One of the fantastic presenters at the recent NEXT Church National Gathering was Jennifer Harvey, the author of Dear White Christians: For Those Still Longing for Racial Reconciliation. Harvey has also written Raising White Kids: Bringing Up Kids in a Racially Unjust America. I’ve only read Dear White Christians, so I’ll keep my comments directed to it today. We’ll explore Raising White Kids in the future.
The argument of Dear White Christians is that the church needs to move from a paradigm of reconciliation to a practice of reparation. There’s a lot to unpack in that claim, so for a full description you’ll want to read the book itself (you can order it here). As I have processed it since reading it a few years ago, Harvey argues that if our approach to racial matters is only to achieve reconciliation, it blinds us to the past and the real effects of the past on racial relations today. It could be a way of saying, “Let’s all just get along” without addressing history, disparity, or deeply rooted biases that are at work. In response, Harvey argues that we need reparations, a way of significantly and symbolically addressing current disparity based on past racist actions.
One example from history that Harvey cites is an attempt by a group of well-intended persons in the Episcopal Church in the 1960’s, who wanted to overcome the adage that “Sunday morning at 11:00am is the most segregated hour in America,” by integrating all of their churches. It was a noble idea, but simply integrating congregations was a disaster. It did not take into account that, because of centuries of exclusion, the black congregations in the diocese were smaller and had much humbler facilities than the historic white congregations. Integration meant that those smaller congregations were swallowed up and typically would be moved over to the finer buildings of the historic, larger congregations. Those historic congregations had fine choirs, pipe organs, and architecture that was perfect for a form of worship that was developed in England and then transported to the US, mostly among well-to-do persons. The worship and membership, simply by dint of tradition and overwhelming numbers, was manifestly a “white” way of being Episcopal, masked as simply being Episcopal. Not only were the particular gifts of the African American worship in those Episcopal churches lost, the specific role that those churches played in many African American neighborhoods was lost – all in the name of “color-blind reconciliation.”
Harvey argues that too many approaches today – among all manner of churches – try to enact reconciliation without addressing the need for reparation. What she argues is that we need a serious reckoning with how the church historically has empowered a system that has exploited black and brown people, and to start with undoing what we can before we launch into holding hands and singing the “Barney” song together. (That last description is definitely on me, not Jennifer Harvey.)
I think Dr. Harvey is really onto something significant. But, in saying that, here’s what I’m not saying. I not saying that white people or churches that are mostly white need to “fix” the situation. Our savior complex has been part of the problem all along. Instead, we need to listen. The original call for reparations came from the African American community and it horrified even the most progressive of white congregations. Most of those progressive white congregations were already hard at work “fixing” the situation. What I am hearing from Harvey’s work is that reconciliation – while a noble goal – requires us to address the historical injustices and stop pretending that they can be separated from the current situation. That’s where my mind is as I return to the book again.
If you want to watch Dr. Harvey’s address, go to this page and scroll down to click “Tuesday AM Keynote #2.”
Mark of St. Mark
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