“Down by the Riverside”: The Raceless Gospel for a Desegregated Church

Grab a towel. 

I am calling for a come-to-Jesus meeting. You could say it’s an intervention. The North American church needs help desegregating, as there remain black and white churches.

Put away from me your community days and pulpit swaps, your website’s stock photos of “diversity” and church signs with the obligatory message: “All are welcome.” We know the answer, but at least two generations must see the work. 

Less focus on multiplication and more attention on the divisions. Because what’s the difference between First and Second Baptist Church?

Because Paul opposed Cephas to his face (Galatians 2:11) and Peter once ate with the Gentile Christians but caved to pressure from the in-group. He started behaving differently and questioned the authenticity of the Gentile’s newfound faith — as if it was better to be a Jewish Christian, as if his cultural identity was the unique distinction for Christians (2:12-14). 

Peter was creating a false binary, an either/or sense of identity, an insular way of being Christian. He was dividing Christians into two groups — insiders and outsiders, circumcised and uncircumcised, Jew and non-Jew (or Gentile). 

Peter’s hypocrisy caused a member named Barnabas to be led astray and nearly created a social hierarchy in the early church. Peter knew a change had been made, that these new members gained salvation through faith, not obedience to the Law or “Jewish customs” (Acts 2:38-39; First Peter 1:3-12). 

Peter had already had a vision and knew the Gentiles were not “unclean.” He didn’t just receive a new edible arrangement but a new seating arrangement: All are welcome at the table.

Here, he stands face to face with Paul, who ensures he gets the message and will proclaim it without reservation. There is no distinction. 

Baptism by water or with the Holy Spirit, either way, it makes no difference. The Spirit blows where it will and cares not where we draw the line. 

This is the power of being born of water and spirit. This is not to be confused with cultural assimilation or some demonstration of what it means to be an American. 

The Gentiles are accepted without changing their name, cultural location or learning a new language. They don’t have to pledge allegiance to a land or pick up a flag. Christ’s cross is the only tool a disciple is commissioned to carry (Matthew 16:24).

The early church creed adopted by Paul and shared with the church at Galatia bears repeating: “As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek; there is no longer slave or free; there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus” (3:27-28).

Jesus put his hands together and prayed for unity. Still, all the members of this religious institution can’t come together — not even for an hour or two on Sunday mornings. Bodies racialized as black are still not safe and thus, the need for the Black Church remains. 

But what is the work of the White Church? What is this institution protecting?

On July 2, the U.S. Supreme Court signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, outlawing segregation. Fifty years later, we can drink from the same water fountain, but baptism doesn’t seem to have made a difference. 

Most African and European American Christians do not attend the same churches. None of this should come as a surprise since the churches split over slavery before the states did. 

A sinful laryngitis follows centuries of violence and oppression. What, then, does the North American church have to say when it comes to social justice? 

James Baldwin called that which has been used to justify these crimes against community a “curtain.” Baldwin writes in “White Man’s Guilt” in an essay for Essence:

“The American curtain is 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?”

Baldwin does the work of baptismal identity: questioning race, place and social positioning. 

It is time for that curtain to come down. Peter saw it and Paul proclaimed it to the Colossians:

“Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal, there is no longer Greek or Jew, circumcised or uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all” (Colossians 3:9-11)!

Paul’s words to the believers in Galatia and Colossae are the impetus for the work and witness of the raceless gospel for a desegregated church. But we must meet “down by the riverside” where the water doubles as a reflection pool. 

We must face our sinful compromises, the heresy of white supremacy, the re-creation of human beings as beige, that is, mixed race, black, brown, red, yellow, and white, the pseudo-theological support given to this color-coded caste system as well as the violence and death used to sustain it.

Get in line and let us sing:

“Gonna lay down my burden
Down by the riverside, down by the riverside, down by the riverside
Gonna lay down my burden
Down by the riverside
I ain’t gonna study war no more
Study war no more
Ain’t gonna study war no more.”