African American – Sheila Dougal

I guess the people that decide such things would categorize me as a white evangelical. Depending on what you read or who you ask, in our current social context, that might sound like I’m a Trump-voting, Religious-Right, conservative Republican. I’m none of those. But I am white, and I am a Christian- by the amazing grace of God in Christ! I guess I am evangelical in the sense that I believe the good news that Christ died for our sins and I love to tell others that good news in hopes that they might come to their senses like I did and follow Jesus. But in the social context that seems to connect the idea of being a white evangelical with being a bigoted, Christiandom, Culture Warrior I want to be a light on a hill, driving out darkness and helping others see. If I want to be a light, I first need Jesus to heal my blindness.

My pastor recently said something like, “Blind spots in a Christian’s life are not areas they struggle with. Those are just usually areas where they don’t want to repent of sin. Blind spots are just that. You’re blind to them. You don’t know they’re there.”

If I’m going to be aware of my blind spots I’m gonna need someone to point them out to me. When it comes to being a white Christian in the U.S., I need my black, Latino, Asian, Indian and Native American friends to show me where I’m blind to my lack of love and burden-bearing with them.

MLK Day is one of those holidays where I feel haunted. I feel a perpetually, present gnawing in my gut to get at what’s dividing me from the people of color (POC) in my life. Honestly didn’t think anything was. But the more I hear the news and see the Twitter posts of Christian POC who are living with the history of the U.S.’s oppressiveness towards them, the more I realize I am not bearing this burden with them. I have no idea how they feel. But I want to.

Dr. John M. Perkins said, “There is no reconciliation until you recognize the dignity of the other, until you see their view- you have to enter into the pain of the people. You’ve got to feel their need.”

I wrote a post awhile back after hearing a radio broadcast on NPR about the African American wax museum in Baltimore, Maryland. In that post I talk about my desire to listen to my black neighbors, co-workers and friends and to not be quick to say something to defend myself or make things sound better. I just want to listen. I want shut my mouth and enter into the pain of the people upon whose backs this country was built.

I never used to think about racism. I think about it a lot now. I hear our President. I see my elderly, white patient’s stand-off-ish reactions at work to the Nigerian doctors and Eritrean nurses who care for them. I go to church, and I see mostly white people. I go to the gym down the street and the grocery store and I see very few white people. I drive through El Mirage, which is predominantly Hispanic and I see no grocery stores. No kids playing outside. No church. I long to have personal relationships with POC where I can bear burdens with them. I long for my church to be multiracial so we can be a more accurate sampling of the Kingdom of God which is made up of people from every tribe, tongue and nation.

So what am I doing about it? I am blessed to work with doctors and nurses from all over the world. There I have formed some professional relationships and early friendships. But I want to go deeper. I want to bear burdens. I had coffee with a brilliant Nigerian nurse I work with a while back. We talked about racism, being Christians, marriage, temptations we deal with… it was good. But I know I need to go further. I’m praying about it. Asking God to show me how I can be a minister of reconciliation to my Hispanic, African, Asian, and Native American neighbors.

On the way home from the gym I listened to this YouTube playing of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s sermon: Why Jesus Called a Man a Fool. In his sermon he compared America to the fool Jesus spoke of in Luke 12:13-21. He was right. And the spirit of America, where we build barns to store more of our wealth, has affected me too. I have grown up in America as a white evangelical where the themes of being a conservative republican were preached as equally as the need to read my Bible and go to church. I have never known oppression because of the color of my skin. But I’m beginning to see the people around me who have grown strong under the oppression of America’s foolishness and I am emboldened by their strength to confess my blindness and follow their lead in speaking the truth in love- boldly, humbly, despising the shame of the fool.

The other day while driving to my oldest son’s baseball game, this story came on the radio. It’s about the producers memories of going on a tour of The National Great Blacks In Wax Museum in Baltimore, Maryland. She recalls with audible disturbance, the traumatic memory she has from her school tours through the museum which depicts lynchings and a slave ship as well as segregation and slavery. Its one of the few times everyone in the car was silent. Three white males in the car 47, 14, and 12. And myself a white woman. It really hit us all. My pubescent sons’ mouths were gaping and at one point my youngest announced, “This is horrible! Why would people do that?” I turned the volume down and asked the boys to imagine that they were born and raised in a country where in recent history white people were segregated, lynched, abused, treated like animals and made to be slaves? That’s the history that my black friends in the U.S. live with.

People like me and my husband and sons we have no idea what that feels like. That’s what “white privilege” means. It doesn’t me we get a hand out or hand up. It means we don’t live with a history of oppression against people who look like us in the country we call home.

I know folks are upset about NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem. And I know people are quick to defend police officers (so am I… I’m married to one). But we white folks need to listen. We need to listen to stories like this. And to the stories of our black neighbors and co-workers and friends. We need to listen. And shut our mouths. We may have good arguments. But especially those of us who call ourselves Christians need to put our hands over our mouths and listen.

I have nothing but respect and prayers for our veterans and military servants. I love my country. But my country has a history of sinful oppression of people of color. What we hear in the news and see on T.V. and post in our social media is not going to stop the blood of the slaves from crying out in their descendants. We need to lay down our lives and listen. We need to stop being Job’s friends to those who are bearing a bitter burden. We need to love our black neighbors. And give our lives for their restoration to wholeness.

This is the way of Christ, our God and Savior who wasn’t white. This is the way of the God who calls peoples of every tribe, tongue and nation to be his children. This is the way of Jesus, who drove out the proud money-changers and proclaimed, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer for all nations”? And you have turned it into house of robbers!“

“For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.” -2 For. 5:18-19

Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to hear, slow to speak, slow to anger… -James 1:19

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Category Archives: African American

Confessions of a white evangelical woman

we need to listen. and shut our mouths.