Abstract
As the Christian church turns the corner into the 2020s, it must continue to simultaneously deconstruct itself from its relationship with colonialism, modernity, and Christendom (Tizon 2018) and reconstruct itself for a globalizing world filled with conflict both unique and yet not so unlike conflict from the past. Missiology, too, must continue to facilitate these conversations, envisioning the characteristics of a postcolonial missiology (Tizon, 2018, k.l. 1496), characterized by reconciliation (Tizon, 2018), peace (Francis, 2019), and discovering the presence of God in “others” who mission has struggled to see and hear as equals (Noble, 2018), by justifying conquest, occupation, and triumph under the guise of mission (Stroope, 2017). In order for missiology to continue to shed its “colonial” skin, however, it must continue to confess and repent of its origins and consequential tethering with the whiteness project of Europe (Jennings, Can White People Be Saved? k.l. 235), for racism continues to plague the church as it moves further into the 21st century (Emerson and Smith, 2001; Sechrest et al., 2018; Tisby, 2019: 15; Walker-Barnes, 2019).
In The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, Jamar Tisby, a Black historian and minister, writes, “History and Scripture teaches us that there can be no reconciliation without repentance. There can be no repentance without confession. And there can be no confession without truth.” (Tisby, 2019: 15). And so, what Tisby offers is a historical survey that “. . .undoes the tendency to skip the hard parts of history and directs the reader’s attention to the racist realities that challenge a triumphalist view of American Christianity” (Tisby, 2019: 20), and central to his argument is that racist Christianity in America was, and is, avoidable (Tisby, 2019: 18), but dismantling white supremacy comes at a cost many American Christians have been unwilling to pay—losing power in American society by challenging the social status quo of the times.
Broken up into 11 chapters, the survey aims to give a sense of how racist historical patterns have changed and persisted over time (Tisby, 2019: 17), showing racism never went away, only evolved (Tisby, 2019: 18). Tisby begins by examining early European contact with indigenous peoples and African slavery in North America, laying the foundations for economic race-based stratification in the colonial era (chapter 1). Racial segregation continued into the 18th century (chapter 2), by being theologically justified for economic gains, and was also present in the theology and practice of the great awakening and its figures like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield (chapter 3). The Antebellum period (chapter 4)—also characterized by Christian compromise and complicity—reveals a missional paradigm that justified evangelism as the only requirement for mission to enslaved and freed blacks, failing to justify liberating them as equals. The latter half of the 19th century faced not only battles over slavery as a means to economic progress, but also battles over Biblical justification for either black liberation or enslavement (chapter 5)—leading many Christian leaders to eventually resign discussions of slavery as “political issues,” relegating them as “state issues” that do not belong in the church. Such events led to the civil war; however, the war did not end racism in Christian communities, as can be seen in the new systems of formal laws and informal customs designed to reinforce the inferiority of Blacks during the Jim Crow era of the 20th century (chapter 6). Likewise, racism is not just a “southern” problem, since “compromised Christianity” was also in the northern United States (chapter 7). Continuing with the theme of racism’s evolution within American Christianity, the civil rights era encountered new forms of racism through the rhetoric of “law and order” and “colorblind Christianity,” producing “the white Christian moderate” (chapter 8). These orientations eventually led to the rise of the “Religious Right,” a politically conservative movement organized to return Americans to “traditional” values (chapter 9). The closing chapters (10 and 11) shift the focus to the 21st century while still pointing out the themes of racism’s evolution within Christian thinking and practice in the eras of Black Lives Matter and Donald Trump. Chapter 11 offers an overarching set of possible responses to stop racism’s reincarnation, concluding that such education on racism should lead to liberation—challenging racial discussions to move beyond personal enlightenment and to the alleviation of modern-day oppression (Tisby, 2019: 205).
There are two noticeable weaknesses in the book. First, the emphasis on black–white relationships throughout the centuries fails to educate readers of all of the other countless population groups who suffered (and still suffer) under complicit Christianity (including women, Asians, Latinx, Indigenous and other silenced communities)—although Tisby acknowledges this shortcoming in the introduction as a byproduct of the nature of his specific focus. Second, although Tisby concludes with suggested responses, much more could be said to facilitate “courageous Christianity”—which he proposes as the alternative to “complicit Christianity.”
What Tisby sets out to do, however—to show how a compromised and complicit Christianity has evolved with racism—he does exceptionally well. The reader understands the rhetoric of the times that deemed racial oppression as permissive, or worse, “good.” Tisby’s survey takes a poignant and unflinching look at the disturbing realities of Christianity’s complicity with racism, both past and present. It offers an essential introduction to an entire history that has been buried and ignored by much of the church—revealing essential truths and practices for anyone seeking to participate in the actual reconciling mission of God in creating peace with the racialized “other.”
If, as Tisby demonstrates, racism evolves over time, scholars and practitioners of mission must also learn to discern its presence in modern-day missiology. A vital question Tisby raises for missiology, then, is, how has mission compromised and been complicit with racism, and how is this still happening today? More importantly, how can missiological education lead to the alleviation and liberation of racialized oppression? History shows mission’s thinking is capable of justifying the dehumanization of people groups, reducing populations to a means for an economic or spiritual end (or both). Mission cannot repent of its racializing in history if it does not learn how it justified racialized violence as an act of “Christian charity” (Stroope, 2017, k.l. 3502). However, as Tisby argues, the past is not the only problem, as mission still needs to learn to embrace notions of racial justice, as can be seen in the mixed responses to Immigrants and Asylum Seekers, George Floyd’s death, Donald Trump’s presidency, and in contexts like the Urbana Student Mission Conference in 2015, where Michelle Higgin’s endorsement of “Black Lives Matter” provoked outrage (Tisby, 2019: 182). In order for missiology to further distance itself from its colonial past and move closer into the realms of true reconciliation (Tizon, 2018), peace (Francis, 2019), and encountering the presence of God in the “other” (Noble, 2018), it must listen to the silenced stories of the other—to her stories of ongoing pain. It must see the other—recognizing that violence has not ended for her and her people, making reconciliation not a thing of the past, but an urgent issue for the racialized violence of today and tomorrow (Walker-Barnes, 2019).
