Churchianity Today calls for white evangelicals to pay a second African Tax on top of the one they already pay as white residents of the United States.
It’s time for white evangelicals to confess that we have not taken the sin of racism with the gravity and seriousness it deserves. The deep grief and anger over the death of George Floyd is about more than police brutality. It’s about a society and culture that allowed for the abuse and oppression of African Americans over and over and over again. We have been a part of that society and culture, and sometimes we have been the last to join the fight for racial justice. Christianity Today’s own record in this regard is mixed. Neo-evangelicals generally believed it was enough to preach the message of salvation and trust that justice would follow as a matter of course. It hasn’t. What we thought righteous was unrighteous. We repent of our sin.
But repentance is not enough. The other biblical narrative that comes to mind is the story of a tax collector in Jericho. Zacchaeus was a collaborator with the occupying Roman authority, and by adding his own extortionary fees, he plundered the wealth of his neighbors and enriched himself. Jesus encountered him and shocked the crowd by going to his home. Salvation came to the house of Zacchaeus on that day. He proclaimed, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will give back four times the amount” (Luke 19:8).
Zacchaeus had not personally designed the unjust system of Roman taxation. But he had not denounced it either; he had participated in it and profited from it. So Zacchaeus did not merely repent of his ways; he made restitution. He set up what we might call a “Zacchaeus fund” in order to restore what belonged to his neighbors. Are we willing to do the same? Black lives matter. They matter so much that Jesus sacrificed everything for them. Are we willing to sacrifice as well?
First, racism is not a sin. To the contrary, anti-racism is servitude to Satan. Second, I refute him thusly.