Sociologist says white Christians are ‘stuck’ regarding race

White Christians concerned about racial equality often have difficulty moving beyond introspection to anti-racist action, a sociologist told a Christian community development conference.

Some well-meaning Christians in white-dominant spaces “are desperately trying to get it right” when it comes to race, but they are “stuck,” Gerardo Marti, professor of sociology at Davidson College, told the No Need Among You Conference at First Baptist Church in Waco.

“Whiteness” has shaped nearly every aspect of western society, including religious institutions, he observed.

While race and its role in American history remain volatile topics that prompt significant reaction, “so much of the controversy really occurs due to manipulation,” Marti said.

“It is deliberate. And what I mean is that the attempts to achieve power have led to a radical reorientation, twisting, ignoring and often outright lies—certainly mythology—about how we characterize our history and where we are today.”

Research on white churches confronting racial injustice

Marti presented some early findings from his research—funded through the Lilly Endowment’s Thriving Congregations Initiative—focused particularly on Alliance of Baptists churches confronting racial injustice. So far, his research has included 150 interviews in the past year and surveys completed by 1,600 people.

“In our interviews with white people in these dominantly white, socially progressive churches who have actively committed themselves to anti-racism, what we find them saying is that they’re stuck,” Marti said, noting they want to know: “How do we accomplish this work?”

“These people are committed. They have read books, gone to workshops, been to conferences. They have done their homework.”

However, in interviews, they tend to answer with “rehearsed responses” that mimic phrases they believe to be “the right ones to use” in discussing race, Marti observed

“They are not just trying to get it right. They have a fear of getting it wrong,” he said.

Often, their commitment to anti-racism is driven by deeply held religious conviction. However, they find it difficult to square those beliefs with some of the underlying foundations of religious traditions that shaped their identity, he said.

“Their current religious mindset hasn’t filled in the gaps of how to respond,” he said.

Living and working in segregated spaces

Since these white progressive Christians live and work in highly segregated spaces, they mostly interact with people like themselves, he observed.

“White people are the most segregated in their relational networks,” he said. “People of color have far more diversity in their relationships than white people do.”

As a result, these white progressive Christians “have to exercise their imagination in grouping themselves with people of color,” Marti said. They imagine engaging with Black people “as peers, as neighbors, as friends,” but it is a romanticized ideal projected into the future.

“You have churches that are 100 percent white envisioning a diverse future, but they have no idea how to accomplish it, let alone have ever experienced it,” Marti said.

If they try to take steps toward racial inclusion, they don’t know where to begin, and they look for a quick fix rather than investing in long-term relationships, he observed.

“The work of racial justice takes a long time. White people become exhausted—in a way similar to how Black people have always been exhausted,” Marti said.

White progressive Christians trying to work on racial issues find themselves in a new place of uncertainty, and they are working without mentors or exemplars, he said.

In a real sense, they are working on a moral project—how to become “a good white person” and to find a new self-identity that differentiates them from “those white people” who are implicitly or explicitly racist, he noted.

Religion and race ‘confusing’ to many people

To further complicate matters, even in socially progressive churches, those who work on anti-racism face resistance from within as well as without, he said.

“Religion can inspire what we celebrate as good. Religion also can become one of the primary sources of oppression. And this is so confusing to so many people,” Marti said.

“I think we can all accept that power is racialized. What if we thought of religion as racialized? … Is it possible that we need to question things more deeply in order to confront more successfully and thoroughly?”

However, the tendency of white progressive Christians to become paralyzed by their self-analysis and introspection remains an impediment to anti-racist action, he observed.

“More and more, white people come to obsess over their own selves because they sense there is no way of doing whiteness appropriately,” Marti said. “They retreat into learning and sensitivity, not action or collaboration.”

 Marti challenged white Christians to move beyond the individualized “moral project” of trying to become “a better white person,” and instead join people of color in the work of societal transformation.

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