Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America
Listen to our memorable interview with the profoundly insightful co-author of the book, Dr. Michael Emerson.
The article below is about a very special moment in my life where I got to speak to one of the major influences on my thinking about race and the church. These moments are possible because of supporters like you. Will you become a paid subscriber today?
Michael Emerson described himself in his teens and twenties as “Central Casting White Guy.”
If Hollywood needed a white male, they would look for him. He perfectly fit the description of a middle class, suburban, white man.
Then, at the age of 26, he attended a Promise Keepers rally in the 1990s, and God intervened.
After every session, attendees were invited to write down their thoughts. After each session, even if the topic of the talk was unrelated, he wrote about changing the racial status quo.
The words he wrote after the last session read, “You will be involved in my transformation of race in America.”
When the conference ended he bought all the books (all three of them) he could find on race and the church. He read them nonstop for three days straight and collapsed in a deep, exhausted sleep.
He had a vision while he slept and heard a command from God—“You will live as a racial minority, you and your family, until I tell you otherwise.”
With trepidation but conviction, Emerson told his wife, who was five months pregnant at the time, and she burst into tears. The life they envisioned was about to completely change.
But over nearly three decades of obedience to this command to live as racial minorities, Emerson, his wife, and their children have become lifelong advocates for racial justice.
It is out of this spiritual conviction that he had to be part of the solution to racism that Michael Emerson partnered with Christian Smith to write their book, Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America.
Published in 2000, Divided by Faith has become canonical content in the literature about race and the church in the United States.
For nearly a quarter century pastors, lay people, Black folks, white folks, and many others have accessed this sociological examination that addresses the simple and profound question: Why is the church so divided by race?
In what will surely become one of our most seminal episodes, Tyler Burns and I interviewed Michael Emerson in person for Pass The Mic.
In this episode, you will not only hear more about Dr. Emerson’s spiritual commitment to racial justice, you’ll also hear about terms such as racialization, the cultural toolkit, and the miracle motif.
If you’ve never listened to an episode of PTM or it’s been a while, there’s no better place to start than our conversation with Dr. Michael Emerson talking about his book, Divided by Faith.
Below are some excerpts and definitions from our interview.
Racialization
Racism is no longer as overt as race-based chattel slavery or legalized Jim Crow segregation. But racism never goes away, it just adapts.
So what does racism look like today—after the Civil Rights movement, after the gains of the past?
It looks like racialization.
A racialized society is a society wherein race matters profoundly for differences in life experiences, life opportunities, and social relationships.
~ Divided by Faith (Emerson & Smith)
Cultural Toolkit
We always ask “Why can’t white evangelicals just seem to get it right when it comes to race?”
There’s actually a social scientific answer to this question. It’s called the evangelical cultural toolkit.
I draw from Emerson and Smith in these quotes excerpted from The Color of Compromise.
Accountable individualism means that “individuals exist independent of structures and institutions, have freewill, and are individually accountable for their own actions.”
Another belief in the cultural toolkit is relationalism, “a strong emphasis on interpersonal relationships.”
And antistructuralism refers to the belief that “invoking social structures shifts guilt away from its root source—the accountable individual.”
The particular religio-cultural tools that white evangelicals use to understand race actually tend to perpetuate the very racial problems they say they want to ameliorate.
Miracle Motif
The “miracle motif” says you can solve any problem by converting people to Christianity.
And that’s basically all it takes.
Once a person confesses Christianity they will miraculously change into a more virtuous person who does good in the world and even works to reduce racism.
The evidence against this assertion is self-evident, yet the notion that Christians can avoid taking a stand for justice by focusing on evangelism is still pervasive.
The miracle motif is the theologically rooted idea that as more individuals become Christians, social and personal problems will be solved automatically.
~ Divided by Faith (Emerson & Smith)
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I really look forward to Emerson’s book.
One of the ongoing questions I have for Emerson is that his Religion of Whiteness seems to contrast against some of the work of Perry and Whitehead and others with regard to Christian Nationalism.
I know they have different approaches and focuses, but whitehead’s latest book bent over backward to keep calling Christian Nationalists, Christian. I think this was both about responsibility as a Christian for other Christians (avoiding a no true Scottman defence of Christianity) and a pragmatic approach to how to convert a few CN followers back to a more orthodox Christianity.
But that approach seems opposite of Emerson’s flat denial of many white people actually following Christ.
I think I am more persuaded by Emerson. But I would really like to get Emerson and Whitehead together and have a clear conversation about this point. I know it isn’t a simple answer and there is a mixture of both perspectives that is true. But I think is would be an important discussion.