Yet, many White Christians believe that 1) segregation is not evil and is not against the will of God, and that 2) the Bible does not support the idea that God is in favor of integration. Vivian’s God regards racism as a sin, but the God of many White people unequivocally supports segregation. When Methodists were struggling with whether to integrate their all-White churches in the mid-60s, its “Resolution of Racial Integration” took issue with those who said segregation was a sin. It is not a sin, Methodists who were fighting to maintain White supremacy maintained. “Segregation is not discrimination …integration is not commanded by God nor taught by Jesus Christ.”
Many religious Whites, in the North as well as in the South, in the 60s and now, are comfortable in their religious conviction that God is in favor of the separation of the races. These people seek a “pure and uncorrupted faith,” a religion which deals with the “spiritualty” of the church and the need for the church to evangelize. God, they teach, is not for the equality of Black people.
That has been a religious, “conservative” value for years. It has not gone away but has festered as many Whites have seethed at the presence of a Black man in the White House. Religious people, those who would call themselves “good Christian men and women,“ are standing in the midst of their faith traditions to justify the need for Black people especially, but Brown people as well, for equal rights and to be treated with dignity. These White people are concerned that so many people of color are in this country. They are worried that if the trend keeps up, people of European descent will be in the minority. God, they believe, does not want that. God is in favor, they believe, of Donald Trump’s promised wall. To them, it is as necessary and as right as is the barrier wall in Palestine.
Some religious person who has chosen to read sacred texts with the eyes and heart of a White supremacist. To me, such a way of thinking puts God on the periphery of religious life. It offers a theology and hermeneutic that I refuse to accept.
As Donald Trump reigns in hundreds of thousands of disaffected White people, using racism as the bait and the justification, it is scary to think of what could happen as “that” God clashes with the God of those who believe God to be merciful, just and egalitarian.
The battle for “the” God has begun anew. Whose God will win? Only time —and a lot of painful policies which will surely be passed in favor of discrimination—will tell. The God of the masses is on the battlefield now, and I am not sure that the God of mercy and equal and fair rights will win. That, to me, is the biggest tragedy of what is going on in our society and culture now. It ought not be the case, but it is.
(Reverend Susan K Smith is an ordained minister who lives in Columbus, Ohio. Reach her by emailing revsuekim@sbcglobal.net)
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