Most of us have not considered how American slavery influenced the theology that we believe today.  It’s worth asking how the theology taught in white evangelical churches is different from the theology taught in black evangelical churches or around the world.  While black evangelical churches emphasize corporate sin and justice, white evangelical churches prioritize personal conversion and piety, having lost sight of corporate sin and justice.  In his book, The Color of Compromise, Jemar Tisby details the American church’s long history of compromise with slavery and the impact that compromise had on our theology.  This essay will look at our focus on personal salvation, which originated out of the Second Great Awakening revivals.   

​

During the later part of the Second Great Awakening (1825-1835), Charles Finney was one of the best-known revivalist preachers of the day.  “Finney was an outspoken abolitionist, but he was not a proponent of black equality.  He advocated for emancipation, but he did not see the value of the social integration of the races.  Though he excluded white slaveowners from membership in his congregations, he also relegated black worshipers to particular sections of the sanctuary.  Black people could become members in his churches, but they could not vote or hold office.” (Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise, pg. 68)

​

Finney’s stance for abolition but against integration arose from his conviction that social reform would come through individual conversion, not institutional reform.  Finney and many others like him believed that social change came about through evangelization.  According to this logic, once a person believed in Christ as Savior and Lord, he or she would naturally work toward justice and change.  “This belief led to a fixation on individual conversion without a corresponding focus on transforming the racist policies and practices of institutions, a stance that has remained a constant feature of American evangelicalism and has furthered the American church’s easy compromise with slavery and racism.” (Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise, pg. 69)

​

Many American Christians today struggle to understand collective responsibility.  We tend to create a false dichotomy between collective responsibility and personal accountability.  It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking it must be one or the other, but in reality, it’s both.

​

The Hebrew word for justice is mishpat.  It can refer to retributive justice, where we as individuals pay for the consequences of our actions.  Yet most often in the Bible, mishpat refers to restorative justice.  It means going a step further, actually seeking out vulnerable people who are being taken advantage of and helping them.  But mishpat involves much more.  It means taking steps to advocate for the vulnerable and changing social structures to prevent injustice. (The Bible Project)

 

It is important that we recognize that white theology, which tends to focus on individual improvement and changing the world “one heart at a time,” is incomplete.  The Old Testament vision of shalom and the New Testament vision of the Kingdom of God do not share this individualist perspective.  We must recognize that it is our cultural lens that prompts us to downplay or even ignore the communal and systemic aspects of sin and the redemption that the Bible emphasizes.  We must overcome these cultural influences and heed Jesus’ call to “hunger and thirst to put things right.”

​

Do we view white theology as the normative standard?

​

Soong-Chan Rah, a Korean American pastor, points out that when we merely call white theology, “theology”, in contrast to how we label black theology, Asian theology, etc., it communicates that we believe white theology is the normative standard, superior to all other theological viewpoints.  Soon-Chan is pointing not just to how white Evangelicals feel their theology is superior to that of black Evangelicals but also to how we have felt our theology is superior to what is being taught in Asia, Africa and South America, shaping how we have done missions around the world.  Christianity is now an undeniably global religion, and Asians, Africans, South Americans, and black Americans have insights into Biblical theology and missiology that those with a Western bias lack.

​

I’ve seen it firsthand in my own church.  When I mentioned a need to develop cultural intelligence because culture was touching everything within the church, a fellow Elder responded by saying that we shouldn’t be talking about black culture or white culture because the only culture that matters is Biblical culture.  But what is Biblical culture?  Is it what Koreans view as Biblical culture, what black Americans view as Biblical culture, or what white evangelicals view as Biblical culture?  The reality is that we all have different views of Biblical culture based on our own cultural viewpoints.  Blacks and Asians are aware of the difference and wouldn’t just assume that their theology and Christian culture are superior to other theologies or Christian cultures.  But we white evangelicals speak of our cultural norms as “Biblical culture,” as if only our normative Christian culture (white American) is Biblical.

​

White American theology is necessarily incomplete.  If our goal is to get to the true Gospel message, it will come by building bridges across ethnic lines, learning from each other instead of living with the false assumption that our white American theology is superior and therefore, we have nothing to learn from people of color.  In Evangelical Cultural Lens we will look at three specific cultural lens that result in evangelicalism perpetuating rather than dismantling a racialized society.