Our culture is starving for substantial, truthful responses to racism, and the best the white church can offer is milk toast. 1)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
A Twitter thread:
White Christians have long since framed the struggle with white supremacist racism as a "debate" in which there are "two sides." 2)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
And they do not intend to take sides in this debate, since that's not what Christian discipleship is about, they maintain. 3)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
Except that in not taking sides, they are, in fact, taking sides — with racists. 4)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
This is not a new story in American Christianity. It is an old, sordid, dysfunctional one. 5)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
It's a story propped up by mendacious claims about what constitutes love, as if love and truth-telling cannot coexist. 6)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
Underneath it all, the sad fear of loss of money and prestige if the churches speak out, telling truth in love. 7)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
Part of the truth that must be told today: a MAJORITY OF WHITE CHRISTIANS VOTED FOR DONALD TRUMP. Full stop. 8)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
What happened in Charlottesville is a DIRECT RESULT of the choices made by white Christians in placing Trump in the White House. 9)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
Telling the truth about all of this requires a calculus of telling the truth about ourselves — and we don't want to do that. 10)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
If for no other reason than that doing so would put us crosswise with many powerful and wealthy people right in our pews. 11)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
Easier in such a situation to offer anodynes, milk toast, simpering piety to cover deep, glaring fissures of betrayal of the gospel. 12)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
That's what I saw the white churches of the South doing as I grew up during the Civil Rights crisis — at their best. 13)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
Today? Not much seems to have changed. When I seek meaningful, true words about our deep racism, I look elsewhere than the white church. 14)— Bill Lindsey (@wdlindsy) August 15, 2017
