Dividing, By Race and Faith

IT IS NO SECRET among observant, honest, well informed folks that not only does racism lurk in every nook and cranny in America, but that it is particularly manifest throughout the politically conservative population, deeply embedded within evangelial Christianity, and especially rampant within conservative evangelical Christianity.(In general, conversatism and fundamentalism go hand in hand, although there is a sizeable community of progressive liberal evandsgelical christians in America) In fact, all this has been known for a long time. More than twenty years ago, a team of social researchers, Emerson and Smith, published an illuminating volume on the topic, titled: "Divided By Faith: Evangelical Religion and and Problem of Race in America". This fascinating study is a compilation of thousands of interviews with devout evangelical Christians conducted by telephone, with another several hundred face to face interviews. The original intent was to gain an understanding of the evangelical viewpoint on any number of concerns and issues, and it evolved into a study of race and religion in America as it became evident that the racial concern was paramount in the evangelical community, so much so that when this book was written, at the turn of the millennium, many leaders within the faith were encouraging efforts to bridge the obvious racial divide within the church, a divide which results in two churches, the evangelical white church, and the evangelical American black church. Such efforts have always been, and remain, rhetorical, and minimal. Most notably, most evangelicals, although willing to acknowledge the two separate communities, did not and still do not recognize any actual systemic racial "problem" in society, nor any pattern of behvaior indicating a systemically racist culture. Willfully blind though this may seem, the authors came to realize and point out to the reader that some of the most basic features of evangalical Christianity; individualism, self determination, emphasis on personal relationships and salvation through Christ, tend to foster an attitude about personal and social responsibility which leads to precisely such cultural blindness, and a tendency to see the remedy to all problems as personal repentance, atonement, and salvation. Thus, racism is an individual, personal matter,and society is merely a backdrop for individual choices. Societal trends and sociological studies per se lose importance and immediacy among evangelical minds. Your average conservative evangelical is likely to see no pervasive, systemic racism within his or her own community, but merely, an accumulation of individual, personal choices. The tragdey of this, as the authors conclude, is not that the evangelical community fosters open, blatant racism (it does not), but that it passively, peacefully coexists with it, and does nothing on any organized meaningful level to extinguish or even mitigate it. Like Christianity in general, evangelical Christianity has never been a front and center agent for social progress and change in America. Conservative religion is focused on traditional beliefs and values, rather than change and progress, by its very nature. Society in general, spearheaded by science, is not, however, nearly so mentally moribund as traditional religions. Emerson and Smith conclude that the racial divide in evangelical Christianity, much like that in American society generally, is here to stay for the forseeable future. The lingering racial divide in America will, however, continue to encounter strenuous opposition, even if the church chooses to continue being of no help.