Two Pastors, Two Prophets

By DON ROLLINS

“In this time, these men chose to castigate a framework that points out a truth that cannot be denied. American history has been tainted with racism. America codified it. And more, our public and private institutions propagated it.” — Rev. Dr. Ralph West

To invoke a journalistic phrase from a bygone era, a great deal of ink has been spilt trying to explain systemic racism. It’s a conversation as old as the republic, yet current as the next unjustified shooting.

The complexities of systemic racism are of course profound and unsettling, broadly seen as dividing Americans into one of three camps: the “post race” crowd that discounts, even denies the existence of present-tense strategic oppression; the more enlightened but still distanced academic strain, generating more heat than light, more punditing than action and; those of multiple colors, cultures and classes that have debunked the lies and sidestepped the excessive intellectualism, but often at a cost.

Take the case of Rev. Dr. Ralph D. West, founder and pastor of the Houston-based megachurch Church Without Walls. A doctoral student at Southwestern Baptist Theology Seminary (an affiliate of the Southern Baptist Convention), West not only left the program, but severed his congregation’s ties with the SBC.

At stake were two bedrock antiracist explanations for calculated racism: critical race theory, and intersectionality. (Quick primer: Critical race theory asserts racism (historically defined as power plus prejudice) was intentionally baked into every core American institution; related, intersectionality refers to the overlapping of discriminations, as in class with race and gender.)

The precipitating event was a Nov. 30 statement issued by six, all-white SBC seminary presidents declaring both critical race theory and intersectionality as having been “… appropriated by individuals with worldviews that are contrary to the Christian faith, resulting in ideologies and methods that contradict Scripture ...” and therefore outside the denomination’s official teachings.

Followed soon thereafter by his Black colleague and pastor of Chicago’s Progressive Baptist Church, Rev. Dr. Charlie Dates, West issued a statement dismissing the SBC’s biblical-only approach to anti-racism: “Their stand against racism rings hollow when in their next breath they reject theories that have been helpful in framing the problem of racism.”

West was quick to hedge his endorsement of every aspect of the two paradigms, but made no apology for using secular tools to help understand and counter racial injustice — an endorsement sure to encourage pockets of Southern Baptists already uneasy with the denomination’s racial blind spots.

West and Dates’ witness for racial justice categorically rebuffs obscene claims of a “post-racial” America; but no less the comfortable “cocktail party” liberalism of the once-removed. Their prophetic actions, despite the consequences, are proof we can do better than either of those options.

Don Rollins is a Unitarian Universalist minister living in Hendersonville, N.C. Email donaldlrollins@gmail.com.

From The Progressive Populist, March 15, 2021

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