Moving Ahead: Our Vision - by Doug Hartman
In September 2004, we passed our 5-year anniversary as an organization living and ministering on the east side of Columbus. I thank God everyday for the joy and privilege of living in this community. Some may view opening one's home daily to 20 screaming kids as a huge sacrifice, but I'm thankful for these opportunities. We love it here. We hear one comment rather frequently from our volunteers: their time at Urban Connections has challenged their faith more than anything else in their lives. I doubt that this is usually intended as a compliment, but I can think of no higher praise for a group or organization than that it stretches one's faith and forces a greater dependency on God. For better or worse, most of us come away from our time at Urban Connections as profoundly different people.
I think it is fair to say that we all have learned almost as much as we have changed in that time. We now know what it means if a rap-song's beat is bangin'. We now know that if the mashed potatoes are da' bomb, this is a good thing. We now know of more uses of Ranch dressing than we thought possible. We've learned new definitions of family.
Some realities are more sobering: We now know some of the difficulties facing the urban community firsthand, and there are many. Some struggle each month with the decision to feed the family or to pay bills. Others wrestle with the steps that must be taken in order to break the cycles of poverty. We now know what sociologists would call the "transitory nature" of the urban community: families bouncing around from one place to the next, or kids being shuffled around constantly. And perhaps under-girding it all, we learned how fragmented the urban family often is. Slowly we have learned the degree of love, sacrifice, patience, and long-term commitment that is required to see radical change in our community.
As a team, the leadership has been going through an extensive evaluation process. Translating the knowledge and experience we've gained into a comprehensive vision and then into reality can make for weak knees and fainting accountants. But for us, it has also resulted in a rugged determination to see those ideas through for the community. All the difficulties and challenges will not be resolved. But we firmly believe that our mission is to work for broad-based transformation of the urban families and community, empowering them so that they can address their own problems. As a team, we feel that it is time to take another step toward those ends.
We are anticipating some big changes. The most obvious change would be adding a full-time staff member. Our hope is that by next fall, we will have a new leader for our Bible Clubs and Teen Night ministries. This person will assume most of my current responsibilities of teaching, cleaning and preparing the ministry house each day, planning games or activities for each age group, and facilitating the tutoring ministry. The individual will also be living in the Urban Connections house. We do not foresee this as an easy decision-making process or a simple transition. Please be praying with us that we would find the man or woman of God's choosing for this position and that he would be sovereign over the entire process.
The net affect of all of this, of course, is that I'll be out of a job and homeless! That's okay though, because, Lord willing, my wife Jill and I will purchase a home of our own in the community sometime late this year. And this additional staff-person will allow us as a group and me specifically to address some much needed areas.
Even before I moved into the community, we established relationships with several different families here. Many of the kids we meet 6 years ago are still hanging around, but now they are 16-18 year old young men and women who are finishing high school. In the urban community, finishing high school is rare. The failure and drop-out rates are incredible. Graduation tests are insurmountable for some and a major source of anxiety for many others. Making it all the more difficult for urban young people is the unremitting lure towards delinquent behavior. This is true most anywhere I guess, but in the urban culture it is often embraced and encouraged like a badge of honor. Choosing to do something productive after high school is extraordinary. And unless it's due to a sports scholarship, college is simply a foreign concept.
In the next year or two, at least 10 of our teenagers will face this major transition with many more teenagers only a couple years behind. That so many of our teens are in this position is phenomenal. Our prayer is that they would become productive members of God's kingdom and society, who are empowered to give back to the community and help transform it. But such things do not just happen by chance. We must be intentional, doing everything we can to encourage and equip them. We already are helping a few of our teens apply to college and consider career options. We are organizing visits to colleges and universities and taking them through the application process step by step. But much more will need to be done.
Our desire again is to creatively work for broad-based community transformation. What do we mean by that? Here are some of the areas of ministry that we feel need to be addressed: We envision a far more developed discipleship effort. We want to thoroughly train and comprehensively equip these young people by working integrally with their parent(s), schools, and other community partners in a five- or six-year process that will build and reinforce their personal assets. Integral with this vision is our desire to address the plague of violence and the transient nature of the urban family, the former by teaching nonviolent ways of resolving conflicts, and the latter by facilitating home-ownership. Christ must be central in this process or it will all be in vain. We know this well, so an equally thorough process of spiritual formation will underpin it all. Urban Connections is not just about producing converts. Our desire is for these young people to become leaders in their world and agents of transformation in their culture. We have no desire to "reinvent the wheel" here, but the "wheel" must actually work for the families and children of the urban community.
Obviously this much restructuring will not happen overnight; it will take much prayer, time, energy, care, and planning to develop. The personnel changes could happen soon, with our new staff member assuming his or her new responsibilities by September. The changes will require an additional $2000 per month, so we have not come to this decision without significant thought and deliberation. Nevertheless, we feel it is important and necessary. To do any of this, we need to collaborate with suburban, rural, and inner-city churches on a much broader scale. We expect to be as thoroughly dependent upon God for the next phase in this journey as we have in the past. We are thankful to God for our recent connection with Hope Christian Church, a church which also lives and ministers in this community and has a similar desire for community transformation. This is an incredibly important relationship, for which we praise God. We are thankful for all those who have volunteered and supported Urban Connections from the beginning, for helping us do what we love.

Who is Salt & Light - by Doug Hartman
"You are the salt of the earth... you are the light of the world!" When I think of these words, I am struck by the idea of faith. Some may acknowledge them as rich and inspirational ideals, but what makes them compelling is that the Son of God said them. Other portions of Scripture inspire and encourage us to have faith in God. Not these. Jesus' words do not refer to a person's faith in God, but God's faith in flawed human beings. Jesus speaks of himself as the Light of the World elsewhere, but here he presents that radical concept and then thrusts it back in our laps, not as an obligation but as an amazing affirmation. It is as if in these words God says, I believe in you...
My understanding of this text is fairly simple. Salt was an essential part of life before refrigeration because it was the primary way to keep foods from spoiling. Salt prevents decay. The idea, then, pictures the world as rotting with a decay that's actively spreading. Though it can never be stopped completely, certain people acting as ‘salt' can radically hinder the spread of decay. This is not what we would call transformation; it is more like preventative maintenance. The light metaphor is similar in that it assumes the world is in "darkness," but people acting as ‘light' can bring truth, order, understanding, and wholeness to the world. Light can have a greater impact because light does not just hinder darkness, it transforms it.
Jesus' main point in this passage was the warning against becoming ineffective. Salt can become ineffective if mixed with impurities, but even pure salt is ineffective if it never comes in contact with that which decays. Light becomes useless if it is hidden under a basket. The logic here is convicting: Decay happens when there's no salt, and darkness exists where there is an absence of light. If we as ‘salt' never actually are mixed with the earth, nothing hinders it from going to ruin. If we as ‘light' avoid the darkness, then the darkness simply remains.
I was vividly reminded of the simplicity and power of these words recently. A few weeks ago we had an incident just before Bible Study started. Hostility between a few of the teenagers had been smoldering for weeks, and it finally erupted. Thankfully it didn't turn violent, but the argument was heated. We tried to calm everyone down, but our efforts were in vain. Half the teenagers got so angry that they stormed off and went home. It might seem awkward to turn to the Bible after an incident like that, but I value the opportunity. That night, I tossed out my plans and we had an impromptu Bible Study on forgiveness. We ended that night in this passage of Matthew. To these street-tough guys who had just blown up in anger and hate, I relayed Jesus' words: you are the salt of the earth... you are the light of the world.
Many people may question my logic (or the lack of it) here. We should remember, though, that Jesus' words here are not commands nor ethical teachings but affirmations. As we said, those affirmations are not based on our faith in God, but God's faith in us. Many of the Bible's descriptions of Christ-followers should be understood this way: ordinary people are called "the righteousness of God" (2 Cor. 5:21), "participants in the divine nature" (2 Pet. 1:4), "a habitation of God in Spirit" (Eph. 2:22), and "a royal priesthood, a holy nation" (1 Pet. 2:9). Could even the most pious person legitimately claim such things? In all of these we are the beneficiaries of God's gracious decisions to form us as he desires. We participate as salt of the earth and light to the world by accepting and receiving those roles from God.
It may also be beneficial to look closely at the people Jesus originally called salt and light. As with most of Jesus' public teaching, "the crowds" were an incredibly diverse group of people. This crowd would surely include representatives of the ruling class and highly-trained religious scholars, but others were present. Jesus gained a reputation for attracting and even seeking out the "undesirables" of society (Matt. 9:10-11, 11:19). People who were normally excluded from mainstream Judaism are perhaps specifically in view here, because Jesus had just finished a tour of the region (Matt. 4:23-25), proclaiming the good news and healing the "unclean". We should therefore understand "the crowds" to include landless peasants, tax-collectors, political terrorists, the diseased & crippled, leapers, half-crazed demoniacs, and others of ill-repute. Out of such diverse company, Jesus drew his disciples.
It is to these disciples that Jesus primarily directs this teaching, but we should be careful about how we understand "disciple" in this context. (The Twelve are not meant. Matthew was still sitting in his tax-collection booth at this point in the story!) The term "disciple" was used to describe someone who wanted to learn from a master. Jesus called some personally, but most of his disciples were members of the crowd who had responded to Jesus' proclamation of God's Kingdom. They wanted to know more, and so they began to follow him, learn from him, and emulate him. How much someone was willing to sacrifice to that end seemed to be in question though. Some of his disciples turned away when Jesus later raised the standard on what it meant to be his disciple (Matt. 8:18-22). Jesus surely knew some of his disciples would turn back, but he did not qualify his statement or make it conditional. Precisely by offering this clear, unequivocal affirmation I think Jesus encouraged his disciples to love and emulate him more. I think it still works that way.
It would have been much easier for us if Jesus only called himself the Light of the World. It is difficult to accept people who are socially or culturally separated from us as salt and light. Surely this was also true in Jesus' day. The animosity between some of his followers must have been incredible, but the decision to follow Christ involved not only a conversion to God but also a conversion to the other. Jesus called people out of seeing each another based on categories. He accepted them and taught them to accept each other. In modern society, who do we find "undesirable"? Would we find it difficult if Jesus called them salt and light?
The teenagers might have fit the term disciple well. They come each week because they want to learn. And they latched onto those words that night... God calls me a light to the world? They seemed to almost swell with a godly sense of pride and duty. The next week, I heard the oldest and perhaps the toughest looking guy apologize to the same girl he had nearly come to blows with the week before. It didn't "turn the world upside down," but in the hood that's measurable seismic activity.

Conversion to the Poor - by Doug Hartman
In the book, Gospel Women: Studies of the Named Women in the Gospels, the biblical scholar Richard Bauckham studies the women associated with Jesus during his ministry. One of the women he chose to study was Joanna, the wife of Chuza.
Joanna is mentioned by name twice in the Gospels. The first is in Luke 8:1-3 where she is identified as one of the women who financially supported Jesus and the twelve. Joanna is mentioned again at the very end of Luke when she witnessed Jesus' death, burial, and empty tomb. Thus even in the brief sketch Luke offered us, Joanna's contributions seem outstanding. She provided financial support for the group and joined them as a disciple, eventually becoming a unique witness and participant in Jesus' life and ministry. Though Joanna's financial contributions are important, it was her willingness to join Jesus' followers and be identified with them that proved to be far more amazing and difficult.
We learn in Luke 8:1-3 that Joanna was the wife of Chuza, the steward of King Herod Antipas. Bauckham argues that Chuza was likely the financial minister over Herod's entire realm, which would mean that both Chuza and Joanna were powerful, high-ranking officials in Herod's court (pg. 137). As members of the ruling elite, they would have had considerable wealth and lived in great luxury in the many palaces, cities, and royal estates that were built around Galilee. As was common in antiquity, the aristocracy in Galilee maintained their opulent lifestyle mainly through heavy taxation and the systematic economic exploitation of the peasants and common people (pg. 146). Dr. Wright, my professor at Jerusalem University College, estimated that the tax rate was as much as 80% in 1st century Palestine. One can imagine the resentment that would create!
Economic exploitation was only one aspect of the vast gulf separating Herod's court from the people. The Herodian aristocracy was in deep collusion with Rome, a relationship that was beneficial for both of those parties, but was at the expense of the common people. To the average Jew, King Herod (and his court) unmistakably symbolized the Roman political domination forced upon their lives and homeland (pg. 146). The aristocracy represented a general rejection (if not an open defiance) of Jewish culture and faith (pg. 145), favoring instead many of the customs, values, and religions of the pagan Roman Empire. Bitter feelings of hatred and disillusionment lead to open hostility between the Jewish people and their rulers.
Whether intentionally or by ignorance, this was Joanna's life before she encountered Jesus. While it is possible that Joanna rejected some of the more oppressive values of the aristocracy, it is just as likely that she embraced them. Bauckham thinks it is likely that she was among the "Herodians" (see Mark 3:6, Matt. 22:16), a sect of Judaism that actively supported the rule of Herod (pg. 140). Far from resisting its values, the Herodians openly promoted the king's power and political influence among their fellow Jews.
The initial point of contact between Jesus and Joanna was likely when she was healed by Jesus (Luke 8:2). Her financial contributions would have been understood as a natural response of gratitude. But Joanna did not stop there. She made the unprecedented step of joining Jesus and became one of his followers. To follow Jesus was to join Jesus and his followers in their counter-cultural lifestyle (162), and so in choosing to embrace Jesus, Joanna made a decisive break with her past. As Bauckham says, "it was a radical step right outside the Herodian establishment to which she belonged and into the life of the ordinary people of Galilee..." (150). Thus, her acceptance of Christ involved not only a conversion to God but an equally radical "conversion to the poor" (150). The very people she had once exploited and oppressed, she now encountered and embraced!
How could a wealthy aristocrat in Herod's court and the people she oppressed come to live and learn together? We cannot gloss over this question. What about the Jesus' followers who were oppressed and exploited at her hand? Did they not feel great hostility towards her?
Somehow, Joanna was eventually forgiven, accepted, and welcomed into their midst, but that type of transformation doesn't just happen. I think this kind of community was something Jesus labored hard and long to produce among his followers. Jesus put his disciples into a situation where they were forced to encounter one another. He taught them to accept one another and challenged them to love their enemies. Other disciples were their former enemies, so they had to figure out ways to live together.
Perhaps nothing maintains the inequalities and separation between us more than isolation. The poor never encounter the rich, and the rich never encounter the poor. Our mutual isolation reinforces the barriers that separate us, and there's little or no other impetus to challenge those situations. Jesus created an environment among his followers where it was impossible to remain isolated. Bible teachers often point to the constant bickering among the disciples as a sign of immaturity. Instead maybe we should see the natural discomfort of people who were forced to encounter one another across many barriers. Through these encounters, Jesus brought about their transformation. To put it in another, more challenging way, it may be that true transformation into a Christian community requires these encounters.
Unfortunately, the way many modern charities operate preempts that very process. Instead of facilitating that encounter, most charities function as mediators, allowing the wealthy to deposit their money or goods and the poor to pick them up. Charities will now come to the donor's home in an effort to make helping those in need as convenient and painless as possible. But people never encounter one another! In our efforts to make things easy, what is lost? Can dropping a box full of old clothes at our curb even approximate the transformation that happens when we encounter those in need? We need to ask ourselves if our goal is to allow God to transform us or to avoid being bothered.
One of our guiding philosophies of ministry at Urban Connections has been to encourage that encounter, then stand back and allow God to bring the transformation. It is certainly easier to act as a mediator, but we're not here to make things easy. To follow in the steps of our foremother Joanna, I think we must strive for no less.

Rethinking Christianity - by Doug Hartman
The cover story of Christianity Today (September, 2005) is entitled "The New Monasticism". If you have not seen it or taken the time to read it, I would highly encourage you to do so. It is well worth the time. The article discusses the recent emergence of Christ-followers who are coming together in intentional communities, seeking to follow Jesus and live out the faith in a more wholistic way. Often the communities locate themselves in urban "slums," choosing to live & work among the poor.
The article focused on Shane Claiborne, one of the founders of The Simple Way community in Philadelphia and the emerging leader of the movement of "New Monasticism". (Some of you might remember Shane from our Spring Dinner a couple years ago.) But the journalist's presentation was especially impressive to me because of its balance. Three different communities were highlighted: The Simple Way in Philadelphia, one in Durham, NC, and one in Camden, NJ. The communities each have a unique make-up and approach, but they have very similar emphases: radical concern for those in need, dedication to environmentalism & conservation, focus on hospitality, absolute commitment to non-violence, and passion to know and live for Christ & his Word. (And they tend to insist that these things stay connected!) As they say in the hood, "Big–ups!" to Christianity Today for having the courage to present this movement and its inherent challenges to "mainstream Christianity" in this country.
In our households, we identify profoundly with these communities. Each time we interact with communities like The Simple Way (or older Christian communities like Antioch in Jackson, MS) it is always both immensely challenging and encouraging. For me, the aspect of their lives that most sets them apart is their focus: somehow they find ways to put into practice aspects of the Christian faith that often seem to elude the rest of us. They find ways to share resources, open their homes and lives to those in need, and become intimately & deeply involved with one another (and so develop a natural accountability). All the members are deeply involved in ministry. By challenging some of the constraints of life in mainstream culture, they structure their lives around remembering & focusing on what's important from God's perspective.
In doing so, I think they challenge all of us to not just accept life and "the system" as it is, but to be creative and passionate about what we can realistically do to flip the system on its head. We can talk about the problems of life & society as if they are insolvable. Racism, poverty, violence, drugs, teen pregnancy...the problems are great. But can nothing be done about them? Did not Jesus come into this world to address such problems and offer God's solution? People can talk about "the system" and "the way life is" as if those cultural aspects of life are unchangeable. Are they? Or do we just lack the courage and faith to challenge them? If we waste away all the resources of time and money God has given us on sanctuaries - whether for corporate or personal use - that only serve our own needs and desires, then those issues may indeed be insolvable. But is there not an alterative? Communities like those in Christianity Today prove that there is. That message needs to be heard.
Ministries to the poor can be as guilty as anyone else of forgetting what they are supposed to be about. We traveled to Los Angeles, CA several years ago for an urban ministry conference. Tours of other urban ministries can be an especially beneficial part of these conferences. Some of our group toured a ministry set in one of the poorer areas of LA. This organization had just spent millions of dollars building a new facility so that they could reach out to their community and serve the poor. But the building was lavishly built - the bathroom was on the tour - and it quickly became apparent that the building had usurped the people on their priority list: the visitors were not allowed to use that bathroom for fear that they would mess it up! One can only imagine what happened when (or if) people from the community came in to their precious facility. This may be a particularly extreme example, but are we willing to open up our church facilities, our homes, our cars, and our lives to others? Is that hospitality limited to close friends and family or does it extend to outsiders and the "least" in society?
The "New Monasticism" movement is poorly named if it gives the impression that such a radical commitment & different lifestyle are limited to a select group of especially zealous youth. Modern Christianity seems to walk a tight-rope as we try to hold on to biblical truth and our traditions in a world that increasingly has no time for such "nonessentials". Prayer, missions, Bible Study, evangelism, fasting, service to others in need, mentoring, and other such things too often are discarded as impractical relics of the past. Following Jesus gets reduced to five-minute devotionals and offerings that are automatically deducted from our checking accounts. After five minutes of that fluff, we should start asking, "Is this all there is to following Christ?" Like all those who have come before it (from the Franciscans to the Jesus People of the 1970's), such communities answer with an emphatic, "No!"
Monastic movements do not arise in times of intense persecution and difficulty. They tend to form in times when the majority of Christians have been lulled asleep by power, comfort, status or money. Christ-followers start reaching for solutions like monasticism when they hear cries within their faith for a greater level of fulfillment & attainment than what they see. Whether we embrace the particular solutions they have reached or not, the very existence of such a movement should make us all rethink our understanding of the Christian faith. Christ made incredible demands on his followers: leave all you have, hate your father and mother, have nothing before me, you have been bought with a price, love your enemies, take the narrow road that leads to life... In a culture that says, "Don't bother me...I'm busy!" these communities seem to respond, "No, be bothered. Get interrupted. These things are important - think about them!" Have we made discipleship too easy? Are we zealous for God and actively seeking his kingdom? Our King said, "By this my Father is glorified: that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples" (John 15:8).

Review of "Divided by Faith" - by Doug Hartman
Due to the space limitations of a newsletter, we unfortunately had to greatly simplify the arguments & findings of Michael Emerson & Christian Smith in their book Divided by Faith. But we wanted to make this information as clear and accessible as possible, so we've added examples and points of clarification to the article below. Follow the footnotes below to get more information...

In 2000, Michael Emerson & Christian Smith, sociology professors from Rice and the U. of N. Carolina, Chapel Hill, published the book Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America. I have mentioned this book several times in past newsletters, but I have long wanted to address its subject matter in a more thorough way. Obviously I cannot exhaustively reproduce their research and findings here, but I hope to offer several significant probes into the issues they raise.
I think this book is extremely important for at least three reasons: (1) Racial divisions and inequality are an inescapable reality in our neighborhood, a glaring issue that we face every single day. They are both a deeply embedded and disturbingly common-place aspect of our society, making it all the more difficult to address and combat. (2) Unity & harmony across barriers like race underlie the gospel of Jesus Christ and is, according to Paul, one of the primary results of Jesus' death (see, e.g., Eph. 2:14ff). In Scripture, the reconciliation of dissimilar people groups is held up as one of the marks of the Christian community. (3) Discussions about race tend to start with misunderstanding, turn into anger, and result in further estrangement. Emerson & Smith first wanted to determine what people's understandings and experiences of racial issues are by using the General Society Survey and their own detailed national phone survey of over 2500 Americans. But they wanted a more thorough analysis, so they held in-depth interviews with about 200 evangelical Christians (pg. 18-19). Their careful work and wise analysis make this book an excellent contribution to our understanding of racial issues in America.
Racial Reconciliation has become a major emphasis among white evangelicals recently. But for a long time racial issues simply were not on the social "radar" of white evangelicalism. Emerson & Smith track the attention given through articles in Christianity Today, white evangelicalism's most prominent magazine. Despite the huge social upheavals going on in the 1950's and early 60's centered on race, there was practically no space in CT (less than 2 reports per year) given to the subject. CT's editorial attention increased slightly in the 60's only to slump into practical silence again in the 70‘s and early 80's. But in the last 20 years, white evangelicals seemed to have "discovered" this issue: myriad books, conferences, and evangelical organizations have emerged, dedicated to the cause. CT now averages 12 articles per year for the entire post-Civil Rights era (pg. 56). Organizations like Promise Keepers have fought for racial reconciliation. PK has reconciliation as one of their 7 core promises and even dedicated the entire ‘96 conference to the issue (pg. 65).
But this increased attention does not mean everything is better. Our society is growing more segregated (i.e., increasingly isolated along racial lines) in the post-Civil Rights era. As education & income levels increase, Americans become more opposed to racism in theory. But in practice, wealthy, highly educated people are the most racially isolated at home and work (pg. 10). Middle and upper-class neighborhoods are the most highly segregated in America. Christians are not noticeably different than other Americans in this regard. The opposite is actually true: the stronger white Americans are in their evangelical faith, the more adamantly opposed they tend to be towards policies that promote integration and social reform (pg. 122). This trend, say Emerson & Smith, goes to the heart of white American evangelicals' social, cultural, and theological assumptions. This bears much detailed explanation, but I will try to be as concisely as possible.
A fundamental belief for evangelicals is God's desire to have a personal relationship with us through Christ. This conviction, according to Emerson & Smith, has lead white evangelicals to a worldview defined by "accountable freewill individualism" and "anti-structuralism" (pg. 76). Those are rather forbidding terms, but they simply mean that God is going to hold us individually accountable for our actions, so we must be able to individually determine our on destiny. Regardless of any circumstances which may hinder us, the individual ultimately is responsible. Evangelicals can be suspicious about talk of larger structural limitations like family or school systems or racism, because they assume such things undermine individual accountability (pg. 79). This is the "anti-structural" component. Indeed, social programs designed to help the disadvantaged (e.g., Affirmative Action, welfare) were thought by many whites to be creating racial problems.
So, what are the racial issues facing America? The white Christians interviewed understood "racism" as isolated incidents of conflict between people of different races, like when someone uses the "n-word". The solution, then, is for people to become Christians, because Christians don't do such things. Emerson & Smith identify this as the "miracle cure": racism will magically cease when the individual racists become Christians (pg. 117ff). Wholly absent here is even the possibility that racial issues may extend beyond seemingly unbalanced or uncivilized individuals to social or justice systems, to historical patterns of behavior, to unequal access to quality education, to segregated housing practices and to jaded cultural values (pg. 112). White Americans typically are unaware of these things - many even deny their existence! - because we are not negatively affected by them. Yet there are many such aspects to our society that we all participate in - and benefit from - each day. The focus on the individual and his/her personal sin is a great asset when it comes to personal evangelism, but it is a debilitating weakness when it comes to identifying and addressing larger social issues.
There are complicating factors. Many white evangelicals live, work, and worship in racial isolation . Emerson & Smith defined homogeneity or racially isolation as at least 90% of the same race, and this was the experience of most of the white evangelicals they interviewed (pg. 80). Making such matters worse, popular evangelical eschatology (study of the "end times") tends to be very fatalistic. The Scriptures teach that the world irreversibly continues toward moral decline as time progresses. But this has lead many evangelicals to the conclusion that care or concern for society or the justice system or the environment is misguided, a hopeless waste of time and resources (pg. 47). Good intentions may be and, indeed, are undermined by poor theological assumptions. It is a rather bleak picture: racial and socioeconomic isolation coupled with questionable theology and an uncritical embrace of the social structures has led most white evangelicals to unintentionally contribute to racial inequalities (pg. 113). This is how many white Christians, who individually may be loving, caring, and generous, have come to embrace cultural practices and social systems that continue to hurt minorities.
An important clarification of terms is also needed when we discuss racism. As we said, white Americans tend to think of racism primarily in terms of individual level prejudice. Conversely, Emerson & Smith report that black Americans tend to think of racism in terms of structural inequalities (e.g., unequal access to quality education). These understandings are held more strongly by whites and blacks respectively with strong evangelical faith (pg. 70ff). If we are to build a bridge across the racial chasms in our country, the foundation will begin with understanding. This is why Emerson & Smith's book is so important: it makes that foundation all the more accessible for those who wish to lay it. The great danger of race for white Americans is indifference. This all can be easily disregarded, because white Americans are the beneficiaries of racial inequalities in this country. Divided by Faith is a sobering book. It can be uncomfortable to discuss the issues raised here. But racial reconciliation in this country will take more than an open-door policy or making a friend of a different race. A sequel called United by Faith was published in 2004 showing how multiracial Christian communities have found ways to make it work. I would have to recommend both as essential reading for those who call Jesus ‘Lord' in this country.

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(1) By "glaring" examples of racism, we do not mean the individual level prejudice that most whites think of when we mention racism. As we explain in other parts of the article, racism in America also takes the form of limitations within our culture and society which primarily affect the members of a given race. The school system is a good example of a structural limitation, because most of the schools in the neighborhood are very poor. Many of our schools have received failing grades under the new educational "reforms", failure rates for the proficiency tests are extremely high, and even students in the top of their class struggle with the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) and do poorly on standardized tests like the ACT & SAT. The rest of America can downplay how bad the public schools are in our cities and the affect this has of a student's ability to succeed in life, but I think popular opinion would change dramatically if we shifted the discussion to suburban children. If there was a social reversal where wealthy students had to attend inner city schools and the inner city teens were transferred to the school systems of the suburbs, there would be public outrage. People would demand and get change. And who could blame people for wanting their children to have every opportunity in life? What might happen to the drop-out rates and the substandard proficiency scores if the kids of the inner–city were also given every opportunity? What about seemingly unrelated issues like teen pregnancy, drug use, and the high crime rates...? The truth is that everyone knows the schools are bad...this is why people with the money & resources make sure their children attend better schools.

(2)This is the put the issue nicely. Due to their relative isolation from other racial groups, white Americans have not been forced to deal with the racial issues. In the 1950's and 60's, for instance, most of white evangelicalism obviously knew of the social movements going on, but they consciously rejected the idea as a "social" issue not central to the gospel or the Christian faith. There were many exceptions: Tony Campolo, Jim Wallis, & Ron Sider are examples of white American evangelicals who strongly supported the Civil Rights Movement and have fought for social justice for the poor over the past four decades.

(3)They also show the typical thinking of white evangelicals based on the practices of Billy Graham in his Crusades. Early on, he publicly dismissed the ideas of integration and racial reconciliation as "local issues" and even denounced the ideas as a product of the communists! Under pressure from "liberal Christians" in the North Graham tried to integrate some of his Crusades, but he buckled under the pressure from the white Christian leaders in the South. After the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling (1954) in the Supreme Court, his thoughts about the relationship of race segregation/discrimination to the gospel changed dramatically to the point where he was speaking about it forcefully and mandating that the seating at Crusades be desegregated (see page 46 and following).

(4)This discovery was mostly due to the substantial efforts of some evangelical leaders who rose up in this era and brought the message to the white evangelical circles. Black evangelical leaders like Tom Skinner & John Perkins, for example, fought tirelessly to bring the message to white churches. They developed a nuanced theology which showed how in Scripture reconciliation is fundamental to the gospel and how deeply God is concerned for the poor. They argued that it is part of our Christian responsibility to provide justice for the poor. White evangelicals like Campolo, Wallis, and Sider were saying much the same thing (see page 52 and following).

(5)Emerson & Smith argue that the translation of the racial reconciliation message from the early advocates social justice (e.g., M. L. King, John Perkins, or Ron Sider) to popular evangelicalism was errant. Promise Keepers taught about defeating racism, like other whites, mostly in terms of countering individual level prejudice. Their solution was to repent & pray together at the conferences, and then to develop intentional friendships with people of different races. This is an excellent start. But Promise Keepers, at least initially, did not do a good job of listening to the Civil Rights leaders. PK made no attempt early on to deal with the structural issues. Men came together across racial barriers at the conferences, but when it was over, they went right to back to the same social structures and practices that were highly beneficial for whites and detrimental for blacks. Many African-Americans grew weary of this kind of "superficial" reconciliation. Christian leader Carl Ellis commented, "Tears and hugs and saying I'm sorry is a good first step, but for me, the question is not one of changing hearts of individuals as it is dealing with the systems and structures that are devastating the African-American people" (pg. 67). But Bill McCartney, leader of PK, deserves credit. He eventually listened and incorporated some of the social justice issues into their teaching of racial reconciliation. It was at this point, however, that complaints from the men who participated in PK emerged about the "hard" teachings. The popularity of the PK movement itself began to wane, too, which McCartney attributes to their focus on racism (see page 66 and following).

(6)This is our greatest point of simplification. In response to the question, "Does America have a race problem ...what is it?" white evangelicals generally had one or more of these three answers: (1) The race problems are attributable to prejudiced individuals. Since it has become socially taboo to be a bigot or a racist, racism is generally understood by the white evangelical community to be the problem of dysfunctional or relationally-defective individuals. Thus for normal, sane Americans, there are no race problems. (2) No, America does not have a race problem. The "racial" issues are fabricated by the media, the government, or perhaps African-Americans themselves for their own self-interests. (3) Others admitted that there were individual-level problems, but they blamed others (usually African-Americans) for making it into a group-level issue when it is actually just an individual-level issue. For instance, a disagreement or fight can be misinterpreted as being based in race: If two white men get into a fight, it's just a fight. If a black and a white man fight, suddenly the conflict is racially motivated and involving whole people groups (see page 74 and following).

(7)We obviously do not intend to mock the Spirit's influence on a Christian and God's power to bring personal transformation. God is able. However, it does not happen for most Christians. We offer several suggestions as to why this never happens: (1) Reconciliation is viewed by many Christian pastors and teachers as completely unnecessary or even a possible hindrance to the "other work" of the church like evangelism. (2) It is NOT made clear to most new Christians that reconciliation across the racial and economic/class barriers in our country is apart of being in Christ. Most Christian discipleship is silent on this issue. (3) The church tends to be completely mute on cultural issues like where and why we buy a house. These cultural practices continue the patterns of our racialized society that hurt minorities. The church has historically been both a protector and a conveyor of the racialized system in America. (4) To seriously deal with these issues would threaten the privileged position of power and comfort that whites enjoy in America. Perhaps it is even at a subconscious level, but this is a real and high motivational fear. (5) History. There has been a multi-century-long history of racial hatred, oppression, and violence between black and white Americans, giving the status quo a great deal of historical momentum. All this can be countered, but it will take a careful intentionality. Careful intentionality is precisely what is missing in popular reconciliation efforts of white evangelicalism.

(8)A significant portion of the people surveyed and interviewed denied outright that racial problems exist at all. People like Jesse Jackson talk about racism to make a job for themselves. In essence, it is all a fabrication.

(9)Racial isolation is not accidental. Historically speaking, isolation has been the "solution" of choice for white America. The old Jim Crow segregation laws of the south were actually borrowed from the less institutionalized though still highly effective practices in northern cities. White America did not want to deal with minorities, so people of other races were encouraged to live and work in areas separated from the white community. These practices created the framework that lead to our modern urban landscapes (pg. 42).

(10)A good example of how many people unintentionally contribute to our racialized system is the home-buying practices. People with money and resources leave a neighborhood so that they can live in "better" neighborhoods. The local businesses follow the money and also leave. The problem is that many local-level civil services (like police & fire departments, trash services, and public schools) are dependent on real-estate taxes. When the wealthy people and businesses leave, those services lose their sources of revenue, forcing the police departments to cut back patrols and servicemen, fire stations to close, schools to slash programs. These are the very comforts and services that people value in their "good" neighborhoods. As crime rates increase & schools flounder, the neighborhood develops a bad reputation (it's not "safe" for the family, etc.) and more people leave and property values drop. The neighborhood is then left to the poor (who can't afford to move) and the criminals. This is the definition (and history) of the modern American ghetto. The home-buying practices of middle and upper class Americans (all racial & religious groups) substantially contribute to the creation and maintenance of ghettos.

(11)Strong evangelical faith increases the tendency in whites to think of racism individualistically. Strong evangelical faith increases the tendency in blacks to think of racism structurally.

(12)"Reverse discrimination" does happen, too, of course. Quota systems for minorities adopted by universities or businesses do deny whites to positions or programs that they may deserve. On balance, however, white Americans derive far more benefits from the racialized system than minorities. What may happen on occasion to a white individual is the daily experience of whole minority groups in our country.