Racial Reconciliation
by: Jerry Price - Feb 6, 2006 - comment
“Reconciliation is a lot more than black and white. It is about politicians and how they serve their constituency. It is about bringing our behavior into harmony with our beliefs. It is about what we think of welfare. It is about breaking the cycle of poverty and building a system where welfare will be an emergency measure, not a way of life.”
Maxie D. Dunham, “Reconciliation: Our Calling,” in Timothy George and Robert Smith, Jr., editors, A Mighty Long Journey (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000), 125.
Author Clarence Shuler suggests replacing the term “racial reconciliation” with “racial partnership.” He explains: “The strength of the term racial partnership is that, first of all, it implies that equal parties are involved. This is something racial reconciliation doesn’t necessarily do. Second, partnership implies a working together for a desired goal or result. This is hard work because you are forming something out of nothing! Partners starting a business very often have to work through their differences if they are going to be successful . . . most partnerships are formed because the goal can’t be achieved by one person or company. If it could, then there wouldn’t be a need for the partnership. The same is true of us in the areas of culture, race, and even spiritual gifts in some of our own churches. We all need each other—we just pretend we don’t because we are often afraid of what we may lose personally (control, for example) and what the finished product may look like.”
Clarence Shuler, Winning the Race to Unity (Chicago: Moody Press, 1998), 142.
“To love others is easier said than done; however, we must manage to incorporate it into our daily lives. We must wrestle with, and ultimately overcome, our prejudices that we bring to bear on the relationships we form with others. Our love for others must be based on our recognition of them as having desires and needs just as we do, as having the basic sameness as we, as having a truly transcendent reality about themselves as we do.”
Michael F. Thurman, “Love: Fundamental Ingredient of the Christian Life,” in Timothy George and Robert Smith, Jr., editors, A Mighty Long Journey (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000), 68.
“In our resolve to go forward, to do more, we should pause to take inspiration from the progress that has been made. It has not been enough. It has been woefully inadequate, but there has been change. We need to draw courage from that change to move from standing on the border of the promised land of integration, to moving forward to the kingdom of reconciliation. It will not happen without a faithful Christian witness. We have failed too often in the past in America. We have had two great religious awakenings and slavery survived both, because we did not understand adequately the need to move from our personal lives to our prophetic commission to be salt and light in our society.”
Dr. Richard Land, “Moving Toward the Kingdom of Racial Reconciliation,” in Timothy George and Robert Smith, Jr., editors, A Mighty Long Journey (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2000), 35.
“It is going to ‘cost’ anyone—any church or organization that is serious about and committed to improving race relations among Christians today. This cost will always be more than we anticipate because that is the faith aspect of it. An attitude of flexibility, teachability, and patience must be developed by those of the majority race who desire cross-cultural relationships with minorities. This is something they can learn to do. After all, in order to survive in any culture, minority children must master the system of the majority race without losing their own identity.”
Clarence Shuler, Winning the Race to Unity (Chicago: Moody Press, 1998), 141-142.
Further Learning
Learn more about: Citizenship, Racial Reconciliation