White evangelicals re-examine role during civil-rights fight

As America remembers the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the 50th anniversary of his assassination Wednesday, segments of one influential American demographic are reflecting on their role in perpetuating the white supremacy that the civil rights leader rallied against.

Many of the issues King fought against continue to dominate today’s headlines, which has lead some white Christian evangelicals to examine their actions — or lack thereof — in responding to King’s message, and how that position affects the country’s current politics.

In his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” King wrote about how white Christians did not fight racism, but aided it. The Presbyterian Church of America — one of the country’s largest Presbyterian denominations — barred black people from being members and supported segregation. Some white evangelical leaders partnered with white supremacist groups such as the White Citizens Council in criticizing those advocating for the civil rights of black people by calling them disruptive and questioning their Christian faith altogether.

Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, recently wrote about how poorly many conservative Christians responded to King’s call to dismantle racism, often using their faith and the Bible to reject support for integration.

Moore’s group is partnering this week with the Gospel Coalition, a network of conservative evangelicals, to host MLK50 in Memphis to take “an opportunity for Christians to reflect on the state of racial unity in the church and the culture.”

Race has consistently been a controversial issue in national politics, most recently with police shootings of unarmed black men, immigration, NFL protests and a violent rally over the removal of a Confederate memorial in Charlottesville.

But these debates aren’t new; King criticized white Christians 50 years ago for their relative silence toward the suppression of rights for black Americans. Years before his death, King wrote in 1956 what he believed the Apostle Paul would have said to predominantly white churches in America:

“I understand that there are Christians among you who try to justify segregation on the basis of the Bible . . . . Oh my friends, this is blasphemy. This is against everything that the Christian religion stands for,” he wrote. “I must say to you as I have said to so many Christians before, that in Christ ‘there is neither Jew nor Gentile, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus.’ ”

This unity was not always one that white evangelical leaders embraced, something Matthew J. Hall, dean of Boyce College, a Christian school, wrote about in the Gospel Coalition: “In all of my research on the long history of racial justice and the black freedom movement, I find that my fellow churchmen who supported the cause of justice were more often the exception, not the rule.”

Some white evangelical leaders did embrace King and his message, to a point. The Rev. Billy Graham integrated his “crusades” and shared his stage with King — moves that were relatively progressive for a white evangelical in the 1960s. But he has also been criticized for not going far enough.

These issues are center stage again as white evangelicals prove to be one of the most influential voting blocs in a political climate where race is at the forefront — and there’s no sign they are losing influence. But some within the group are asking themselves: When it comes to race in America, what side of history will they be on?