The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby is a great resource to get a more complete picture of how Christians have been involved in perpetuating racism throughout history. This book was super helpful to me as I have asked the Lord to search my heart and mind and reveal any racism in me. I am begging the Lord to rid me of anything even resembling racism so that I can love Jesus and my neighbor with a clear and full understanding of the Imago Dei. “History and Scripture teaches us that there can be no reconciliation without repentance. There can be no repentance without confession. And there can be no confession without truth.”
I highlighted several things while reading and have posted those notes below…
- The failure of many Christians in the South and across the nation to decisively oppose the racism in their families, communities, and even in their own churches provided fertile soil for the seeds of hatred to grow. The refusal to act in the midst of injustice is itself an act of injustice. Indifference to oppression perpetuates oppression. Location: 210
- History and Scripture teaches us that there can be no reconciliation without repentance. There can be no repentance without confession. And there can be no confession without truth. Location: 213
- The festering wound of racism in the American church must be exposed to the oxygen of truth in order to be healed. Location: 222
- What do we mean when we talk about racism? Beverly Daniel Tatum provides a shorthand definition: racism is a system of oppression based on race. Location: 235
- Another definition explains racism as prejudice plus power. It is not only personal bigotry toward someone of a different race that constitutes racism; rather, racism includes the imposition of bigoted ideas on groups of people. Location: 238
- Christians participated in this system of white supremacy—a concept that identifies white people and white culture as normal and superior—even if they claim people of color as their brothers and sisters in Christ. Location: 244
- Historically speaking, when faced with the choice between racism and equality, the American church has tended to practice a complicit Christianity rather than a courageous Christianity. They chose comfort over constructive conflict and in so doing created and maintained a status quo of injustice. Location: 248
- Even if only a small portion of Christians committed the most notorious acts of racism, many more white Christians can be described as complicit in creating and sustaining a racist society. Location: 255
- The goal is to build up the body of Christ by “speaking the truth in love,” even if that truth comes at the price of pain. Location: 290
- Reading The Color of Compromise is like having a sobering conversation with your doctor and hearing that the only way to cure a dangerous disease is by undergoing an uncomfortable surgery and ongoing rehabilitation. Although the truth cuts like a scalpel and may leave a scar, it offers healing and health. The pain is worth the progress. Location: 335
- In 2 Corinthians 7:10, Paul says, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret” (ESV). This kind of grief is a natural response to the suffering of others. It indicates empathy with the pain that racism has caused black people. The ability to weep with those who weep is necessary for true healing. Location: 348
- So from the beginning of American colonization, Europeans crafted a Christianity that would allow them to spread the faith without confronting the exploitative economic system of slavery and the emerging social inequality based on color. Location: 627
- In 1785, Lemuel Haynes became the first black person ordained by any Christian fellowship in America. Location: 730
- Harsh though it may sound, the facts of history nevertheless bear out this truth: there would be no black church without racism in the white church. Location: 858
- The chattel principle is the social alchemy that transformed a human being made in the image of God into a piece of property. African American minister and abolitionist James W. C. Pennington spoke of it this way: “The being of slavery, its soul and its body, lives and moves in the chattel principle, the property principle, the bill of sale principle: the cart whip, starvation, and nakedness are its inevitable consequences.” Location: 986
- It should give every citizen and Christian in America pause to consider how strongly ingrained the support for slavery in our country was. Location: 1,451
- They also constructed a new social order, what we refer to as Jim Crow—a system of formal laws and informal customs designed to reinforce the inferiority of black people in America. Location: 1,473
- One of the primary reasons black people showed so much enthusiasm about reading was because they were finally able to read the Bible for themselves. Literate black people no longer needed to rely on any white person’s interpretation of Scripture; they could comprehend and apply God’s Word on their own. Location: 1,500
- At a key moment in the life of our nation, one that called for moral courage, the American church responded to much of the civil rights movement with passivity, indifference, or even outright opposition. Location: 2,234
- Ephesians 2:14: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” Location: 2,974
- Black lives matter served as a rallying cry for protests, but it also acted as an assertion of the image of God in black people. In Christian anthropology, saying that black lives matter insists that all people, including those who have darker skin, have been made in the image and likeness of God. Black lives matter does not mean that only black lives matter; it means that black lives matter too. Given the racist patterns of devaluing black lives in America’s past, it is not obvious to many black people that everyone values black life. Quite the contrary, the existential equality of black people must be repeatedly and passionately proclaimed and pursued, even in the twenty-first century. The words black lives matter also function as a cry of lament. Theologian Soong-Chan Rah explains in his book Prophetic Lament that in the Bible lament is “a liturgical response to the reality of suffering and engages God in the context of pain and suffering.”20 He goes on to say that it is a way “to express indignation and even outrage about the experience of suffering.”21 Racism has inflicted incalculable suffering on black people throughout the history of the United States, and in such a context, lament is not only understandable but necessary. Black lives matter presents Christians with an opportunity to mourn with those who mourn and to help bear the burdens that racism has heaped on black people (Rom. 12:15). Location: 3,082
- Many white Christians viewed the killings that made national headlines as isolated events, and they could not understand why black people and other keen observers had such strong reactions. Evangelicals would agree that black people should be treated fairly and have all the civil rights other citizens have. But the root of the disagreement over racial issues lies deeper beneath the surface. It is a failure to acknowledge the subtler ways that racism operates today. Because their religious beliefs reinforce accountable individualism, relationalism, and antistructuralism, many white Christians wrongly assume that racism only includes overt acts, such as calling someone the “n-word” or expressly excluding black people from groups or organizations. It is good that black and white people generally can agree that racism of this type is wrong, and it usually elicits swift and unequivocal condemnation in public discourse. But the longer arc of American history reveals that Christian complicity with racism does not always require specific acts of bigotry. Being complicit only requires a muted response in the face of injustice or uncritical support of the status quo. Location: 3,108
- Centuries of racism in the American church cannot be overcome by “pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities” that ignore the deep social, political, and cultural divides that persist across the color line.50 If the church hopes to see meaningful progress in race relations during the twenty-first century, then it must undertake bold, costly actions with an attitude of unprecedented urgency. The solutions are simple though not easy. They are, in many cases, obvious though unpopular. No matter their difficulty or distastefulness, however, they are necessary in order to change the narrative of the American church and race. Location: 3,296
- Black theology can teach the American church not just how to lament but how to rejoice as well. The exuberant vocal and bodily expressions common in much of black worship represent a faith that celebrates God’s goodness in equal measure with lament over humanity’s sinfulness. Those who have suffered much find much joy in God’s salvation. Location: 3,494
- In the Bible, James 4:17 says, “If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.” Location: 3,654
- The church today must practice the good that ought to be done. Location: 3,656
- Jesus crossed every barrier between people, including the greatest barrier of all—the division between God and humankind. He is our peace, and because of his life, death, resurrection, and coming return, those who believe in Jesus not only have God’s presence with us but in us through the Holy Spirit. Therefore, we have the power, through God, to leave behind the compromised Christianity that makes its peace with racism and to live out Christ’s call to a courageous faith. The time for the American church’s complicity in racism has long past. It is time to cancel compromise. It is time to practice courageous Christianity. Location: 3,691