Reparations Is Not a Bad Word
For the contemporary church to move forward, Christians must help repair the past.
“It is easy to forget that the Christian church in America carries out its mission in one of the longest-standing White-supremacist social orders in the history of the world. For this mission to have integrity, the church has to take this context seriously.”1
One of the central problems of many missional, gospel-centered, or cultural transformation Christian organizations is that they are often under-contextualized. By this I mean they do not take seriously or – at least take seriously enough – their social and cultural milieu.
Another way of putting this is these organizations often fail to reckon with their history – its complexity, its contingency, and its casualties. More to the point, many have not reckoned with the history of race in modern Western culture and how this has shaped them and continues to form them.
Of course, these organizations are not all bad. One of the great goodnesses of many of these organizations is their biblical vision of the future. It is a vision is of the glorious future of a reconciled humanity from every nation and people, ever tribe and tongue worshipping the Lord in a restored cosmos inspired by Revelation 7.
But for so many, this biblical vision of the future is hindered by a fatal flaw: their unbiblical dealings with the past. At best, what I so often see are well-intended pursuits of racial justice that inevitably fall short because the solutions don’t solve for the whole problem. At worst, what I often witness is how the ahistorical approach of such organizations is so totalizing that not only are they not engaged in healing the evils of racism but they sometimes continue to participate in them.
The problem, in other words, isn’t that the these kinds of organizations are so heavenly-minded that they’re no earthly good. The problem is that they are so ahistorically-minded that they’re little earthly good.
I think this helps explain much of the disruption and even devastation of many Christian institutions over the past five to ten years. Churches, parachurch ministries, Christian colleges, and seminaries have finally been forced to reckon with their histories. As their past complicities with racism has come into focus, their futures have become uncertain.
If the Church and other Christian organizations in America hope to have a future, if they desire their mission to have integrity in their context, the way forward is to take their context seriously. The must deal with their histories.
Simply learning about their history is insufficient. The wounds of history that are passed down into the present don’t just need knowing, they need repairing. For this to happen, I am convinced we need to seriously engage with reparations.
Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair
In my first post on reparations, I interacted with Ta-Nahesi Coates’ foundational essay. Here I want to spend time engaging with the recent book called Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair by Duke Kwon and Gregory Thompson.
For Christians in the American context, who want a guide to reckon with and repair
the wounds of the past, this book is essential reading for three reasons. First, it carefully and convincingly brings a blind spot into focus by articulating the contours of the oft overlooked sin of White supremacy (WS). Second, it outlines the biblical foundation for restitution and restoration of the theft of WS that are inherent to the Church’s call to faithfully live out the gospel. Third, it charts a path forward for action that enables Christians to participate in the mission of God with integrity.
In this essay, I want to focus on Kwon and Thompson’s articulation of the problem of racism in America and why reparations are a necessary part of the solution.
The Problem: The Sin of White Supremacy
One of the fundamental assumptions of Kwon and Thompson is the reality that racism is a powerful cultural-shaping force. As Kwon and Thompson develop their case for reparations, they argue that “the best way to understand the cultural order of racism is through the lens of White supremacy.”2
It’s important to remember “race” is a modern invention. The racial categories of “White” and “Black” were created by powerful Europeans – “White” people – to justify the exploitation and oppression of “Black” people. “To be Black,” in this racist system, “was to possess lesser mental, emotional, spiritual, and relational capacity; it was to be inferior. It also came to signify moral deficiency, an innate tendency toward laziness, theft, duplicity, and lust. To be Black was to be dangerous.“3 WS is a racialized lens, logic, and valuation system designed to privilege whiteness.
WS is a sinful ideology characterized by racial hierarchy and system of valuation that disorders our lives and culture by shaping the way we view ourselves and one another. As an ideology, offers an accounting of our world, informing the laws, systems, structures, imaginations, and values that shape and divide the people – both in the American church and in American society.
[For a deeper dive into how this ideology has been baked into Christianity in the modern West see Willie James Jennings’ The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. For a broad historical overview of how this ideology shaped the history of the Christian church in America, see Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise.]
Of course, WS is not the only ideology fundamental to the constitution of the United States of America but it certainly was and arguably remains among the most pervasive features of American society. From slavery to sharecropping and forced labor via the 13th Amendment, from separate but unequal Jim Crow to predatory housing schemes and redlining, the ideology of WS has worn different masks but has long been powerful and pervasive force structuring American life.
I don’t think the Christian church in America has not adequately dealt with this reality. If Christians hope to bear witness to the whole gospel, we must face and deal with the whole past.
The Theft of White Supremacy: Truth, Power, and Wealth
As we think of WS and reparations, it is helpful to consider the why? and the what? The why of this sinful ideology is the maintenance of social, political, and economic power of White people at the expense of Black people. The what includes the mechanisms and impacts of this racialized hierarchy. I’ll focus here on the impact. Like Coates, Kwon and Thompson describe that impact of WS in terms of theft – theft of truth, power, and wealth.
Foundational to the case for reparations, Kwon and Thompson argue, “lies the claim that White supremacy is best understood as a massive, multigenerational project of cultural theft.”4 This theft includes robbing Black people of the truth about their identities and histories. This happens through the forced removal from land and place, the erasure of history and roots, and the re-narrativizing of Black identity as inferior and deficient through the process of animalizing, demonizing, and infantilizing Black people.5
This theft also includes robbing Black people of their personal and political power. The subjugation of Black bodies through the institution of slavery robbed people of agency. The denial citizenship and enfranchisement robbed Black people of the ability to change their lives through the political process.
In addition to the plundering of truth and power, WS also robs Black people of wealth through extraction and obstruction. WS has extracted wealth from their unpaid and underpaid labor. It has also obstructed them from wealth-building opportunities more readily available to White people like owning land and homes. This theft of wealth has compounded through American history such that “by the middle of the twentieth century…the economic inequalities established by slavery and enforced by Jim Crow expanded to become an enduring feature of national life. Indeed, the fruit of these choices defines American economic life to this day.”6
When you begin to see the disorder of racism through the lens of WS and when WS is understood as theft – of truth, power, and wealth – it’s not hard to see how the logic of reparations makes very good sense.
If a theft occurred (and who could deny this?), the problem cannot be repaired, at least in any satisfactory way, without restitution – the restoring of something stolen to its proper owner.
The Solution Depends on the Problem
When you begin to see that theft is at the heart of the disorder of racism driven by the ideology of WS, you also begin to understand why so many well-intended attempts to respond to the evils of racism are simply not up to the task. They are inadequate because they aren’t solving for the whole problem.
One of the most clarifying discussions in the book deals with the various approaches to solving the problems of racism and WS. Kwon and Thompson outline the three most common approaches: personal repentance, interpersonal reconciliation, and institutional reform.
What I want to do now is quickly survey these three approaches, highlighting the implicit conceptualization of the problem of racism in each one.
Personal Repentance. For many, racism is viewed primarily in terms of personal sin: racial prejudice. The heart of the problem is the human heart. When racism is understood primarily as an individual’s way of thinking or feeling or even acting – a bias against people simply because of their skin color – then the solution that emerges is personal repentance: turning from these sinful perspectives, attitudes, and actions. If everyone got the hate of their own heart, then the evils of racism would be no more.
The corruption of the human heart is a fundamental dimension of the Christian view of Sin and, therefore, every sin. This being the case, personal repentance is an essential part of the solution to fight racism. However important personal repentance is, this approach does not go far enough to address the whole problem. Changing your heart or your racist Uncle’s heart doesn’t close the Wealth Gap in America.
Interpersonal Reconciliation. Perhaps the most pervasive approach to solving the evils of racism is what we call “racial reconciliation.” More often than not, this tack on fighting racism focuses on relationships. Implicit in this approach is the view that racism is fundamentally a breach of relationship between peoples that reveals itself as separation, division, or segregation.
This approach assumes that the problem is essentially relational. The goal of racial reconciliation is the bridging these divisions, very often with a focus on increasing diversity and the formation of multi-ethnic communities.
As important as this is, interpersonal reconciliation likewise does not adequately address the problem of racism because the issue involves so much more than relational division. Being a dedicated member of a multi-ethnic church doesn’t improve Black maternal mortality rates.
Institutional Reform. I’m not aware of any Christians who deny the reality and pervasiveness of personal sin and its corrosive effects on relationships. I do, however, know many Christians who either deny or are deeply skeptical of institutionalized sin (e.g., sin baked into the systems and structures of a society).
This approach to fight racism involves fixing institutions – righting the wrongs of racism at a systemic level (e.g., enfranchising Black citizens, outlawing racially discriminatory banking and housing practices, and improving access to health case, etc.). Implicit in this approach to fighting racism is the belief that racism has been “encoded” into virtually every American institution including our legal, education, health care, banking, housing, labor, and criminal justice systems.7
Racism, in other words, is more than a matter of the heart or fractured relationships. It is woven into the systems and structures of our culture. For this reason, fighting racism requires institutional reforms.
And yet, as important as reform is to fight the institutionalized injustice of racism, changing an unjust law doesn’t repair the damage of the past. Reforming laws and policies developed during the War on Drugs won’t help the financial situation and earning prospects of Black men and their families who lost wealth earning opportunities because of harsh penalties and punishments that have disproportionately impacted the Black population.
To tie this all together, the point that Kwon and Thompson convincingly argue is that each of these approaches individually and together are necessary but insufficient. For a holistic, effective, and – indeed – biblical approach to fighting racism, more is required than personal repentance, interpersonal reconciliation, and institutional reform.
If the theft is an essential component of the evil of WS, then repair is not possible this side of glory without restitution, without that which was stolen restored. This includes the restoration, insofar as is possible, of truth, power, and wealth.
This is why I am convinced that any approach to fighting the evils of racism that does not include reparations is either not sufficient, not serious, or both.
Though not the only measure, it seems to me that a litmus test for measuring the degree to which an individual or an organization adequately acknowledges the acid of WS is their commitment to reparations.
Now What? More Questions Than Answers
At this point in my thinking, I am convinced of reparations in theory but I still have lots of questions about practice. That is, I am convinced reparations are necessary but how do you actually do it?
The wounds of the past are wide and deep and long. Repairing them, likewise, is understandably very complicated and raises loads of questions. I’m sure there are more but here are a few that come to mind:
Who is qualified to receive reparations? How is this determined? Who determines it?
What form should reparations take? What amount is sufficient for repair? How is this assessed?
Who is responsible for footing the bill? Who has benefitted from the thefts of WS? How do we know? How do we quantify this?
Strategically, where do we begin? When do we begin? When do we end? How do we know what form(s) of reparations will be most effective? How do we measure effectiveness?
I think these are all good questions that we should be asking. I think answering them will be very difficult both in terms of quantitative analysis but also in terms of moral courage.
To move forward, Christians must deal with the past. The way forward in the fight against racism is repairing the past. To make progress in solving the whole problem wrought by WS, reparations must be part of the solution.
Reparations in Pittsburgh
I think Kwon and Thompson are right that the solutions begin locally. We must each begin with our own lives and affiliations, with our particular churches, organizations, denominations, neighborhoods, and cities. By asking where each of us is personally and organizationally implicated in the wounds and theft of the past, we can begin to see where we can support, contribute to, and participate in the repairing. By learning about the wounds in our local contexts – even the ones not tied to us or our affiliations – the Church can to live into its missional calling to love our neighbors.
This is something I’m in the process of doing now. In 2021, I moved to Pittsburgh to serve as a priest in an Anglican parish. Pittsburgh is now my home. I am in the process of learning about the great and complicated history of this place so that I might know how to better love God and my neighbor more faithfully in my new context.
I am beginning to learn about some of the thefts of WS in Pittsburgh. Specifically, I learned about the story of Bethel AME, the oldest Black church in the city, when I attended an event called a Table Talk. Held in local churches, these event include presentations by leaders from Bethel AME, where they share their story of loss, resilience, and hope for repair.
In brief, here is Bethel’s story. In the mid-twentieth century, Pittsburgh successfully transitioned from being an industrial city built on steel to being a post-industrial city centered on the medical, education, and technological industries. The process of urban redevelopment in Pittsburgh is largely heralded as a success but it did not come without a cost. The cost was disproportionately born by the Black community, as Bethel AME’s story bears painful witness. In the process of redeveloping the Lower Hill district to create a new Civic Arena, Bethel AME’s land was taken via eminent domain and they were unjustly compensated. Their church building was razed and their community was scattered.
Led by their pastor, Reverend Dale Snyder, Bethel AME is now seeking reparations. They are hoping to get their land back with development rights and as well as to secure other investments to build up and resource the community around their church. They are also challenging and inviting faith communities to get involved.
I am asking lots of questions. How might I, how might my church, how might other faith communities in Pittsburgh support, contribute to, and participate in restitution for Bethel AME? What does it look like to participate in repairing the wounds of the past in Pittsburgh?
This is how things are beginning to play out locally in my context. I wonder how it will look in your context?
However it looks, my hope is that Christians, churches, and other Christian organizations would take seriously the call to repair the wounds of the past. As Christians become more historically minded, perhaps we will be more earthly good.
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If you live in the Pittsburgh area and want to learn more about Bethel AME’s story and engage with people from the community, my church, Church of the Ascension, is hosting another one of these Table Talks on October 16, 2022.
Duke L. Kwon and Gregory Thompson, Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair, 17.
ibid., 15.
ibid., 57.
ibid., 74.
ibid., 75-77.
ibid., 95.
ibid., 39.