Slavery, Segregation, and the Church

Hooded, sheet-wearing, Bible-quoting racists (Ku Klux Klan), cross-burnings on Stone Mountain, segregated public transportation (“Colored sit from rear to front. Whites sit from front to rear”), water fountains, restrooms, schools, and churches. This was the South where I grew up. A popular swimming lake (located near what is I-285 and the airport today) displayed a sign at its entrance prohibiting “colored people and Jews” from enjoying the cool waters in the hot southern summer. As a boy I looked at the sign, was grateful I wasn’t excluded, and went swimming. How easy it is to not have a problem with other people’s problems. I remember the janitor at the church I attended. Lij (short for Elijah) could stay in the men’s room and clean up the church building, but he and his family weren’t welcome to worship along side white folks. But things began to change with Rosa Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. The Civil rights activism led by Martin Luther King Jr. with its boycotts, sit-ins, marches, and eventual legislation changed society’s segregationist ways. There is still a lot of well-disguised racism, but race relations are markedly improved over what they were during the days of Jim Crowe.

An embarrassing chapter in the struggle for racial equality in America has been the oftentimes feeble response of the church. The political activism of evangelical Christians since the 1980s was absent in the 1950s. Whereas many pulpits throughout the South had sought to justify slavery prior to the Civil War, their spiritual descendents did the same with segregation. I was once told by a student at a well known Christian university that God said, “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set” (Prov. 22:28). This was an attempt to use the Bible to “prove” racial segregation.

The child of slavery, racial segregation, presented a formidable challenge to those who worked for racial reconciliation in the body of Christ. It was African-American pastors and churches that led the way to end racial discrimination. Sadly, I didn’t see many of my white brothers and sisters in Christ rise to the occasion. I heard sermons on the Tower of Babel (a favorite segregationist text) and eloquent appeals from well known Bible teachers to resist racial integration. I do not wish to villainize my spiritual fathers. In many ways they unwittingly planted the seeds of racial reconciliation. They did this by their evangelism and world missions zeal that reached across racial lines. They taught me the Scriptures that began a transforming work in my life (though they did not see the racial implications of what they were teaching). It was not until 1961 while in college that I began to awaken from my benign segregationist slumber. I read the book “Black Like Me” in which John Howard Griffin, a white man, told how in 1959 he had darkened his skin and traveled the South as a black man. My white eyes were beginning to open to what had been the invisible world of the southern black. In 1964 while in seminary I became friends with John McNeal, a married black student from middle Georgia. For the first time in my life I had a friendship with a black brother in Christ. My world and my plans for the future were being reordered.

The journey from slavery to segregation to racial integration is not over. As one generation was blind to the evil nature of racial discrimination, what is it that we do not see? We can pass judgment on those who failed to acknowledge and repent of racist attitudes. But how comfortable are we with the materialism that infests modern society? The unborn are aborted and it is gauzed over as a woman’s reproductive health issue. Appeals are made to let scientists experiment on human embryos. This is not to say that Christians have overcome racial prejudice. How many churches continue to leave “transitional” neighborhoods for the safety of another white ghetto? The vast urban areas of our cities go without a strong gospel witness because of crime problems. African-Americans, Hispanics, Caucasians, and all other racial and ethnic groups in the body of Christ must work together to pray for reformation and revival in the church. I pray that the progress we have made in racial harmony will not be wasted in the lukewarmness of compromise with a culture that is not a friend of the truth. And woos us above all else to be comfortable.

Dr. Howard E. Dial
Berachah Bible Church