If you read one article today, it should be this one by Campbell Robertson. It’s an incisive and narrative account of why Black Christians are leaving evangelicalism since the 2016 Elections, and I would argue how and why the white church is by and large missing the significance and reasons for this exodus. Â
The US Evangelical Church has been fractured since the 2016 Elections. It isn’t that the fissures of racism, sexism, nationalism, or triumphalism were not already within our churches, or that congregations have not long wrestled with this pull of being shaped more by the patterns of this world than the Good News. However, the recent elections exposed how deeply these realities have become embedded in our local ways of being the church. Whatever promises the 45th President of the US promised to the evangelical world during his candidacy, his own lack of evidence of actual personal faith, and his brazen racism, along with the accompanying sexism and nationalism, was not enough to create pause for 81% of white evangelical voters. This lack of being “troubled enough” to vote differently or speak out, even in light of the obvious and repeated sins showcased in the professional and personal life of #45, shows us some deep, troubling patterns for us, especially those of us shaped within the white church. And by the white church, I do not mean every white individual Christian; I am pointing to the systems and pervasive common culture that shapes churches, conferences, books, Christian radio and worship concerts, etc – the system of whiteness that shapes most of the US evangelical platforms and expressions of faith. Â
Many people have written about this problem since the election, suggesting reasons that perhaps white voters could stomach #45’s indiscretions were linked to promises he made around abortion control, supreme court judges, the tapped fear of the “forgotten working white class,” that he was the “lesser of two evils,” etc. Whatever else the 2016 Election showed us, however, I am convinced that it revealed a deep lack in the theological imagination, Scriptural understanding, and ability for courageous discipleship within the white church in the US. The 2016 Election revealed that the white church still views deep, pervasive racism as an add-on, lesser prioritized issue, next to the other more core issues (i.e., abortion, taxes, whatever.) This candidate’s political career started with birther-ism, he had ties to the KKK including his own father, he repeatedly called immigrants and refugees disgusting and false names – these realities were “not troubling enough” to vote/speak against him. The 2016 Election also showed us that the church is still wrestling with how it views women/sex/power, and that by and large when a man with a platform speaks & treats women as objects (and objects meant for male pleasure and control), the white church – men and women alike – either accept, or are “not troubled enough,” to say that this tells us something core about that man’s faithfulness, integrity, and trustworthiness. The 2016 Election also showed us that the white church struggles with a vastly misplaced understanding of allegiance in kingdoms of this world, vs the Kingdom of God; we do not seem “troubled enough” by the clamoring noises of war mongering, building walls around borders and separating immigrant children from parents, limiting the safe harbor for refugees fleeing war and violence, and a pandering to modern-day fantasies about the US or Israel having a particular God-given role in political power. Indeed all of these policies and actions should strike us as deeply anti-life, not pro-life; as deeply sinful, not yielding faithfulness; as deeply troubling, not allowable in service of some other supposed God-ordained grasp for power. Â
These realities listed are just a very few of the many troubling and repeated violations that we’ve seen continue and escalate from the 45th President and his friends now elevated to more power since 2016. We keep hearing from our sisters and brothers in the Black church that this is deeply troubling; we keep hearing from women in leadership and those recovering from abuse, from immigrant families and recovering from trauma as refugees, we keep hearing from youth leading the protests after Ferguson and those advocating for gun control after the Parkland shooting – we keep hearing a call to be very troubled and to do something, from our current day orphans, widows, and immigrants and sisters. The biblical prophets tell us how we are to respond to the vulnerable in our midst, how we are to listen to the places where injustice are taking over, and that in fact we cannot even worship rightly or come to God with our sacrifices or our our worship unless justice is rolling down like a mighty, torrential, overflowing river. (see Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Amos 4 and 5, to name a few.)
TO the White Church in 2018, I am still praying – when will we start to fully see what has happened and is continuing on our watch within the Body of Christ itself, as a result of the issues exposed but not attended to in the 2016 Election? When will we choose biblical discipleship over partisan power? When will God’s call for us to lament, repent, confess, and turn around to focus on life, truth, and the kingdom win? Until we listen to the rest of the Body, until we listen to the Word itself, until we act in a way that is faithful and just, we are in for a lot of trouble.