What Does it Mean to Disciple the Church in Antiracism?

The Discipleship Gap Behind Anti-Racism Training

I had spent some time stepping away from the church that I was a part of after 2016. And it's really easy to think that a lot of that was my reaction to the 2016 election. And I think because I've spent a lot of time in politics, a lot of people think that my disengagement and disappointment and brokenheartedness over conversations on race and injustice in that time had to do with politics.

To be very honest with you, I was brokenhearted over what I saw was a lack of Christlike character in white evangelical spaces that refused to disciple on anti-racism. So I stepped away from that space for quite a while, and I was introduced to Be The Bridge from another local church.

I didn't go to the church, but Central Baptist was doing Be The Bridge, and they wanted to invite me in to be a part of that discussion. And I said yes, because I desperately needed to have the conversation, and I needed it to happen with my brothers and sisters that were white.

So I participated in that. I learned a lot.

I grew a lot.

I got real honest about what it's like to grow up in all white evangelical spaces, to kind of have issues of race covered up with language of brotherhood and sisterhood, only to find that my pastors and mentors in those spaces could not pastor me through the particular pain that racism and disenfranchisement causes.

How Be the Bridge Redefines Racism

So I gotta pause here for a second, because what is stated here by Rekisha is probably a foundational issue for why DEI training is rapidly growing within the evangelical church. Rekisha has just expressed here disappointment in the, quote, white evangelical church for their lack of discipleship on anti-racism.

Now, if we're old school, we would take what she said and interpret what she said as a disappointment in the church to disciple its white congregants to not show partiality and hatred against people of particular ethnicities, or to exalt those of Caucasian ethnicities as better in some way.

Someone receiving that statement with that sort of lens might be inclined to agree with Rekisha if they don't actually understand what the term anti-racism means, and it means something totally different.

And this will be part of the episodes to come to expose what Be the Bridge means by anti-racism. But according to Be the Bridge, racism is no longer defined as hatred or partiality against a certain ethnicity and skin color.

Racism is a system of advantage based on race involving cultural messages, misuse of power, and institutional bias. And I will add under cultural messages, theology, which we're gonna see moving forward.

In addition to the racist beliefs and acts of individuals. Here's a clip from Be the Bridge's own teaching on this.

White racial equilibrium. Our country was founded on a white supremacy ideology, which was enshrined in the founding documents. From the top officials in our political system to the top leaders in most industries, it feels normal for whiteness to have power.

And even though you and I did not create the ideology, we were born into it, raised in it, and we absorbed the value of whiteness. And this is a product of socialization. So white supremacy ideology has created systems that are founded in racism.

A good definition of racism is economic, political, social, and cultural structures, actions, and beliefs that perpetuate an unequal distribution of privileges, resources, and power. While individual acts of racism exist in this definition, it's so much bigger.

Anti-Racism as Power Dismantling and White Theology

So according to Be the Bridge, racism is not merely the mistreatment of an individual because of the color of their skin, but is now the systems of advantages or privileges and power that are claimed or assumed to be given to people of white skin color by these systems.

And white people perpetuate or keep the system of power and advantages and privileges. They keep it going. And so to become anti-racism is to challenge or dismantle the systems of power, to dismantle our own privileges, and to rid ourselves of these advantages and privileges and grant them over to the BIPOC community.

And so to be anti-racist is to be actively against power structures that are presumed to be built on whiteness. White people then are to dismantle their whiteness by removing themselves of their white ideas.

And in the case of the church, remove themselves or decenter themselves from white theology. And this is the main problem. It's going to connect white theology with biblical standards and really twist scripture and especially twist the gospel.

And remember, there's no neutrality when it comes to anti-racism, okay? So that's one of the things that we have to understand. It's not just a personal choice to, I'm not gonna show partiality to anybody regardless of their race, gender, their class, status, all that, their age.

To just not show partiality, you must go beyond that. Either you're anti-racist or you are racist, right? So if you are, even if you take on the biblical teaching that you are not to show partiality, that's not enough.

To be biblical, to be gospel-centered, they're going to say, you have to be anti-racist. And so you have to not just be, within anti-racist teaching is the idea that you must become not just an advocate, but you must become an ally.

And allies and advocates do different thing. An advocate goes, yes, and is in agreement with, in agreement with anti-racist teachings, they're advocates, but allies will actually go out there and do something and make a change and literally dismantle the authoritative structures.

And when it comes to a church, it'll dismantle the authoritative structure within the church. Okay, and you'll see that too. There's just so much, you're gonna be so educated on these next couple episodes.

Discipleship Recast as Anti-White Activism

One of the things is to say that you are an active anti-racist means you are actively submitting yourself as a white person to people of color. That you as a white person submit must either, and if you're not, you're not anti-racist.

You must submit yourself to a person of color, which is why you'll understand now why LaTosha Morrison and Be The Bridge, they come into churches and their DEI program. Their program is set to train the people on their implicit bias.

And then not only that, but come in and instruct the elders within the church and show them, instruct them on how to become more diverse. And that will be the requirement of training, either in-house training of the BIPOC community to bring them up into leadership or to hire people from the BIPOC community.

And again, the very dangerous thing is it's not just limited to the color of their skin, to be a diverse, they will say, they have to bring in people with other theology, other theologies, okay? And for people in the BIPOC community, these people to raise them up, it's not just that you just hire a BIPOC person, a black or indigenous or somebody of another ethnic race, other ethnicity, you're not just hiring them who has the same ideas as you.

They must be a person of the BIPOC community that is culturally intelligent, racially intelligent, and probably have different, or I would not say probably, they have to have had adopted the critical theory of foundational view that there are oppressor and oppressed enough so that they can come in and have that lens, have that worldview, and then help keep the elders in check.

Do you see what I'm saying here? So it's not a matter of just hiring somebody who has the same theology, believes that scripture is enough, or adheres to the same creeds as you. They have to be people of the BIPOC community who take on the critical race theory worldview to be able to keep you in check.

Otherwise, right? It's not anti-racism. Now, back to Rakeisha's claim here. When Rakeisha and others like her claim that anti-racist action is a discipleship issue, they are basically claiming that Christians are not following Christ's commands.

Christians know that to be a discipleship of Christ, we learn from our Lord and obey his commands. Anti-racism is really anti-white activism. Social justice and activism become the gauge of identifying a disciple of Christ with this kind of idea, that anti-racism is a discipleship issue.

This is a belief that Christian discipleship is not really about the study of scripture, faith in Christ's work, or the individual's sanctification into holiness, but the belief that discipleship is centered on fighting for equal distribution of power, privilege, and positions of those of the BIPOC community who promote the social justice and oppressor worldview, like I said.

Does Scripture Require Anti-Racism?

I want to point this out because this is becoming a common theme or claim in the evangelical sphere, that anti-racism and social justice is a discipleship issue. We need to understand that we need to structure discipleship around scripture.

So when someone makes this claim, we need to ask, is that true? Does scripture call us to be anti-racist? Is anti-white activism what Jesus was instructing his disciples to fight for and is becoming an anti-racist part of our sanctification?