10 Easy Things You Could Do On MLK Day To Honor the Life of Martin Luther King, Jr.

1. Listen to a whole MLK speech.

When we only see the popular quotes pulled from his speeches, we are in danger of consuming a sanitized version of Dr. King that makes us comfortable. Listening to Dr. KIng’s words in full protect us from distilling his speeches down to platitudes.

2. Read Dr. King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.

This letter is uncanny in its timelessness. Dr. King’s eloquent words, written from a jail cell, echo through the decades to call us out of our commitment to a kind of “negative peace” that ignores injustice.

3. Read articles from The Guardian’s series on Anti-Racism.

I particularly appreciated Ibram X Kendi’s piece on building an Anti-Racist America and Robin DiAngelo’s on our tendency as white people to equate niceness with being “not racist.” I would say that my commitment to “niceness” and to being perceived as a “nice person” has been the single greatest hurdle in my journey towards eradicating racial bias from my own dark heart. Whenever I am more worried about whether someone thinks I am nice or about if we can all just be nice to one another, I am clouding my vision from being able to see the insidious white supremacy in the room, especially if it’s coming from me.

4. Read this article from an agent of mercy being arrested at our southern border.

A quote:

The truth is that the “soul of the nation” has been deeply disturbed for 500 years. Despite rhetoric in our founding documents that “all men are created equal,” the legacy of our history is one of deep denial. We all live on stolen land and reside in a society built from stolen labor. Our country was founded on the legacy of dispossession and settler colonialism, rooted in a belief that some are deserving of rights, but only some.

5. Watch 13th or Selma.

6. Donate money to an organization that is devoted to justice and that is run by a person of color.

Two organizations I love right now that are doing amazing work are Bryan Stevenson’s Equality Justice Initiative and Susan Burton’s A New Way of Life. If you want to be compelled by the work of these two individuals, they both have amazing books out that detail the work they are doing: Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson and Becoming Ms. Burton by Susan Burton.

7. Order The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby.

This important book, which I’ve already talked about on the blog, releases tomorrow.

8. Support a business in your town today that is owned by a person or family of color.

This is an easy one! If you eat out or shop today, be intentional about spending those dollars in a way that makes a tiny dent in the enormous racial wealth gap in our country. (If you live in North Little Rock, you could eat lunch at Lindsey’s BBQ. I get the catfish platter every time!)

9. Follow Dr. King’s daughter, Bernice King, on Twitter.

I am amazed at how she is both consistently a voice for justice and manages to give wisdom that is unfettered by bitterness. She honors both of her parents’ legacies with grace.

10. Join The Poor People’s Campaign.

This campaign is literally the continuation of Dr. King’s unfinished work. It’s based on a campaign by the same name that he started shortly before his life was taken. Being a part of this campaign has been an incredible learning experience for me. I would say one of the most important things I have learned is how much more complicated and lengthy the process is towards lasting change. I think it’s easy to simplify Dr. King’s life (and the Civil Rights Movement), but walking through the process of being involved in the PPC has helped me greater appreciate the long slog it is to push against racism and injustice.

Thank you Dr. King for working to see God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is heaven, even unto death. 

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The Color of Compromise: The Truth About The American Church’s Complicity in Racism

A new book by Jemar Tisby

I have been following Jemar Tisby’s work for a couple of years now and have been eagerly anticipating the release of his new book The Color of Compromise, so when calls went out for advance readers, I raised my hand high.

I’ve been digesting the book slowly for a few weeks and here is what most amazes me: I have been reading and studying America’s deeply racist history for a while now, but this specific history of how the American church had a leading role in both establishing and maintaining racism was, for the most part, previously unknown to me.

I think that there is a part of my heart that felt that all true followers of Jesus during the colonial era were abolitionists. (Not true.)

And I certainly thought that all abolitionists believed in racial equality. (Also not true.)

I thought that white churches during the Civil Rights Movement were either supportive or silent, but I was surprised to discover that segregation was actually preached from the pulpit.  Tisby argues that the Religious Right was initially galvanized by an effort to put forth laws and practices that would reverse the gains of the Civil Rights Movement. (It was not abortion that initially bound Fundamentalists together, but rather the move to establish tax-exempt status for private schools which provided a means of fleeing integrated schools.)

These are just a couple of examples of the many revelations that were part of reading the history of the way the American church helped build our nation on white supremacy.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time, you know that understanding the ways that racism has evolved since slavery has repeatedly brought me to my knees in lament.

Reading that the American church and many Christian leaders have lent their overwhelming support to that evolution is a whole other level of devastating.

The History of the American Church Matters.

I read A LOT of history because I think that it’s important. The parts of our history that we don’t know or the stories we sweep under the carpet are the bits that come back to bite us. Also reading history keeps me from naively believing the many false narratives that pervade our thinking about “The Land of the Free” (where people are imprisoned at a higher rate than anywhere else in the world).

And so it follows that for a Christian, reading and knowing the history of the American church’s complicity in maintaining a racist society is the only way to begin to break the cycle of that complicity.

It’s been a long, sad slog of complicity, but Jemar Tisby graciously tells it under 300 pages, stating himself that it is “a historical survey” rather than “a comprehensive treatment.” Also, he reminds us from the very beginning that it is his love of the church that compels him to tell this truth. He is not writing from the perspective of someone who written off the church, but as someone who wants to see a better day in the American church. He maintains hope that we can still seek unity across racial and ethnic lines, that we can still see God’s kingdom come.

But first, like the people of Israel who mourned when Ezra read them the word they had forgotten and forsaken, we have some reckoning to do. We cannot gloss over the sins of the past or we will continue to allow them (and their more subtle forms) in the present.

“The Fierce Urgency of Now”

Jemar closes the book with a chapter full of practical ways to address current racial injustice in America, because when we know how hard those who have gone before us have worked to erect racial barriers, surely we will want to know how to do the work of taking them down.

Here’s a paragraph from the book that will continue to inspire and admonish me in the days ahead:

Although our eternal peace is secure, a diverse but unified body of Christ will only come through struggle in this life. A survey of the history of racism and the church shows that the story is worse than most imagine. Christianity in America has been tied to the fallacy of white supremacy for hundreds of years. European colonists brought with them the ideas of white superiority and paternalism toward darker-skinned people. On this sandy foundation, they erected a society and religion that could only survive through the subjugation of people of color. Minor repairs by the weekend-warrior racial reconcilers won’t fix a flawed foundation. The church needs the Carpenter from Nazareth to deconstruct the house that racism built and remake it into a house for all nations. 

Amen to this!

I hope you’ll make a point of getting your hands on Jemar Tisby’s powerful book, The Color of Compromise. It releases on January 22, 2019, but you can pre-order it today. I also recommend following him on Twitter @JemarTisby.

PS. I’m for sure adding this book to my ongoing list of resources for growing awareness of systematic racism.

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MLK50: Gospel Reflections from the Mountaintop

“There’s a wreath at the Lorraine Motel.”

“We are not children of God apart from loving one another.” 

“This is a great conference but it’s still just a conference. Let’s not give finish line praise for getting to the starting line.”

 “The reason that you are so comfortably able to honor the prophets is that they cannot speak to you any longer.” 

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My church hosts this class once or twice a year called Talk It Out.  And I want to invite you to be a part of it.

It’s a class for anyone who wants to learn more about race issues inside and outside of the church.

The provided reading and listening material alone is worth the effort to participate in the class, but nothing can take the place of the unrehearsed, impromptu but guided discussions you will have face to face with someone who is different from you.

To say that hearing a brother or sister alongside whom I now worship tell a story from his or her own experience is eye-opening is to grossly understate the experience.  It is heart opening.  It is nothing short of life changing.  It is the fuel we need in our souls to stay hard on the path of seeing the church become a reconciled body of Christ.

Each Talk It Out class is as different as the people who attend it.  The memories you take from a simple gathering together with others for a meager four sessions are greatly varied but consistently meaningful.

For me, the moment I remember most vividly was learning that it is common practice today in some neighborhoods that if you are an African American trying to sell your home, you would be asked by a realtor to you hide all evidence that black people live in your house.

Really?

Put away your family photos.  Take down art that might seem ethnic.

Really?

For some reason, it was this experience that stayed with me even longer than stories of growing up in segregated schools.  I think the reason for this is that it happened just recently.  In my lifetime, in the day I (we) live in, right now, people don’t want to buy a house because the race of the owner is different from their own.  Because this story happened right across from me and I could not alleviate its pain or take it away, I was ultimately most moved by it.  Even now as I remember her telling it, I feel the sting of how much I hated its truth.  I cringe.  It was something I wanted to look away from.

I did not know it at the time, but the part of Talk It Out that I needed was a tangible understanding that I don’t have to live with these kinds of common insults because I am white.  I will not ever have to explain to my children that I’m taking their pictures down because someone won’t want to buy our house if they see them.

There is a name for this collection of concerns that I don’t carry with me every day of my life.  This not having to think about race.  It is called white privilege.  I didn’t earn it and I can’t give it back, but it is as real as the chair I am sitting in.

Because I have it, I can look away.  I can turn my head. I can choose to not listen to the stories.  I can try to pretend that there is no such thing as racism in America.

But this mission, this most worthy journey of all people being reconciled in Christ Jesus, calls me to keep looking.  To keep listening.  To stop pretending.

To keep having conversations across race.

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