USA TODAY International Edition
Churches struggle to deal with racism
It’s Wednesday night at Crossroads Church in Corryville, a neighborhood in Cincinnati, and about 30 people, equal numbers white and black, more women than men, stand in a circle in a basement meeting room. ❚ A church leader asks them to give a one-word answer to describe how they feel about being a part of the Undivided racial reconciliation program. “Happy,” one says. “Hopeful,” someone else says.
At the same time, on a website that originates about 75 miles east of Cincinnati in Bainbridge, Ohio, an avowed neo-Nazi proclaims a different doctrine. Only a select group of white people is chosen by God, he says.
“Not the Jewish nation. Not blacks. Not Mongrels. Not half-breeds, yellows, Chinese, Koreans, homosexuals or bisexuals,” says the white supremacist preacher, Paul Mullet.
Everyone else is unworthy.
The messages could not be more different, yet both are based on an interpretation of the same Christian faith. Though Mullet is a fringe actor, his sermons are a reminder of Christianity’s complicated history with race in America – one stained by the justification and endorsement of slavery.
Though mainstream Christian churches don’t speak about race in the hateful manner Mullet does, many don’t address race relations and racism headon as Crossroads attempts to do. Instead, they struggle with a more fundamental question: How should they speak about race at all?
Uncertainty about race in the pulpit often stems from the racial makeup in the pews. Almost 9 in 10 Christian churches nationally are predominantly of one race group, according to a Tennessee-based religion information firm. LifeWay Research also did a survey in 2014 that showed that two-thirds of American churchgoers agreed with the statement that “our church is doing enough to be ethnically diverse.”
Long-standing Protestant and
Catholic churches are based in city neighborhoods or smaller communities and reflect their racial composition. The Cincinnati region, which includes Northern Kentucky and Southeast Indiana, is the nation’s 10th-most residentially segregated region, according to an analysis of 2016 Census estimates by Apartment List.com.
Individual churches and denominations, in addition to ecumenical and interfaith groups, try to break down some of those walls in programs that range from joint social justice projects to worship and pulpit exchanges.
“The race issue will continue to be a challenge for the Christian community and other faith traditions as long as whites focus only on race relations while ignoring society’s systemic inequities that shape – if not predetermine – our race relations,” says Robert “Chip” Harrod, a longtime diversity and inclusion advocate.
In other words, in addressing race and racism, the Christian church in America remains a reflection of the larger society: a handful of successes to go along with the polite silence of the pulpit and missed opportunities to call out racism as a sin. Or as the Rev. Wilton Blake, retired Presiding Elder of the Cincinnati district of the African Methodist Episcopal Church says, “Bits and pieces but not the whole bite.”
Faith-based efforts to close the racial divide and the social damage it can cause are made in small and large ways.
One of the most overt racial makeovers took place beginning in 2001 at Peoples Church, formerly known as First Christian Assembly of God, in Corryville. At that time, it had a 98-percent white, commuter congregation. In
2004, in his third year as pastor, Chris Beard articulated a new mission statement: “to be a racially reconciling, generationally rich, life-giving church thriving in the heart of the city.”
Many white members left. Some eventually returned. Today, Peoples Church has a congregation that is 25 percent African-American, 25 percent international (representing 30 nationalities), and 50 percent white, a mix Beard and his congregants refer to as “heaven on Earth.” The staff and lay leadership also are diverse.
The nation’s timeline since 2014 is dotted with racially charged incidents, including fatal violence that erupted at a white nationalist rally last August in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Starting with the police shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, in August 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri, racial events seemed to pull white from black, says Chuck Mingo, pastor of Crossroads in Oakley, Ohio.
In the midst of violence – including the massacre in 2015 of nine AfricanAmericans in a prayer group by an avowed white supremacist at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina – Mingo says he wanted to start a church-based conversation about race.
That dialogue grew into the Undivided program, which in two years has shepherded 3,000 people through a six-week racial reconciliation process.
For Mary Burns, 42, a white lawyer who lives with her husband, Joseph, in Newport, Kentucky, Undivided has been a catalyst for racial understanding.
“I am still trying to figure out the benefits I received but did not earn because of my race,” Burns says. “You learn these benefits came at the expense of other people’s undeserved hardships. And you’re left asking, ‘What do I do with that?’ I know as a Christian that I have the responsibility to do something.”