We Need a Better Approach to Race Conversations

As a black pastor trained in a conservative evangelical school, I have been grieved to watch my white fellow pastors debate each other and divide over racial issues over these past few years. The acrimony reached a critical peak at one conference. Before the watching world, the moderator challenged the panelists’ orthodoxy over the question of racism. As a result, the gospel coalition between them (and those who followed them) fractured, at least publicly. To further widen the divide, one side seemed to become eerily suspicious that their friends were no longer conservative and colorblind enough. Needless to say, black evangelicals who raised any issue of racism had already been dismissed as too progressive and woke.