White Supremacy in the Church

Sometimes people quote Martin Luther King, Jr. to feel inclusive or as a toothless acknowledgement of our diverse world or even as a misdirection to cover up systemic racism (interestingly, the Trump administration in it’s final attempt to disqualify the votes legally cast in Pennsylvania began it’s court case with a quote from MLK). Needless to say, all of these dishonor Dr. King.

Like any good prophet, MLK is not only quotable but incisively insightful about injustices. Today we hear from Dr. King in what could be a direct commentary on the passage we looked at yesterday in church.

Why spend money on what is not bread,
    and your labor on what does not satisfy? Isaiah 55:2

Instead of eating the bread of justice and doing the hard work of shalom, so many of us believers - particularly those of us who are White - instead eat a version of White Supremacy that leaves us both hungry and hateful. In MLK’s concluding address at the March from Selma to Montgomery, 1965, he surfaced the exact mechanism of these multiple injustices:

“... it may be said of the Reconstruction era that the southern aristocracy took the world and gave the poor white man Jim Crow. He gave him Jim Crow. And when his wrinkled stomach cried out for the food that his empty pockets could not provide, he ate Jim Crow, a psychological bird that told him that no matter how bad off he was, at least he was a white man, better than the black man. And he ate Jim Crow. And when his undernourished children cried out for the necessities that his low wages could not provide, he showed them the Jim Crow signs on the buses and in the stores, on the streets and in the public buildings. And his children, too, learned to feed upon Jim Crow, their last outpost of psychological oblivion.”

As King pointed out, racial division has been used to consolidate power for those who already have it - to pit the poor of one race against the poor of another while the rich (White) people are undisturbed. But God’s invitation is so different.

Take a few minutes and sit with this gentle invitation to all of us who hunger for a different approach to racial equity and who long for a sustainable pace as we march on the long arc of history. Whether your vision for justice is undernourished or your energy for justice is flagging, feast on these words and be renewed.

Come, all you who are thirsty,

    come to the waters;

and you who have no money,

    come, buy and eat!

Come, buy wine and milk

    without money and without cost.

• Isaiah 55:1