The Color of Compromise

by Jemar Tisby

  The IRS’s guidelines about racial integration in 1978 sparked national outrage among many Christian conservatives. Department officials as well as members of Congress received tens of thousands of messages in protest. In an interview Weyrich explained, “What galvanized the Christian community was not abortion, school prayer, or the [Equal Rights Amendment]. . . . What changed their minds was Jimmy Carter’s intervention against the Christian schools, trying to deny them tax-exempt status on the basis of so-called de facto segregation.”47 While it would be wrong to suggest that racist resistance to integration was the single issue that held the Religious Right together in these years, it clearly provided an initial charge that electrified the movement.

  THE MORAL MAJORITY’S SUPPORT OF RONALD REAGAN

  We’ve seen that the rise of the Religious Right represents a time when conservative Christians got more involved in politics. But what exactly did the Religious Right support in terms of specific policies and platforms? The era’s most prominent Christian political organization—the Moral Majority—provides clear evidence that the new Christian Right tended to promote laws, practices, and ideas that limited or even sought to reverse the gains of the civil rights movement.

  In the mid-1960s, Jerry Falwell, a well-known fundamentalist pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, would have seemed an unlikely candidate to shepherd conservative Christians into mainstream politics. In an oft-quoted sermon he gave in 1965 entitled “Ministers and Marches,” Falwell declared, “Preachers are not called to be politicians, but soul winners.”48 Delivered during the height of the civil rights movement, most observers interpreted Falwell’s sentiments as a critique of the movement in general and of Martin Luther King Jr. specifically. By 1976, Falwell had completely flipped his position and his stance against mixing religion and politics and embarked on an “I Love America” rally tour. In a sermon delivered on the Fourth of July, he made his new position crystal clear: “This idea of ‘religion and politics don’t mix’ was invented by the devil to keep Christians from running their own country.”49

  In 1979, Falwell met with other members of the emerging “New Right,” including Paul Weyrich, Edward McAteer, and Robert Billings, to strategize how to gather a coalition into a potent force for political influence. During the lengthy meeting Weyrich used the phrase “moral majority,” and Falwell immediately halted the conversation to have Weyrich repeat the phrase. “That’s it,” he said. “That’s what I’m going to call the organization, ‘Moral Majority.’ ”50 Falwell and his associates formed Moral Majority Inc. a month later. He explained their simple program in three steps: “Get ’em saved, get ’em baptized, get ’em registered.”51 According to the Moral Majority’s founder, the platform was “pro-life, pro-family, pro-moral, and pro-America.” The organization proved immensely popular with religious conservatives of all kinds. As an avowedly political organization, Falwell and other leaders of the Moral Majority courted people from across the religious spectrum including conservative Mormons, Jews, and Catholics as well as Pentecostals and a variety of Protestants denominations. Within a few years, the Moral Majority had an annual budget of $6 million, and its publication, Moral Majority Report, went to 840,000 households, with hundreds of Christian radio stations carrying their daily commentary.52

  The Moral Majority organized just in time to support the man who would become the darling of the Religious Right, Ronald Reagan. Reagan, a divorced Hollywood actor-turned politician who supported a liberal pro-abortion law while governor of California, certainly did not scream out “champion of Christian conservatism.” But Reagan’s skilled campaigning and winsome speechmaking quickly endeared him to the Religious Right, and Reagan was quick to adopt the right talking points to win white evangelical voters. When asked what single book he would read if he could only read one for the rest of his life, Reagan soberly answered, “I [know] of only one book that could be read and re-read and continue to be a challenge: the Bible.”53 Reagan also recognized the political advantages of endearing himself to a voting bloc that numbered in the millions, and he did all he could to earn their favor. In a famous speech given at First Baptist Church in Dallas early in 1980, Reagan all but sealed the conservative Christian support for his bid for the presidency when he remarked: “I know this is a non-partisan gathering, so I know you can’t endorse me, but I want you to know I endorse you and what you are doing.”54 In the 1980 presidential election, Reagan won the electoral college in a landslide of 489 to 49. He carried all the Sunbelt states and all the states in the former Confederacy except Georgia, the home state of his Democratic opponent, Jimmy Carter. The momentum of electing a GOP president helped other Republican politicians gain an additional thirty-five seats in the US House of Representatives and a majority in the Senate for the first time in over two decades. Jerry Falwell credited the Moral Majority for several of those victories and called that election night “my finest hour.”55

  What did conservative Christians support when they voted for Reagan? A brief glimpse of his actions and policies demonstrates that in throwing their electoral power behind this charismatic politician, they also bolstered several stances that could be perceived as antiblack. Reagan did not shy away from publicly aligning himself with racists or from using racially coded language in his appeals to white voters. As historian Joseph Crespino relates, Reagan began his 1980 presidential campaign at an annual fair in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where in 1964, three civil rights workers—James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman—had disappeared. After a search that lasted all summer and attracted national attention, an anonymous tip led investigators to an earthen dam where the bodies of the three young men were buried. They had each been shot by white supremacist members of the KKK and local law enforcement officers who were outraged by the presence of “outside agitators” during Freedom Summer, a movement to register black voters in Mississippi.56 Even though it was years later, that infamous crime was still a fresh memory, yet Reagan chose to speak at the annual Neshoba County Fair and use words familiar to Mississippi segregationists, who believed the federal government should stop disrupting the social affairs of the states. Republicans assisting Reagan intentionally tailored his speech that day to appeal to “George Wallace inclined voters” (referring to the failed 1968 third-party presidential candidate who opposed black civil rights).57 “I believe in state’s rights,” Reagan said. If elected, he promised to “restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them.”

  Reagan also championed Bob Jones University even at a time when it refused to change its policies on interracial dating. In January of 1980, Ronald Reagan spoke in front of an enthusiastic crowd at Bob Jones University and called it a “great institution” despite its persistent refusal to change its stance on race. Reagan went still further in his attempts to appeal to the Religious Right by promising to zealously pursue a “limited government” approach. That same month, he led his administration to reverse the IRS’s ruling against BJU and restored its tax-exempt status. Echoing a common argument against affirmative action, Reagan insisted, “You do not alter the evil character of racial quotas simply by changing the color of the beneficiary.”58 After this statement, a public furor erupted, and the president had to backtrack in what advisers called a “salvage operation.” Reagan ended up submitting a bill to Congress that gave the IRS express permission to revoke the tax-exempt status of racially discriminatory schools, adding that racially discriminatory practices “are repugnant to all that our nation and its citizens hold dear, and I believe this repugnance should be plainly reflected in our laws,” which he wrote in a note to Congress.59 The Supreme Court officially upheld the IRS’s position in a 1983 decision, and the university remained a taxable institution because of its racial stances.

  Reagan was also known for popularizing the term welfare queen, which became an oft-used phrase by the president. He told the story of a black woman from Chicago with “80 names, 30 addresses, 12 Social
Security cards,” who gamed the social support system for $150,000 in annual tax-free income. The “welfare queen” became a stand-in for the president’s criticism of an undeserving class of poor people, especially inner-city black women.60 He, along with an all-too-willing national media, helped push the issue of crack cocaine use to the status of a national crisis. Even though rates of drug use between whites and blacks were about the same, the drug war intentionally focused on areas of high poverty where there were high concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities. Spending was increased to fund the drug war. In Reagan’s first term, antidrug spending by the FBI went from $38 million to $101 million. The Drug Enforcement Agency’s budget went from $86 million to over $1 billion. At the same time, the budget for the Department of Education’s drug prevention programs dipped from $14 million to $3 million.61

  Reagan’s questionable politics regarding racial equality and his political appeals to racist sentiments may be just that—politics. After all, Reagan made several public overtures to the black community throughout his public career. As governor of California, he appointed several black people to executive positions. He met with black Republicans throughout the Republican National Convention in 1980 and spent nearly $1 million on African American outreach during his campaign.62 He signed a bill that made Martin Luther King Jr. Day a national holiday. Of course, this only came about after his initial objections and only when its passage in Congress seemed inevitable. Yes, there were some positive signs, but overall Reagan’s advocacy of black civil rights was less than enthusiastic. Whatever their intentions, when the Religious Right signed up to support Reagan and his views, they were also tacitly endorsing an administration that refused to take strong stances toward dismantling racism. Here we see further complicity with institutional racism as conservative Christians chose to support certain elements of the modern Republican platform.

  The Religious Right’s own statement of political objectives also demonstrates its troubling compromise with racism by promoting policies that failed to advance or support black civil rights. Anticommunism stood as a conspicuous pillar of the Religious Right’s platform, and while on the surface this aversion to communism as a political philosophy and to the countries that espoused it appears positive, at another level anticommunism could also signal an antiintegrationist stance. A lay Christian from Macon, Georgia, voiced the mentality of many conservative Christians when he said, “What are we doing as Christians while this awful thing called integration, that should be called communism, is destroying our way of life and our entire race?”63 Furthermore, Christian conservatives carefully coded any change, especially those related to race, as “liberal,” and they perceived themselves as constantly under attack by liberal operatives in the media and politics. In 1974, a Baptist churchgoer in Alabama plainly stated his beliefs about liberalism and its relation to racial integration: “I firmly believe in each race having its own schools, social organizations, and churches. . . . Of course, what I am suggesting will be considered ridiculous and absurd by today’s liberal and brainwashed public and I will be labeled a dirty old racist and bigot.”64 In addition, a stance against welfare led to stereotypes of black people and the poor as lacking in initiative and having no work ethic. As historian James German explains, “The welfare state, in the mind of the New Christian Right, undermined the sense of individual responsibility in which public morality rested.”65 Efforts to reduce funding to social support systems functioned as a subtle judgment on welfare recipients in general, but to the extent that welfare was associated with black people, it also functioned as a judgment against “lazy blacks.”

  The flip side of what Falwell called “welfarism” was the promotion of capitalism and the “free market.” In his book Listen, America, Falwell wrote, “The free enterprise system is clearly outlined in the Book of Proverbs.”66 Drawing on the work of conservative economist Milton Friedman, Falwell claimed that capitalism was the only Christian form of commerce and contended that a free enterprise system liberated from government constraints would lift black people out of poverty.67 In terms of policy, the Religious Right supported GOP efforts to reduce funding for welfare programs and increase tax breaks for corporations. This contributed to the overall perception among black people that Christian conservatives did not care about the concerns of a historically oppressed group. Although their intentions may have been varied, in terms of political impact the Religious Right failed to demonstrate a clear commitment to black advancement.

  The introduction to this chapter stated that racism never goes away; it just adapts. The growth of the Sunbelt and the white suburban ethos accompanying it meant that many politically and theologically conservative Christians strayed away from the use of explicitly race-based language and appeals. Yet those appeals did not disappear. Instead, they mobilized around the issue of taxation of private Christian schools, many of which remained racially segregated or made only token efforts at integration. They supported presidents and legal policies that disproportionately and negatively impacted black people. They accepted a color-blind rhetoric that still utilized racially coded messages.

  Yet as we have seen in this brief historical tour, after more than three centuries of deliberate, systematic race-based exclusion, the political system that had intentionally disenfranchised black people continued to do so, yet in less overt ways. Simply by allowing the political system to work as it was designed—to grant advantages to white people and to put people of color at various disadvantages—many well-meaning Christians were complicit in racism. Of course, there are always unintended consequences for our political choices, and not all of them can be foreseen or even avoided. But when we examine our attitudes about race and consider them in light of the history of slavery and racism in America, we begin to see that Christians have a responsibility to, at the very least, consider how the political connections between theologically conservative evangelicalism and conservative politics, namely through the Republican Party, have supported racial inequities.

  CHAPTER

  10

  RECONSIDERING RACIAL RECONCILIATION IN THE AGE OF BLACK LIVES MATTER

  The close of the twentieth century brought about many changes in the American church and race relations, changes that may have resulted in violence had they happened in earlier generations. The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), the nation’s largest Protestant denomination that had been founded to protect slaveholders within its ranks, finally apologized for its racist roots. They issued a resolution repenting of racism and slavery at their annual meeting on the 150th anniversary of the denomination, a statement which read in part, “We lament and repudiate historic acts of evil such as slavery from which we continue to reap a bitter harvest, and we recognize that the racism which yet plagues our culture today is inextricably tied to the past.”1 The resolution went on to ask forgiveness from African Americans and pledged to “eradicate racism in all its forms” from their denomination. In ages past such words of racial equality would have engulfed entire congregations in controversy.

  New racial reconciliation movements arose in the final decade of the twentieth century as well, notably a movement begun by Bill McCartney. McCartney was a good athlete but an even better coach. After graduating from the University of Missouri in 1962, he went on to coach high school football, and several years later, legendary University of Michigan football coach Bo Schembechler took notice of him and made the rare decision to hire a high school coach to work at the Division I college level. McCartney’s talents landed him a head coaching job at the University of Colorado eight years later. His prowess eventually earned him a place in the College Football Hall of Fame. But McCartney is perhaps best known as the founder of the Promise Keepers movement.

  In 1990, McCartney, a Roman Catholic who became a “born again” Protestant Christian, attended a Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) banquet where he and a companion discussed the need for men’s discipleship. McCartney pictured a stadium full of 50,000 men gathered t
o learn about what it means to be “godly men.” Promise Keepers was incorporated in December of 1990 and held its first conference the following year. By 1993, McCartney’s vision of tens of thousands of men filling a stadium had become a reality.

  McCartney, who is white, cited his experience recruiting and working with black players as one of the reasons he made the decision to turn Promise Keepers toward racial reconciliation.2 In 1996, organizers for the annual conference chose the theme of “Break Down the Walls” and Ephesians 2:14: “For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.”3 In what was touted as the “world’s largest gathering of clergy,” 39,000 pastors of varying races, ethnicities, and denominations who attended the Promise Keepers rally in Atlanta ended their time in tears and hugs. “Better than any other national or visible movement, Promise Keepers is not only preaching racial reconciliation, but they are doing something about it,” said Silas Pinto, a Latino pastor who attended the rally.4