Courageous Christianity: Teaching Our Children About Racial Injustice
As a biracial woman raised in a mixed-race household and a predominantly white, Southern evangelical church context, I have always been aware of my skin. It became clear to me early on that the people in my home, at my daycare, at the park, and in the grocery store were relatively aware of it, too. I don’t remember how old I was the first time someone looked at me and asked, with a puzzled expression, “What are you,” but I remember how it felt. I don’t remember how old I was the first time someone referred to me as an “Oreo,” or how many more times—likely in jest—I was referred to as a light brown food substance, but it was always soaked in discomfort. I don’t remember how old I was the first time a family member reminded me that I was more white than black, but I remember the countenance with which he said it, and I remember the time after that and the time after that.
I also remember that the first time I was given space to explore my identity as a black woman was not within the walls of a church building. I remember that the first time I participated in a protest against racial injustice on my college campus— marching through a legacy donors meeting—I linked arms with more nonbelievers than believers. I also remember the first time I attended a church that had a minority pastor on its full-time staff; I was twenty-two years old.
“Our disengagement with these issues due to discomfort, disagreement, or cognitive dissonance goes against what God has commanded. ”
The American church is late to conversations about social justice. As someone who leads a children’s ministry and also identifies as a black woman, I am often asked to share about how those worlds intersect. To be honest, they don’t intersect as much as they should. The last four years have brought more and more injustice to the surface, and it seems as though the American church can no longer turn a blind eye to what is happening—and has happened for centuries—in our country. After George Floyd was murdered, I sat in a meeting with a parent from our local church who expressed concerns that believers were starting to stray from their gospel worldview as they followed cultural movements. She explained that she saw the American church and secular culture agreeing on the same diagnosis, but not on the treatment plan.
I disagreed. To assume that the American church and the culture are at the exact same place in diagnosing and understanding the disease of racism in this country is to ignore the actual history of this country. In his book The Color of Compromise, Jemar Tisby writes, “Historically speaking, when faced with the choice between racism and equality, the American church has tended to practice a complicit Christianity rather than a courageous Christianity. They chose comfort over constructive conflict and in so doing created and maintained a status quo of injustice.” In reality, the American church is hundreds of years late to the game. What secular culture has been shouting at us through slave revolts, sit-ins, bus boycotts, cardboard signs, and masked protests over hundreds of years is just now being acknowledged by the American church. Nonbelievers in this country have been working toward justice in many ways and for many more years than the American church has—it’s an unfortunate reality, but a factual one. Will the broader church agree on every step of a treatment plan built by systems of this world? Certainly not. After all, we are called to be a people set apart, a city on a hill, a light in the darkness. But, as Tisby wrote, choosing our own comfort over constructive conflict has made us complicit in the machine of systemic injustice. Our disengagement with these issues due to discomfort, disagreement, or cognitive dissonance goes against what God has commanded.
“The failure of many Christians in the South and across the nation to decisively oppose the racism in their families, communities, and even in their own churches provided fertile soil for the seeds of hatred to grow. The refusal to act in the midst of injustice is itself an act of injustice. Indifference to oppression perpetuates oppression. History and Scripture teaches us that there can be no reconciliation without repentance. There can be no repentance without confession. And there can be no confession without truth.” —Jemar Tisby, The Color of Compromise
The book of Micah is filled with themes of judgment and forgiveness. In Micah 6, the prophet tells us that covenant faithfulness involves both justice and mercy:
“O my people, what have I done to you?
How have I wearied you? Answer me!
For I brought you up from the land of Egypt
and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
and I sent before you Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam.
O my people, remember what Balak king of Moab devised,
and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him,
and what happened from Shittim to Gilgal,
that you may know the righteous acts of the Lord.”“With what shall I come before the Lord,
and bow myself before God on high?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings,
with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
with ten thousands of rivers of oil?
Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression,
the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”
He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?”
“Justice, kindness, and humility are required, not requested.”
Like many other passages in the Old Testament, verses 3–5 are centered on remembrance of what God has done in the lives of his people: “I brought you up… redeemed you… I sent before you Moses…” The Lord is constantly reminding his people that he has done what he said he would, and that he will continue to be who he says he is. In verse 8, Micah lays out three components to what the Lord requires: “to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God.” There are two things that stick out to me in this passage each time I read it:
First, justice, kindness, and humility are required, not requested. They are not suggestions of ways to be a good Christian or impress our neighbors. Rather, Micah 6:8 tells us that God is a God of justice, who requires these things of us—of you, of me, of his people. There is a clear call to courageous Christianity over complicit Christianity, to prayer and action over silence and inaction. We don’t have the luxury of avoiding our own contradictory beliefs or vulnerable and risky conversations at the dinner table. We have a weighty responsibility to respond to our Father’s charge with the same clarity with which it was given.
Second, the language used for each of these requirements is active, not passive. We are not called to solely think about justice, ponder kindness, or consider humility. We are called to do, love, and walk. These are action verbs that require more than contemplation. They require, well, action. God has called us to act—in fact, he has required it.
“Micah’s language is active. We are not called to solely think about justice, ponder kindness, or consider humility. We are called to do, love, and walk.”
As someone who leads a children’s ministry, I’m often met with questions from parents about how they can begin introducing the story of the gospel into the regular rhythms of their home. Families will start with The Jesus Storybook Bible, make a family worship playlist, hang Bible verses in frames, and pray before meals. Our families tell the amazing story of Jesus coming to earth, dying on the cross, and raising from the dead over and over again. And while that story is the most important story we can teach our children, it is not the end of our teaching. Micah 6:8 has given us a clear command as followers of Jesus; it’s a call to action that applies to us and to our children as well.
Do we see family discipleship in its fullness? Do we have a complete lens that sees God as both merciful and just? Are we talking to our children about what it means to do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God? Are we teaching our children the story of God sending Jesus to save sinners in some sort of narrow-view vacuum, or are we taking the time to connect Jesus’ redemption and restoration to the social injustices so clearly evident today? Are we preaching to our children about God’s promise-keeping and what that means for brothers and sisters of color or for ourselves when we feel hopeless in the face of headline after headline after headline? Or are we waiting for the secular culture to do that teaching for us?
American novelist James Baldwin once said, “Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.” It was abundantly clear to my young black self that my peers knew I was different from them. Sometimes that difference was ignored, sometimes it was celebrated, but more often it was pointed out in clunky and unhelpful ways. I wonder how much of my peers’ reactions to those differences were learned behaviors, modeled by their elders as Baldwin describes. I have grace for that—we were kids. But I now know that children imitate first and understand later; they are amazing observers and not-so-great meaning-makers. As our children grow and develop, they will start to ask deeper and more complex questions. They will grow in awareness of their brokenness, their parents’ brokenness, and the world’s brokenness too. As our kids grow and develop, what meaning are we helping them to make?
“Children have never been very good at listening to their elders, but they have never failed to imitate them.”
I feel burdened—in the deepest parts of me—to challenge myself as a parent and the parents around me to choose courageous Christianity—to have conversations about race with our children, to push past cognitive dissonance, and to press into hard conversations. To choose to actively pursue justice and kindness and humility rather than just pondering these things passively. To create intentional spaces for active conversation and justice-doing with our kids. To step up as the grown-ups in the room to help them make biblical meaning of these central-to-the-gospel issues.
If your child has not already shown you their inherent sinful patterns of prejudice or racist thoughts, they will soon. We no longer live in the Garden of Eden. This is a post-fall world, and we do not become prejudiced when we enter adulthood; we arrive there with bags already packed. We are a people desperate for God’s radical heart-changing power to flood over our biases, prejudices, and racism. We’re desperate for him to give us eyes that see people as he does.
One act of resistance to social injustice is to preach the imago Dei to our families, to ourselves, and to our church communities. We turn to face the reality of what is happening in our country, instead of turning our faces away from it. We seek to ask curious questions instead of defaulting to judgmental questioning. We show up to learn, assuming there is always more work to do.
“We cannot assume that one book about diversity, one black friend, one museum visit, one documentary, or one clunky conversation is enough.”
And this journey does not end with us, as parents. It has to start with our children, too. We cannot assume that one book about diversity, one black friend, one museum visit, one documentary, or one clunky conversation is enough. Continued conversations are crucial.
It is a natural tendency in my heart to protect myself and my child from things that are hard. But if I want to choose courageous Christianity over complicit Christianity, I have to make intentional, calculated choices to stretch myself—and to stretch my child—by pressing into things that are new, difficult to grasp, and even harder to remember. So we talk about things that are hard. We work to build families that don’t just adhere to the routines of Christianity but also have honest conversations about the gospel, with space to express doubts. We press into what’s going on in this country, and we bring John Lewis and Breonna Taylor up at the dinner table. We teach our children about the Civil Rights movement, about systematic injustice, about police reform, and about black men and women in leadership who are paving the way for my brown-skinned sisters and brothers. We beg and plead for God to move, to call our children to himself, to show our families how to embody Micah 6:8 in both a preschool classroom and a corporate meeting.
Over the next several months, we—the children’s ministry team at Redeemer Fellowship Midtown in Kansas City, MO—will be publishing a series of posts here at Gospel-Centered Family and at the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission site about how to have conversations on diversity and race with your family. We’ll cover stages of child development from toddlers to teens, and our final post will be centered on resources to educate yourself as a parent in this long but crucial journey of waking up. We know that there are so many nuances to this conversation based on developmental levels. We also know that no child is too young to start these conversations. We hope you will press in and allow God to do his work while you do your own. We are praying for God to open eyes and hearts through these resources as he builds courage and endurance in each of us!
You can read more of Alix’s personal story here.