Emerson & Smith), The New Jim Crow (Michelle Alexander), 13th (documentary by Ava Duvernay), Rethinking Mass Incarceration (Gilliard), The Color of Law (Rothstein), Race & Place (Leong), Prophetic Lament (Rah), The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Cone)

Lived Experiences of People of Color: Between the World and Me (Coates), Tears We Cannot Stop (Dyson), Reconciliation Blues (Gilbreath), Dear White Christians (Harvey), Let Justice Roll Down (John Perkins’ autobiography)

The Church’s Work: Roadmap to Reconciliation (McNeil), The Next Worship (Van Opstal), Segregation to Solidarity (Swanson), Duke Kwon’s teaching