The path forward: Voices on all sides are calling for action, including Kondo’s, as we saw earlier. I see three kinds of action that we might pursue. First, false starts and a focus on side issues lead to a blustering inaction. Second, picking up the tools at hand. Third, choosing deliberately biblical categories of action.
1. Miss: Another Church Failure. The first option is sad. The church could easily miss this moment, hoping to return to three songs and a sermon, and hoping that the election will cure everything. Imagining that the urban protests will just go away as if there were nothing. I would call this a very serious error of omission.
2. Mistake: Picking up the Tools at Hand: This seems to be the primary approach of Christian leaders at least at first. The tools at hand include the categories of thought, language, priorities, and race-related topics being addressed by our secular society. Everywhere I see our people talking, for instance, about systemic racism and about anti-racism. These are terms that have specific meanings in Critical Race Theory (CRT); meanings which I strongly doubt those using them, including me, intend. As I have listened, I have heard moderate views from African Americans, even if they are strongly stimulated by this urgent and important moment. I was cured of social-based action at the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.
3. Mission: Deliberately Biblical Action: This option is pursuing biblical categories of action. This is going to focus on building engaging relationships and serving people where they are, on their terms. This will not be about gathering a variety of conversations and experiences with ‘those people’ like charms on a bracelet. How can we serve? How can we listen and learn? How can we build the bridges we have neglected? How can we take this seriously rather than address it and retreat as if returning from a short mission trip? Kondo said. “Start with compassion, listen rather than judge, close the distance, speak up against all forms of racism.” Biblical.
▪ We are a bit more prone to socially motivated action than to pursuing the biblically motivated action. I believe that we must stand for biblical values rather than our cherished American values or our shared guilt about race. If political action is preferred to biblical action, then we are deluding ourselves. I reject any dodging of issues; we must see them as primarily spiritual rather than social or political, as I learned in ’68.
The MLK approach is distinct from Critical Race Theory: Here is a striking example of a contrast between part of MLK’s ’I Have a Dream’ speech (D.C. 1963) and CRT (in blue): Which approach do you prefer?
MLK said, “In a sense, we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. (They were lies on the day there were written), they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir (Not so! These were exclusively for whites only then and now). This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, (Not so! Black and Whites are fundamentally different identities) would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Not so! Those values are part of a constructed white privilege and form the white architecture of the mind). It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note (Not so! It was never a promise to African Americans) insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred (Not so!) obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds. But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. (Not so! We are not here to cash the check, but to possess the bank because we built and funded it). We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation (Not so! There are no opportunities for us). And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.” (Not so! We are here to remove the evil of whiteness which is racism from the land.) |
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