Smashing 💥 The Mirror 🪞

Notice the word “escape.” Too often Christian schools are set up as enclaves with high walls barring their students from “the world.” Attempts to engage other ideas are seen as attacking the Christian foundations of the school. https://t.co/RUYpz8VINe pic.twitter.com/YaodcaKq8J

— Jemar Tisby, PhD (@JemarTisby) February 16, 2022

Sunday morning worship is STILL the most segregated hour in America. I think Dr. King observed that. It's true, whoever said it first. Most people go to church to "escape" from "the world." I know Karl Barth said a preacher should hold a Bible in one hand, and the newspaper in the other. Put the newspaper down, Pastor, unless you want to be looking for a new church real soon.

In other words, “Don’t invite the Black guy to preach about race…unless he refers to it only as a past-tense reality. Plus those Black Christians have suspect theology anyway. They should leave ‘politics’ out of the pulpit.”https://t.co/RUYpz8E7VG pic.twitter.com/bT0HRPPtSH

— Jemar Tisby, PhD (@JemarTisby) February 16, 2022

I was fortunate to attend, not "Christian school," but a seminary where I was challenged emotionally, spiritually, intellectually, and personally like I never was in college, graduate school, or law school (yeah, I'm educated far beyond my station in life).  I had a black professor who told us about going to department stores and having clerks watch him until he left, because, you know....they steal!  There was a black woman in my class, about the only one in the seminary the four years I was there, who was furious with white people for what they'd done to her, mostly things we were wholly unaware we were guilty of.  We were guilty, but not guilty in the sense of the law or even of eternal shame, ashes and sackcloth.   We learned the hard way (well, I will speak only for myself, though we all, in the end, came to love and respect each other, and honor her truths and re-examine our own), that "all white people benefit from a system that grants advantages to those considered white and disadvantages to Black people and other people of color." And yeah: "What you do with that fact says more about you than me."  Most white people cannot STAND that fact.  Too bad for them.

I keep telling y’all. CRT is simply the latest scare tactic meant to intimidate Christians into ideological conformity, curtail efforts to create racially inclusive organizations, and demonize those who speak up about it. Anyways, check out my work…https://t.co/2haGh0O7vz

— Jemar Tisby, PhD (@JemarTisby) February 16, 2022

I honestly think (believe; whatever) that CRT is not an external force being foisted on white people by FoxNews and random trolling Facebook pages.  The reaction is too intense, too personal.  I've seen it before.  White people recognize themselves in that mirror, and the only response is to smash the mirror.  "CRT" is a conveniently neutral term for the n-word and "I really don't like THOSE people!," and all the other things white people would like to be more comfortable saying (well, even when I was a child, the n-word was not used in polite company, but nobody demurred if you didn't want your daughter to marry one) if they only could.  The root problem here is Barack Obama was President for 8 years, and some people think it will take generations to wash that stain out of the body politic.

They think it; but they won't way it.  Or even admit they think it; not even to themselves.  They also know they "benefit from a system that grants advantages to those considered white and disadvantages to Black people and other people of color."  They know it, and they're afraid of losing those advantages (see, e.g., the reaction to the halftime show at Super Bowl LVI).

I SO thought we'd be over this shit by now.  That was before I understood this is America's hidden wound that cannot heal, because we work so hard to keep it hidden. And keep it a wound. Conservative means not letting anything change, right?