Friday, March 29, 2024 | 2 a.m.
Some of my earliest memories are in church. I remember attending Sunday school as a kid. Performing in the children’s choir. Christmas plays. Sweating bullets about leading the opening prayer during “Children’s Sunday.” Youth retreats. I was by no means a preacher’s kid, but I would say that my mom got our family up on enough Sunday mornings to be able to say that I grew up in church.
I remember being taught very early that Jesus was God’s son, sent to Earth to sacrifice his life for our sins. Your sins. My sins. Everyone’s sins. Jesus gave his life for us because he loves us. You. Me. All of us.
After Jesus gave his life for us, he returned to heaven. He now sits with his father, God, and watches over us. He watches what we do, and how we treat each other. He expects us to act like he did when he was here on Earth. He expects us to love each other. To treat everyone with respect (especially our elders). Doing these things is how we get to heaven to join him. In sum, we are to be “Christlike” in our actions. That is what it means to be a Christian.
As I got older, I got to stay in the sanctuary for the sermon. The pastor, no matter which church we attended, would always speak of God as a liberator. God was with our ancestors through 400 years of slavery, until he delivered them. He was with us through the Civil Rights Movement. He is with us still. Sermons would often compare our story to that of the Israelites. They would also routinely point out the hypocrisy of our story playing out in a so-called Christian nation.
My mother always strived to send my older sister and me to “good schools.” No matter where her job was, she would make sure that we lived someplace that allowed us to attend the good public school in the district. As it so happens, those “good schools” were almost universally majority white.
I remember being taught very early that America was a Christian nation and that our Founding Fathers were Christian.
As I got older, I was taught about how American Christians treated Black people over the course of our nation’s history. They enslaved us for centuries. Half of this Christian nation fought a war to keep us enslaved. After we were freed, good Christian folk donned white robes and hats as they engaged in a national campaign of terror aimed at putting my people “back in our place.”
During the Civil Rights Movement, people marched, boycotted and otherwise protested for the passage of federal legislation to end racial discrimination in our Christian nation. They were attacked with dogs, fire hoses, bats, chains, rocks, anything the opposition could get their hands on. Homes and communities were burned. People were shot, lynched and worse. Many, if not all, of those who perpetrated this terrorism would claim to be Christian.
I grew up in Black churches and attended white schools. Black churches taught me that God was always on the side of us, the enslaved, the oppressed, those yearning to be free. White schools taught me that America saw itself as a Christian nation the entire time that it systematically exploited, enslaved, destroyed and decimated people who looked like me. As Christians, we believe that God can do all things. Still, I could not help but wonder how God could be with us and them at the same time.
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “I think it is one of the tragedies of our nation, one of the shameful tragedies, that eleven o’clock on Sunday morning is one of the most segregated hours, if not the most segregated hour, in Christian America.” He made this comment in 1960. This comment reflected my time growing up in the church in the ’80s and ’90s. It still reflects the church-going experience today.
I have always attended Black churches. I still do. Churches in which God is still spoken of as the liberator. The one who fights battles for and alongside us. And God’s son Jesus is the model citizen. The one who calls on us to love one another, be kind and spread the good news.
I have often wondered how God and his son Jesus are spoken of in white churches. I wonder if they, too, speak of God as a liberator. Do they, too, speak of his son as the model citizen? Most importantly, I wonder, do sermons in white churches similarly discuss the religious hypocrisy of this Christian nation?
“Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. … Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another. … If we love one another, God dwelleth in us, and his love is perfected in us. … If a man say ‘I love God’ and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.” — 1 John 4: 7-21, King James Bible
So much of our Christian nation’s actions do not appear to be in line with the above biblical mandate. So much of our nation’s policies do not appear to be developed or enacted with that mandate in mind. If our nation does not outright hate the poor, it is at least mean-spirited toward them. I would argue the same can be said for Black people, immigrants, women, homosexuals, transgender people, the list can go on.
I wonder specifically about what is preached during sermons in white churches, because the vast majority of those making decisions about our nation’s actions and policies are white. Moreover, 88% of Congress claims to be Christian. Though one can argue that we are not a Christian nation, one cannot dispute that we are a nation led by Christians.
At least they claim to be.
Eric Foster is a lawyer in private practice and columnist for The Plain Dealer and cleveland.com.
