I once heard a woman say, "I'm not a racist; I just don't like Filipinos." She was not joking, and she did not pick up on the fact that the second part of her statement completely negated the first part. She had no idea that she was the very definition of a racist. It was bad enough that she said it and meant it, but it made it even worse that she was also a longtime ruling elder in a Presbyterian Church (USA) congregation. We Presbyterian (USA) folks pride ourselves on being inclusive, sensitive, and diverse. In this area, I think we've done better than a lot of other branches of the Christian family tree when it comes to our national policies, but my experience "on the front lines" of pastoral ministry has been that these policies have not changed what really needs to be changed: people's hearts. When I say "people's hearts" I'm not talking about people outside the church. I'm talking about the hearts of Christians.
Just a day or two ago a 21-year-old white man attended a Wednesday night prayer meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown Charleston, South Carolina. After about an hour, he stood up and said, "I'm here to shoot black people" and then he did what he had come to do. Nine people, nine beloved children of God, nine of our brothers and sisters in Christ, died in this hate-filled man's effort to "start a race war." It is coming out that the murderer was an avowed white supremacist. He seems to have been motivated not by mental illness but by a societal illness and an illness of the heart and soul: hate. It does not appear that he hated Christians; it appears only that he hated black people. My guess would be that the only reason he went to a prayer meeting to kill black people is that he knew enough about Christians to know that a white person would be accepted into a prayer meeting of black Christians. In many other contexts he might have been excluded or viewed with deep suspicion. But everyone is welcome in the circle of prayer. "Come on in, brother." Perhaps some of those who were praying thought, "Wow, we're really making progress in building bridges with our neighbors." Maybe they thought that before their neighbor shot them to death.
It is scary to think that a violent racist could walk in from outside the church to kill people inside the church. That frightens me. But I'm not sure how much I can do about the racism of those outside the church. My concern at this point is the racism that exists inside the church, even within my beloved Presbyterian Church (USA). Over my years of experience in many different congregations, I have been in church meetings during which racist statements have been made by leaders of the church without a second thought. "We can't hire that company to do the work on the building. They'll just hire a bunch of Mexicans to do it." I have visited parishioners (also officers of the church) in the hospital who have told me that they didn't like the hospital they were in because "all the nurses are colored here." Yes, in the 21st Century they used the word "colored." Although it doesn't involve race, I have heard church leaders say derogatory things about women ("That's why we shouldn't have lady preachers, because all they do is cry.") and people who are gay and lesbian (completely out of context: "It could be worse; we could live in San Francisco with all the gays.") These are Christian people, and not just Christian people but leaders in the church, and not just in any church but in the PC(USA). I have heard these things in churches not just in South Carolina, but in Oklahoma, in Louisiana, and in Ohio, which I have found to be just as racist as anywhere I've lived in the South.
When the Apostle Paul wrote to the churches in the area of the world then known as Galatia he felt the need to say, "As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female for all of you are one in Christ Jesus." The fledgling Christian communities in Galatia were having trouble understanding exactly what was the indicator that they belonged to the people of God. Paul is telling them that Christ is the indicator that they belong to the people of God. They have been "clothed with Christ" rather than clothed with their race or economic status or gender. Paul's statement was so revolutionary that even he doesn't seem to have been able to live it out entirely (see 1 Timothy 2:12). But just because he didn't live it out perfectly (which has had tragic repercussions for women in the church for 2,000 years) doesn't mean that the revolutionary statement is not true. Galatians 3:28 is a statement about who God in Jesus Christ is. 1 Timothy 2:12 is a statement about who Paul of Damascus is. What I'm getting at is that we Christians, if we are really clothed with Christ, will "wear our new clothing" by dissolving boundaries between who is "in" and who is "out." We will still see different shades of skin (nobody is really "color blind" when it comes to people) but instead of using that as a way of dividing people we will celebrate the diversity of God's creation. There is no place for racism, or classism, or sexism (and I would had "homophobia" as well) in the community of followers of Jesus.
I admit that sometimes I have racist thoughts come into my mind. But here's what we must do: we must "cut them off at the pass" before those racist thoughts make it from our minds to our hearts. We do this by identifying them as sin. Whether those thoughts are the result of the way we were raised, of our surrounding culture, or of very real experiences that we have had in the past, those thoughts are still sin. We label them as sin and then we repent of those thoughts. "God please forgive me for thinking that way." But we have to remember that the word "repent" doesn't mean "say you're sorry." It means to change, to turn in the opposite direction. For that we will need God's help. "Lord, help me to see every person as you see her or him, as your beloved child." Then we live our lives as forgiven people, open to the Spirit's transformation. Part of this is that we confront our fellow Christians when they say things or act in ways that are racist (or sexist or homophobic, etc.) And as a pastor, I beg of you not to leave it to the pastor to always confront people. If someone says something about "those Mexicans" (which usually means any people of Hispanic heritage) or "the blacks" and so on and so forth, you call them on it. Everybody expects their pastor to be a stickler about these things. It will have more power coming from "one of their own."
While the victims of the horrific mass murder in Charleston were Christians, we as Christians (even those of us in the open-armed PCUSA) have to come to terms with the fact that we are often a part of our nation's (and world's) problem rather than a part of the solution. Christian ethicist Stanley Hauerwas writes, "The Church is constituted as a new people who have been gathered from the nations to remind the world that we are in fact one people. Gathering, therefore, is an eschatological act as it is the foretaste of the unity of the communion of the saints." As Christians it is our baptismal vocation (the life purpose given to every person at their baptism), through the power of the Holy Spirit, to live as a community and as individuals that give an example to the world of what God wants humanity to be like in how we relate to God, to ourselves, to one another, and to creation. So plain and simple, even if we read our Bible every morning, pray several times a day, go to Sunday school and worship, and put money in the offering plate and even give to those in need here and abroad, when we live in racist ways (and other ways that look down upon or mistreat others), we are not living into and out of our baptismal vocation. Perhaps the best Scriptural summary of our baptismal vocation is Colossians 3:17, "And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." Anything that is racist cannot be done in the name of the Lord Jesus, therefore anything that is racist is not to be done by those of us who bear his name.
May God grant comfort to the families and friends of the victims, may God do a work in the heart of the murderer so that he may know peace with God and others even as he pays the just consequences for his hateful actions, and may God transform the hearts of the Church so that we are no longer a part of the problem, but an obvious example of God's solution, what Jesus called "the Kingdom of God."
