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Mini-rant so I can get it off my chest: I keep seeing people saying white churches MUST preach anti-racism. Stop it.
For one thing, any time you tell somebody they must do this or that, it's a little expression of authoritarianism. Jesus didn't strong-arm people, neither should you.
For another, it completely ignores the sociological realities of American churches.
IIRC, something like 75% of American congregations have fewer than 100 people in worship on a Sunday. That number might be higher. Yet 75% of Christians worship in churches with average attendance above 500(?).
Somebody correct me on the math, it's been a while since I looked at the figures.
But how can this be? Well, there are a lot of very small churches and a few really big churches.
What that means in practice is that most congregations are in survival mode right now, especially with Covid keeping people home. It's a tough environment for small churches these days.
Churches in survival mode tend not to want to hear much beyond "We can make it!" Meanwhile, the big ones tend to shy away from social preaching, for reasons of money, politics, and theology.
As if that weren't enough, churches, like all voluntary institutions, tend toward inertia. If your church was founded for working-class Germans, it tends to remain focused on...working-class Germans, unless something knocks it off course.
There are congregations who change to serve new and different populations, but it's really hard to do so! Most will age out and close rather than take on that kind of challenge.
And in small cities, towns, and rural areas, there's just no pressure to change. So they remain focused on their immediate communities and don't think too much about larger social issues.
Not making excuses here, just trying to explain the reality. Systemic racism is just not something that many of these churches see as touching their lives, and they're often not very keen on adding it to their agenda.
So you can yell about how ministers MUST work on this or that issue (it's not just racism), and, great, two points to you. Doesn't mean the pastor's going to have a cooperative audience.
And of course, those would be the "persuadable" churches. There are a lot of places that are, uh, anti-anti-racist, shall we say?
Yet there are congregations that are taking this work on! My own Wisconsin Conference of the UCC has taken on racism and the Doctrine of Discovery in the past couple of years. Even some small, relatively conservative congregations have engaged.
But the last reality to understand is that churches also reflect demographic realities in America. That is to say, they tend to be either mostly conservative or mostly liberal, and not a heck of a lot of purple.
All of which is to say, who do you think you're talking to? Most churches aren't interested in talking anti-racism, and most of the ones that are, are already doing the work. There's only a very small slice of places that could, but currently aren't.
Does that mean there's not good work that can be done? By no means!
...But first, let me address something else.
...But first, let me address something else.
Somebody in my mentions suggests that the "larger church" straighten out congregations that aren't interested in anti-racism. This seems like a great idea! until you look at the realities again.
People outside the church often vastly overestimate how much influence Christians have over one another. Denominations cannot and do not tell one another what to do, and even if they could, many of the most conservative/racist churches have a denominational polity...
...which means you can't tell them jack. Basically, there's no social discipline for a Southern Baptist Church, unless they like the gays or women in the pulpit, and that discipline is a violation of their own tradition.
Crud, I see my fingers have been going faster than my brain again. The most conservative churches have a *congregational* polity. One SBC congregation can't tell another what to do, much less somebody like me.
Me to SBC pastor: You should preach anti-racism!
SBC pastor: Irrelevant rando says what?
SBC pastor: Irrelevant rando says what?
Even within denominations, it's hard. The hierarchy in the UCC, such as it is, can't really mandate that congregations take on any kind of social issue. Not how the system works. Even denominations with bishops tread lightly for fear of ticking people off.
All right, so let's talk about what *can* be done. Larger denominations do still have disproportionate influence on social norms in the US.
Look at how Catholics and Southern Baptists leveraged their power against abortion and LGBT rights, for example. They could do the same on issues around systemic racism.
In fact, Catholics have been leaders on racism for decades, though perhaps not in the way we talk about anti-racism these days, and the SBC is fumbling its way toward an agenda.
The potential for activism does have limits, however. For one thing, conservative sexual mores have been fairly widely shared in those communions, and anti-racism just doesn't have the same kind of backing.
For another, it took literally decades for those churches to build the kind of clout they needed to push things their way on abortion and same-sex marriage, and even then, they only ever got partial victories.
So Christians could—and do—push for systemic change, but it's difficult to actually accomplish.
As for the preaching and teaching of local pastors, I incline to Father Kadel's view: https://twitter.com/FrKadel/status/1350901196119302149
Rightly or wrongly, where we're at as a society these days means that for many preachers, it's more effective to approach the topic of racism at an angle, as it were.
In my most conservative congregations, I got the best results by talking about how scripture encounters difference and drawing appropriate analogies. Just expanding people's horizons was making progress on these issues.
Was that the kind of progress I would have liked to make? Absolutely not!
Was it the kind of progress those people were ready and able to make? Yeah, that was as far as I could reasonably stretch the envelope. Even then, they thought I was some kind of crusader.
Was it the kind of progress those people were ready and able to make? Yeah, that was as far as I could reasonably stretch the envelope. Even then, they thought I was some kind of crusader.
Last thing, because as we know, my mini-rants are never so mini: whenever somebody says the church MUST take on this cause or MUST take on that one...
...I suspect they conceive of church as some kind of forum for the exchange of ideas, and it's just not.
I don't mean to say that people don't talk about ideas or learn something in Christian education. But churches are about prayer and worship and relationships above all else, and as we know, relationships are pretty resistant to change.
Churches can, should and do effect social change. But they also reflect social realities, and the reality here is that they're as compromised by the culture of white supremacy as any other institution.
Flogging them to be champions of anti-racism doesn't do any more good than running up to random people on the street and yelling at them to do the same.
"The church" is simply too diffuse for everyone to be on board with that work, and not everyone is in a position to take on the work. I wish it were otherwise, but that's the facts, Jack.
A more appropriate response to the situation would be to offer prayer that the church undertake this vital work, and that its *internal dynamics* would align for it to become invested in it.
Because as we know, God moves in mysterious ways, as anyone who's survived a church committee meeting with a shred of hope understands.
The end.
