I wake up to messages on social media from other Christians calling me a racist, communist, false teacher. Such messages have become as ordinary as my cup of coffee before morning prayer. I receive them because part of my work as a Christian theologian addresses issues of systemic injustice. I never imagined such work would be controversial. Racism — personal and societal — still affects the lives of people of color in the United States. Part of the Christian witness involves addressing this among a host of other maladies.
Nearly every Christian of color I know who addresses these issues has been subject to similar attacks, no matter the nuance of our argumentation or the sources we cite. I have been accused of believing that all white people are irredeemably racist and of seeing humans as only victims or oppressors. None of this is true, but that does not seem to matter. They call us “woke,” but the disdain with which they use that word makes it feel like a stand-in for deeper and more cutting insults.
I remain puzzled as to why discussions of racism and injustice stir up so much venom from fellow believers. They do not simply disagree. They are angry. Despite this hysteria, there is simply no theological or historical reason for Christians to hesitate over acknowledging structural racism.
When people point out bias or racism in structures (health care, housing, policing, employment practices), they are engaging in the most Christian of practices: naming and resisting sins, personal and collective. A Christian theology of human fallibility leads us to expect structural and personal injustice. It is in the texts we hold dear. So when Christians stand up against racialized oppression, they are not losing the plot; they are discovering an element of Christian faith and practice that has been with us since the beginning.
The Law of Moses says: “You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in their lawsuits. Keep far from a false charge, and do not kill the innocent and those in the right, for I will not acquit the guilty. You shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right” (Exodus 23:6-8). The Hebrew Scriptures see the links between power, money and justice. Therefore when I read in modern scholarship depictions of the ways in which money subverts justice, I find a convergence of interests and a place for dialogue.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus quoted the prophet Isaiah in his first agenda-setting sermon. He said that he had come to “set the oppressed free.” In Isaiah’s time and ours the oppressed are “the shattered ones,” those who have been broken apart by a life filled with exploitation. They are those who have not been given a fair shake, the victims of bribes, land grabs and economic disenfranchisement. Oppression is both spiritual and material.
Christianity teaches that humans, left to our own devices, often pursue their own distorted interests. We call this tendency sin. When you add in political and economic power to get what you want at the expense of others, you have the recipe for systemic injustice. Systemic racism is just one form (out of many) that people use to get what they want at the expense of others. People can rob you at gunpoint and governments can rob you through eminent domain. Both are wrong.
The texts of the Old and New Testaments open up the possibility of introspection and learning. The Psalmist wonders: “Who can discern their own errors? Cleanse me from my hidden faults” (Psalm 19:12). The writer recognizes that there may be parts of themselves that they do not know. Christians should be open to the possibility that they may have hidden racial biases of which they are not aware. This is well documented, for example, in the areas of health care and medical treatment. When someone gives us a chance to finally know ourselves and heal, we should be open to the possibility. Training in potential hidden biases is not indoctrination in every case (admittedly it can be done in unhealthy ways); it can be a chance for growth.
In the struggle against systemic racism, our analysis, solutions and implications may diverge in ways as different as our perceptions, temperaments and underlying beliefs about reality. My religious beliefs will give my arguments a certain tenor. They are a part of who I am; it was the gift my grandparents and parents gave me, their weapon against anti-blackness and despair. Others have trod different paths.
That does not mean that we cannot talk to one another. W.E.B. Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Fannie Lou Hamer, James Baldwin and Martin Luther King Jr. held a variety of religious views. Nonetheless, they managed to speak to a religiously diverse America. That is what the public square is for. That is the rough and tumble of democracy.
I am a Christian theologian, not a critical race theorist. When I say that, it is not an attempt to avoid censure or to seal these worlds off from each other. There are no respectability politics here. Instead, it is a statement about the shape of my training and my respect for others’ expertise. Black historians, theologians, philosophers and legal scholars disagree about a host of things. There is an entire Black intellectual tradition about the nature and means of Black freedom of which much of America remains blissfully unaware.
When we arrive at points of consensus, it is not because we are all working within the same framework. It is because we are all staring at the same monster come to steal, kill and destroy.
Many fear that Christians who speak out against racism want to tear down America. That is not true; we are the fools who believe that America might better embody its ideals for all people. We are the people of hope. We don’t want destruction of any good thing; we want justice. Let us then set aside this tired drama and fear-mongering distracting us from real issues. The lines are stale and the plot predictable. Let’s instead write a different script and possibly a more just future for everyone.
Esau McCaulley is a contributing opinion writer and an assistant professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Illinois. He is the author of the book Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope.