The Struggle of Being a Black Christian
I’m in between churches.
Moving from New Jersey back to New York mid-pandemic meant that I had to find a new home church in my new location, and I’m still looking. An Uber driver was playing the latest gospel one time and I struck up a conversation, so after a while she invited me to her diverse, eclectic church. I had grown up in one of those stuffy Christian households with a stepdad who was a rolling stone when it came to spiritual home bases, so I had seen my fair share of congregations, but thus far my search had brought me to strangely cult-like places that I technically knew existed but had never experienced in real life.
The first church was medium-sized, had its main location in Nigeria and made everybody hold hands while singing their anthem-esque song about unity and love. A couple things struck me as odd, like their enthusiasm for “honoring” the head pastor, or their emphasis on the blessings that come from tithing, but the last straw was when the pastor mocked the use of masks under the implication that Christians didn’t need them.
The second church was actually worse. It was small and brightly decorated, the Pastor was a black woman whose entire sermon was a dramatic reading of some Wikipedia-lifted research on the human skeletal system, which she was apparently tying in to a theme of “dry bones coming alive.” At intervals she would break into tongues, or jump around while two people held her back, or charge into the little audience laying hands at random. Needless to say, I visited those churches once, and left understanding why there are so many skewed perceptions of Christianity.
But finally, with my Uber driver’s church, I felt like there was a big contender. They had an in-person gathering on Fridays at a Manhattan location which didn’t go past an hour and some change. There were well-enforced restrictions in place, like mandatory mask-wearing, social distancing, and completing a health questionnaire before each visit. There were tons of young people there, the worship was great, the pastor was very likeable and cool, a white guy from Australia. Going in, I knew I would have to adjust to having a white Pastor in a racially tense climate. I suppose America has always been racially tense. But for me, the mass protests of 2020, followed by the ridiculous Capitol insurrection in early 2021 had left me on edge more than ever before. I had not experienced American brand racism all my life; I immigrated from the Caribbean roughly five years ago, so the culture shock is still incredibly jarring.
Going to a church with a white head pastor and a huge number of white people was a serious choice for someone like me. I’m not sure how other black Christians are feeling right now, but the discussions on racial justice in the wider world definitely spilled over into the church, and a lack of true understanding became painfully obvious. So I went in knowing that I am very activist-y and racial justice writing is my niche, so maybe there were things that would rub me the wrong way at a white church. It even feels uncertain to call it a white church, because of course we know that the church has no color, but then again it is also accurate to call it a white church.
Anyway, everything was fine until last Friday. The Australian pastor alluded to political tensions sometimes within his mini-sermons but it was always very light. Last Friday there was an Asian guest pastor, who gave a mini-sermon on restoring joy. Everything was great, he was very vulnerable and biblical and even funny, all the makings of a great message. But one thing he said really stood out to me. He was describing how depressed everybody seemed after a tumultuous 2020, and during this ongoing pandemic, when he said, “I’ve never seen so much despair in the eyes of my beloved African-American friends.” There I was, feeling all seen and acknowledged, nodding slightly under my mask, when he followed it up with, “I’ve never seen so many police officers, not knowing where to turn.” Huh? What? The juxtaposition of black trauma and police officers’…frustration…completely threw me off.
By now folks should understand that these are two diametrically opposed groups. Did we not see how much of a new low George Floyd’s murder was? Have we not witnessed police enable white supremacists and brutalize black bodies on multiple occasions? Is it not apparent that if one supports the ridiculous notion of “blue” lives, it means supporting the state-sanctioned, violent, and racist persecution of black lives? Perhaps I have a unique vantage point in my field of work. At an alternative to incarceration program, I’ve seen young men who remind me of my brothers get targeted relentlessly by police, get cases pinned on them, get locked up and beaten down and controlled so much by the justice system that it is now the norm in their lives. I’ve read the books and watched the documentaries that detail the current reality of how the police prey on our communities for a living. I’ve seen the FBI reports that white supremacists are rampant within police forces, I’ve heard the statistics that black men are the demographic most likely to be killed by police, I know that the term “systemic oppression” is a reality and not just fancy liberal jargon, and I’m aware that non-black people are kept in a bubble of perpetual ignorance to everything that we continue to go through. Why do I expect Christians to know about these things or care about it in the same way, when this kind of thing is specialized knowledge?
It’s just that as black Christians, we have accepted the bare minimum for so long. The bare minimum of knowing that God loves everybody equally and so should we.
We cannot in the same breath sympathize with black people and sympathize with police. Policing as an institution has been conceptualized and consistently used as a tool to support Jim Crow, segregation, and every racial inequity that exists in this country. Racial profiling by cops is a cornerstone of their work. Mass incarceration exists because police arrested, accused, and falsely charged that many black people for that many decades. In an attempt to “love everyone” or recognize “both sides”, we must be careful as Christians not to become unwittingly complicit with outright evil. In certain situations there is no straddling the fence, there is a clear choice of allegiance that must be made. We do not say we are committed to God but can totally sympathize with what the devil and his angels have to endure. Bishop Desmond Tutu famously stated that “To be neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”
As ugly as terms like “white supremacist” and “racist” appear to white Christians, the fact of the matter is that they were all socialized into a white supremacist culture and naturally adopted its attitudes and beliefs, in spite of their Christian worldview. Just like we are all born into sin, we were all born into a racialized world and none of us are supernaturally impervious to its influence. Black Christians have borne the brunt of everyone else’s anti-blackness within the church, believing that they don’t know any better and we are called to be humble and understanding, relinquishing our blackness for the sake of our faith. While as believers our new identity is found in Christ, and our race is always secondary to that, it is highly unfair that other groups get to remain uneducated about the ways that we are affected by racism even within the church, and the times we have remained silent for the sake of “peace” and “unity”.
There is also the impression that anti-racism is a worldly trend, or an aspect of the liberal agenda. Many people are of the belief that the world has become “too sensitive” and that political tensions are “dividing us.” While those opinions might be true, we as humans are fully capable of understanding nuance, that while certain things are an overreaction due to “cancel culture”, holding people and entities accountable for their racism is a long-overdue step in the right direction. Reflecting on unconscious biases is a positive thing. While it is annoying to walk on eggshells so as not to offend people, and pastors may feel that burden now more than ever, pastors and other Christians do at times make racially insensitive comments. It would be irresponsible and harmful of us to keep brushing it under the rug, with the expectation that black people suffer in silence because we are all God’s children and race doesn’t matter anyway. It is also unfair to associate antiracism with oppressive wokeness, and as somehow outside the bounds of Christian conservatism. There is this notion of antiracism efforts being a liberal thing, while Christians are seen as conservative, and conservatives are clearly opposed to antiracism of any kind. Politicizing attempts to foster more empathy, equity and justice within society leaves black Christians in a difficult place.
It is okay for the church to seek to become less racist, in fact, it is necessary. A huge part of the injustice plaguing our world is the problem of racism and economic inequality, we cannot keep trying to ignore it. We cannot keep getting it wrong, time and time again, while Black Christians let it slide like we always have. I, for one, am tired of the perpetual ignorance I have had to put up with. Is anybody else tired? I have accepted discomfort in order to maintain the comfort of others who make harmful statements. I have tried to educate them on these things, often to no avail, and then agreed to disagree. It is high time for the rest of the church to go ahead and lean into the discomfort, to go ahead and educate themselves, to take up the unique cross of racial humility that has historically been ours to bear. In 2021, black Christians are tired of the charade, spiritual context or not. And the God of freedom, the God of deliverance and justice supports us, I just know it.
I don’t want to go around searching for the perfect church that will never offend me, because I know that doesn’t exist. After all, there are instances where God will convict or correct me through spiritual leaders. However, some grievances are easier to brush off than others. If this isn’t the right church for me at this moment, it doesn’t make it a bad place, or remotely close to the others that I didn’t like. It would simply be an illustration of the difficult time Christians have found themselves in, and my ongoing inner struggle with navigating blackness in America while staying true to my faith.
