Aliens in the Promised Land

Why Minority Leadership Is Overlooked in White Christian Churches and Institutions

Anthony Bradley

• Publisher: P Publishing
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781596386235
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

For evangelicalism to survive in an increasingly nonwhite global church, minority perspectives and leadership must be valued and incorporated. Black, Hispanic, and Asian leaders offer advice on uniting the church across racial barriers.

1

General Introduction:
My Story

Anthony B. Bradley

This book emerges out of much pain, many wounds, sobered expectations, and yet hope for the future. After my spiritual awakening in college, I had great hopes of serving the church in Christ in the spreading of the gospel. As someone who was young and naive, and who continues to be in many ways (though not so young), I thought—with my own inflated view of my importance to the kingdom—I was going to be able to “make a difference” in helping to diversify Reformed and classical Presbyterian networks.

But I had a sobering wake-up call in 2004, when I received word that John Calvin–loving racists were beginning to post things about me on the Internet. It continues to this day, but the worst of it emerged in 2006. I learned that some of those for whom the Puritans are precious did not welcome my presence among them. On November 27, 2006, the following was posted on a blog about me: “Afro-Knee Bradley, the PCA darling, is an illiterate nigger.” For several years, while teaching at a Presbyterian seminary in the Midwest, I repeatedly received racial slurs on the Internet and on radio programs from many who aligned themselves with historic Southern Presbyterianism and Calvinism. While I was aware that racism had been a part of Southern Presbyterian history and Calvinism in general, I had no idea that it remained alive and well and unchecked in some Reformed and Presbyterian churches. I was even more surprised to discover that few people were even talking about it.1 I began to ask new questions about the presence of racism in evangelicalism at large, especially among those who openly boast about the soundness of their theology. This book represents my ongoing struggle to make sense of why evangelicalism struggles with diversity in church leadership and in the Christian academy. To lead this discussion, I have gathered Hispanic, black, and Asian scholars to describe their own experience as minorities and leaders in evangelical circles and to suggest ways to make real progress toward racial diversity.

The diversity in the book will be a challenge to some. I am fully aware that evangelicalism is now tribal, and many of us value the perspective of leaders from only our particular tribe—i.e., denomination, theological community, writers from a particular publisher, graduates of certain seminaries, and the like. The contributors to this book represent multiple tribes in terms of race and also in terms of church background, ranging from Baptist to Mennonite to Presbyterian. The representation of many tribes is a unique feature of this book on Protestant evangelicalism. The challenge for readers will be to read the stories and understand the hopes from those outside their respective tribes. I would argue that this is the beauty of the kingdom: that we have the opportunity to learn from other believers for whom Christ died and who might not share our denominational space or network affiliation. This book represents a great opportunity to learn, especially for those of us who have spent many years in Reformed and Presbyterian associations.

I believe this conversation to be important because, to my surprise, I have encountered resistance even to the idea that the Reformed tradition has ever had any racism in any of its church leaders. It is important to know Christian history, so that we can learn from the past, and so that we don’t repeat the same mistakes. We need to know our blind spots and weaknesses. We need to know how those who went before us needed the gospel, so that we might lean on the grace of God and be faithful to what he intends his people to do in our time as well. The Puritans are not precious to all of us. Honesty, confession, and repentance are the way forward. We need to be proactive.

Back when I had an active personal blog,2 I questioned the silence about racism in broadly Reformed and conservative Presbyterian circles, then in response to my being called a “token negro” (again) on a popular racist website. I received this in an email from a well-known pastor in Reformed circles:

In the few sentences you wrote you are making Reformed Christians complicit in your charge of racism, and that’s a serious thing. If you want to say that Reformed people are racist, you’ll need to do better than pointing to one site whose whole modus operandi is racism. . . .

I’ve been Reformed just about all my life [and] I’ve never seen any hint of racism. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’ve found this movement systematically combating racism and seeking to be as integrated, as cross-racial and cross-cultural as possible. I could provide a heap of evidence to prove that. I can look to my own church and see a lot of races present and enjoying sweet fellowship together.

What was so surprising to me in the email was the simultaneous confidence in, and ignorance of, his own tradition, given that he has been Reformed nearly his entire life. How can someone be so steeped in the Reformed tradition and never be introduced to how the Reformed tradition’s racism gave birth to apartheid in South Africa, how it litters the anthropology of Abraham Kuyper, and how it is explicitly described in the work of R. L. Dabney?3 It is the cultural and historical ignorance represented by statements like the one above that demonstrates the need for an honest, historically informed conversation. Many white evangelicals are resistant to the fact that racism remains in contexts driven by “the gospel.” However, because sin still exists, there is no reason to believe that racism will simply magically disappear or that we simply need to “get over it” and “move on.” In evangelicalism, there is a strange tendency to confess that we struggle with other sins, like materialism, anger, gossip, adultery, individualism, and the like, and to rebuke American society because of abortion, homosexuality, alcohol abuse, and so on, yet to ignore the racial issues in our own midst. This book is an attempt to humbly bring an issue that is important to minorities who are within and adjacent to evangelicalism to the attention of those committed to pressing the claims of Christ everywhere in life. This volume is a collection of stories and recommendations from Asian, black, and Hispanic leaders from multiple denominations, who write to help evangelicalism be a more faithful witness to the world in showing that the gospel brings people together in Christ from all tribes, languages, and cultures for a common purpose: to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Evangelicalism will not make progress unless we listen to the stories and recommendations of ethnic leaders. The Reformed and Presbyterian tradition provides a good example of why this book is needed. Presbyterian denominations in America that subscribe to the Westminster Confession of Faith continue to struggle to diversify because of its cultural captivity, as some might suggest. What is worse, some Reformed and Presbyterian churches not only are culturally captive to white Western norms, but also have embraced the doctrine of the spirituality of the church, which has provided an excuse for not speaking to issues like racial segregation after World War II. Joel Alvis highlights this history in Religion and Race: Southern Presbyterians, 1946–1983, as does Peter Slade in Open Friendship in a Closed Society: Mission, Mississippi, and a Theology of Friendship.4 I inadvertently created a denominational firestorm by summarizing Slade’s findings on my blog. I was struggling to figure out why someone outside my own denomination knew parts of its history that I had never heard. Slade reports the following:

• Some Presbyterians in Jackson, Mississippi, seem to have played a role in resisting desegregation in Mississippi by embracing the “spirituality of the church” doctrine.5

• Rev. James Henry Thornwell issued a call to “reform” slavery, not abolish it.6

• On December 4, 1861, the representatives of forty-seven Southern presbyteries formed an Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the Confederate States of America (PCCSA).7

• Mississippi Presbyterians exhibited paternalism toward blacks in the formation of institutions and programs designed to help them.8

• First Presbyterian Church in Jackson issued a statement in 1954 rejecting the Presbyterian Church in the United States’ support of the conclusion of Brown v. Board.9

• Dr. Guy T. Gillespie (a former president at Belhaven College) argued in favor of segregation.10

• Desegregation led to the launching of Christian schools in Jackson; Mississippi Presbyterians equated supporting desegregation with being a liberal in the 1960s.11

The above list does not represent the full story. The story of Presbyterianism in Jackson, Mississippi, should continue to be clarified, and there is good evidence that the future looks bright for discussing race in those circles in the future. Like the Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod in 1994 and the Southern Baptist Convention in 1995, the Presbyterian Church in America passed an overture in 2002 strongly opposing racism and confessing general racism in the past, in an effort to move toward the gospel call to racial reconciliation.12 The Missouri Synod successfully produced denominational leaders like Dr. John Nunes, the president of Lutheran World Relief. In 2012, the Southern Baptist Convention elected the Rev. Fred Luther as its first black denominational president. Some denominations are making real progress in terms of their leadership in taking action in accordance with their repentance.

The most courageous and unprecedented confession of racism to date in a conservative Presbyterian congregation occurred under the leadership of the Rev. Richie Sessions, senior pastor of Independent Presbyterian Church in Memphis, Tennessee.13 Independent Presbyterian was founded in early 1965 after the session of Second Presbyterian Church in Memphis reluctantly admitted black worshippers, after it voted to limit the power of elders who were racial hard-liners. These men and their families responded by departing to found Independent Presbyterian, adopting a segregation policy based on the conviction that “the scriptures teach that the separation of nations, peoples and groups will preserve the peace, purity and unity of the Church.”14 After years of leading his church in honesty, confession, and repentance, on Sunday, May 13, 2012, Ruling Elder Sam Graham read this statement:

On behalf of the Session, this public address to you today specifically marks the beginning of a time of corporate confession and repentance by Independent Presbyterian Church (past and present) regarding the sin of racism. Just as we celebrate those aspects of our history at Independent Presbyterian Church of which we the Church are proud, we must also acknowledge with sadness and renounce and repudiate those practices in our history that do not reflect biblical standards. We profess, acknowledge and confess before God, before one another, and before the watching world, that tolerance of forced or institutional segregation based on race, and declarations of the inferiority of certain races, such as once were practiced and supported by our church and many other voices in the Presbyterian tradition, were wrong and cannot and will not be accepted within our church today or ever again. The Lord calls us to repent of the sin of prejudice; to turn from it and to treat all persons with justice, mercy, and love.15

This statement is an encouraging sign of real progress, especially if we see more Presbyterian church leaders and congregations throughout the southeastern United States make such courageous gospel confessions. These are great first steps for a church that still needs to deal with its own history for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of its own survival in an America that is increasingly becoming nonwhite.

The Event That Launched This Book

On Tuesday, November 3, 2009, Regent University announced Dr. Carlos Campo as its eighth president, filling the seat vacated by its founder, Dr. Pat Robertson, following news that Robertson would be ste...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1. General Introduction: My Story
• 2. Black Pastoral Leadership and Church Planting
• 3. Race and Racialization in a Post-Racist Evangelicalism: A View from Asian America
• 4. Serving Alongside Latinos in a Multiethnic, Transnational, Rapidly Changing World1
• 5. Ethnic Scarcity in Evangelical Theology: Where Are the Authors?
• 6. Blacks and Latinos in Theological Education as Professors and Administrators
• 7. Blacks and Latinos in Theological Education as Students
• 8. A Black Church Perspective on Minorities in Evangelicalism
• 9. Theology and Cultural Awareness Applied: Discipling Urban Men
• Afterword
• Appendix: Racism and the Church: Overcoming the Idolatry
• Notes
• Contributors
• Index of Subjects and Names
• More Resources from P&R
• More Resources from P&R
• More Resources from P&R