And the church is silent... — Blessed Are The Poor

This morning I went to a church service that was similar to any other week, a couple songs of varying degrees of emotion, some announcements and a sermon that was mainly focused on personal righteousness found through following Christ. This is a typical service that you would find throughout the country in churches that adhere to a reformed theology. Yet I felt a weight of uneasiness throughout the service. There was no mention of racism. It was almost like I walked out of the real world and walked into an environment that was blind to the rest of the world or maybe… consciously trying to ignore it.

The events that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia are a heart-breaking reminder of sin and the disgusting reality of the depths of hatred that plague this world. While my heart breaks for people of color, this post is not going to reiterate how wrong the ideals of the white nationalists are. (Plenty of much smarter people have already done that, you can read about it here, here, here.) (So as to not leave any ambiguity in the matter, I wholly condemn the ideals and actions of the white nationalist group and affirm that they are out of step with the Bible).

My heart breaks even further when I see the American evangelical church staying silent.* Now some organizations have made steps in the right direction, but for the majority of middle class evangelical churches this is not an issue and is definitely not brought up during a service. Why does the rest of the world see this travesty, immediately speak out against it and work to hold our leaders accountable but the church can have a “normal” Sunday service. A service without any mention of the blatant racism that leaves minorities in fear and emboldens those on the fence to fall into a camp of hatred and rejection. Does our reformed theology drives us to forget the few people in our ranks who look different then us?** Do the Solas drive us to forget the vulnerable? Other, less doctrinally driven, churches are holding prayer vigils, publicly condemning the protests and ensuring that people of color feel welcomed and valued as the image bearers they are. Why then are we silent?

“Silence has not and will never equal solidarity”

Regardless of intention, silence does speak. Silence says to people of color that we don’t care about you, that we will not change our normal service to acknowledge your pain and fear. Silence says that because it does not effect our (mostly) white congregants, we should not be concerned with it. Silence stinks of privilege and pride. [Real talk] Silence has not and will never equal solidarity. I love the church and God's call to the church is weighty. We have the potential to change the world for His glory, but that takes entering into suffering that is dirty and messy.

Comment with your church experience below...

* I want to be careful with how I describe the problem and I am cautioned when making a blanket statement such as this one. I know that the entire "reformed" church is not silent about this issue and there are churches, who on Sunday, made steps toward racial reconciliation in the wake of the protests and violence. An overall characterization of the reformed church, however, I feel is appropriate for this issue because it is an overwhelming majority of churches who do not speak out publicly against racism. There are outlying churches but this is far from a normally identifier of churches who heed reformed theology.

**Reformed theology should not have this result, as exhibited by John Piper, Anthony Carter, Thabiti Anyabwile, and many other people of color.