95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity: #34

A movement for multiracial congregations needs theologians of multiracial Christianity.  Seminaries and Christian colleges must become places where pastors and lay leaders are trained in a theology of oneness and equipped with skills to minister effectively in culturally diverse environments.  Institutions of higher learning, as well as education programs at local congregations, must introduce what has been learned in various cultural settings. Most “Christian education” is Eurocentric in its content and presentation.

Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim, United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 184.

[Read the Introduction to 95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity here.]

95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity: #33

A movement for a new multiracial church needs prophets of the post-apartheid condition in the United States.We need people who not only speak truth to racism but who can envision a future church where racism is no longer a defining characteristic of our faith. We need brave and courageous individuals who will be the activists in the movement for multiracial Christianity.

Curtiss Paul DeYoung, Michael O. Emerson, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim, United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 184-185.

[Read the Introduction to 95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity here.]

95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity: #32

The American curtain is color. Color. White men have used this word, this concept to justify unspeakable crimes and not only in the past, but in the present. One can measure very neatly the white American’s distance from his conscience – from himself – by observing the distance between white America and black America. One has only to ask oneself who established this distance, who is the distance designed to protect, and from what is this distance designed to offer protection?

James Baldwin, “White Man’s Guilt” (1965), in David Roediger, ed., Black on White: Black Writers on What is Means to Be White (New York: Shocken Books, 1998), 323.  

[Read the Introduction to 95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity here.]

95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity: #31

[T]he history of white people has led them to a fearful baffling place where they have begun to lose touch with reality – to lose touch, that is, with themselves – and where they certainly are not truly happy for they know they are not truly safe. They do not know how this came about. On the one hand they can scarcely dare to open a dialogue which must, if it is honest, become a personal confession, a cry for help and healing which is, really, I think, the basis of all dialogues and, on the other hand, the black man can scarcely dare to open a dialogue which must, if it is honest, become a personal confession which fatally contains an accusation. And yet if neither of us cannot do this each of us will perish in those traps in which we have been struggling for so long.

James Baldwin, “White Man’s Guilt” (1965), in David Roediger, ed., Black on White: Black Writers on What is Means to Be White (New York: Shocken Books, 1998), 323.  

[Read the Introduction to 95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity here.]

95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity: #30

I  have often wondered, and it is not a pleasant wonder, just what white Americans talk about with one another. . .One wishes that Americans – white Americans – would read, for their own sakes, this record and stop defending themselves against it. Only then will they be enabled to change their lives. . .The fact that they have not been able to do this – to face their history, to change their lives – hideously menaces this country. Indeed, it menaces the entire world. . .White [person], hear me! History, as nearly no one seems to know, is not merely something to be read....the great force of history comes from the fact that we carry it within us, are unconsciously controlled by it in many ways, and history is literally present in all that we do. It could scarcely be otherwise, since it is to history that we owe our frames of reference, our identities, and our aspirations. And it is with great pain and terror that one begins to realize this. . .My point of view certainly is formed by my history, and it is probably that only a creature despised by history finds history a questionable matter. On the other hand, people who imagine that history flatters them (as it does, indeed, since they wrote it) are impaled on their history like a butterfly on a pin and become incapable of seeing or changing themselves, or the world. . .This is the place in which it seems most white Americans find themselves. Impaled. They are dimly, or vividly, aware that the history they have fed themselves is mainly a lie, but they do not know how to release themselves from it, and they suffer enormously from the resulting personal incoherence. This incoherence is heard nowhere more plainly than in those stammering, terrified dialogues....The nature of this stammering can be reduced to a plea. ["]Do not blame me. I was not there. I did not do it. My history has nothing to do with Europe or the slave trade. Anyway it was your chiefs who sold you to me. I was not present in the middle passage. I am not responsible for...the cotton fields of Mississippi....I also despise the governors of southern states and the sheriffs of southern counties, and I also want your child to have a decent education and rise as high as capabilities will permit. I have nothing against you, nothing! What have you got against me? What do you want?["] But on the same day, in another gathering and in the most private chamber of his heart always, the white American remains proud of that history for which he does not wish to pay, and from which, materially, he has profited so much.

James Baldwin, “White Man’s Guilt” (1965), in David Roediger, ed., Black on White: Black Writers on What is Means to Be White (New York: Shocken Books, 1998), 320-322.  

[Read the Introduction to 95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity here.]

95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity: #29

America became white. . .because of the necessity of denying the black presence, and justifying black subjugation.  No community can be based on such as principle—or, in other words, no community can be established on so genocidal a lie. . .This moral erosion has made it quite possible for those who think of themselves as white in this country to have any moral authority at all—privately or publicly. . . .It is a terrible paradox, but those who believed that they could control and define black people divested themselves of the power to control and define themselves.
 

James Baldwin, “On Being White. . .and Other Lies” (1984), in The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, ed. Randall Kenan (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), 136, 138.

[Read the Introduction to 95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity here.]

95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity: #28

Salvation does not divide.  Salvation connects, so that one sees oneself in others and others in oneself. . . .Complexity is our only safety and love is the only key to our maturity.  And love is where you find it.  Race and religion, it has been remarked, are fearfully entangled in the guts of this nation, so profoundly that to speak of one is to conjure up the other.  One cannot speak of sin without referring to blackness, and blackness stalks our history and our streets.  Therefore, in many ways, perhaps in the deepest ways, the minister and the sheriff were hired by the Republic to keep the Republic white—to keep it free from sin.  But sin is no respecter of skin: Sin stains the soul.  Therefore, again and again, the Republic is convulsed with the need for exorcism.

James Baldwin, “To Crush a Serpent” (1987), The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, ed. Randall Kenan (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), 162, 165.

[Read the Introduction to 95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity here.]

95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity: #27

And I am sure that you believe, with me, this paradox: black freedom will make white freedom possible.  Indeed, our freedom, which we have been forced to buy at so high a price, is the only hope of freedom that they have.

James Baldwin, “The Fire This Time: Letter to the Bishop [Desmond Tutu]” (1985), in The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, ed. Randall Kenan (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), 218.  

[Read the Introduction to 95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity here.]

95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity: #26

What is most terrible is that American white [people] are not prepared to believe my version of the story, to believe that it happened.  In order to avoid believing that, they have set up for themselves a fantastic system of evasions, denials, and justifications, which system is about to destroy their grasp of reality, which is another way of saying their moral sense. . . .And every white citizen of this country will have to accept the fact that he is not innocent. . .Black people will have to do something very hard, too, which is to allow the white citizen his first awkward steps toward maturity.
 

James Baldwin, “The White Problem” (1964), in James Baldwin, The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings, ed. Randall Kenan (New York: Pantheon Books, 2010), 79.

[Read the Introduction to 95 Theses for Christian Racial & Ethnic Unity here.]