A response to ‘Weary Black Woman’

“Dear God, please help me to hate White people …”

So begins the prayer of Chanequa Walker-Barnes, a Black Christian and professor of theology who has been working toward racial reconciliation for decades. Her prayer, recorded in the bestselling book, “A Rhythm of Prayer,” lists all the reasons it would make sense to hate white people.

I learned about “Prayer of a Weary Black Woman” on Twitter when commentator Rod Dreher tweeted:

“Progressives preparing something terrible and violent for America. This left-wing prayer book embodies the spirit of Antichrist, petitioning God to grant one the spirit of anti-white racial hatred. It’s a bestseller, from a major publisher.”

He linked to his essay “A Rhythm of Racist Prayer.” His tweet included a picture of Walker-Barnes with “Reconciliation without Justice is

Cheap” written on her T-shirt. I was intrigued.

Dreher’s post is worth reading only as an example of a knee-jerk reaction that demonizes rather than engages. In this case, Dreher, a Christian, is demonizing a fellow Christian, which makes it all the more awful. He misses the point and purpose of the prayer — a call to persevere in love — entirely.

Walker-Barnes wrote in the prayer she isn’t asking for help hating the really racist ones, the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis. And she doesn’t want to hate the ones who are allied with the cause of justice.

No, she wants to hate the “nice White people.” The ones who would have her over for dinner but feel squeamish about Black Lives Matter. Or the white progressives who have read enough books to sound like they understand and care about vague concepts like racial justice but who actually undermine the cause.

I could feel tension in my chest as I read her words.

She’s a Christian! She’s a minister! Why would she want to hate white people? Why does she want to hate me?

Her prayer reminds me of all the people in the Bible who don’t want to love the people God wants them to love. I think of Jesus’ disciples, who hate the Romans even when their leader tells them to love their enemies.

This prayer also humbles me. I have been the nice white person who tried to explain away what seem like “little” racist remarks. I am the nice white person fearful of acting as an ally, worried about what other white people will think, wondering whether it is all too extreme, unwilling to give so much of my time, of my heart. I am the nice white Christian who has done little to repent or to proactively love the vulnerable among us.

It reminds me of the first time I heard a Black woman challenge white Americans to read themselves into the Bible in the role of the oppressor.

If I let this prayer make me uncomfortable, then I will begin to understand why Walker-Barnes might long to hate someone like me.

And then she prays, “But.” “But I will trust in you Lord. You have kept my love and my hope steadfast even when they have trampled on it.”

In the end, Walker-Barnes invites me to do the work of repentance. She invites me to reconciliation. Through a prayer that begins with hatred, she invites me to enter into love.