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Where is "the church" in conversations about reparations? [1]

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Date: 2023-02-23  

I work in churches and with faith-based non-profit spaces, some of which are way the hell ahead of the rest of the national conversation on reparations, and most of which are struggling with their own declining memberships and revenues calling their attention.

Folks outside these spaces (perhaps already the majority of the country: www.pewresearch.org/...) don’t really have the opportunity to listen in on how these internal conversations go, so I want to offer a word from the inside.

1) There is as little agreement internally to faith communities regarding the need for and nature of reparations as there is outside; my own denomination has for years straddled whatever “progressive/liberal” and “evangelical/conservative” spectrum pollsters have used, although with conservatives leaving to form their own denomination (www.politico.com/...) this is shifting. Even with this shift, the biggest divide remains between urban and rural ways of understanding faith, politics, and the media environment. So while a single congregation may have a (sort of) coherent worldview, churches of the same denomination in different locales may have very different reflection points on racism and literally everything else.

2) That said, inside of any congregation, any honest pastor will acknowledge that the hour we (may) have of someone’s attention on Sunday morning simply can’t compete with social media engagement, alone, of folks in our congregations (www.forbes.com/...). At most, we get 52 hours a year. . .1,300, according to the Forbes article linked, go to scrolling cat videos and Youtube hacks leading us down ever darkening rabbit holes. The theology and worldview of our people is far more formed by this toxic milieu than whatever church they may consider themselves to attend — in fact, I would argue that the church someone attends is more likely to express a person’s political/theological worldview than shape it. I know many folks who have left churches because they heard something they didn’t like from the pulpit. I know very few who have changed their political worldview because of something they heard from their religious leader.

3) Therefore, Christian nationalism and QAnon ideas are horrifically hard to combat from within the Christian community and impossible to correct by folks outside the camp. This set of ideas has been well documents both on Kos and by other outlets, so I won’t belabor them. . .here’s an explainer: www.christianitytoday.com/...). It reminds me of nothing so much as the early 2000s when there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth of folks asking, “Why won’t the moderate Muslims condemn extreme Islamic groups?!” In truth, many of them were. I worked with an interfaith forum in which the Muslim speakers, wearily, would always condemn terrorism and extremism, pleading for understanding that not all Muslims were suicide bombers and that Islam condemned such hate. It didn’t register for the same reason that alternative Christian voices aren’t breaking through now: we are all talking to each other, wringing our hands, releasing statements, tweeting our little hearts out, and we still are losing people to Reddit videos using pseudoscience to back up racist theological statements and readings of history (no links. Not adding to their click counts). Reparations, in this context, are part of the vocabulary of the terminally woke and irredeemably anti-American to those who think God ordained white Americans as the chosen people.

The work toward reparations is not aided by any statements that the “church should” do this or that. The assumptions are that 1) denominationally, churches act in command-and-control fashion, taking marching orders and executing them across broad geographic and sociological boundaries, 2) internally, congregations are on the same page and singing from the same hymnal, so to speak, and 3) that if folks are attending a church, they will be less susceptible to misinformation and propaganda from other agendas directing their energies elsewhere. None of these holds up to scrutiny for long.

I believe our best efforts right now are local and grassroots — the earnestly bland statements of denominational and judicatory leaders of predominantly white churches have precious little traction with your average church-goer (unless, of course, they disagree with it, and it it widely enough reported on their news network of choice) on any matter, let alone an issue already so defined by the broader media landscape. Locally, and even in concert with other similarly oriented folks from within other congregations within a specific geography, is where any traction is happening. The Minnesota Council of Churches, for example, has taken reparations on as a marquee project for the next 10 years: mnchurches.org/…

“The church”, such as it is, transforms when its people transform, period. There is no entity of “church” apart from the people who understand themselves to be a part of it, just like “the electorate” or “the nation” or “the party.” These collective nouns mask the truth that people are gonna “people” wherever they are, and it is miraculous when they find themselves marching in the same direction. As it is — I still believe in miracles. I have seen them. And I will keep working in my spaces to make room for the miraculous to happen.

****The recent robust conversation on the place of people of faith in the DKos community has surfaced assumptions held by some who don’t understand themselves to be religious in any way, and the comments sections have been populated by folks who seem of good will but little understanding of religious community dynamics (completely fair. I didn’t grow up in an irreligious context, and I have to listen to those who come from those space to get a better understanding myself.) For the few folks who make their way to this story, I wanted something on the record here giving some nuance to the faith community conversation around this particular issue. ***

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