What Do You Do If You Are A White+Evangelical+Conservative Racist?

Criticizing white evangelical social conservatives seems to have become the "in" thing these days among emerging evangelical thinkers and theologians. An influential thinker in this movement is a writer, pastor, and theologian by the name of Greg Boyd.

I need to preface this post by saying I'm not at all familiar with Boyd's theology. I haven't read any of his books and only in the past week was made aware of who he is. The only reason I bring him up at all is because his most recent blog post addresses one of the reasons why I started this blog - the issue of race. His title of the blog entry is The Heresy of an Unreconciled Church and it begins this way:

Several people responded to my most recent blog by contrasting what I wrote with the “hostility” and “venom” they were reading on some white conservative Christian blogs the day following the election. While most other Americans — even most opponents of Obama’s politics — were celebrating what Obama’s election means for race relations in this country, these white Christians, I was told, were enraged. While I think this is tragically sad, I’m actually not surprised.

Why is Boyd not surprised? Well, a few weeks ago he attended a seminar by Michael Emerson who wrote the book Divided By Faith and he learned the following:

One of the sad but unavoidable conclusions Emerson drew from this combination of studies was that participating in a homogenous church — as the vast majority of white evangelicals do — actually makes people more prone toward racism. Folks who are strongly bound to homogenous religous groups tend to embrace racial stereotypes and be more wary of people whose ethnicity and culture is different from their own than those who don’t. As a result, participating in homogenous religious groups tends to make people less interested in, and less adept at, making progress at bridging the racial divide.

In this light, it’s not surprising that some white evangelicals were enraged over Obama’s victory while so much of the rest of the country was celebrating it. Arguably, no group in America is at one and the same time more invested in political opinions that oppose Obama and less able to appreciate the significance of his racial achievement than this group.

Boyd then proceeds to lay into white conservative evangelicals a little more and finally ends with these statements:

So too, if refusing to preach the forgiveness of sins is heresy, then so is the refusal to passionately engage in racial reconciliation.

And in this light, we have to confess that the evangelical church in America is, to a large extent, guilty of heresy…as perhaps are some of those who were spewing venom after Obama’s election.

I have so many thoughts about Boyd's post that I barely know where to begin. For someone who appears so comfortable in his critique of the church, he shows surprising ignorance regarding why races are so segregated on Sunday, little knowledge of the depth of progress we've made as a nation in this area outside the church walls, and offers zero guidance to the people he brands as heretics and racists.

So instead of trying to unpack everything he wrote, instead I'll ask a question.

What should you do if you are a white evangelical christian who attends a mostly white church (as I am and as I do) and cares about certain social issues such as racial reconciliation?

I wish I could answer that question in a sentence, but I can't. The answer to that question is messy and complicated. And, in fact, you will get radically different answers depending on who you talk to.

But my own journey in attempting to answer this question is one of the very reasons why I started this blog.

In future posts I'll share some thoughts in this area - and I promise to offer some constructive advice rather than just drop a "heretic racist" bomb in your lap.