Lord, we lament the violence that has broken out in Baltimore. We lament the anger that has been boiling in the black community for centuries. We lament the greed and hate of whites who enslaved blacks in the name of economic prosperity for whites. We lament how whites built the United States on white supremacy. […]
What would Old Testament prophets say about our segregated churches?
I have felt a lot like one of the Old Testament kings recently when it comes to Scripture and the injustices in my land. I feel like Josiah when the Torah was accidentally found during a repair job at the temple (2 Kings 22). Generations of doing things a certain way, now confronted with God’s […]
Believing Jesus died on the cross for your sins will not save you
Romans 6:23 is one of the most common verses used in evangelism: For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (NLT) It’s a key feature on the Romans Road Bible tract and in general serves as a summation of the gospel message […]
Ferguson’s Michael Brown Reveals Problem + What We Can Do About it
By now everyone has most likely heard about the shooting and killing of unarmed 18-year-old African-American Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri on August 9, 2014. The story is intense and certainly a lot to digest. Stories like these can be tough to figure out because they often feel like a case of “he said, she […]
How Being “Color Blind” Whites Out Minorities
For most of my life, I never thought having a multiracial church mattered. I also thought racism didn’t really exist anymore. Slavery was over. Don’t use the “N word”, be nice to black people and racism is eliminated. As a rough summary, this is what a lot of white Christians think about race. If asked […]
How America’s Racist Past Breeds Racial Profiling Today
I recently wrote about the racial discrimination housing laws of the 1940’s-1970’s (and I did a post on “How To Talk About Racism”). My point in showing those bits of somewhat hidden history is to help set the table for why some things are the way they are today when it comes to race. It’s […]