The burden-sharing between communities during this time of activism should encourage us all.
By Jamal L. Johnson
In the midst of blatant injustices inflicted upon the Negro, I have watched white churchmen stand on the sideline and merely mouth pious irrelevancies and sanctimonious trivialities. In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard so many ministers say, "Those are social issues with which the Gospel has no real concern," and I have watched so many churches commit themselves to a completely other-worldly religion which made a strange distinction between body and soul, the sacred and the secular.
- Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail
A
s an African American preacher generations after Rev. Dr. King, I find these words highlighting inconsistencies in orthodoxy eerily familiar. Perhaps the contemporary pious irrelevancies from white churchmen are fashioned after the theoretical gospel of their American forefathers. Church leadership that today vehemently refuses to acknowledge social and economic injustices in these yet to be United States reeks of the Puritan religiosity that championed the Boston Tea Party but labeled silent, nonviolent protest as unpatriotic.
The Black church's frustrations with silence from our white evangelical brethren can be traced to America’s theological foundation, which rendered African victims of transatlantic slave crimes worthy of spiritual liberation while still in physical bondage. Puritan evangelists like George Whitefield, Jonathan Edwards, and Cotton Mather propagated a slaveholding gospel, advocating for liberty for all—except their dark-skinned gross national product.
We find ourselves in this familiar climate of unrest today because injustice, economic inequalities, and proper articulation of the gospel in America have long been adjudicated through white lenses.
Long before George Floyd's eight-minute, forty-six seconds of agony on that Minneapolis pavement, African Americans have struggled to breathe in every community throughout America. We could not breathe as adolescents in Mississippi while being murdered for Jim Crow crimes never committed, like Emmitt Till. We found it hard to breathe as eleven-year-olds like Tamir Rice, who, while playing with a pellet gun in an empty park in Ohio, was gunned down without warning. We were not permitted to breathe in Florida like Trayvon Martin, who was assassinated for wearing a hoodie while Black outside his father's gated community.
The African American experience has been a lonely pilgrimage. Our cries, pleas, and petitions for justice have often been ignored by our brethren in Christ.
Each time an African American is lost at the hands of law enforcement under murky circumstances, it has been another tragic episode in solitude. We’ve heard the familiar reframe of an officer "in fear for his/her life" affirmed by other Christians, despite video evidence to the contrary.
Yet our resolve in the gospel that united Peter (the fisherman), Simon (the Jewish nationalist), and Saul of Tarsus (the religious terrorist) has never wavered.
Sunday, June 28, 2020, will long resonate as a memorial stone of God's faithfulness. The Asian American Christian Collaborative took James 1:19-25 to heart, proving doers of God's word by taking their vulnerable brothers’ cause to task. In response to the Lord's rhetorical question, "Where is your brother?" (Gen. 4:9), our Asian American brethren rejected the trivial responses about Black lives offered by the church for 401 years.
Instead of the typical superficial affirmations that systemic racism contributes to inequitable healthcare, educational resources, and unjust policing, the Asian American Christians for Black Lives and Dignity March demonstrated that "Black Lives Matter" is theological in essence. The march was a manifestation of Rev Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's mountaintop epiphany of the church standing in solidarity.
Whenever African American lives are snatched without consideration that we bear the Imago Dei, we have grown accustomed to an apathetic response that includes victim shaming and racial insensitivity. The cultural barriers broken during the march were trailblazing, considering the perceptions that many first-generation Asian Americans have of African Americans. Every expression of lament, every silent march, and every prayer pause built a bridge of burden-bearing with the African American community.
While America maneuvers through a pandemic, waves of protest, and an upcoming election, we ask the question: where do we go from here? As I survey our current activism, I am both optimistic and cautious.
The history of America's cultural and spiritual caste system regarding race, especially in the church, makes me wary. The previous feigning of reconciliation has now shifted to a "fear the gospel will be lost" in retribution of America's original sin. White evangelical fears of God's word being applied more sociologically change based on who is affected. Where was this reservation to preserve the gospel's authenticity when Black families were systemically and intentionally severed by slavery, the war on drugs, and the school-to-prison pipeline? Unsurprisingly, activists have deemed the church’s influence in national racial transformation unwanted and ineffective. This grieves me.
I have to hope that the same church culture that supports America's most irreligious and racially divisive president can take an honest assessment of equitable diversity in its seminaries or places of worship. To do so, our fellow Christians will need to glean wisdom from this country's consistent voices of conscience in the Black church. I pray the church will provide authentic opportunities for Christ-centered and theologically sound African American pastors—Rev. Dr. Charlie Dates, Rev. Dr. Bryan Loritts, Rev. Dr. Eric Mason, and Rev. Dr. Ralph Douglas West, and others—to disciple in white spaces toward biblical reconciliation.
The alternative is for the church to remain most segregated on the Lord's day, a prophetic representation of ethnic and theological divisions across our country.
As an African American Christian man reflecting upon the events of June 28, 2020, I am most grateful. The Asian American Christians for Black Lives and Dignity March was yet another step toward progress. Our Asian brethren’s willingness to affirm laments long ignored, while internally evaluating their perceptions of Black America is an example for the local Church. Commitments to sit under African American preaching, learn from our leading theological voices, and be another Christian voice of anti-racism will continue the momentum of this march.
In full transparency, I experience days of pessimism, frustration, and mourning. However, I am encouraged by the song Tiff Joy sang at the end of the march: “We've come this far by faith.” And we will continue on by faith.
The African American experience is tethered to a house built upon unwavering faith in Jesus. Our fidelity to God has never been circumstantial. We have long known that he keeps his promises. The Negro National Anthem lyrics best describes our sentiments of faith: “God of our weary years/God of our silent tears/Thou who has brought us thus far on the way/Thou who has by Thy might/Led us into the light.”
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Pastor Jamal L. Johnson is a graduate of Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. He currently serves as the associate pastor at Progressive Baptist Church. He lives on the southside of Chicago with his wife, Rheanna, and their four children: Nasir, Na’ilah, Na’imah, Nuriyah. Pastor Jamal has a heart for biblical justice & righteousness.