When I was a sixteen year old Southern Baptist with my sights set on the White House (I grew up in the hey-day of the Moral Majority), I met a black pastor named William Barber at a state-wide event for young political hopefuls. Rev. Barber was there to give a motivational speech, but I heard the gospel in his talk and saw it in his character. A friend and I invited Rev. Barber to come preach in our home town and he accepted our invitation.
A few months later, Rev. Barber drove to King, North Carolina, in his family minivan. Another large man at his side, he was not alone. “My people told me not to come up here,” he said. “This is Klan country, you know.”
A sixteen year old post-civil rights white boy, I didn’t know. I was raised to be color blind by believers in equal opportunity. No one told me that King was a Sundown Town—one of hundreds of cities and towns that had advertised danger for blacks found within its limits after dusk. (The last sign in King was removed, I’m told, in 1983.) I didn’t learn the history of racism in church or public schools. I heard it from a preacher who knew that judgment can be a gift.
As I listened to Jeremiah Wright’s speech at the National Press Club (a speech that was the kickoff of a two day symposium on the black church), I was reminded of Rev. Barber’s words to me on that first visit to King. I remember the feeling of surprise and confusion—awkwardness, even—as I heard the truth about my past spoken so frankly. And it occurred to me, That must be how most white folks feel listening to clips of this on the evening news.
Given the fierce political competition that has afforded Rev. Wright his national platform, I’m not surprised that most commentators have ignored his message about the prophetic tradition of the black church. Looking back on my education from Rev. Barber, though, I hope followers of Jesus will take this opportunity to listen to our black brothers and sisters. Though judgment is not easy to hear, my experience has been that there is grace and new life on the other side if we are willing to listen.
If we are bound by a history of racism, this is not just a problem for those who have suffered. It is also a burden on those who have inflicted suffering or benefited from a history of oppression. For white folks, racism has inflicted a hidden wound. I talk a lot to white Christians who are concerned about the future of the church. They worry that our faith has become irrelevant in a post-modern and increasingly post-Christian era. The next generation simply isn’t hearing good news from our pulpits.
“If today’s Church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early Church, “ wrote Martin Luther King from Birmingham Jail in 1963, “it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning….” The prayer of the prophetic tradition, as Rev. Wright describes it, is always that all people would be set free from our bondage, transformed into the image of Christ, and reconciled to one another and God. This is not an angry diatribe. It is, I’m convinced, our only hope.
It may be that this combination of truth-telling and radical grace can only come from the black church tradition in this country. In an age when we do not easily believe in miracles, the black church in America is a miracle that can hardly be refuted. How is it that African peoples who were not Christian were objectified, enslaved, and abused by people who called themselves Christian, heard the gospel preached by their oppressors, yet heard and believed the good news? With God, all things are possible. Not only do we have a black church in America, but its members have consistently loved their enemies and prayed for those who persecute them.
By miracle, even reconciliation is possible. More than a decade after I met Rev. Barber and learned that I was a racist by birthright, my home church in King, North Carolina, invited me to preach their homecoming service. Now an Associate Minister at an historically black Baptist church, I asked if I might bring our choir along to help me preach. As it happened, our pastor canceled service at our church, chartered a bus, and the whole congregation went to worship in Klan country.
When we arrived, there were some awkward exchanges. Everyone, of course, was trying to be nice. But when the gospel choir started singing, it wasn’t long before the whole church—black and white—was on its feet, clapping and singing together. It was, of course, just a moment—a few minutes in hundreds of years of history. But it was, without a doubt, an interruption of that history. It was the sort of miracle I’m praying to see more of.
Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove is the author of Free to Be Bound: Church Beyond the Color Line (NavPress 2008).
