Response to The Urban Perspective on Dr. James White (part 1)

Racial Issues and the Gospel

Hello, my name is Adam Robles. If you have been following my Facebook feed lately, then you know that I've been interested in racial issues, especially how the gospel applies to racial issues of our time.

And I came across a video that I really recommend. I think you should definitely give it a listen. It is from two pastors in North Carolina, and they decided to respond to some comments that Dr. James White, a pastor in Arizona, made on racial issues.

And specifically, an article that he was reading, I believe it was by Jamar Tisby. And I think the video is awesome. I disagree with most of it. However, the disagreement that I have with them, even though it is quite strong, their presentation is important to listen to.

They have a lot of experiences and knowledge that we need to take seriously. We need to hear. But at the same time, they've handled the disagreement with Dr. James White very well. It wasn't very combative.

It was coming from a place of unity, humility. In fact, in the video itself, Pastor James White, which is going to be a little confusing because we've got Pastor James White. He's one of the black pastors in North Carolina responding to Dr. James White, who's also a pastor.

So it's going to be a little confusing. But Pastor James White, he makes a statement in this video that is awesome. He talks about the church in the past, especially in the time of slavery. And he doesn't try to dissociate himself from that church.

He says that as a Christian today, we have to own a lot of the injustice of the past that the church perpetrated. And I agree with that. I think that these days we see a lot of black and Hispanic people that would want to distance themselves from that church and maybe even say that anyone who held slaves or existed in that time and tolerated slavery, anyone like that isn't even a Christian.

These two brothers didn't do that. And I highly appreciate that. So give this video a listen. I'm going to definitely include a link to the video in the description of this video. But I wanted to respond to some of these things because like I said, I disagree with these two brothers very strongly on a number of their points.

And so I'd like to play some of this and respond to it as we go. So here's the video. I'm going to switch my screen now and we'll start here.

Anti-Racism Training and Gospel Contextualization

You know, it's important for us as Christians to be able to have healthy dialogue, to be able to disagree and even disagree in love. As he continued, he talked about an organization called LDR.

And there's an article that says, Only whites need to have anti-racism training? According to this, evidently. Only whites can experience racism.

He then kind of went on a diatribe to assume that they were saying that, you know, blacks didn't need this training. You know, have you kind of seen that where we know that sin can take on any form and it can obviously come in.

I'm going to pause it right there, actually. So the first comment that that this guy makes is that that Dr. James White was assuming that the organizers of this event were saying that that only whites needed this anti-racism training and that blacks didn't need it or browns didn't need it or, you know, any other ethnicity that you can think of.

And, you know, in a way I can see his point. They didn't come out and say the organizers of this of this conference didn't come out and say that black people do not need racism training. They didn't come out and say that Hispanics don't need racist anti-racism training.

However, I think that it's a little bit unfair to sort of say that this is purely an assumption and it's not really based in anything because it's based on something that's actually real. I mean, the the conference was presumably for all kinds of participants.

You know, you didn't have to be black to go to this conference. You didn't have to be a certain ethnicity to go to this conference. But they decided to single out white people for this anti-racism training.

And so I think it's fair to say, according to whoever organized this conference, that at least especially white people needed to take an anti-racism training. So I'm not so sure that I'm that shocked that Dr. James White interpreted it that way.

That's how I would have interpreted it if I was going to a conference and it said that a certain group needed to go to an anti-racism training, but not other groups. So, you know, again, I think that it's a pretty fair thing to sort of assume on Dr. James White part.

I guess technically it's not accurate to say that that the organizers of the conference did not think that black people needed to attend anti-racism training. I guess technically that's accurate. But, you know, to start there is, you know, it's it's a little funny because I think a lot of pretty reasonable people would have assumed the same thing that Dr. James White assumed.

Let's go back to the video.

In any color. But it seems like when black and brown people want to talk about it with amongst white evangelicals, again, not painting all of them with one broad stroke, but saying that these are issues that black and brown people are facing.

So here's why we would ask you to attend maybe some training to to learn from our struggle and our experiences. Why do you think conversation like that? Are you the sidestep or critique as being divisive and not gospel centered?

Well, I think it's interesting because what we what many times many of my white brothers and sisters don't realize is that they have taken the conversation to the same place as those who come from a framework that they don't have the gospel.

We're not looking at this through, quote, unquote, as we say, a gospel land. Yeah, because when you look at this through a gospel lens, then certainly no one should ever push back on any kind of experience that's going to help you understand a people group who need to encounter the gospel.

And so if if really the goal is really to carry out the great commission of all nation, all people group, then why would one even sort of recall back and even saying you need to? Because I think the challenge becomes it's a subtle challenge.

The challenge becomes when sometimes when you're white and I'm using the word white rather than majority culture in our conversation, I think sometimes we want to soften how we talk about this. No, we're talking about white people.

And but sometimes what happens is when you hear those kinds of statements, even for a conference to say white people must attend this particular seminar. Well, that goes against the way our brains are wired as white people, because especially for those of us of white conservative evangelical Christians and even beyond it, just white Christian period.

We're not used to hearing words of authority come from a particular group because that's changing hundreds of years of how we even gather and collectively engage together. That goes culturally against the brain that this group that does not have authority socially, economically, politically.

Now, all of a sudden are going to say you must go to a particular seminar. So some of it is even us being able to wrap our minds around submitting to authority that is authority for people of color. That's a difficult thing to do.

Authority, Partiality, and the Sin of Racism

OK, so that's really what I wanted to get to in this video, because I think that that Pastor James White, he makes a good point to start and then he kind of goes off the rails, in my opinion. So his first point, he says that, you know, if we look at this issue through a gospel lens, right, the gospel is supposed to go out to every nation, to every ethnicity, to every tribe, every tongue.

We understand that that's the gospel messages for everybody. And so to a certain degree, we should never recoil from an opportunity to learn how to contextualize the gospel for different cultures. You know, we want to when we communicate the gospel, we want to be understood.

And the way that certain cultures will understand the gospel of Jesus Christ, it's going to it's going to depend on a lot of their culture. We want to make sure that when we the words we use, the concepts we use make sense to that culture.

And it's not the same across the board. You know, speaking the gospel to an Asian culture is a lot different than speaking the gospel to a black culture or a Hispanic culture. If you want to be understood, if that's the goal, if you want to be understood, you need to learn about other cultures.

But notice that's a great point, but notice that is not at all what Dr. James White was was bristling about. He was recoiling at the idea of an anti-racism training for white people, not any kind of gospel contextualization training, not any kind of let's learn from my experiences as a black or brown person.

That wasn't what the training was. Again, I didn't go to this conference, so I don't know the details of what actually happened at this training. I'm just going by what Dr. White read was going to happen at this training.

So I think that, you know, Pastor James White's point is a good point, but it doesn't really address Dr. James White's issue. Then he goes on to say that one of the issues is that white people have a problem with receiving orders or having an authority figure that is not white, essentially, is his thing.

So when a black or a brown person says that you have to do something, that goes against all of your experience as a white person, where whites are in charge and whites are the ones giving orders. And so you just sort of recoil just naturally at that, even if you shouldn't recoil because the order is a good order or something like that.

And I have a hard time understanding where he gets this. How does he know that that's what Dr. James White is experiencing? He doesn't say. I can't imagine how you would know something like that. I mean, is it possible that that's part of Dr. James White's reaction?

I suppose it's possible. But that's not the explanation that he gave. He gave an explanation of I'm uncomfortable with the idea that only white people need this anti-racism training. And that's why I that's why I'm recoiling.

That's why I wouldn't go to it. And that explanation seems pretty reasonable to me. I'm I'm not white, but if I was at a conference where they had a special anti-racism training just for white people, I would leave the conference.

I wouldn't go to that conference. I wouldn't stay there because to me, that strikes me as a little bit racist, right? Because you're singling out a group based on their ethnicity and you're saying you need to take this training to not be racist anymore or to at least be sensitive about any race racism that you might harbor.

That strikes me as very racist. And so even though I'm not white, I wouldn't go to a conference like that because it's it it kind of sends me a signal that this conference is, you know, they're not really that concerned about showing partiality based on race.

So, again, I just I have a hard time understanding where where that explanation comes from from Pastor James White. He says that, you know, really what what Dr. James White was concerned with was blacks in authority giving orders.

And, you know, hey, I can't listen to those orders because that's not how this works. I'm the one in the authority here. You know, I just don't I don't see that at all. And it's it's it's it's very odd to sort of try to project that on to Dr. James White when he's offered you a perfectly legitimate explanation that makes sense.

You know, so if you don't if you don't think that's really what it is, I mean, I guess you're entitled to your opinion, but understand that you really haven't addressed what Dr. James White has even said at all.

So, again, I just want you to understand I want you to understand that I don't come from this from a place where I think that that these two brothers are purposely being disingenuous or they're trying to cause trouble.

I don't I don't get that impression at all, but I I don't see how they've reached the conclusions that they've made here. You know, you would need a lot of evidence, in my opinion, to to charge another brother in Christ with showing partiality, because that's really what it is there.

They're saying that Dr. James White, part of his reaction to this conference is showing partiality. He's saying, no, I cannot accept orders from a black person. I cannot accept orders from a brown person because I'm white and that's not how it works.

That's the accusation that's being made. And so, you know, we really need to be careful when we're making those kinds of accusations. You really better have some good evidence of it. And I just don't under I just don't see how they could have evidence of that based on what I saw.

Could they have more information about about Dr. James White than I do? I suppose that's possible, but they don't present it here. And so, you know, I think that it would be good of them to sort of retract that because those are you know, the sin of partiality is a serious sin.

And so that's a pretty serious accusation of another minister of the gospel. You know, no different than these two brothers. Dr. James White is a pastor, just like these two brothers are. And so I would say that it would be probably a good idea to retract that.

I hope to continue along on this. There's a few other points that I want to address in this. But again, I encourage you to listen to this video. It's a great video. And so that's all for now. And hopefully we'll be back soon with a little bit more.