Becoming an Anti-Racist Church

Given the tides and times in which we live, and as something of a follow up to the last review, I would submit the book "Becoming an Anti-Racist Church" by Joseph Barndt.

Most churches would say, if not insist, that they were not racist.  Most people say that.  Yet racism is more than an attitude, it is something that can (and has) been ingrained into cultures, institutions, and even churches.  We may not be racist, but we might not be doing anything about racism either.  And that can be a big difference.

"Racism," according to Barndt, "is the result of individual prejudice and bigotry, but more significantly the product of historic institutional power structures." (p. 5).  Racism is also about creating superiority and inferiority. (p. 26).  I would add that it may not be so much about creating these attitudes as both fostering and continuing them.

Barndt argues that we have often used God to justify our own beliefs and public actions.  Sadly, when the churches began to take stances for or against slavery, they used the Bible to back their points of view.  The churches that opposed slavery slowly changed their minds.  What is telling is that while these churches would eventually become advocates against slavery, they didn't believe that point of view to begin with.  As such, Barndt points out, it is easier to find records of resistance to racism than records of being racist.  We work to hide our opinions that were for what we now think of as sin.

There is much work to be done when it comes to the church being the voice of racial inclusiveness and advocates for those whose skin color is different from our own.  There is also much work to be done in expressing collective outrage at social injustice - especially when that outrage is re-defined as being anti-American.

Barndt's book isn't a step-by-step, twelve-week program to becoming an Anti-Racist church.  Would that there might be such a thing.  Instead, it is a recognition that the changing of racist ideas is a protracted struggle that might take years, if not generations.  For some, that might seem too long and make the idea of the book untenable.  That's too bad.

What Barndt is offering is a map to introspection and reflection.  Before a church (or an individual) can change their minds about an issue (and, by the way, the word repent literally means to change one's mind and/or direction), it takes a willingness to "fess up" to one's true feelings on a subject.  For the church to become anti-racists, it has to start by examining its own heart and history.  Only then can it work to grow into an agent of social and public change.

Barndt's book isn't an easy read.  But it is a good read.  Coupled with "Divided By Faith" (our last review), it makes for a sobering and thoughtful approach to a conversation that is being carried on all around us.

Information
Becoming an Anti-Racist Church
by Joseph Barndt
Published by Fortress Press, 2011
ISBN 978-0-8006-6460-2
paperback