11 responses to “No, Progressive white Christians. You’re not off the hook.”

1. 

   Leanne Nealy

   July 14, 2022

   I do not hold affiliations with any white Christian Churches. I don’t consider myself a Christian though I was raised as one and saw the hypocrisy within.

   I’m a seeker who finds all religions fascinating though I doubt I’ll join any in my lifetime.

   I do so love the Bushop of a Black Church near me. Is it a good or bad thing for me to attend their services though I won’t be joining their church permanently?

2. 

   Matt Mirmak

   February 22, 2022

   Thank you for addressing my concerns with white progressive Christians. I helped start a DEI Ministry at my former UCC church that was supposed to elevate and amplify the voices of our POC members. What ended up happening is that ministry ended up being a white space that was more concerned with providing comfort to fragile white people in denial of their privilege while tone policing BIPOC like myself. Long story short, I ended up leaving the church when I was being gaslit over a newsletter article I wrote on my own lived experience with anti-Asian racism in the aftermath of the Atlanta mass shootings.

   The responses I get from white progressives is “I’m learning” and “I’m trying” as an excuse for their microaggressions and problematic behavior. And then I am bombarded with their social justice resumes as if my lived experience with racism is trivial. Basically, the excuses is nothing more than performative bullshit with no intention of making any changes to make their realms attractive to BIPOC.

   I will no longer will attend any church that is led by a white clergy and has a predominantly white leadership. I have had too many bad experiences in white spaces and need to be in a place where whiteness is not centered.

3. 

   Grace B

   January 19, 2021

   The Facebook post is no longer visible now, but after reading Lace’s piece, I’m gathering it involved a lot of agreement with an anti-racist post on a page where that would not be controversial, without risking any social capital (I/white people don’t even give that up, despite using it as a substitute for action at other times). It seems there was also an opportunity for distancing between religious groups/denominations.

   In the spirit of not distancing, though I am not in a faith community, I locate myself in the need to personally work toward substantive improvements in the communities I am part of rather than being comforted by the appearance of action.
   The point about structural change is twofold – it’s who holds power in community structures, but also how the structures shape interactions between members. Including more Black and Brown people in problematic structures cannot be the end goal.

   What am I going to do? I am going to engage here, engage financially here and elsewhere, and amplify Black- and Brown-led organizations’ positions with local representatives.

4. 

   Jennifer Crane (she/her)

   January 13, 2021

   This is on us–all of us white Americans. So many of us have left our churches and sometimes even our families because of the very hypocrisy in an attempt to distance ourselves from the hypocrisy and lack of growth that dominates white churches. But we left with out whiteness intact. You call ourselves non-denominational, atheist, agnostic, new age, or simply “spiritual.” Whatever we call ourselves and whatever spaces we inhabit, we continue to flex, hoard resources, and avoid accountability.

   So what am I going to do now? Call a thing a thing: white supremacy. Break it down in myself. Challenge everyone I know to do the same thing, whether they are part of a congregation or recovering from one. Follow Black and brown leadership towards a better world.

5. 

   J Kim Birnbaum

   January 12, 2021

   I’m not a member of any house of worship and am not Christian. I do occasionally worship at my mother’s synagogue. While It’s easy for me to have seen the hypocrisy and complicity of the right-wing church because the double standards are obvious to an outsider, I know that racism is alive and well in other religious institutions including my own religion’s synagogues. The Republican parties portraying themselves as the party of “family values” and being associated being co-opted by a party based on one issue (abortion) as being the moral party because of it alone has condoned numerous ills, suffering, and death. Racism being perpetuated in houses of worship is not limited to Christian churches. While I’ve heard anti-racist sermons and Black Lives Matter support as a topic of high holiday services at my mother’s synagogue, I don’t know what actions they have taken beyond that. I will definitely talk to my mother, who is active in her congregation about what they are doing to combat racism, what interfaith comunity collaborations on anti-racism they are engaged in, & think on ways I can contribute to such an effort.

   I became disenchanted with organized religion in 3rd grade when my Hebrew School teacher said something racist. I no longer felt the drudgery of Hebrew School was sanctified and dropped out. As a married adult with kids, my home is an interfaith home. One set of my in-laws are religious evangelical Christians. Between us, religion is a sensitive topic as you can imagine. My step-father in law is progressive & tries to talk sense to his fellow congregants. My MIL, while never a fan of Trump, seems to follow along a bit more with what leaders of her church say as long as the candidate is against abortion and would prefer not to talk politics, but listens as the rest of the family discusses it. I see this as any other place/part of our lives: we need to call out racism whenever we see it, to help uplift Black and brown people whenever we can, to look within and root out racism we may have absorbed. So I am going to stay the course & continue to: call racism out, root out racism within, talk to my family & contacts, show up for anti-racist events, take worker bee roles under Black and brown leaders in my community doing the work in our schools and community to fight white supremacy and mitigate the harm to Black and brown people.

6. 

   Michelle Wicks Cypher

   January 11, 2021

   I have been asking this question of myself lately with my church. My faith is very important to me and a big part of my life and I believe strongly in the power of God and the power of Faith. I am also very aware of the shortcomings of my religion and of the “man made” church. Those failings have become even more glaring and evident over the past 4+ years. It has felt shameful to admit that I am a Christian when I know the thoughts that it invokes of the alt right evangelical perspective. In the past year, I have come to grips with the fact that no, us liberal, progressive Christians do not get a pass. It is easy to point at “them” and point at their offensive words and actions. It is harder, but vital, to look internally. Internally in myself and internally in my home church and internally at the greater ELCA community and internally at White Christianity as a whole. I participated in a zoom educational series on racism in America put on by my synod through a local church. My first question at the first session was, where was the Black leadership? There was a POC (latinex) but no Black person. They had a Black guest speaker. They also had a white male guest speaker talking about his anti-racism journey. Their recommended reading resource included some good choices, and also included the typical white person rad, written by a white person. Once section of the class talked about the difference between Black Christianity and White Christianity but it barely touched on how and why white supremacy and white chirstianity grew up together and one fed the other and how white christians pretty much used white supremacy and vice versa. So many things in the anti-racism journey get called out as anti-Christian (and anti-American) To me, that means racism is so intertwined within America and Christianity. I do not believe that the God of white Christianity reflects who God truly is though and do not want to throw my Christianity out. I have begun looking around for a church that is actually doing preaching and calling out, that is doing the racial justice work not just out in the community, but cleaning house internally as well. It is harder with COVID in some ways, but easier in others – so many services are online, but online will not help me build that family and community. I am here to walk and learn and to root out in myself so I can focus on the North Star and to take that into my church family as well as elswhere where I live my life.

7. 

   Robin Van Haste

   January 11, 2021

   I am a member of a crunchy, hippy, progressive church, and we HAVE (recently) realized that being “nicer than those evangelicals” is not enough. My church created a Racial Justice task force within the last year, mainly focusing on ways we can support organizations in our area that are already doing racial justice work. We just had our first-ever anti-racism training on Saturday, and I estimate that nearly half of our regulars attended. It’s only a start, but we’ve started.

   So that’s what we will do. What we have done in the decades up to now….? Yeah, not much. I think that all mainline (white) churches, including my own hippy church, and including me personally, are guilty of intentional ignorance and lack of progress. And we probably blamed the evangelicals.

8. 

   Leah Gallo

   January 11, 2021

   I’m not part of any church, so I can’t comment from that angle, but the points you make are equally applicable to life in general. The idea of chosen incompetence in the intervening years of my life between teenage hood until now. It didn’t seem like a choice at the time – something completely off my radar. But I realise now, looking back, the fact that it wasn’t on my radar was its own kind of choice. Intentional blindness to why the country has an underclass, who makes that up and why it really is. I ‘thought’ I got it but I never tried to truly understand it with any serious effort until now. and to point to only the worst of us, the insurrectionists storming the Capitol with their Confederate flag, is to do the disservice of continuing our own white supremacy unchecked and unexamined. So I am here in this space walking, and out in life walking, in little and big ways, because agreeing with a cause isn’t enough. My outrage is toothless and meaningless if not backed by action just like everyone in the church yes’ing Chris without reflecting on their own part in the system.

9. 

   Kathy Kratchmer

   January 10, 2021

   Lace on Race so here we are again, still, naming the problem but not owning it, moving to mitigate it, but agreeing it is all so wrong.

   I’m thinking no one engaged with your questions because for all our progressive concern, conversation, book studies, etc., we haven’t yet found strategies that we’re comfy with—it all would cost us too much…

   And now I will dispense with the ‘we’ and engage with the ‘I’ .

   I don’t know what I will do… or how to go about addressing things strategically and intentionally. I struggle so in finding the point of entry, the place to set a post, an anchor. And here I’m not referring to the bare minimum of daily engaging in North Star living but of the strategic engagement with systems and structures to bring about long term change. Because that’s what it will take.

   I’m still doing a lot of reading but now it’s about racial justice activists, their organizations, how they networked, how they set and accomplished goals. I’m identifying issues in my community, continuing to follow organizations that are already doing the work, looking for where I can put my shoulder, who I can lock arms with, to address all these things that I can name and own in my community….
   (Cross posted)

10. 

    Jaime Ballard

    January 10, 2021

    This was hard for me to read. I have been aware of these problems in the church. I have thought of them as factors impeding anti-racism in the church, not as the driving forces of white supremacy, the forces causing violence at the capitol and violence towards Black folks and disregard of Black peoples’ value. I have been taking action, we have been asking women of color to hold leadership and teaching positions in our congregation, I taught an anti-racism lesson for sunday school, we are working on increasing diversity in the artwork we display. But again, I thought of those as “helping” things – not as lessening the harm we are currently and actively causing in our church. I need to do more. What I have not done is call a spade a spade, in church. I will have to practice this. It shouldn’t be, but it will be a major change.
    In all of the responses on Facebook, I see “Yes, I agree” and not “Yes, this is me.” I can see how this is part of the problem, not taking accountability when we are currently and actively harming others.

11. 

    Lace Watkins

    January 10, 2021

    Be sure to read the comments on Chris’s post, including my own.