Divided by Faith (part 1)

Book Review (Emerson and Smith)

(I realise some of my book reviews are more like reading summaries. Hopefully they are also interesting and useful to some of you!)

In short, this book is a (mostly) descriptive study, driven by research, of the connection between evangelicalism and black-white race relations in the US. It's also fascinating. And what's fascinating about it is the way sociological research makes apparent how evangelicalism, and particularly white evangelicalism, reinforces even unintentionally the racial divide in the US. Though published in 2000, what else I’ve read suggests this remains even more true in 2022 than before.

The authors talk about the US as a racialized society, one "wherein race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities, and social relationships." (p7). Or, quoting Bonilla-Silva, "“a society that allocates differential economic, political, social, and even psychological rewards to groups along racial lines; lines that are socially constructed.”

That is, we construct and construe race as a category around certain features, primarily physical, and not other features, and we invest those differences with social meaning. And it didn't need to be this way, it could be otherwise. Societies do not have to be structured in such a way that lines are drawn along racial differences, but once they are racialized, it's hard to un-racialize them. So, "races exist because a society is racialized." (p8)

Racialisation, as Emerson and Smith discuss it, recognises that the US maintains racial divisions even as the shape and pattern of racial divisions change over time. Racial division in the contemporary US differs significantly from pre-War slavery, from the Jim Crow era, but it still exists. And it pervades the US. Precisely because it does pervade the US, it is invisible to most whites, and even where people do not intend to cause or further racial divisions or inequalities, their actions often do.

The authors briefly demonstrate how racialised the US is, by considering statistics on intermarriage, residential integration, economic inequality, asset wealth, health outcomes, death rates, musical taste, tv shows, and religious affiliation. All of these show marked differences along Black-White lines.

History

Chapter 2 is a historical overview of Evangelical thought and practice from 1700-1964. It's depressing, let's be clear.

"Because evangelicals view their primary task as evangelism and discipleship,1 they tend to avoid issues that hinder these activities. Thus, they are generally not counter-cultural. With some significant exceptions, they avoid “rocking the boat,” and live within the confines of the larger culture. " (p. 21).

Evangelicals usually fail to challenge the system not just out of concern for evangelism, but also because they support the American system and enjoy its fruits. They share the Protestant work ethic, support laissez-faire economics, and sometimes fail to evaluate whether the social system is consistent with their Christianity. (p. 22).

And that's what you see - very few Christians before the 18th century questioned slavery as an institution. African slavery in British North America grew rapidly, and the impact of that was not to question slavery, but a new call to evangelise them. The fear of evangelising slaves was, would this lead to freedom or slave revolts? Legislation was introduced to specify that baptism did not negate slavery, while theology shifted to accommodate: (i) reinforcing that spiritual freedom did not alter temporal slavery, (ii) placing the emphasis on Christian teaching of slaves in terms of obedience and submission to their enslavers. Christianity reinforced the social structure of slavery, and co-opted the Gospel to do so.

I'll pass over the Great Awakening, but there's a lot to be said about it. Instead, why did things change in the wake of the American Revolution? (i) the rhetoric of the liberty, and the enlightenment ideal of equality, pushed against race-based slavery, (ii) the North did not rely economically on slavery in the same way the south did, which meant (iii) an alignment of theology and socio-economic pragmatics gave the space to challenge slavery. However, early anti-slavery advocates (a) were opposed to slavery, not racialisation. Hence the ongoing plans to 'recolonise' African slaves by sending them back to Africa, (b) were generally gradualists, believing in changing individuals' hearts and minds, in order to advance their agenda. Things began to shift decisively in the 1830s, with more radical pushes to end slavery, but not racialisation.

In the end, slavery didn't end with a hearts and minds approach, but with war. And yet, post-war, the 'problem' remained. Lincoln seriously considered what it would cost to "repatriate" former slaves to Africa. It could not be done. Instead, the remarkable period of Reconstruction took place. Followed by a backlash - sharecropping, mass incarceration, prisoner-leasing. The formation of the Black church denominationally as a further instance of racialisation brought about by the unwillingness of Whites to welcome Blacks into their churches.

Emerson and Smith take their history right up into the Civil Rights era, pointing to how so much of the Civil Rights movement was driven by religious convictions. But it was rarely white evangelicals taking part. It was Black Christians, and non-evangelical whites.

Chapter 3 then examines more contemporary responses. What shines through in this chapter is that in the wake of the Civil Rights movement, many Christians across the spectrum took seriously the call to racial reconciliation. However, the way that was understood and popularised in White evangelical contexts was pervasively individual, and almost never structural. People like Perkins, Skinner, Hines, James Early Massey, and so on, were all pioneers at the time of racial reconciliation in evangelical contexts, and they were all Black. They articulated a theology that saw reconciliation at the heart of the Gospel, that this reconciliation extended to human-to-human relationships, and so racial reconciliation was a divinely mandated response to the Gospel, and continued racial division was a sin. That theology had four main steps: (1) development of mixed-race friendships on an individual level, (2) identification and resistance of structural inequality, (3) whites must repent of their participation and benefaction from past and present, personal and social sin, (4) Black people must forgive whites individually and corporately.

This message, on the whole, grow and took root. But it was also subject to change. White acceptance of this theology often failed to comprehensively seek justice, and so reconciliation often felt incomplete, a papering over rather than a rooting out. At the same time, its practice in predominantly white spaces tended to reduce to the individual - personal repentance, and development of mixed-race friendships.

Society

In chapter 4 we move into a more research oriented section of the book. It looks at how White evangelicals think about and conceive race and racial problems. The authors draw a number of conclusions from their studies. Firstly, most white evangelicals only talk about race if asked about it directly - it is not an issue they need to raise or deal with because it doesn't appear as a category in their daily life. Black people and other people of colour almost always raised issues of race themselves, it's a part and parcel of their daily experience of living in America, they are also far more likely to identify and name systemic factors. Furthermore, white evangelicals tend to think that (a) race problems mostly exist outside the church, because Christians know to treat everyone equally, (b) race problems often exist because people 'make race an issue', and those people are the ones causing trouble. If we stopped focusing on race so much, race would stop being a problem.

White evangelicals thus generally think the race problem

is one or more of three main types: (1) prejudiced individuals, resulting in bad relationships and sin, (2) other groups—usually African Americans—trying to make race problems a group issue when there is nothing more than individual problems, and (3) a fabrication of the self-interested—again often African Americans, but also the media, the government, or liberals. (p. 74).

But why do White evangelicals think this way, and have such a large disconnect from other perspectives. Emerson and Smith discuss the idea of a "cultural toolkit", the ideas within white evangelicalism that give them conceptual tools for understanding the world, and race in particular. Here, they identify three factors:

(1) Accountable freewill individualism - a view that fundamentally humans as free agents, free to choose, and only because they are radically free are they also radically accountable.  The outcomes in a person's life are ultimately the results of their choices which they are totally and utterly free to make. You create your own destiny, and if you fail, it's your fault.

(2) relationalism - a primary emphasis on relationships, expressed theologically as the need for a personal relationship with Christ, but when placed in a social context, people need healthy relations with other healthy people to make the right choices in life. If you have poor influences in your life, you make poor choices. Notably, poor relationships are never explained in structural terms, only in individual terms.

(3) anti-structuralism - the above two tools converge to make white evangelicals unwilling or unable to see structural explanations as true, and even to resist them as wrong - an attempt to blame the system for personal failings. If there are structural problems, they tend to explain these as "bad eggs" in the system, and so fixing individuals in positions of power should then fix the system.

This is a particularly powerful set of explanatory tools, and resonates with what I know of american white evangelicalism. I can see exactly how people talk like this, and how and why they are unwilling to consider alternatives to these positions.

The authors also explore social isolation and how this functions in concert with the above tools. Because most whites do not interact with or know that many Black people or other People of Colour, their social worlds are very white, and so very sheltered. They do not see nor experience the racial issues that non-whites do. And so they cannot conceive of it as beyond a problem of a few individual prejudiced people. However, white people who do have extensive interaction with non-white people, start to shift their views. Significant enough 'contact' with non-white people makes the race problem real to them.

To summarise:

On careful reflection, we can see that it is a necessity for evangelicals to interpret the problem at the individual level. To do otherwise would challenge the very basis of their world, both their faith and the American way of life. They accept and support individualism, relationalism, and anti-structuralism. Suggesting social causes of the race problem challenges the cultural elements with which they construct their lives. This is the radical limitation of the white evangelical tool kit. This is why anyone, any group, or any program that challenges their accountable freewill individualist perspective comes itself to be seen as a cause of the race problem. (p. 89).

Chapter 5 focuses on economic inequality. Simply put, for white evangelicals, if there is a race problem (which is understood as personal prejudices), it doesn't involve economic inequality, because they believe that the playing field is already flat and fair. White evangelicals overwhelmingly explain economic inequality in terms of individual motivation, and less commonly in terms of education or discrimination, i.e. structural issues. This split is seen in whites generally, and is more pronounced among conservative protestants. Conversely, Black conservative protestants are more likely to identify structural issues such as discrimination, than Black Americans more generally. The interviews reflect the survey data. White evangelicals generally believe "that all Americans have equal opportunity", and so economic inequality is seen as a combination of freewill individualism and relationalism - "culture" - the accumulation of "poor life choices" among Black people results in individual problems for groups of people. Structural answers, and structural attempts to address the issues are seen as wrong-headed, because they [appear to] deny personal moral responsibility, and do not change the hearts of individuals. Again, here as in the previous chapter, increased contact by white with non-white people shifts their explanations.

At a couple of points in this book Emerson and Smith offer an illustration or parable to make clear their point. I won't attempt to narrate the one here, but each of them is effective. The one that fills out chapter 5 is particularly effective, I feel, in illustrating how easy it is to exist in an unfair system and be totally oblivious to it, and instead blame an individual.

Okay, you’ve read enough today. Rest up and I’ll see you in part 2.