Dr. Piper: Lecrae & #Facts about “White Evangelicalism”

 

 

I was puzzlingly enthused, encouraged and perplexed by Dr. John Piper’s response to Lecrae’s recent interview on Truth’s Table. Immediately, I realized that Dr. Piper’s response could be so more than that. It could actually be a seed that could sprout into dialogue and action that are both sorely needed, centering on the major question he asks in his blog post: “What are the implications when young black men and women state they are loosening ties with white evangelicalism?” I can’t speak for everyone, but I’ll share my insights in hopes of continuing this incredibly important issue.

Why was I so enthusiastic about the post? My journey into ‘white evangelicalism’  had largely been a one-way street. Like many young black men and women who have found Jesus and been nurtured in the context of this particular movement, I have imbibed deeply of its fountains. White evangelicalism’s heroes became my own and the institutions they have built, have become those in which we have served. I have been serving with one of the largest of such organizations for 17 years- practically my entire adult life. Young black folks have embraced the teachings, proclaimed them passionately and studied the debates astutely. We have embraced the declarations of the Reformation, the Confessions, and Creeds. We have defended them against any adversary even when they were at odds with our own traditional black churches. Though many in our own communities have criticized and questioned our loyalty when we have raised financial support to join the missionary and church planting movements launched by white evangelical entities completely foreign (and often historically hostile) to our people, we pressed on- determined to serve Jesus and believe in the best of our white brothers and sisters. Our faith in them was often was in the face of evidence to the contrary as we were consistently stereotyped, and misjudged and held to different standards than others. Young, black Christians who hold to the same creedal confessions of evangelicalism rarely experience someone of Dr. Piper’s platform, influence or credibility in white evangelicalism engaging us on our terms. In that context, his listening was very meaningful. Using his platform to comment on what he heard was even more significant. Why? Because we’re used to the exact opposite. Normally, our voices and words have been ignored in dealing with issues of race, justice, and unity in the church. Truth’s Table wasn’t celebrated but attacked when the groundbreaking podcast first aired. The hosts, Ekemini Uwan, Dr. Christina Edmonson, and Michelle Higgins were called out, not called upon to share their insights. Similarly, Jemar Tisby, who co-hosts the Pass The Mic podcast has been castigated for speaking on racial issues. Even someone like Dr. Eric Mason, with all the bona fides of Dallas Theological Seminary, Acts 29, books and countless other ‘white evangelical’ credentials still finds himself wondering aloud why people question his loyalty to the Gospel when talks about race. I’m grateful that Dr. Piper broke from this trend and actually listened because white evangelicalism seldom has listened to us.

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Why was I encouraged? When the rare moment occurs that those of us “young black women and men” experience engagement from ‘white evangelicalism’ it is often the type that is dismissive. If we had a dollar for every time someone chastised us to just “focus on the gospel” when we bring up the significance of doing anti-racism work, none of us would have to raise support anymore. Dr. Piper not only listened in on the conversation, but he chose to emphasize that which he was thankful and hopeful for instead of being critical. That was very encouraging especially because he didn’t necessarily agree with all that he heard or read … or even understand it. But he offered Lecrae enough respect to listen and celebrate what he did grasp. That gave me hope. He set a tone that makes it more likely that others will follow suit because he is a respected elder in the tribe.

Why was I perplexed? I am grateful that Dr. Piper spent his personal capital to essentially support Lecrae on his blog but found it puzzling he pushed back on the term “white evangelicalism”  commenting it “puts too many whites in bed together” and therein lies my perplexion. Young black women and men didn’t put white evangelicals in bed together … they put themselves there! Ironically, Lecrae addresses this in “FACTS”, the second track on his new album, All Things Come Together:

They say, “‘Crae, you so divisive, shouldn’t be a black church”

I say “Do the math, segregation started that first!”

Doctrinally speaking, the Barna Group has both clarified and described the murkiness in how the term “Evangelicalism” is used. Broadly speaking, this Wikipedia definition is helpful: Evangelicalism “is a worldwide, trans-denominational movement within Protestant Christianity which maintains the belief that the essence of the gospel consists of the doctrine of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ‘s atonement.”^[1]

What about the white evangelicalism? White evangelicalism is real and is rooted in the historical heresy of white supremacy. One can not discuss the American church without discussing slavery, segregation, and racism. It was St. George’s Methodist Church in Philadelphia that sinfully insisted on segregating its congregation. Richard Allen, refusing to endure the false doctrine of white supremacy, left the segregated ‘fellowship’ and started the African Methodist Episcopal Church in 1789. It was the Southern Baptist Convention which separated from the Triennial Convention in 1844 rather than turn away from its members’ idol of slavery. The National Baptist Convention started in 1866 by Black Baptists, who rejected this false teaching and practice, is the reaction to this idolatrous racism. And of course, it was the white Christian leaders who strongly criticized Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. for demanding that the doctrine of Imago Dei be lived out in this nations laws, practices and churches. It was to them that he wrote the Letter from a Birmingham Jail. Time does not permit us to detail how “white flight”, targeted marketing, and the rejection of those who speak about racism have all contributed to the creation of ‘white evangelicalism’. The racial divide in the church is not only a historical vestige of slavery, but a result of continued practices that marginalize people of color in the Christian community. White evangelicalism has been cultivated and crafted to be just that. It’s not a historical accident. Those people of color who are passionate about racial justice who stay among this tribe do so in spite of it. They stay affiliated supremely aware they must carefully eat the meat of epistemological fidelity and spit out the bones of ethical infidelity and racism, and this is a particularly bony fish. The movement that often syncretizes American exceptionalism and uncritical patriotism with what it means to be Christian is White Evangelicalism. The movement that openly speculated that the first black president was the anti-Christ is White Evangelicalism. The movement that overwhelmingly was silent when a presidential candidate they endorsed race-baited and pandered to white supremacists is White Evangelicalism. The movement that ignores issues of justice and the crisis that black people are suffering at higher rates than whites in just about every measurable way is White Evangelicalism. It’s a movement that too often neglects to identify the socio-economic realities that our Scriptures clearly link with injustice and therefore is one that many of us have decided to discontinue identification with.

Those people of color who are passionate about racial justice who stay among this tribe do so in spite of it. But because it is hyper-individualism, white evangelicalism is predictably unaware of itself or of its importance.

What’s a recognized global leader in ‘white evangelicalism’ to do? I celebrate Dr. Piper’s post. He thought the sentiments of what Lecrae shared on Truth’s Table was worth celebrating and pondering. But more needs to be done. White Christians like Dr. Piper must press into this issue of “white evangelicalism”. If dynamic young African American Christian leaders are saying that the air is so toxic in this movement that they need to leave, perhaps an exploration and some type of assessment of their complaints are warranted? I implore anyone confused about the term ‘white evangelicalism’ and the reasons why many of us are disillusioned by it to look into history, learn and tell that story. Then change the story. Don’t just dismiss it, but explore it. It has already been reported that part of the reason for Lecrae’s decline in sales is because he is tackling issues of race and justice. (Album Sales is only one measure of success and this album has critical acclaim and unprecedented reach, it’s still a tangible indicator of Lecrae’s point). If you’re a white evangelical, buy the album, encourage others to do the same.

Still confused about the term ‘white evangelicalism’ and the reasons why many are disillusioned by it? Learn the history, tell that story, then change the story. Don’t dismiss it, explore it. (Recommended: books like Divided By Faith and Doctrine and Race) I say this as one who respects and appreciates Dr. Piper and not as a cynical critic. Lecrae and so many of others who also have given up attempting to scale the wall of white evangelicalism acceptance deserve more than thankfulness that they are still in the faith. They deserve advocacy from those on the other side of that wall. They are the Hellenistic Jewish widows with a complaint about the distribution of dignity and justice in Acts 6. Will white evangelical leaders, like the disciples did, call together those under their influence and see what must be done? If things don’t change, then more will continue to look for other places to be seen and heard because their calling is bigger than the confines of ‘white evangelicalism’. But wouldn’t it be awesome if white evangelicals actually tore down the walls of their own structures?

 

Confederate Monuments: Our Golden Calf

“History is not the past.

It is the present.

We carry our history with us.

We are our history.

If we pretend otherwise, we literally are criminals.”

–James Baldwin

 

The Israelites had been waiting for what must have felt like forever. Yes, they had just seen Egypt, the most powerful nation in the world, forced to release two million slaves after an epic battle of Biblical proportions. But now, seemingly stranded in the wilderness, with no clear vision or leadership, they needed to move on. But how? An idea spread like wildfire in the camp:

“Let’s build a golden calf, worship it, and continue the traditions we learned from our oppressors. Let’s tell the story how we want to so we can own our past and our present course of action.”

So they shared this idea with the leader in charge, and he approved legislation to build this monument and declared at its dedication: “Behold the god who delivered you from Egypt!”

The idolatry was not just found in the golden calf, but in the deceptive story the people wanted to tell about themselves. The truth was that golden calf represented the idol of wealth (hence golden) and their desire for power to create their own story of the past.

The defense of Confederate monuments and memorials reminds me of this moment in Exodus 32. It is not just a defense of bronze and marble. It’s not even a defense of preserving the hard truths of history. It is a defense for the way we remember things, and what those things tell us about ourselves today. It’s one thing to tell the story of history, it’s quite another, to celebrate those who fought to oppose the vision of the nation we hope to attain. Germans and Israelis seem to recall history quite well without Nazi statues in their midst.

But this should be of no surprise. The fight for the meaning of the war that took more American lives than any other, and split the nation into what President Abraham LIncoln called “a house divided” was always contentious. In his second inaugural address, Lincoln told this story in a sobering way:

If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him?

By the Civil War’s end, Lincoln interpreted it as a sort of divine judgment on North and South for the evils of benefiting from African Americans’ “250 years of unrequited toil”. But his was not the only interpretation in play. His own assassination at the hands of John Wilkes Booth and the Compromise of 1877 sought to remove the memory of the war as a monument to a new America in which former slaves would be equal citizens. These moments sought to tell a different story.

By 1905, Thomas Dixon Jr. opened a play called The Clansman, which told the story of the Civil War and the Reconstruction (which sought to enforce the citizenship rights of former slaves). Dixon told the story of noble Southerners being oppressed by lazy, lustful, black men and self-righteous greedy Northerners. The play would be made into the first national blockbuster film: Birth of A Nation. Released in 1915, (just 50 years after the Civil War ended) Birth of A Nation, was met with enormous box office sales and critical acclaim. It’s hard to overestimate the significance of this particular form of storytelling. This film created burning crosses, later used as a symbol to intimidate blacks, prompted a revival of the Klan, and popularized the notion of black men as violent. The film was so powerful, President Woodrow Wilson, in office at the time, gleefully wrote to the writer of The Clansman: “This play is transforming the entire population of the North and the West into sympathetic Southern voters. There will never be an issue of your segregation policy”.1

The title change is instructive: from The Clansman to Birth of A Nation. The idea was to tell history. And make no mistake about it, Birth of A Nation was seen and defended by its supporters as an accurate portrayal of American history. Fearing its impact on the nation, NAACP fought unsuccessfully to ban it. This golden calf was an expression of the idol of racism and the power to create a version of the nation that would once again “Make America Great Again”.

Why were those who descended on Charlottesville so motivated by the planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue? What caused such chants as “You will not replace us! Jews will not replace us!”? 

Baldwin’s words are instructive here: “We carry our history with us. We *are* our history.” The removal of monuments is a statement that a key component of their story (slavery and the Confederacy) was steeped in racism. That also forces us to look into the current legacy of that past in everything from segregation, lynching, the Civil Right struggle and current issues of racial inequality. To interpret the Confederacy honestly is difficult for those wanting to see their past heroically. How do we tell the story of a rebellion against the United States motivated by the existential crisis Southern states felt based on a fear of an impending abolition of slavery? It is a difficult thing when one wants to see their ancestors as nobility and their culture as idyllic. What does one do with that history?

Once again the words of President Lincoln, who no doubt felt the shame of his own previous moral equivocations, are instructive. He told the story of the Civil War not primarily based on heroes or villains, but centered on its most vulnerable population: the two million African Americans who were in bondage. Based on that most egregious truth, he recognized both sides had culpability. I don’t think Lincoln would have been in a hurry to put up any monuments for Union or Confederate troops. Perhaps the monuments really need to go up to those enslaved Americans who endured the suffering with great courage and therefore show us the way forward.

And in that regard, it might not be such a bad idea to reexamine how we tell the history of our past after all. Maybe this is why God instructed the Israelites when Moses finally did come down from the mountain: “Make no graven image.” What is clear today is that these monuments reflect a deep difficulty we have in telling the story accurately. The white supremacists who clamor to them, and defend them show us the danger of what happens when we keep the golden calfs up, instead of tearing them down, reflecting and mourning what they mean. America has always struggled to tell the truth about its brutal past because we struggle to tell the truth about our brutal present. We must tear down our idols so we can build a nation for all of us.

My Reflections On The Anniversary of #Ferguson: 3 Ways You Can Respond

I’ve tried to write this several times this year but the tragic repetition of each news story “Unarmed Black Man Killed By Police” left me at a loss of words. Additionally, I also had to process the defensive reactions to the cries of injustice and #BlackLivesMatter that rang out over the last year. August 9, 2014 was a day many of us will never forget. I know I won’t. I remember watching the shocking video on CNN of a dead, black male body laying in the middle of the street for over four hours, like roadkill, as neighbors watched in outrage.

That disturbing scene was my introduction into the Mike Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. As the protests and unrest grew in the weeks that followed, I prepared to write. But then, a grand jury decided not to indict the officer who we saw kill Eric Garner while using an illegal chokehold. Once again, I planned to write something, but the shouts for justice for Freddie Gray, killed in police custody prompted more anger, disbelief, and reflection. And the names kept coming:

     

Mike Brown, Ezell Ford, John Crawford, 12 year old Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland, Christian Taylor (August 7, 2015), [all pictured above in order] and more were all part of this story. It seemed like each day another tragedy unfolded.

During the last 12 months a disturbing trend of unarmed black men being killed by police officers emerged.That’s a tragedy that ought to be lamented, not a political football to be kicked around.

There is another tragedy as well: too many people don’t see Mike Brown, Samuel Dubose, Freddie Grey, and Eric Garner as imago dei – made in the image of God. They are to some simply inconvenient anecdotal evidence that the America that many black people live in is different and less fair than white people. But they were more than that. They were people with infinite worth and value.

The rush to support the police (or demonize them) distracts from the point. It’s not just about if the officers were guilty of a crime or not, although that is important. It’s about the obvious reality that these tragedies happened, and that they disproportionately happened to a certain demographic: black people. When we create caricatures of “good guys and bad guys” it prevents us from simply grieving with those who grieve and advocating on their behalf. In the Good Samaritan story that Jesus told, the Samaritan doesn’t stop to figure out what the man left for dead did. He didn’t ask “Well, did he deserve it? Maybe he started the altercation and the other guy just defended himself?” He just helped the poor soul.

When we see these dead men and women as imago dei ~ made in the image of God ~ then we can agree that their untimely deaths are tragedies that had ripple effects in their families and communities. In light of the fact that they were unarmed we also should ask what best practices ought to be implemented to reduce the likelihood of police officers using deadly force. It’s a conversation that should happen in the wake of such loss of life. Such a dialogue also can protect law enforcement from the burden and consequences they face as a result of these tragedies. Officer Darren Wilson, who shot Mike Brown, is unemployed and in hiding in light of unfortunate threats against his life. The officer who shot Samuel DuBose is facing a criminal hearing (as well as those involved with Freddie Gray’s death), and the officer who shot and killed Christian Taylor is currently on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. I’m sure they would do things different in hindsight.

As a black man, the last year has been surreal and scary. It’s also been a source of frustration and anger to constantly hear the immediate jump to justifications that some my white friends and colleagues respond with when these issues emerge. It’s scary because every time I’ve been stopped by a police officer, I have feared for my life, and have experienced unnecessary hostilities. When I see video of a dreadlocked Samuel DuBose shot and killed after being stopped for nothing, I see myself.

And regardless of how close your appearance is or isn’t from his, Jesus Christ reminds us in the Good Samaritan story that Samuel DuBose was our neighbor, and so was Mike Brown.

I recommend three steps to help us move toward healing and progress. This list is especially for those in the majority culture who may feel ambivalent about the facts of the cases.

1. We should grieve the loss of life. Mike Brown had just graduated high school. Isn’t it a tragedy that instead of being dropped off for his sophomore year in college, his parents are visiting his grave site this month? An overly simplistic perspective says: “If I’m not sure the officer did anything wrong, then I can’t take the dead person’s side and not side with law enforcement.” Real life is not that simple.Let’s say a number of toddlers died while playing with a toy alleged to have had manufacturing problems. A class action lawsuit is filed claiming the manufacturer was responsible for the deaths. Would we reserve compassion until we knew all the facts and could make a decision about who was really at fault? Wouldn’t it be troubling enough that toddlers died regardless of who was to blame? Imagine going up to the mother and father who loss a child and saying “Well, I can’t really empathize with you because the child may have used the toy incorrectly and caused her own death.” That’s the callousness and lack of empathy I have witnessed when these sad events have come up. We need to rediscover empathy. Take a moment and do that now. Just lament the losses of life.
2. Understand the context. There are structural inequalities that cause poorer people in this country to experience harsher consequences in the criminal justice system. We all know that acquiring “the best lawyer money can buy” has advantages that a court appointed attorney doesn’t.Think about that. Money drives our justice system. Additionally, the biases that emerge from a racialized society are clearly still a reality. Simply put white privilege is alive and well in the United States and that truth combined with the economic facts (almost 1 in 3 black people are in poverty compared with less than 1 in 10 white people) and you have scenarios, like those that played out over the last year repeatedly. There is still a unique fear of black men in the United States, and you can’t effectively “protect and serve” a community you are afraid of.
3. Be an advocate. Learn about the relationship between poverty, education, race and crime and do something. You have a choice to engage in this challenge. But if you want to show the compassion and justice that you would want others to have toward you then you have to simply do something. Let’s hope, pray and act so that the next 12 months will go by without the same tragedies as we experienced since August 9, 2014.