TCW Short Take #5 - Race, Racism and Reparations

It's often said that Sunday is the most segregated day in America. We've been talking about white churches and black churches and so forth. What is the best way forward to have more of the New Testament church, more of a grounded biblical church where there's not divisions based on ethnicities, but believers just come together? You hear some churches, predominantly white churches, try to have more blacks on the elder board, and they do kind of quota things like that, and what's your answer to a better way forward to have more mixed churches naturally with people seeing each other as brothers and sisters in Christ instead of dividing amongst ethnic lines?

Again, interesting question. It was Dr. Martin Luther King who first asserted that Sunday is the most segregated hour in America, and it's an assertion that has largely been accepted as fact, primarily because it was Dr. King who made the assertion. But we need to be careful here to distinguish between, excuse me, segregation and separation. There are myriad, myriad reasons why black and white Christians worship separately, but what I find most concerning about this assertion that Sunday is the most segregated hour in America is that it is only those churches that are predominantly white that are tasked with becoming more ethnically diverse. Churches that are predominantly black are not held to that same standard. The reality is that there are countless black evangelical churches, particularly in the inner cities, that not only are predominantly, if not totally black, but are quite comfortable with their congregations being mono-ethnic. I find nothing in scripture that mandates local congregations be multi-ethnic.

Nothing. A church can have people of varying shades of melanin occupying their pews, but all that tells me is there are people of varying shades of melanin occupying the pews of your church. It says nothing about what the person who is Caucasian or Hispanic or African thinks in his heart about the person next to them who is Latino or Chinese or Middle Eastern, and it's the condition of the heart, not the curls of skin that matters most to God.

Now, with respect to a better way forward, the best way forward to have better race relations within the church is for those who comprise the church to have better relations with God. As the Apostle Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 5, verses 17 through 19, he says, Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature. The old things have passed away. Behold, new things have come. Now, all these things are from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us a ministry of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself. And that's the approach we have to take.

See, we've got it backwards here. This is especially evident within the social justice realm of evangelicalism, is that they are trying to change the aesthetics. They are trying to change systems and institutions, and then, as a result, have that reflect that reconciliation has taken place. But biblically, reconciliation happens from the inside out.

It happens from the heart first, and the effects are seen outwardly as a result of what has happened inwardly. So again, the best way forward for you and I to have better relations with one another is for you and I to first have better relations with God. We hope you gained from this short take of the Christian Worldview radio program. To hear the full program and further connect with this ministry, visit thechristianworldview.org. I'm David Wheaton.