Christians and the Color Line: Race and Religion after Divided by Faith

Abstract

Christians and the Color Line: Race and Religion after Divided by Faith is an edited volume of papers originally presented at Indiana Wesleyan University to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Michael Emerson and Christian Smith's Divided by Faith, which documented the vastly differing ways that white and black evangelicals and conservative Protestants approach the issue of race in their lives and the faith communities they inhabit. The purpose of the book is to showcase scholarship written on Christianity and race in the past decade, as well as for the authors to engage with the key themes of Divided by Faith. Written by a combination of historians, sociologists, and theologians, half of the pieces are historical in nature and half examine contemporary problems related to the state of evangelicalism and congregations. Some of the pieces go beyond the original black–white focus of Divided by Faith and others step outside of the evangelical world, examining race relations among Catholics. The pieces display the wide-spanning influence of Divided by Faith. A theme of tribute is apparent throughout, with each author paying homage to the influence of Divided by Faith, but there are also critiques and counterexamples in some of the pieces. Tobin Miller Shearer's chapter “Buttcheek to Buttcheek in the Pew: Interracial Relationism in a Mennonite Congregation, 1957–2010” argues that Emerson and Smith “. . . too quickly dismiss the potential of relationships to transgress oppressive racial norms” (101). They use the example of a Mennonite congregation to show how relationism can “. . . challenge white racial hegemony and nourish racial integration” (115). In another chapter, Edward J. Blum complicates Emerson and Smith's contention that individualism is another bulwark that perpetuates white privilege and prevents white evangelicals from engaging meaningfully around race. His chapter on the significance of antimiscegenation and the effort to separate not just races, but physical bodies, notes that, “. . . evangelical individualism and its missionary focus could paradoxically work on behalf of interracial activity and hinder it as well” (164). Blum contends, “At certain historical junctures, individualism could actually work against racial discrimination, while at other times—especially when it came to sex and marriage—arguments about community, the social good, and God's purposes for groups trumped individualism” (164).