The Silence of the White Church<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I am a Christian and a black man. My wife and I wife attend a majority white church in central New Jersey. We are not an anomaly. The few majority-white\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/10\/the-silence-of-the-white-church.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Silence of the White Church\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I am a Christian and a black man. My wife and I wife attend a majority white church in central New Jersey. We are not an anomaly. 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{"id":381,"date":"2014-10-06T07:58:00","date_gmt":"2014-10-06T07:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/10\/the-silence-of-the-white-church.html"},"modified":"2014-10-06T07:58:00","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T07:58:00","slug":"the-silence-of-the-white-church","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/rhetoricraceandreligion\/2014\/10\/the-silence-of-the-white-church.html","title":{"rendered":"The Silence of the White Church"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

I have been deeply and painfully grieved by the torrent of unprovoked killings over the past several years of young brothers. The events surrounding the deaths of Jordan Davis, Michael Brown and John Crawford were some of the most ugly and bigoted things I\u2019ve witnessed in my lifetime\u2013from the media\u2019s attempted shaming<\/a> of the teenage murder victims by drudging up signs of \u201ctroubled adolescence\u201d to the \u201cI am Darren Wilson\u201d bracelets<\/a> worn by Ferguson police.<\/p>\n

A recent New York Times poll<\/a> shows deep divisions between black and white perceptions of the significance of race and racism in the death of Michael Brown and is evidence that America\u2019s race problem is much bigger than we thought. The problem isn\u2019t that we, as African-Americans, see race as a factor. The problem is that different lives have different value and the value of young black life is at a shocking low in the twenty-first century.<\/p>\n

In 1963 Martin Luther King called on white clergy<\/a> to take a good hard look at the violence and injustice perpetrated against blacks in America and to stand united with black Americans who were struggling just to be treated as fully human. Fifty-one years later I am calling on white church leaders to do the same thing\u2014take a good look at what is happening to black boys in this country and a deep introspective look at your own hearts to sift through any potential biases.<\/p>\n

Ignoring the deaths of Michael Brown, John Crawford , Jordan Davis and others in service of placating white congregants is just as dangerous and problematic as overtly racist responses. Silence inadvertently communicates to the white members that these aren\u2019t important matters or that they are not relevant to the faith.<\/p>\n

Read the rest here<\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"