Becoming an Anti-Racist Church: Journeying toward Wholeness

Chapter 7: Captive Christians in a Captive Church

• 101 • :aπWrseven Ibegan this book with the observation that for the vast majority of Christians, the scandalous reality remains that even if our daily life is increasingly multiracial , when the work week is over and we head for church on Sunday morning, we walk through doors into congregations that are racially defined as red, brown, yellow, black, or white. No matter how hard we try, we remain locked away from one another, imprisoned in separate and segregated churches. Prison bars and gates are fitting images, in fact, for what keeps white people and people of color separated from each other, not only in our churches, but in virtually every aspect of our lives. Of course, it isn’t difficult to see that racism places prison-like restrictions upon African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos/Hispanics, Asian Americans, and Arab Americans. But for many white people, it is shocking to discover the imprisoning and destructive effects of racism in our lives, to recognize that all people are imprisoned by this evil power. The heart of the analysis of racism on which this book is based is that we who are white are prisoners of our own racism. We have held the power of racism in our hands for so long that we are unable to let go. We receive power and privilege from racism, but in turn, racism gains power and control over us. Despite all the goodwill in our hearts, despite our deepest desires and intentions to become nonracists , the reality we have yet to face is that we cannot stop. We have been taken captive and are oppressed by our own racism. The imprisoner is imprisoned; the victimizer, victimized. We are prisoners in the racist structures of our society, and “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.” —John 8:34 Captive Christians in a Captive Church 102 • BeCoMInG An AntI-RACIst CHURCH we need to be set free. In the words of the late historian C. Eric Lincoln: “The same fetters that bind the captive bind the captor, and the American people are captive of their own myths, woven so clearly and so imperceptively into the fabric of our national experience.”1 Willingly or Unwillingly, We Are All a part of Racism Before considering racism’s captivity of the church, which is the focus of this chapter, let’s recall briefly how it is that we all are captive to racism. White individuals and people of color are made to be a part of the collective structures of systemic racism through a process of racialization. Our nation was constructed with clearly defined racial structures, whose primary purpose was to separate all people of color from white people but which also served to separate people of color from each other by placing them into categories of Native American, African American, Latino/Hispanic, Asian American, and Arab American. Even today, with the current emphasis on recognizing and affirming multiracial identities, racism’s evil goal is to make a sharp distinction between “white” and “non-white” and to be very clear that the first is superior to the other. Through a complex multi-generational identity-shaping socialization process , we were assigned at birth to a collective racial group and were taught to participate in society according to our particular racial identity and role. For people of color this socializing process is called the “internalization of inferiority.” No matter to which of the racial sub-groups they are assigned, people of color are taught to believe and accept negative societal definitions of self and to live out inferior societal roles. For white people, the comparable socializing process is called “internalization of superiority.” White people are taught to believe superior societal definitions of self, as well as to accept white power and privilege as a way of life. As a result of this internalizing of racial identity, we all, like puppets on a string, support the construct of systemic and institutionalized racism. This internalizing process is incredibly destructive of the human personality and represents racism at is deadliest. We cannot comprehend racism if we do not understand this overwhelming shaping of our identities and our actions. It is particularly important for white people to recognize that we are not immune to the destructive identity-shaping effects of racism. One of the reasons this is so hard for we who are white to comprehend is that part of our socialization is designed to keep us unaware of our...