Is There Incognito Racism in Our Churches?

Source: Crosswalk.Com
Author: Debbie Holloway


Donald Sterling, owner of the LA Clippers, has been banned for life from NBA events and fined 2.5 million dollars due to his hurtful and racist comments recently leaked to the public. Phillip Holmes from Christ & Pop Culture notesSterling as one public example of widespread racism still alive and well today.

“Don’t think for one second that believers that think like Sterling don’t exist,” he writes, and share his own experience as a black man in largely white church circles. According to Holmes, interracial dating and marriage is still a huge sticking point for many white parents and pastors. His own college mentor dissuaded him from interracial dating, and admitted later that “he could not bear the thought of one of his daughters marrying a black man.”

So what are Christians to make of this incognito racism in our churches and families?

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First, according to Jim Denison on Christian Headlines, we must acquaint ourselves with how God feels about racism. On racial lines and other social differences in the 1st century, Paul wrote:


"There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus" (Galatians 3:28).

"God shows no partiality" (Romans 2:11; Acts 10:34).

"There is no distinction between Jew and Greek; for the same Lord is Lord of all" (Romans 10:12).

In Christ "there is not Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free; but Christ is all, and in all" (Colossians 3:11).

Crosswalk author Whitney Hopler, in her article How to Turn Racism into Gracism, suggests developing compassion, understanding favor vs. favoritism, and becoming educated as ways to combat racism in our hearts and actions.

Read the Complete article  HERE

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