BLACK AND SOUND

A news item in one of our journals on the right, from up North, caught my eye. It tells of the plight of a brother in Arkansas whose wife has been ill for several years. After suffering from cancer for many years, the dear sister is now in the hospital with pneumonia. The brother is described as “the only sound negro preacher in Fort Smith.”

Ouida and I decided that we wanted to help this couple in their distress. In our letter to the brother we explained that it was not because he was sound that we wanted to help, nor because he and his wife were Negroes, but only because they were a brother and sister in the Lord. We would consider it just as great a blessing to be able to help, I pointed out, if they were unsound! Or even white!

The news item reminded me of some statements from Ralph Sweet, whose Christian Chronicle came in the same mail. “White racism in churches of Christ is a fact,” writes Ralph. “Racism is a sin! It isn’t a ‘weakness’ or a ‘shortcoming.’ It is a sin! It exists in the hearts of black and white Christians.”

Our brother editor up North will think I am most unfair in suggesting that his news item about a brother in trouble, written out of the goodness of his heart, is to any degree racist. It is not a vicious racism, to be sure, but there is little racism that is vicious anyway. It is the insidious kind that can have a benevolent touch to it. Many a racist has been willing to go into his pocket to help “the nigger church” across town, and many a white supremacist has deep affection for “the colored folks” that work for him. Philanthropy and racism are not incompatible. One doesn’t have to kick a black man down the stairs in order to be a racist.

The point calls for a definition of racism. Webster’s “the assumption of inherent racial superiority and consequent discrimination” is a helpful description. But to a Christian the meaning goes even deeper, for it would simply be letting race or color make any difference at all in our thinking about a person. The Jews in the days of early Christianity were racists because of their attitude toward the Gentiles, and it was because Jesus made no such racial distinction that he got in trouble with them. The Bible teaches us that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free; and so in our own time we would add: in Christ there is neither black nor white.

Other news items on the same page point up the oblique kind of racism I have in mind. A church in Wisconsin is “looking for a man to work with them.” Would we not be surprised if it read: “Looking for a white man to work with them”? A church in California is “seeking a gospel preacher,” reads another notice. We all know that this means a white gospel preacher, and any black preacher reading the ad would know better than to apply. It would distinctly say black preacher, if for some strange reason they wanted a Negro. This means that Churches of Christ are white. To what degree we may reach out into the black world, we make it clear, as for a century we have done with toilet doors, by the label “Colored Only.”

On this news sheet I count eleven references to churches and individuals before the notice about “the only sound negro preacher in Fort Smith.” Not once is anything said about their being white. They are simply brothers and sisters. Then why in item number 12 is it a “sound negro preacher?” Why not just a “sound preacher,” if indeed we must be distinguished as sound and unsound?

This sound bit only reveals that we are sectarian as well as racist. We may assume that there are other “negro preachers” in Fort Smith, but they are not sound, and of course there are other “sound preachers,” but they are not black. What a mess we have made of the principle of oneness in Christ! We may assume that any unsound Negro preachers in Fort Smith would never make the news page of the journal, even if he and his wife both had cancer. It would be good enough for him, being unsound.

Being sound is an awful condition for a Christian, for this makes him more like the Pharisees than like Jesus. The Pharisees were sound and Jesus was unsound. That is why they killed him. Had he just been sound he could have avoided the cross. When someone starts calling you sound, that is the time to stop and take stock of yourself.

If we could but talk about Christ-likeness more and soundness less! It is clear enough that God wants us to be like Christ. I like the NEB rendition of 2 Cor. 3:18: “We all reflect as in a mirror the splendour of the Lord; thus we are transfigured in his likeness, from splendour to splendour.” There is no such implication about soundness, which is currently used by factious brethren to identify their own kind.

Let us have more references to “Christ-like preacher” and “a Christ-like church” and less to sound preachers and churches. Truth is that one may be sound without being Christ-like, and when one is Christ-like he is almost certainly not to be sound.

So I take it that the plea for help for the Arkansas brother is saying something like this: there is a nice colored man in Ft. Smith, whose wife is in the hospital, the only negro preacher of our party in town, so let’s do all we can to help him.

It is bad enough for a man to be black in our divided brotherhood. God forbid that he has to be both black and sound!—the Editor