Here recently Christianity Today did a number of articles on striving for racial integration in the community of Christ followers. I know I’m posting a lot here to read, but I feel this issue is a very important one. I would identify one thing as one of if not the biggest problem in christianity as it stands today, that is division. Race is one of the biggest dividing lines, along with theology and different cultures in general.
I used to have the typical white conservative American christian view that racism isn’t really a big problem anymore, outside of a few occasional incidents here and there. After all, the type of blatant public segregation, such as having different drinking fountains for different races, was overcome years before I was even born. (Now I realize how short it’s been in reality.)
But this changed largely because of a couple of sermons/teachings that I heard in the past two years. Both of the speakers were black, and both talked about racial issues. One made the significant statement that if you talk to white people, almost none of them will think that racism is a big issue anymore. However, if you talk to blacks (no doubt Hispanics and native Americans would agree here too), it is an issue for all of them. That combined with the fact that something seemed wrong to me that so often when I heard a black person speak, they talked about race, while it seemed that whites virtually never talked about it.
So here I am in the uncommon position of a white person arguing that we as Christians NEED to work on this issue. In fact, I think it is imperative that the church unify, across races, cultures, denominations (even Catholic and Orthodox), and even subcultures (another possible topic of conversation). I admit that I don’t really know exactly what I can do myself, and that I probably don’t do enough. But I guess this is a start.
