Efforts to reconcile black and white churches are currently occurring. Is reconciliation needed or is there something else?  Calls for reconciliation are based in the notion that one race was harmed by the other race.  Is that valid?  Yes and no. That is a judgment, however, I believe, to be exaggerated.  Why? 
 
In American Christianity today two issues have become culturally and morally interjected and integrated into churches and denominations that deny or diminish biblical principles. The two issues are race and sexual morality.  This article addresses the issue of race.
American church history appears to highlight a tendency towards segregation —not only racially but ethnically, linguistically, and class.  Churches were composed of Germans, Irish, Serbians, Syrians, Chinese, Koreans, Blacks, mixed whites, and other nationalities, usually related to immigration. Segregation by the branches and denominations of the Church occurred. Instead of churches resembling early churches constituted biblically, American Christians tended to group related to comfort zones based on particular likenesses. Nonetheless, what is considered the primary and most controversial segregation is that between blacks and whites.
As Christians, regardless of any of the above diversities, we belong to a family—a family that should be recognizable to the world as well-integrated, non-divisive, and one in unity.
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female.  You are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3: 28).
Efforts to reconcile black and white churches are currently occurring. Is reconciliation needed or is there something else?  Calls for reconciliation are based in the notion that one race was harmed by the other race.  Is that valid?  Yes and no. That is a judgment, however, I believe, to be exaggerated.  Why?
First, because entire races are not guilty for what some have done; otherwise, all races would be culpable.  Secondly, it may be due to the tendency to be with one’s own group. Blacks and whites were both involved in slavery—blacks capturing, selling, and owning other blacks as slaves; and whites mostly selling, trading, and owning blacks as slaves. However, the majority of both races were not involved in the institution of slavery.  Reconciliation is rarely called for between blacks and Native Americans who owned black slaves, or between American blacks who owned black slaves and those who didn’t.
To choose only one race as being involved in slavery seems unjust. To purport everyone of a specific skin color is guilty is presumptuous.  In fact, biblical reconciliation relates more to offenses between individuals—not entire races; also between tribes or nations. Saying this, some white churches, seminaries, and Christian schools historically denied blacks access and are candidates for reconciliation.
We must recognize the large gaps in time. Do whites who never owned slaves or never offended any blacks need reconciliation with blacks who were never slaves, never refused access to a white church, nor personally offended by a white person or church?  Reconciliation demands a genuine victim and a guilty party.
If reconciliation is not biblically or morally required, perhaps black and white churches could meet on the grounds of unitedly resisting prejudice and racism in both directions in order to be one in faith and in fellowship.  Prejudice and racism are undeniably found in both races—in fact, in all races.  This doesn’t deny the need for sensitivity to any and all true inequalities. Is this possibly the real problem today?
Our surrounding culture, media, and politicians presently engage in sowing racial discord, disunity, and division. Jesus’ followers must neither allow nor participate in the world’s war against Christianity or its principles by promoting bias, hatred, prejudice, or racism.
In addressing this subtle racial divide promoting disunity and enmity, churches and denominations should do so ensuring both sides are on equal status having a voice.  No one should be told to listen and not speak; all should come to the table with agape love and genuine respect for one another speaking truth based on those premises.  Endeavor to exercise racial sensitivity recognizing races aren’t monolithic.  Good and evil are in both.  People of the same race do not all think alike or believe the same.  Viewing the past unbiasedly reveals complexity, conflict, and circumstances that more accurately reveal gray perplexities, as opposed to black and white clarity.
“Is reconciliation needed or something else?”  We need to promote mutual love and respect; to emphasize efforts to mitigate any biases or racial prejudice based on the evils of some within any race.  Black and white Christians must live in today’s time; nothing can change yesterday.  We are called to live in the present for the sake of the future.
A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.  By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (John 13: 34-35).
Helen Louise Herndon is a member of Central Presbyterian Church (EPC) in St. Louis, Missouri. She is freelance writer and served as a missionary to the Arab/Muslim world in France and North Africa.

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Written by R.C. Sproul |
Saturday, July 20, 2024
Although we rejoice in Christ’s victory over the grave, we nevertheless fear death. Christians are not guaranteed exemption from a painful death. Nevertheless, the thought of death often brings fear for Christians and non-Christians alike. That fear is bound up with the question of what happens after death. For the Christian, there is a promise from God, a promise that allowed Paul to say, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” We are promised that we will enter the presence of God. But there are questions, even with this promise.

Death is the greatest problem human beings encounter. We may try to tuck thoughts of it away in the far corners of our minds, but we cannot completely erase our awareness of our mortality. We know that the specter of death awaits us.
The Apostle Paul writes:
Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses. (Rom. 5:12–14)
We see that there was sin even before the law was given through Moses, and this is proven by the fact that death occurred before the law was given. The fact of death proves the presence of sin, and the fact of sin proves the presence of law, which has been revealed inwardly to human beings from the beginning. Death came into the world as a direct result of sin.
The secular world views death as part of the natural order, whereas the Christian sees death as part of the fallen order; it was not the original state of man. Death came as God’s judgment for sin. From the beginning, all sin was a capital offense. God said to Adam and Eve, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16–17). The death God warned about was not only spiritual but also physical death. Adam and Eve did not die physically the day they sinned; God granted them grace to live for some time longer before exacting the penalty. Nevertheless, they eventually perished from the earth.
Every human being is a sinner and therefore has been sentenced to death. We are all waiting for the sentence to be carried out. The question then is what happens after death.
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Abraham was saved by faith. So the question is: Do you believe in God and trust his promises, as the patriarch did? Here is what Paul says about Abraham’s faith: Abraham (1) believed God’s promise; (2) believed on the basis of the Word of God only; (3) believed in spite of adverse circumstances; (4) was fully assured that God would do whatever he had promised; and (5) acted on that confidence.

Romans 4:23-24
The words “it was credited to him” were written not for him alone, but also for us, to whom God will credit righteousness—for us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead.
Paul began Romans with an analysis of man’s lost condition. The human race is under the wrath of God for its failure to receive the revelation of God that he has made in nature, and its refusal to thank God for creation and to seek him more fully in order to worship him. Instead of following the truth, people have suppressed the truth, and in its place, they have created imaginary gods like themselves and even like animals. Having turned from God, who is the source of all good, they are on a downhill path, which they will follow until they come at last to the point where they are willing to call good evil and evil good.
No one naturally agrees with this assessment, of course. It is part of what rejecting truth is all about. So Paul next spends time dealing with the arguments of those who exempt themselves from those conclusions, including the ethically moral person and the religious person. The end of his argument is that all stand condemned before God.
Finally, Paul unfolds the gospel, showing that God acted to save sinners through the Lord Jesus Christ.
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