THE RACIAL DIVIDE: A LETTER TO MY BLACK SISTER IN CHRIST

I was so deeply touched by your message that I decided to drop everything after returning from my Thanksgiving weekend to write you a response.

Before God, I have no greater burden than that we would love each other across color and ethnic lines to show the world the reality of our Lord Jesus:

·       “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:34-35; 17:20-23)

As a Jew, I was thrilled to visit a German missionary friend who had me speak at two church gatherings in Germany. What a delight to love and to find brotherhood among those whom I had wanted to kill. I treasure the time that we shared together. I also treasure my black brethren, many of whom I teach and regard as giants of the faith. Before God, I would stand up for them just as some as I would my biological brethren.

This is why I am so upset with the secular elites who continue to use every possible occasion to sow division within the Church and to keep the Black vote democratic. This is why it was so painful to read one more such article, the one you sent me. However, for your sake and the sake of the Church, I forced myself to read it.

Here are some of my thoughts following a couple of the quotations I pulled from the article:

·       Modern evangelicals' support for this president cannot be separated from the history of evangelicals' participation in and support for racist structures in America. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/white-evangelicals-love-trump-aren-t-confused-about-why-no-ncna1046826?fbclid=IwAR1mQs12kDbXDjtrZpB0plW--osJifDEdPMUJVtS7duVY9r2F1weqHmudu0

The logic of this article is “Once guilty, always guilty. Once a racist always a racist.” Well, let’s now apply this logic of “once guilty, always guilty” to the Democratic Party! Even if evangelicals entirely dropped the ball during Jim Crow, why can’t our performance not be separated from a vote for Trump now?  I just don’t get it – why must a vote for Trump be equated with racism?

We hear a lot about the failures of the Church during segregation. However, the elite media refuses to mention the performance of Bible-believing whites during Reconstruction following the Civil War. Retired Professor of History and Black Church Studies and author of “Black Preaching,” Henry H. Mitchell, had admitted that he had written to raise the esteem of his Black people. Nevertheless, Mitchell also has some good things to say about the White Church and their role in Reconstruction:

·       After the South was opened up to the missionaries, under protection of military occupation, the Protestant churches of the North launched a veritable crusade to bring literacy to the huge host of the newly freed. (Mitchell, Black Church Beginnings, 142)

·       I was stunned to see whole pages of names of people who had been sent south to do mission work. There were hundreds of these names, in tiny print, on page after page. (142)

·       Regardless of paternalism and hazards to African American self-esteem, it was this huge crew of volunteer and minimally paid instructors, of not just Baptist but all denominations, who laid the foundation for all the secondary and college work reported in the pages that follow. There may have been only a log cabin church to teach in at first; it may have been by firelight, but these volunteers taught their very hearts out. There simply isn’t room to begin to cover the host of primary reading classes that were begun in churches and elsewhere soon after the Union troops took over. (142-43)

·       There were, of course, some educated African Americans from the North hastening south to lift their sisters and brothers. But this vast number of newly freed African Americans required this white host at the outset… The first Southern generation of locally educated African American instructors was first trained in schools planted by white missionaries. (143)

This same inflammatory and destructive article claims:

·       White evangelicals certainly are not concerned with white supremacy, because they are often white supremacists.

I used to believe that whites had a different odor. I hated them so much for killing my people that being in an elevator with too many of them made me sick. However, while I have met white supremacists on rare occasions, I could never regard any of them as Christians, even less so as evangelicals, who are supposed to put the Bible first. As a result of the Bible teachings, I could never look down on anyone. Nor can I understand how any true Christian can. Nor, in my 43 years as a follower of Jesus, have I ever heard a sermon preaching racism in an evangelical church. We, who love the Words of God, understand that our only hope is in the grace of God. This is because we understand that we deserve to die for our sins just as soon as anyone else. Therefore, it is our duty to pass on the forgiveness that our Savior has extended to us and to love all.

This inflammatory article contains many gross distortions like:

·       During the civil rights movement, many white evangelicals either outright opposed Martin Luther King Jr. or, like Billy Graham, believed that racial harmony would only come about when the nation turned to God.

I’m sure that Graham did believe this way. Hatred and racism will be with us until the return of Jesus. However, Graham should be commended for doing so much to tear down the racial barriers, even threatening to withdraw from meetings/gatherings that maintained the barriers. Interestingly, many Black pastors also opposed King.

There are many such articles that have been circulated in the past three years. It doesn’t matter to them whether or not they’ve got their facts straight. All that matters to them is that they have driven a wedge between the Black and White churches.

In "The Silencing: How the Left is Killing Free Speech," liberal democrat, Kirsten Powers, wrote:

·       Mary Frances Berry, an African American and former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights under President Bill Clinton, wrote in a Politico online discussion: “Tainting the tea party movement with the charge of racism is proving to be an effective strategy for Democrats.”

This should remind us of many similar charges, like the Republican party's "war on women." This is not just laughable, but also highly inflammatory! Powers explained that:

·       Berry, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, added, “There is no evidence that tea party adherents are any more racist than other Republicans, and indeed many other Americans. But getting them to spend their time purging their ranks and having candidates distance themselves should help Democrats win in November. Having one’s opponent rebut charges of racism is far better than discussing joblessness.”

Although blacks might feel affirmed such propaganda, the anger generated by this onslaught of attacks against evangelicals has proved to hold back the black community and to be highly divisive and has served to further alienate the black and white evangelical church. If I was black and believed such propaganda, I would have been led to commit destructive acts. What the Leftist media has been doing is criminal!

Sister, thank you for bringing to my attention the depths of your feelings. Please join me in prayer that the Lord will make His people one, the very thing that He so desires.