Becoming One Body

Progressive Euroamerican churches claim to seek to build Martin Luther King’s “Beloved Community.” The question for them becomes how to attract people of color to their congregation. Unfortunately, the hope of diversification is more about political correctness than about desegregating the 11 a.m. hour on Sundays.

While I appreciate the overtures made to include people of color into your fold, I must ask: Why do you assume I would even want to worship at your church? After centuries of exclusion, why should I come running now that you think it makes your church look progressive by having a Black or Brown face in the pew?

It is difficult for me to pray while sitting next to the banker charging me an extra point of interest because my last name is Latino. I find it problematic to shout praises to the Lord while being stared at by the police officer who gave me a ticket for driving while under the influence of being Latino. It is challenging to proclaim the mercies of my God while knowing that sitting across the aisle is a parishioner refusing to show mercy toward the undocumented.

Unless those within the congregation begin to honestly and seriously deal with their white supremacy and class privilege, it is unlikely that believers of color will ignore the realities outside the church building and just come on in.

Communal vs. Individual Racism

Since the Civil Rights Movement began and accelerated over the past year, overt racial and ethnic forms of economic oppression have been normalized and legitimized in the “color-blind” eyes of the overwhelming majority of Euroamericans. This is an entrenched understanding that has found justification in the heresy of white Christian nationalism.

In the Civil Rights Movement—and other worldwide antiracist, anticolonial, and democratizing movements—the way whites constructed reality was radically challenged. Nonetheless, repackaging white supremacy that secured structural inequalities and injustices under the concept of “color-blindness” preserved the historical racial hegemony, as racism and ethnic discrimination persist in our churches, masked.

“Color-blindness” simply replaced racial domination with racial hegemony, posing questions concerning the struggle for justice on a universal corporate plane by integrating the opposition to nullify more radical demands. The reconciliation forged and advocated was a color-blind reconciliation that enacted antiracist laws while failing to fundamentally change or transform the social structures that maintain and sustain racism.

The more radical demands of the Civil Rights Movement were sacrificed in favor of limited economic, political, and cultural access to power and privilege for a minority of middle-class people of color. These demands included equitable distribution of wealth, resources and opportunities.

“Color-blindness” allows white churches to approach racism on an individual rather than a communal level. Euroamericans can downplay, if not outright ignore, the importance of initiating sociopolitical acts challenging the present embedded social structures detrimental to communities of color. For them, reconciliation is achieved through personal relationships across racial and ethnic lines—by having a Black or Latine friend.

Stressing individual-level actions over and against changing social structures allows those privileged by those same structures to feel righteous through their public apologies and crocodile tears shed for past racist acts. Meanwhile, they can continue to benefit from the status quo that protects Eurocentric privilege.

An Altar Call for Euroamericans

We are thus faced with the question: What is the best advice that can be given to whites living in these racist and ethnically discriminatory Trump years? Challenging my ordained Southern Baptist Latino preacher identity, I call the Eurochristian church to get “saved.”

More specifically, they must nail their white supremacy and class privilege to that old rugged cross so they can become a new creature. This is not to be taken figuratively, but literally. 

How much is the white church willing to change, to die to itself, to become a new local body seeking reconciliation? The church wishing to diversify will never succeed while holding on to the attitude that “this is the way we’ve always done it and if you want to join us, then you have to become like us.”

Although we may come to our spirituality through different paths, we are still attempting to form one body—one very diverse body. In his first epistle to the Corinthians, Paul wrote, “There are a variety of gifts, yet the same Spirit; there are a variety of ministries, yet the same Lord; there is a variety of workings in all sorts of different people, yet the same God who is working in all of them” (12:4-6).

Because we represent different traditions, we all offer different gifts and ministries. Our unity as one body does not come from whitening different races, ethnicities, or orientations; rather, our diversity makes unity possible.

Paul reminds us that the human body is composed of different parts, yet remains a single unit. Therefore, it would be ridiculous for the foot to insist that the eye also be a foot.

Likewise, it is ridiculous for Euroamericans to insist that Latines must sing three-hundred-year-old German hymns to properly praise the Creator of all. Likewise, it is absurd that African Americans must follow Eurocentric liturgy to be more spiritual. If all parts conform to the will of one of its parts, how then could it be a body?

The doing (orthopraxis), not the believing (orthodoxy), is the answer for creating the Beloved Community. Moving beyond color-blindness and political correctness requires the Eurochristian’s consciousness to be raised to consider the struggles of their neighbors of color, without being defensive.

The church discovers its own salvation through its solidarity with the marginalized. One engages in the process of liberation not to achieve the goal of having more faces of color in the congregation. One engages in the process of liberation solely to become the church.

This is achieved by white churches joining in solidarity with churches of color (if invited), not the other way around. Then, and only then, can we become one body poised to turn the world upside down.