Do We Worship the Same God?

An Examination of the “Racial” Bifurcation of Black and White Christianity

Mecklenburg Ministries

Food for Thought

Park Road Baptist Church

2/26/09

[Note-This is an extremely essentialist paper that utilizes the terms “Black” and “White” church as absolute categories in order to make a particular point. Though I am aware of a far greater diversity of thought in both categories than will be suggested herein, recognize that the essentialism is just a means to a larger end. I apologize in advance to those who will be offended by the absolute portrayals of the “Black” and “White” church and will invite conversation at the end on the intersections and overlappings of the ideologies of these groups at various historical moments. ]

As I think back on the 2008 elections, I cannot help but reflect on the controversy that arose over the preaching of Jeremiah Wright. Now let me confess up front that Dr. Wright is a well respected acquaintance of my family' and of mine. Personally I remain indebted to him for all that he has taught me, for doors he has opened for me, and for all that he has meant in my life. The recent controversies have not diminished him in my eyes. I was well aware of his humanity and find in some of his behavior that others may deem unusual, the real core Jeremiah, a man who has given his all to a life of ministry to the least of these, but who remains a jocular Philly homeboy at heart. About his message and his preaching I could never be disappointed. In my estimation there is nothing that he has ever said in those often quoted sound bites that I have not “amened” when I heard them later in context. He has a long history and an earned reputation for being a straight talking, hard hitting prophetic preacher who declares "co amar Adonaì”(“thus said the Lord”) unabashedly wherever he finds himself. In fact, I had always hoped that his message would have been known to a wider U.S. Audience, for his cry for Justice, his “Jeremiad” is something we all need to hear as he reminds us of God's Love for those we refuse to even acknowledge and of our responsibility to care for them individually and collectively with all that God has entrusted us to steward in this world.

As I listened to the debate, however, I became increasingly convinced by the fear and revulsion of the White Christians who were so disturbed by Dr. Wright’s words that we Black Christians might not be worshipping the same God, after all! Frankly, Jeremiah was not preaching anything new. His style and his content were not unlike the standard fare in most African American churches. The questions he raised about God’s view of America’s policies and practices are questions familiar in African American religious circles. Even his evocation of God’s judgment was par for the course for Black congregations. If White Christians could react so vehemently against the view of God that emerged from the prophetic tendency in Dr. Wright’s preaching, well then maybe we aren’t worshipping the same God!

Honestly, the God of the Black church Who liberated us from bondage may not be the same god of the White church Who was called on to protect that system. The God of Black sharecroppers Who was entreated to rescue them from the vicious lynch mobs that hung “strange fruit” from Southern trees surely cannot be related to the God entreated by the Klan members who opened up their rallies with prayer. The God of M.L. King Who authored a social revolution to “overcome” a corrupt and oppressive American “racialist” system cannot be the same God to Whom countless White Christians prayed to ensure the status quo, can God? Maybe we really are not worshipping the same God!

A Historical Perspective

The more I thought about this, the more sense it made. After all, African Americans began our time in this nation enslaved. Our ancestors had been torn from their land, their communities, their families. All the systems that gave meaning to their lives were intentionally and systematically stripped away from them in order to reduce them to the subhuman status of chattel slaves. Though not immediately, over time they turned to God. Initially, they were apprehensive about trusting in the God of those who kidnapped, enslaved, whipped, starved, raped, and murdered them. Yet, over time with the concerted efforts largely of the Baptists and Methodists, by the period of the Great Awakening, particularly in its manifestations in the latter part of the 18^th and the beginning of the 19^th centuries, African Americans began to convert en masse. As I have argued in my article “Re-reading “their” Scriptures,” enslaved Africans began to note that the God preached by Whites was actually the God Who freed Hebrew slaves, Who had an extensive history with Cushite/Hamite (read African) people, and Who embodied as Jesus stood against the oppression of the “least of these.” Thus, this God could provide them with the mythopoeic values, the “myth making” content, that they needed to imagine freedom.

Yet, though these Africans became Christians, the more that they watched the Whites around them, the more they became convinced that they themselves were not really of the same faith as the Whites. Consider the words of the formerly enslaved African American lecturer and abolitionist Frederick Douglass:

What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. [Italics mine] (Douglass, “Slaveholding Religion and the Christianity of Christ” in African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 106.)

In this quotation, excerpted from the appendix to his first autobiography published in 1845, Douglass attempts to clarify critiques he has made of the Christian faith, noting that at times Whites have presented the faith as a means to legitimate the slave holding industry of the American South. His reflections here were intended to draw a deliberate contrast between the brand of religion in which he was a faithful believer and the general presentation of Christianity that was prevalent among most of the White Christians he encountered while enslaved.

He (and others like Peter Randolph and Henry Bibb) go(es) to considerable lengths to expose the differences between what he sees as the sincere faith of Jesus and the perversions of the faith that arise from the perpetuation of institutions that were fundamentally opposed to the Christian faith. For example, he notes that:

The man who robs me of my earnings at the end of each week meets me as a class-leader on Sunday morning, to show me the way of life, and the path of salvation… The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. [Italics mine] (Douglass, “Slaveholding Religion and the Christianity of Christ” in African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1999), 106-107.)

What Whites were doing in their churches for Douglass was not Christianity, it was a

Godless lie, masquerading in Christian garb to give theological cover to an

oppressive system.

In contrast to Douglass, I offer the work of Robert Dabney. Dabney was a long time Professor of Theology at Union Seminary in Richmond, VA. A brilliant White Presbyterian scholar and biblical exegete, Dabney’s reputation helped to define theological education at the institution where I teach in the mid-nineteenth century. Dabney would later go on to teach at other Presbyterian institutions, and even found Austin Theological Seminary in Austin, Tx, so his lore in Presbyterian circles is significant. But in spite of all that Dabney did to further theological education in the American South, perhaps his greatest claim to fame was his seminal work, In Defence of Virginia.

In In Defence of Virginia, Dabney makes a sustained theological argument in favor of the Slavocracy of the American South, determining that on moral grounds, Virginia and her Confederate forces were more closely in line’ with the will of God and the precepts of Scripture than was the North. In fact, Dabney argues that: “…it will appear one of the most curious vagaries of human opinion, that the Christianity and philanthropy of our day should have given so disproportionate an attention to the evils of African slavery. (9)” Later he argues that in regard to the presence of instructions on slavery in Moses’ own biblical Law, that:

…a holy God would not sanction sin to his holy people, in the very act of separating them to holiness. But slaveholding was expressly sanctioned as a permanent institution; the duties of the masters and slaves are defined; the rights of masters protected, not only in the civic but the eternal moral law of God; and He [God] himself became a slave-owner, by claiming an obligation of slaves for his sanctuary and priests…we do assert that no people sin by merely holding slaves, unless the place can be shown where God has uttered a subsequent prohibition. (145)

With these and similar theses, Dabney argued for the legitimacy of the system of slavery based on the Law of God, the ultimate system of “order.”

What does this mean?

I present both Douglass and Dabney not just as a matter of course, but to demonstrate something very different about the nature of Black and White Christianity. Now, of course, even few white ministers today would defend Dabney’s assertions, despite his care to attend to the details of the biblical text. But there is something about the nature of their disagreement that seems significant and persistent in White theological reactions to acts of liberation. Clearly Douglass and Dabney are on different sides of the slavery issue and clearly they both have much at stake. Douglass was an African American whose very life had been completely circumscribed by this system and Dabney was an officer in the Confederate army who had invested about $300,000 of his own money in the cause and who was chaplain and advisor to Stonewall Jackson. But not only is their view of the issue different, so is their view of God.

For Douglass, God was of necessity opposed to the kind of abuses that were taking place in slavery. In order for slaveholders to call on the name of the Lord, they had to be abusing this name and twisting this faith for the God in Whom he believed would never condone the inevitable abuses of slavery. For Dabney, God’s Word legitimated the enslavement of Africans in Genesis 9 and 10 and slavery was practiced by Abraham, sanctioned by Moses, and never opposed by Jesus or Paul, thus the God in Whom he believed was of necessity in support of the Southern slavocracy. Surely they had to worship different Gods!

The opposition that we see expressed between these two brands of Christianity is not just about a divergence over slavery, however. Though this is the presenting concern, I would say that these differences are only symptomatic of the larger gap between Black and White Christians, for the opposition to slavery by Blacks was the beginning of a continued history of opposition to systems of institutionalized power that have been arrayed against African peoples in America. Similarly, for Whites, the desire to defend this institution was just the beginning of a history of attempts to maintain a status quo that favored them and those like them. I think that the Douglass-Dabney divide is more than just a split over an institution that happily no longer exists; it indicates a greater bifurcation of the view of God as either the Subverter or Sustainer of the status quo. Clearly the God Who is thought of as the One who will come down to deliver people from the oppressors cannot be the God who authorizes and maintains the oppressors’ systems! We must be worshipping different Gods!

Frankly, even though most White Christians would disavow any connection to the “slave holding religion” that Douglass laments, I think the germ of this expression of Christianity continues to infuse White Christianity. [I know this is a controversial statement, but hear me out.] Though this “germ” no longer manifests as an affinity for institutional slavery, it does manifest in other ways in the contemporary White church usually as an aversion to change, a concern for order, or a reification of the status quo. There is perhaps no greater example of this in the recent past than in the response of eight Birmingham clergymen to the civic unrest fostered by Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Evolution of the Divide: A Letter to Eight White Birmingham Clergymen

Though most people are familiar with the “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” that Dr. King penned while incarcerated in the margins of a newspaper and on random scraps, many of us have never read the letter that inspired that missive. The following is excerpted from that letter published in a Birmingham paper April 12, 1963. After declaring that “hatred and violence have no sanction and our religious and political traditions” and asserting that the actions of the “non-violent” protesters “incite [likely Black people] to hatred and violence” these White ministers go on to praise, not the Blacks people peacefully demonstrating, not the Black clergy who have engendered the spirit of peaceful protest, but the police!

We commend the community as a whole, and the local news media and law enforcement officials in particular, on the calm manner in which these demonstrations have been handled. We urge the public to continue to show restraint should the demonstrations continue, and the law enforcement officials to remain calm and continue to protect our city from violence.

We further strongly urge our own Negro community to withdraw support from these demonstrations, and to unite locally in working peacefully for a better Birmingham. When rights are consistently denied, a cause should be pressed in the courts and in negotiations among local leaders, and not in the streets. We appeal to both our white and Negro citizenry to observe the principles of law and order and common sense. [Italics mine] (“Public Statement to Dr. King” by Bishop C. C. I. Carpenter, Bishop Joseph A. Durick, Rabbi Milton L. Grafman, Bishop Paul Hardin, Bishop Nolan B. Harmon, Rev. George M. Murray, Rev. Edward V. Ramage, Rev. Earl Stallings, April 12, 1963.)

As hard as this is to believe, the progressive White Christian and Jewish clergy leaders of Birmingham actually commend the police who Dr. King will later note have sic-ed dogs on, beaten, and imprisoned the peacefully protesting African Americans as those who have protected the city from violence. In essence, those who are peaceful they have deemed inciters of violence and those who have done violence they have deemed protectors of peace. In response to this woefully twisted logic, Dr. King writes:

I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers. First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice…who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. (King, “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”)

Dr. King goes on to express his dissatisfaction with the White church. As a P-K (Preacher’s Kid) and a son of the church, he qualifies his discontent. He is one who “loves the church; who was nurtured in its bosom.” That being said, much of his “Letter” focuses on the White church leaders’ shortcomings. These natural allies who read the same Scriptures, who support the same institutional church, were apparently more concerned with “order” than with the type of change he knew to be theologically requisite. As he says:

I felt we would be supported by the white church[,] felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents, refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leader…others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.

That last line about White ministers “silent behind the anesthetizing security of stain-glass windows” is poignant, emphasizing a view of faith that is focused within the four walls of the edifice, as though God’s realm ceases at the threshold of the narthex and God’s people are as Christians to limit their ethical concern to this sphere. Further King continues in words that even now, in my estimation, to define the nature of the American church and its relationship with the world:

So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. [F]ar from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

In typical prophetic form, but perhaps with a force unfamiliar to those of us who are reared on a pacified and watered down version of Dr. King, he then utters words of judgment against the White church. Calling it “an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the 20^th century” and remarking on its failures to meet the needs of young people, he notes that it is in danger of losing “its authenticity.” Clearly his brand of Christianity bears little resemblance to the religion practiced by his clerical opponents.

It seems that the White church has a history of being much more interested in maintaining “order” than they are in fostering righteousness. In fact, this concern can be traced throughout American religious history beginning with the Puritans who built their society on a system of religious based rules and “order” that proved dangerous to those who differed from their norms of righteous behavior; through Dabney who argues for slavery in part because of the benefits of “order” that it imposed on human “racial” relationships; through these ministers in Birmingham who oppose King as a threat to “order” while at the same time praising the brutal police who enforce I; even down to the contemporary White church that rejected Jeremiah Wright’s preaching as “out of order.” Since I have been in Charlotte, I have to admit, that I have heard from prominent and revered White church leaders echoes of this concern. For example, during one of the inaugural ceremonies for my own seminary one big steeple pastor went out of his way to rejoice that our seminary would not teach “liberation and feminist theologies.” Instead he extolled the virtues of “true and legitimate” theologies (read “Reformed theology produced by “dead old White men”). Such thinking that disparages the theological work done by minorities and women, those marginalized in the traditional church, is consistent with the dominant tendency of the White church to “control” even the way that Others think about God. Maintaining “order” with a theological sanction has long been the goal of the White church.

Though it is tempting to assert that the difference between Black and White Christians has to do with “order,” a word of caution is necessary. The contrast between White and Black Christians is not between “order” and “disorder.” Despite what Dabney suggested, the Emancipation of those enslaved never produced great “disorder;” contrary to what the White clergymen in Birmingham suggested, the goal of the Civil Rights Movement was not to promote “disorder” or to foster chaos in cities; this has never been the goal of African American religion. The goals of the black and white churches are no less opposed, however, because the actual categories of opposition are “order” and “reorder.”

Frederick Douglass’, Dr. Kng’s, and in fact most Black church leader’s goals have always been Jesus’ own goal, to “reorder” society; to force a situation where compassion and pragmatism would compel negotiations that would lead to positive, permanent, systemic change. Like the prophets of old, “reorder” was mandated by God and thus must be enacted on earth to avert judgment. But, to those who benefited from the unequal distribution of power under slavery, Southern segregation, and other forms of systemic oppression any change in the current “order,” no matter how flawed that “order” actually may have been, was best described as “disorder.” After all, for those Whites raised to think of African Americans as lesser than, it would seem “disordered” to have to share rights and privileges equally with them; for those Whites used to normative superiority, general equality would seem “disordered;” to those who were baptized into what was inevitably a “disordered” system, the threat of “reordering” would seem inescapably “disordering.”

Here, too, it seems logical to conclude that the White church had not only a different ideology, it appears to have a different God! The God of the detached White progressive theologians who speculate about disembodied virtues and objective reflections on faith cannot be the same God of James Cone and Katie Cannon Who comes down from Heaven to deliver God’s people from systemic oppression! The God of White Evangelical preachers bent on personal Salvation cannot be the same God of Randall Bailey and Kelly Brown Douglas Who is focused on social Justice as an ultimate virtue! The God of George Bush Who blesses American Imperialism abroad and sanctions wars for oil cannot be the same God of Jeremiah Wright Who just might “damn” America if it fails to change its wicked ways. These disparate views of God as “slavery Authorizer” and “Liberator”, God as “Segregator” and “Integrator,” God as “Orderer” or “Re Orderer” cannot all be in reference to the same God, can they?

A Bigger God

Well, yes they can! A careful examination of our Scriptural traditions will find reflected both the dimensions favored by the White and the Black church. Our God is both the God of the Exodus where Hebrew slaves were liberated from bondage, and the God of the Settlement where Canaanite free-people were disposed and enslaved. The exclusive anthropology of Ezra-Nehemiah that cast off foreign wives and children with callous indifference rests in Scripture beside inclusive anthropology of Jonah and Amos that reminded Israel of its equality with its hated foes. The God Who sanctions war against Israel’s enemies and then Israel/Judah itself (cf. Amos, Jeremiah) is the same God who advocates Shalom and the Love of enemies as the self. In fact Scripture is replete with seeming contradictory depictions of the Deity that confirm the fact that God is bigger than our parochial understandings and that to live in fellowship with God is to exist in the tension between apparent extremes.

Ultimately as White and Black Christians we do worship the same God, but because of our unique “racialized” history we have viewed the One God from different perspectives. If nothing else can confirm the fact that understanding our social location is key to understanding our theologies, the theological and ideological bifurcation between African American and Caucasian Christians should emphasize this point. As Blacks and Whites, we are not adherents of an objective and absolute view of Who God is; to the contrary, our theological views are conditioned by our experiences, our stories, our collective and individual histories. One of the most damning aspects of the myth of “race” has been that it has offered us all a very limited view of God and forced us to choose to emphasize one aspect of God’s identity often in exclusion of others because of the social and political implications that logically followed.

But our God is bigger than our conditioned camps and our limited perspectives. In fact, it is only when we come together across our differences that we are able to ascertain a larger view of our God. No matter how wed we are to the dominant religious perspectives of the White church, we can always benefit from the Black church’s assertion that our God is also the God of the oppressed. Also, no matter how much we in the Black church value the portrait of God from our particularist camp, there is still great value to the White church’s longing for the absolute truths about our God. Though our God is a God of “order” establishing systems of governance that foster peace and security, our God is also a God of “reorder” overthrowing those very systems when they become oppressive and when we become complicit and complacent. There is a need for both visions and there is room for all people at God's table.

A final note on the benefits of learning to see God from the vantage of the Other is in order. I will offer this in a more one sided manner (i.e. what the Black church can teach the White church) inasmuch as the White church has been the dominant expression of Christianity and as a result 1) It is well known to Black Christians who of necessity are taught by pastors trained in its seminaries, educated by Christian education materials produced by its publishing houses, and members of denominations with roots in the White church; 2) It has been more closely tied to an often oppressive secular status quo in need of radical reorientation; and 3) Its commonplace dominant form of Christianity has been the most static, thus it is the form most in need of change.

Bonhoeffer and the Black Church

Recently I have come to know a brilliant young scholar, Reggie Williams, a graduate Theology student at Fuller University in L.A. Now in the writing phase of his doctoral program, his dissertation focuses on Deitrich Bonhoeffer’s Christological transformation. He posits that prior to his arrival in the U.S. to study at Union Seminary in New York, Bonhoeffer was a run of the mill German theological student, preoccupied with the general view of Christ seen through the lens of German nationalism. In essence, he was a dogmatic theologian trained in the conventions of detached Germanic objectivity; he was a creature of the notions of “order” that define both his pre-Nazi German church culture and the White church in general.

His time in Harlem, however, radically changed his Christology and his ethics. Introduced to the black theological tradition by an African American friend, Frank Fisher, Bonhoeffer went to worship at Abyssinian Baptist Church and learned a great deal about W.E.B. DuBois, and the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance. As a result of his time in Harlem, Williams suggests that Bonhoeffer learned to see Christ differently, to celebrate the incarnational theology done by African American Christians, to embrace a larger understanding of Christ’s role in relation to the disenfranchised, and to appreciate the ethical dimensions of Jesus’ instructions. Eventually, Williams concludes, Bonhoeffer’s experiences in Harlem served as the basis for his ability to sympathize with the disenfranchised Jews and oppose Hitler’s system of “order.” Bonhoeffer’s encounters with Black Christianity moved him from “order” to “reorder” and thus inspired one of the most significant theological witnesses of the first half of the 20^th century. (Reggie Williams, “Context and Theology: The Impact of Bonhoeffer’s Year of Post-Doctoral Study on his Christological Hermeneutic,” Unpublished Seminar Paper).

It is in this vein I want to commend the theology of the Black church for it has been a corrective theology seeking to restore notions of Justice to an American church often prone to condone injustice instead of confronting it. It has also been a universalist theology, grounding the worth of all humanity in the biblical principles of the Imago Dei and opposing the American church’s tendency to favor one “race” over another. And it has been a flexible theology, bending to address slavery, Jim Crow, separate but (un)equal, and Womanist concerns and thus serves as a witness for an American church with a tendency rigidly to resist change. Perhaps the same aspects of the Black Christian traditions that inspired Bonhoeffer to reconceive his Christology, ethics, and impetus to action could motivate the White church finally to address the persistent “racial” inequalities that linger in our nation, to resolve the current immigration crisis that has dehumanized and denigrated Latino citizens of our neighboring nations who are seeking a better life, and to bring peace to the Israelis and Palestinians who have languished in war for far too long.

We do worship the same God, so perhaps it is time that White Christians learn to see our common God through the eyes of their African American brothers and sisters.

Note-I concluded the talk, addressing the issue of the essentialist stance I took in this paper. Though I know the overgeneralizations in this paper are problematic, they were done for several reasons:

1) Rhetorically, I want to emphasize that the tendency toward “order” over “reorder” is a tendency that can impact the ministries of all White churches. Thus, I want participants to listen carefully and examine themselves and their congregations before determining that they are exceptions to a general rule. Clearly there are White churches that have been at the forefront of efforts to “reorder” our society historically and that are working toward this goal currently.

2) Similarly, I know that the picture presented of African American congregations as proponents of a Justice oriented theology is also largely skewed and, hence, overly optimistic. Here the essentialism was intended to remind those in Black churches of this core theological principle that has helped to facilitate our collective liberation and to call us back to it. In an era where Black churches are increasingly influenced by the “prosperity gospel,” Evangelicalism, the trappings of material success, I worry that their tendency is also toward the politics of “order.”

3) Also, the near exclusive use of the terms “Black” and “White” was also intended to be jarring, reminding the listeners by the constant repetition of these polarizing terms of the dangers of dividing the “Body of Christ” along the fictive lines of humanity’s “most dangerous myth.” In this instance, not only are the terms “Black” and “White” polarizing, they also limit a conversation to a juxtapositional dialogue that by rights should be a spectrumal multilogue, including those of a host of other competing and complementary identities.

4) Finally, the overall goal was to inspire all churches to adopt proactively the goal of “reorder.” The church tends to orient its message, mission, and ministry toward the safety of the sanctuary instead of the larger world in need of a “word from the Lord.” Clergy tend to suggest that their congregants are “not yet ready” to work for the changes in the world that we know to be theologically mandated and Christ inspired. “Reorder” requires that we move beyond these comfortable but debilitating tendencies.