The lost part of the narrative

I recently listened to a discussion featuring a black minister who addressed why the black church in America is not leading the Black Lives Matters protest.  This was hosted by Christianity Today and was for the most part an insightful conversation.  However, there was a major missing component to the conversation.

There was a fair and reasonable critique of the evangelical church and its successes and failures in regard to the race relations in the United States.  It spoke positively about the efforts of many evangelicals in the matter of racial harmony in America.  It was spot on many points except for one glaring absence.  There was total silence about the decay of the black community and the associated lawlessness.  There is no justification for police brutality motivated by race or any other reason.  But the occasion of police brutality must not be used as a smoke screen to ignore the self inflicted wounds suffered in black America.  A young black man’s life is in much greater danger from another young black man than from a police officer.  According to the FBI, a black man is ten times as likely to be murdered by another black man than by a white man.[1]  I’m not terribly interested in chasing statics about who is hurting whom, but I do want to share one more story.  Recently, in Birmingham there was a protest in response to the death of George Floyd.  One of the speakers, a preacher’s kid ironically, used the platform to advocate for vigilante removal of a statue of a Confederate hero.  The removal of a statue by due process is civil society at work, by vigilantly mob is another thing altogether.  Not surprisingly, the gathering at the statute turned into a riot and recorded for all to see was a mob breaking into buildings, destroying private property, and a reporter being mugged.

The white church in America needs to use what is left of its position and influence to call for justice and reform of society.  The black church in America needs to use what is left of its influence to call for justice and reform of society.  The lost part of the narrative is the commitment to nonviolence that was at the core of the civil rights movement and gave it great moral authority.  The reason that the old civil rights movement was almost irresistible was that, under church leadership, the non-violence commitment allowed for no other interpretation of events.  The nation at large had to acknowledge that the nonviolent protesters were simply expressing a wrong suffered.

It is concerning to see the speed with which some in the BLM movement have allowed it to become a movement of vigilantes and violence.   Bad cops hurt innocent people, but then again so do mobs.  Without securing the high moral ground this may deteriorate into group warfare, which can only lead to ruin.  With the same vigor that we condemn police brutality we must also condemn mob violence. That lost part of the narrative, the voice of correction in and from the church, tells us much more than we want to hear.  The silence of Christians white or black in the face of injustice tells us they love their agenda more than the Kingdom of God, whether that injustice comes at the hands of a cop or mob. 

---

[1] https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/tables/expanded-homicide-data-table-3.xls