THE RACIAL UNDERCURRENTS OF EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANITY IN AMERICA
(PART TWO).
OLASIJI VINCENT OSHIN
With the above analysis, anyone, including our Nigerian Christian brothers and sisters, are free to choose who to support. This writer is not campaigning for any politician. We are not asking people to vote for Democrats or Republicans. We simply want to state the facts as they become obvious to us. Of course, no one can stop politicians among us from playing politics. We are all impacted either positively or negatively by government policies. We take sides based on the party that caters to our individual interests. What we are opposed to is the attempt to project personal or group interests as the interest of all Christians, nor do we think their position is necessarily advancing Christianity anywhere. We do not buy into the propaganda of projecting a particular president as pro or anti Christianity.
For us the choice is not between Trump or Obama, and by extension Republicans or Democrats. The choice for us Christians, if we understand what that means, is between Christ and our sweet talking politicians. However the Bible is clear as to the choice we are to make as God's people.
Scripture says “He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God”(Prov.14:32);
Scripture also says:
: “When the righteous are in authority the people rejoice, but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn” (Prov. 29:2).
The question is what would Jesus do in our situation? What would our Lord do in a system in which a part of humans created in his image is subjected to endless persecution and oppression because of their skin colour or past condition of servitude.
Jesus declared his mission on earth in these terms:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the lord’s favor”(Like 4: ,18 – 19).
Going back to the history of Evangelical Christianity in America, how has the Church or the evangelical Christians in light of Christ's mission stated above, helped the oppressed black people following abolition of slavery to stand on their own or be integrated into the community as free citizens?
The Old Testament gives us God's perspective regarding the oppressed. He heard the hue and cry of Israel; He redeemed Israel from slavery, poverty, oppression and from the diseases of Egypt (Deut. 7: 15). God redeemed his people from all their troubles (Psalm 103: 1-5).
The Exodus was the quintessential example of redemption which was denied and is still being denied to African Americans because of their skin colour and past serval conditions. God says in the book of Exodus:
"I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from their hand and bring them out of that land into a good and spacious land flowing with milk and honey”(Exodus 3: 7-8).
Slave owners in the antebellum period understood that slaves who knew the Exodus story would find a powerful theological resource for seeking their own emancipation. Apart from keeping many slaves from receiving education, Christian slave masters who took interest in converting their slaves, allowed them to read only the Bible specially printed for them – a Bible that excluded nearly 50 percent of New Testament, and 90 percent of the Old Testament with nearly the whole book of Exodus removed.
Following ratification of the 13th Amendment which abolished slavery in the United States, local and state laws, the so called Jim Crow laws were enacted. Named after a derogatory term for blacks, Jim Crow laws were a collection of local and state statutes that legalized racial segregation. The laws which existed for about 100 years - from the post civil war until 1968, marginalized African Americans, denied them the right to vote, hold jobs, get an education, and precluded them from other opportunities. Those who attempted to defy Jim Crow laws often faced arrest, fines, jail sentence, violence and death.
Jim Crow laws enforced segregation across board – in schools, housing, transportation etc. perpetuating systemic inequality, displacement, and exclusion of African Americans. Racial segregation in public education, though declared illegal for 65 years in the U.S., yet American public schools remain largely separate and unequal – with profound consequences for students of colour.
Racial segregation is a pattern in Christian churches, segregating congregations based on race. As of 2001, as many as 87percent of Christian churches were completely made up of only white or African American parishioners.
As Jemar Tisby has shown, in his new book, THE COLOR OF COMPROMISE, "the fraught racial history of the U.S. has infiltrated and influenced all of its institutions, including the Christian Church. Though certain figures and movements did join the struggle against slavery, segregation, and violence at various times and places, the majority of white American Christendom fell somewhere on the spectrum between open endorsement and quiet acceptance of racism."
Jemar Tisby, surveys racial history with an eye toward the countless moments when white American Christians could have interceded on behalf of racial justice, but did not. Taken together, he argues that from the founding of the U.S. to the present, these moments constitute an ignominious timeline spanning four centuries of suffering, so that today’s headlines are connected to ancient atrocities. By the end, it is clear that past and current events retain a striking similarity regarding the church and race.
As the nation moved from slavery to Jim Crow, to redlining and mass incarceration, the response of white Christians demonstrated no moral trajectory. Martin Luther King Jr. once said that when it came to issues of justice the church was often the taillight rather than the headlight in society. By that he meant that the church often followed along after changes in the racial status quo were already taking place in different arenas from politics to entertainment to corporations. The majority of white Christians, at least did change, but only as the national sentiment was already moving toward more openness and more equality.
Meanwhile, the ascendance of the Christian Right has continued to influence the broader church's positions on race. Historically, conservative political operatives capitalized on fears and social stances on race that were already present. The fears were already there – both overt and covert – within white Christianity.
These fears largely account for white evangelical support for Donald Trump and their disapproval of “Black Lives Matter” protests. President Donald Trump, aware of these fears, has made it the focus of his campaign for reelection and to deliberately stoke racial tension across the nation.
The president and his supporters, white and black in the United States, and outside, including our Nigerian Christian brothers and sisters seem to see nothing wrong in the dastardly manner George Floyd and other African Americans are being openly killed without a word of condemnation from them. The president is more interested in drafting federal armed forces to stop protesters, projecting himself as the law and order president
