What I feel most convicted about is that there are institutions that continually teach Christians to keep their heads down in the Holy Book, all the while ignoring or propagating the injustices that flagrantly take place in our society, which the Holy Book would speak to should we raise our heads and open our eyes. This is what Howard Thurman's Book Jesus, and the Disinherited has opened my eyes to. Institutional racism, institutional segregation, and systematic oppression continue the cycle of generational incarceration and poverty across ethnic lines favoring the white populous and oppressing the minority population. I have come to see more and more of this through the stories my wife brought home by substitute teaching for nearly two years in an urban setting, and myself becoming a caseworker with a mentoring agency having at its disposal the disturbing statistics that span the generations and project the continuation of this cycle.
I had always been taught that issues of racism have been done away with, and that oppression such as slavery was an institution of the past. I had been taught that whispers of modern oppression was only the result of a demographic who wanted to use their ancestral misfortunes to receive a free ride on our tab (that is, us white folk who have jobs and nice things). These were the tenants of a more diplomatic and political expression of what was, in all sincerity, outright hatred and racism concealed in clever semantics. Behind closed doors the racial epithets, disdain, condescension and mockery were no longer concealed. It is true then, that as racism has become less accepted over time in culture, it had to become more discreet and clever in its expression. I affirm this through my experiences.
The more I reside in the minority community however, the more I delve into the system of which I was/am apart, the more I heed the voices of modern prophets who articulate such systems, the more my eyes are opened and my stomach is turned.
My disgust arrives for this reason: Ecumenism (which is a strong conviction I have labor toward) is not enough. It is not enough for denominations to transcend differences, but rather ethnic boundaries must be transcended as well. The church in America remains the last segregated institution in the country. While I am sure that the statistics quoted by Thurman in The Protestant Church and the Negro by Frank S. Loescher are probably out dated, and though we may have made some strides in multiethnic congregations, the fact remains that the most segregated hour in America is still 11:00 AM on a Sunday morning.
Perhaps ecumenism is not enough, perhaps racial reconciliation must first begin by frank and honest conversations beginning in the church, the last remaining institution in the United States and elsewhere that is segregated.
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