What deepens my anger
today is the appalling silence of white theologians on racism in the United
States and the modern world. Whereas this silence has been partly broken in
several secular disciplines, theology remains virtually mute….Progressive
white theologians, with few exceptions, write and teach as if they do not
need to address the radical contradiction that racism creates for Christian
theology. They do not write about slavery, colonialism, segregation, and the
profound cultural link these horrible crimes created between white supremacy
and Christianity.
Pen’s challenge to me and other bloggers:
I thought I would
challenge each of you to address race/unity or respond to the Cone excerpt
on your site this week (being that it is Week of Christian Unity through the
Western church). Let's have a conversation and bring race to the forefront
of the blogosphere for a moment.
Growing up in a Socialist household in
New Zealand in the 1950s and 1960s (my father had been a Communist), I was
inspired by the US civil rights movement. The favourite music in our
household was from Pete Seeger and the Weavers, and at our nuclear
disarmament rallies we sang We Shall Overcome.
Yet, within my lifetime, America has
gained leaders like Colin Powell and Condeleeza Rice, and that inspires me
today. Surely their success is due in part to the efforts of Christians like
Martin Luther King and others nurtured on “white” theology. (What would the
status of Afro-Americans be today if Martin Luther King had devoted himself
to Buddhist or Hindu theology?)
I don’t know America well enough to know
if its theology is racist. Nor do I know enough to comment on the extent of
racism in the US today. No country is perfect. We must all strive to
improve.
But living in Asia for 17 years, I saw
that - in a world of injustice – America is viewed by millions and millions
in the Third World as a beacon of freedom and justice. (As a teenager in
Korea, my wife had one big dream – to marry an American man who would take
her to live in the US. She got me instead, but that’s another story.)
No other country in the world inspires
such admiration. And it is because Americans – so many of them Christians,
inspired, presumably, by white theologians – have constructed a society that
allows all humans to hold that great Christian virtue – hope.
January 24th, 2003
