Divided by Faith

by Michael O Emerson and Christian Smith, Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America

I put off assessing this book for quite a while. I saw it referred to in Christianity Today, with the anecdote that it was given to pastors in a megachurch, one of whom was in tears after reading it. It sounded important.

The book is a history, with lots of survey information, of the modern racial reconciliation movement and how it ran aground; as told through the stories of some key figures. A key passage in the analysis is a description of two letters to Christianity Today:

But there are some perhaps subtle differences in her expression of reconciliation as compared with the black writer's letter. First, the letter from the black writer uses the vehicle of a personal letter to communicate from one race to another; the white writer, though, quickly individualizes the letter, claiming that she cannot speak for other whites. She also asks to be seen as an individual, not a member of a race, and says her goal is to treat individuals as individuals, regardless of color. This seems perfectly reasonable, but it has an important effect. The need to work for social justice and social equality between races is minimized, even dropped. If we are to focus on individuals only, then justice does not mean working against structures of inequality, but treating individuals as equals, regardless of the actual economic and political facts. Equality is spiritually and individually based, not temporally and socially based.

And in another place:

As Wellman noted, most white Americans honestly desire a color-blind society, and often oppose the color-conscious for that reason.

What is more, because most white evangelicals perceive racism as individual-level prejudice and discrimination, and do not view themselves as prejudiced people, they wonder why they must be challenged with problems they did not and do not cause. As they communicated to us over and over, they do not have much interracial contact, but when they do, they are friendly toward people they meet from other races, and some even claim healthy interracial friendships.

The idea is that the individualistic approach to salvation and sin and punishment makes whites unable to “see their advantage” while the corporate approach leads to a “social justice” based (and therefore inevitably political) religion.

The authors make the correlations clear, and their preferences come across clearly too. An inadvertent side effect of evangelical theology reinforces perspectives on race that are incompatible with “black” social justice theory, and which make communication much harder.

The work is limited in scope, of course, and there remain questions the authors did not deal with.

1. Is focusing on individual behavior the right thing to do? The authors, not being even amateur theologians, are not competent to address this question; and don't try.
2. What are the sources of advantage and of disadvantage? Only the most superficial analysis would say that these are due to current racism. There is a vicious feedback at work. The fruits of ghetto culture are crime and loss; the fruits of crime and loss are extra surveillance and distrust; and the extra surveillance and distrust feeds the ghetto culture. Don't bother trying to call me racist—history has seen this pattern many times: go look up NINA.
3. Once you have found the sources of advantage and disadvantage, what just means are usable to deal with them? “Affirmative action” is the tool everyone seems to talk about in the book, but a full theory and review of experience isn't possible in the scope of the book.
4. Is equality of opportunity or equality of result demanded? There isn't agreement on this in the political arena, and the answer informs all planning.

Fundamental political differences are sometimes outgrowths of theological differences. The traditional Muslim concept of the nature of law and the role of religion is not reconcilable with Western democracy. One can tweak it—magnifying the principle that “the ummah is never wrong” and that fallible men are required to interpret holy law—to create a concept that might be compatible; but that isn't what's being preached by the most influential groups.

I'm told Greek Orthodoxy also has issues with Western concepts of liberty—rulers are supposed to mandate, not just encourage, right behavior—but I need to study them more, and I may have this wrong. Certainly theological claims about the divine right of kings to rule as God's regents are part of Western history—and not compatible with democracy.

So one question is: To what extent ought we allow these theological/political differences to separate us?

Some differences make it impossible to worship together—the nature of the Lord's Supper/Holy Communion being one. We have to accept such divisions for the sake of peace. To the extent that a church is involved in attempting social change, it is hard to see how a single body can speak with two voices. Political involvement seems to require division.

One fundamental political division is between those for whom the basic rights are negative—the right to be protected from abuse by others; and those for whom rights include positive ones—the right to demand food or other basic services. It is easy to argue a duty exists to meet other's needs as a religious obligation, but rather a leap to assert that having these needs filled is a right enforceable against the non-religious, and chutzpah to claim that there is only one possible method of filling said needs. Enforcing the “positive rights” is necessarily more contentious, and must result in church divisions insofar as churches get involved in pushing for them.

You'd think that the “negative rights” would be less contentious, but this turns out not to be so. The right not to be killed (anti-abortion) is demanded by some denominations and given no better than lip service, if not downright opposition, by others. I've read some who said that abortion is evil but bans are unenforceable (though bans on sexism somehow are enforceable), and another who said that it was evil but – apparently he didn't like the company he'd be keeping if he supported a ban.

Read the book and think about the questions it asks. And the questions it doesn't.