Russell Moore on Race, Particularly Eric Garner

“I had an African American pastor talk to me about working though his son’s applications to college. And that he was praying over some of those applications, that his son would not be accepted into those schools, because of where they were located and he was afraid that it would not be safe for his son. That,” says Russell Moore, “was one of the most impressive conversations I’ve ever had, because I realized that I will never be in a situation where I’m praying that about my children.”

Interviewed by the Washington Post, the president of the Southern Baptist’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission explains why he and other Evangelicals have been speaking not only on racial issues but on the Eric Garner case. He also offers a theological argument for taking up the issue of race:

“The New Testament tells us that the unity of the church is a sign of the gospel itself. So that’s important theologically. It also has public consequences. I think that churches are where our consciences are formed. We learn to love one another by being with one another. I think that has public consequences.

“You don’t simply have African American people saying we have a problem in American society. We need white Americans to be addressing things on behalf of their black brothers and sisters. That needs to take place. That can only take place if we’re unified with one another. I think the church is the primary place that God has designed for us to live with one another in a household.

“. . . [W]e don’t have the option to simply speak to whatever one niche wants to hear. We have to speak to an entire body of people who must have unity. And I think in political discourse right now, disunity wins often. Dividing people up with polarizing speech can be a winning in the realm of secular politics. It doesn’t win if what one is trying to do is build a church that models the gospel.”

The interview offers more evidence of the movement I described in Conservatives v. the Police. (Not the best title, I see now.) Many politically conservative Christian leaders, Evangelicals and Catholics, have changed sharply in their basic attitude to racial divisions and similar issues. They haven’t simply become more “sensitive” on these matters and incorporated that sensitivity into their existing commitments, they’ve shifted the way they understand these issues and the assumptions with which they approach them, in a more “liberal” direction.