I was moved by Loritt’s pastoral critique of Wilson. He assessed that the coldness or lack of concern for “the other” probably lies in the fact that real relationships with Blacks don’t exist for Wilson. I’m tempted to agree with Loritts. I know a few people (who happen to love Wilson) who lack deep relationships with Blacks yet speak harshly and quickly with broad generalizations about Black people. Most of the time, the content of their remarks were not necessarily what got to me, but the tone. They simply wanted it to be known that Black people had problems and White people were not to blame for all of them. I felt like they really did not care about my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh (Romans 9:3)
Recently Bryan Loritts, pastor of Fellowship Memphis, released a blog entitled “The Other” where he share his thoughts on Doug Wilson’s book Black and Tan. Here is the opening paragraph:

Now I know how these things go. Rarely does anyone throw up their hands and confess that they lost an intellectual sparring match, especially when the venue is oh so permanent like the internet. But I don’t plan on getting into intellectual fist-a-cuffs with Pastor Douglas Wilson over his book Black and Tan: Essays and excursions on slavery, culture war, and Scripture in America. That’s not deep enough.

I was moved to tears as I consumed the pages of this book. My tears didn’t come because I found Pastor Wilson’s book to be insightful, or a literary tour de force. Rather, I was moved in great sorrow over the extreme insensitivity of not just a Christian, but a well known pastor whom God has allowed to have a national platform, speaking into the lives of many. Sure I felt anger at first when Pastor Wilson described himself as a paleo-Confederate (p.80), and my heart rate only escalated further when he rebuked the 19th century “radical abolitionist’s” for being wicked and starting the Civil War, because after all what was needed was not radical reformation, but patience, to simply let the seed of the gospel subversively dismantle the institution of slavery (p.45).

I was moved by Loritt’s pastoral critique of Wilson. He assessed that the coldness or lack of concern for “the other” probably lies in the fact that real relationships with Blacks don’t exist for Wilson. I’m tempted to agree with Loritts. I know a few people (who happen to love Wilson) who lack deep relationships with Blacks yet speak harshly and quickly with broad generalizations about Black people. Most of the time, the content of their remarks were not necessarily what got to me, but the tone. They simply wanted it to be known that Black people had problems and White people were not to blame for all of them. I felt like they really did not care about my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh (Romans 9:3)

We are all guilty of this. It is easy for us to speak harshly of those with whom we have no relationship. And Blacks do it to Whites just as much as Whites do it to Blacks. As I alluded to yesterday, this tension between different races and classes finds its roots deep in the crevices of the heart. We fear and think the worst of those of whom we are ignorant.

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