Beyond the KKK: Getting at White Supremacy in the Church

The problem in American culture is that white people are almost never forced to be in situations that are culturally uncomfortable to us. We almost always get to have things the way we want them, according to our cultural preferences. We get to have the world centered around us (and we don’t even realize that is what is happening). We don’t experience what it is like to be the one “different” one in a room. Or the one who speaks a different emotional or literal language. And so it becomes very easy to assume that our experience is the only experience, our norms the only norms. We get comfortable assuming a colorblind society is what actually exists in America.

White Supremacy in the Church and Missions Organizations

This is not a new phenomenon. The same assumptions operated during much of the missionary era of the Christian church. As missionaries traveled throughout the world, they struggled to separate the unchanging Gospel from their own culture–white culture. They often failed to learn the culture they entered into before translating the Gospel into the heart language of the people. They prohibited things they did not need to prohibit and perhaps allowed other things they should not have allowed. This too is white supremacy–not an intentional malice toward other races, but a consistent action that reflects the (perhaps submerged) belief that white culture is better, more progressive, more advanced, more moral. It is worth noting that liberal progressives today have some of the same ideas, and white supremacy tends to hide deep in liberal groups. When it comes to missions organizations, many are beginning to catch on to the harm of the prior colonialism, and even when my parents were studying to become missionaries a couple decades ago, mission agencies were providing better cultural training and preparation. (There is, of course, still much work to be done.)

In the same way today, one complaint I hear again and again from black Christians is that while they would love to have unity with white Christians, whenever this is attempted, white Christians insist on having things culturally their own way. In my Lutheran tradition, there is (even among liberal churches) an insistence on certain liturgical forms, musical styles, academic preaching styles, and silence among the pews that are all alien to more expressive cultures here and around the world. There is an inability to adapt, to focus on the central things of our faith rather than the optional trappings. And so, black Christians are treated to white supremacy within the church itself (action that reflects a belief in the supremacy of white culture), constantly forced to adapt if they wish to have fellowship, while rarely seeing the favor returned.

The American church desperately needs to respond to the call of God in our current context. If we are willing to challenge ourselves and enter into the culture of brothers and sisters, this new cultural interaction certainly will make us uncomfortable, but we must bear in mind that previously the discomfort has been disproportionately borne by our black brothers and sisters, as well as those from other cultures. If we desire true unity, we must all share in the discomfort.

Knowing how long this has been borne by our brothers and sisters, we must step in and help to take some of the burden. We must humble ourselves, holding to our faith without compromise (as do our brothers and sisters), but allowing ourselves to be led and taught by those who are from other cultures. If we are willing to humble ourselves in this way, we can begin to demonstrate to a watching world the ability of God to heal a broken society. But if we insist that other cultures must adapt to us and change to our liking, we will feed into the suspicion of many unbelievers that Christians are just as resistant to growing and changing as other people, if not more so. We will fail to give God the glory he deserves.

“My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.”

–Jesus in John 17:20-22, NIV

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Photo credit: Silence is compliance – A protester with a message standing on a window ledge in Whitehall. Photo by Alisdare Hickson, via Flickr. License. Note: photo was cropped from original.