“The concept of the black race and the white race originated with the Enemy himself. Just as he sowed seeds of doubt in the garden of Eden with his “hath God really said,” he has continued through the ages to offer a lie in the place of God’s truth. His attack has been anything but subtle. This web of deceit has brought hatred and bigotry into the church. What we are left with is a huge divide that is no more evident than at the 11:00 worship hour on Sunday mornings.”( Dr. John M. Perkins, One Blood: Parting Words to the Church on Race)

It was more than half a century ago, on December 18, 1963, to be exact, when, during a Q&A session at Western Michigan University, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. stated the following: “We must face the fact that in America, the church is still the most segregated major institution in America. At 11:00 on Sunday morning, when we stand and sing and Christ has no east or west, we stand at the most segregated hour in this nation.”

“Segregated”?

Really?

Now, before I go any further, I want to say at the outset of this commentary that I do not ask that question in an effort to be facetious or to portray an acrimonious or argumentative posture toward either Dr. King or his legacy as a civil rights leader.

Not at all.

Nevertheless, the truth is King’s assertion that 11:00 on Sunday mornings is the most “segregated” hour [in the American evangelical church] has essentially gone unchallenged since the day he uttered those words some 55 years ago – words that for many Christians who today identify as advocates and proponents of “social justice” within the evangelical church – serve as a primary impetus to promote a missiology founded upon the presupposition that the same culture of ethnic divisiveness to which Dr. King is alluding, a culture that initially gave rise to the Black Church in America, exists virtually unchanged today.

I, for one, do not believe that to be the case.

But what makes the ongoing appropriation of King’s declaration particularly concerning to me, is the dogmatic manner in which the term ‘segregated’ is consistently used to describe what many believe to be an ethnic imbalance within American evangelical churches (and by “American evangelical churches” I’m referring specifically to churches whose congregations are predominantly white, as churches whose congregations are predominantly black, though perhaps just as ethnically imbalanced, if not more so, are never described in such terms.)

Never.

But, I digress.

When we hear words like segregated and segregation, more often than not we assume they are used within a contextual framework that is jaundiced and tendentious. This is particularly true given today’s socio-political milieu in which reminders of America’s history of ethnic discrimination against blacks and other ethnic minorities, especially in the case of  Southern Baptist churches, seems incessant and ubiquitous.

That said, in no way am I discounting or minimizing what is unarguably a sinful and sordid history. In fact, I am quite familiar with it on a somewhat personal level.

From 2009 to 2015, I was a member of a predominantly ethnically white Southern Baptist church whose origins date back to 1823, the same year that abolitionists Mary Ann Shad Caryand Mifflin Wistar Gibbs were born. But it wasn’t until 1827, the year Fourah Bay College, the first college in West Africa, was founded, that this Southern Baptist church voted to allow blacks to become members.

Ponder on that for a moment, if you will.

That a so-called “church” – any supposedly gospel-centered church – would have to vote on whether to allow others of God’s image bearers to be welcomed as fellow members of its local body is blatantly antithetical to the gospel (Acts 10:28). Nonetheless, it was while a member of this particular church that, in February 2012, I was afforded the distinct and unique privilege of becoming the first non-white person in its nearly 200-year existence to be ordained a deacon.

So, not only do I have an appreciation for the discriminatory history of the Southern Baptist denomination against black people, I have an affinity for it as well. But, be that as it may, contrary to what some evangelical social justice advocates might exclaim, the past is not what is at issue here. What is at issue is the continued acceptance of the subjective assertion that white evangelical churches in America – in the 21st century – are ethnically segregated in the same deliberate and calculated manner as was often the case many years ago.

I say “subjective” because the church must never be defined or distinguished in terms of metrics such as a church’s ratio of black congregants to white congregants, but of hearts that have been sovereignly brought by God to a saving faith in Jesus Christ (1 Cor. 1:30). But that notwithstanding, a question that must be asked is this: by whose standard would such an “ethnic imbalance” be deemed to have been sufficiently remedied? Or, to frame the question another way, who gets to play God in these situations? After all, it is His church, is it not?

In his book, Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed On Discrimination?, Dr. Walter E. Williams, professor of Economics at George Mason University, asks what I believe to be a very profound question:

“Just because blacks are not proportionately represented in some activity, how analytically useful is it to assert that the activity is racially segregated?”

The interrogatory posed by Dr. Williams is, in my estimation, paramount to the matter of multiethnicity within white evangelical churches in America; and yet it is one that many evangelical social justice advocates refuse to answer (or at least consider). Instead, they continue to propagate the notion that multiethnic “intentionality” – a favorite term of theirs – is a “gospel issue” based primarily, if not exclusively, on the premise that Dr. King was – and is – correct in his original assessment and, as such, that the current ‘lack’ (whatever that means) of multiethnicity among white evangelical congregations is inherently rooted in the historic ethnic biases of the past. This denunciatory perspective is perhaps most clearly expressed in the book Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America, by Michael O. Emerson and Christian Smith, who jointly assert that:

“Despite devoting considerable time and energy to solving the problem of racial division, white evangelicalism likely does more to perpetuate the racialized society than to reduce it. This, we have seen, is because of its history, its thorough acceptance of and reliance on free market principles, its subcultural tool kit, and, more broadly, the nature of the organization of American religion.”

Perhaps you’ve deduced by now that I do not concur with those who would tender such assertions as the aforementioned. For to paint an entire ethnic population of believers with such a broad and accusatory brush is to suggest being able to discern the thoughts and intentions of one’s heart. And from what I understand, only God Himself is qualified to do that (Ps. 44:20-21; Jer. 17:10; Heb. 4:12).

But for what it’s worth, concerning the matter of ‘social justice’ in general, I happen to fall within the ideological camp of the late Dr. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of the most learned theologians the church has ever known, who, in his classic work Preaching & Preachers, declared that,

“This concern about the social and political conditions, and about the happiness of the individual and so on, has always been dealt with most effectively when you have had reformation and revival and true preaching in the Christian Church.” 

Lloyd-Jones is right.

But he isn’t right simply because I agree with him. He is right because he is biblical.

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