Maybe White Evangelicals Should Start Taking Their Cues from Their Black Brothers & Sisters

Recently, a large group of black pastors collectively wrote and signed a letter in support of the recent editorials by Christianity Today criticizing the unbridled immorality of President Trump.  In the process, they, rightly so, publicly admonished their white pastor counterparts who condemned the original CT editorials, a condemnation that Franklin Graham blasphemously echoed.  That letter from the black pastors, in its entirety, can be found here, and it is certainly worth the read. Here's a snippet:

"It has been said that 'the local church is the hope of the world, and it rests in the hands of its leaders.' If we truly believe that, then the local church can never be in a position to sacrifice its integrity and abandon all truth for the sake of political expediency. That is exactly what these 170 pastors have done by consistently justifying and excusing the behavior of the now-impeached president."

This black-white division over what seems to be (at least to an objective viewer with a modicum of criticial-thinking ability) a clear distinction between morality and immorality in the White House right now got me thinking about history.  And I specifically thought about the white evangelical response to the Civil Rights movement in our nation.  So, after doing some research on The Gospel Coalition website, I was reminded that during this last major racial-identity political divide, the white evangelicals were most certainly wrong then, too.

Here are a few tidbits from that lengthy article that, sadly, seem to be History trying to remind us all of the putrid stain of the white-evangelical support of blatant injustice:

• One researcher said, "I find that my fellow churchmen who supported the cause of justice were more often the exception, not the rule."
• "White southern evangelicals were blinded by their majority status to the injustice around them."
• "White southern evangelicals imbibed and perpetuated the Lost Cause mythology.  Developing at the end of Reconstruction and the closing of the nineteenth century, white southerners constructed memories of the Old South that perpetuated assumptions about ... the seemingly victimized status of the region.  It found expression ... at the more popular level--one deeply infused with religious meaning-- ... as a form of civil religion."
• "Southern evangelicals fought ferociously against any and all efforts to dismantle the system of white supremacy."
• "Most [white] preachers took a more oblique approach, remaining silent about black equality while condemning faith-based civil-rights activism as a 'prostitution of the church for political purposes.'"

Wow.  Every single one of those historical facts sound eerily, sadly, pathetically familiar to what the white evangelical community is doing right now.

So, here are my points: (1) No, white evangelicals, you weren't victims then, and you aren't victims now.  Stop playing that tired, false card to the rest of us.  You still have a solid "majority" status in our country, and you probably will for a while. However, that doesn't give you the right to steamroll blindly over others who are real victims.  And, (2) the black community's entire history in this country has been one of oppression and injustice at the hands of the white majority; thus, they can certainly recognize and label true, institutionalized injustice when they see it.

Right now, they see it.  And its name is "Trump."

It is now time that the white evangelical community learn from its sordid mistakes in the past, listen to those fellow Christians who know a thing or two about injustice, and humbly unite with those black brothers and sisters against a political climate that is promoting immorality at every turn.