Most Americans agree on one thing: racial reconciliation is a laudable goal. What is new and exciting is the fact that the Church is finally taking the leadership in this movement. Industry and education are discussing “quotas” and “reparations.” But only the Church of Jesus Christ–in its myriad of representations–is seriously undertaking the arduous task of bringing about national racial reconciliation.
Racial reconciliation will not come without God’s miraculous intervention. No social program, no good intention, no human activity for that matter will bring reconciliation among America’s angry races. It will take a miracle. We need, from the very beginning to admit humbly that reconciliation will only occur as we respond to God’s mercy and grace so amply presented in Jesus Christ (John 3:16). He will be the author of reconciliation or it simply will not occur.
Most Christians acknowledge that it has never been the Lord’s intention for His people to be divided along racial lines. Racial identification and racial anger happen automatically in the United States because race has such a ubiquitous presence. Racial reconciliation, on the other hand, will not occur naturally. It will take a lot of hard work. Racial reconciliation will not become a reality through human effort. Reconciliation must be part of a divine agenda. By dying on the cross, Jesus paid the price for peace. This is the only way that humankind can be empowered to seek reconciliation with other persons. Reconciliation is a work of the Holy Spirit.
The road to the cross begins with repentance. The first, and perhaps most formidable task before white American Christianity is a profound and sincere repentance for the horrific choices, concerning race relations, we have made both as a white Christian nation and a white Christian Church in the last three hundred years. We need to own the problem before we will know a solution. It is a personal issue before it is a community one.
The problem is sin. The doctrine of sin is the most empirically arguable doctrine of Christianity. It is everywhere present in American race relations. Raleigh Washington, a black pastor in Chicago writes:
I tell people that the problem is not skin; the problem is sin. . . my challenge to my black brothers and sisters is to speak the truth in what we see so that we can bring the power of the gospel to deal with it. Only as we acknowledge our need for spiritual renewal–spiritual solutions to spiritual problems–can we bring God’s redeeming power to resolve the problems facing us as a people.
Only as we acknowledge our need for spiritual renewal, only when we see racial anger as a spiritual problem, will we bring God’s redeeming power to resolve the problems we face as a people.
Ted Peters, Professor of Systematic Theology at Pacific Lutheran Seminary, argues that there are seven aspects of sin. First, is anxiety, which denies our mortality through self-deception. Joined with unfaithfulness (the second aspect) we are overwhelmed with the need to find security at all cost. This leads to pride–which Paul Tillich states is the root of all human sin. This pride blocks any semblance of empathy from manifesting itself in our lives. Fourthly, there emerges a desire to possess and to master. Peters, like Augustine, argues that this concupiscence eventually drives us to ever-increasing and self-destructive consumption. Ergo, racism and other sins emerge.
Peters’ final three aspects are truly hellish. Concupiscence leads to a self-deceiving cloak of rightness. Next, cruelty and oppression results. Finally, there is blasphemy, the rejection of grace. At this moment we are most like Satan. It is at this place in 1998 that the white American nation finds itself.
A repentant white church must lead our country to repentant prayer. This is infinitely more valuable for America than all the reparations we would ever pay, all the social welfare programs we design. Many white Christian groups are doing just that.