(3.5 rounded up to 4)

“There can be no justice without the truth.”

[FYI- I had to cut a lot out because Goodreads doesn't give me enough space. Check out my full review here]

I knew reading this book would be a struggle for me. I would have to come face-to-face with the atrocities done to black people in America’s past, largely based on a gross misuse of the very Bible that would eventually free them. I love the church, the bride of Christ, and my first reaction is always to defend God’s people. But the church is not a museum for saints. It’s a hospital for sinners. And the church is not immune from sin. I hate that the church strayed so far from God’s heart and his Word in relation to slavery, segregation, and racial inequality. There is no acceptable excuse.

‘The Color of Compromise’ was written to expose the reality of the church’s complicity in racism and I think it did that pretty clearly. I will say that there are parts of this book that concern me and I will discuss those in the second half of this review. (Regardless, please consider pairing Tisby’s book with Confronting Injustice without Compromising Truth for a fuller picture)

But first:

“The failure of many Christians in the South and across the nation to decisively oppose the racism in their families, communities, and even in their own churches provided fertile soil for the seeds of hatred to grow… Indifference to oppression perpetuates oppression.”

I think what made this book so effective, at least for me, was the chronological structure and the emphasis on the theme of missed opportunities. With each era Tisby addresses, he points out that things could have been corrected here and turned around. People could have repented and acknowledged their sin and moved in the right direction. But with each opportunity, the people double-downed, whether from pride, fear, sin, or likely a combination of all three, I don’t know, but they refused to allow progress. Each era of missed opportunities compounds on each other, which is what I believe the claim of ‘systemic’ racism refers to.

“At a key moment in the life of our nation, one that called for moral courage, the American church responded to much of the civil rights movement with passivity, indifference, or even outright opposition.”

I think for a lot of people, slavery, segregation, and racism are all kind of balled up into this one big ‘event’ (for lack of a better word). We see it as a combined thing in history. Laid out like Tisby did, to start with the Colonial era, then the Revolution, Antebellum, Civil War, and then Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, the formation of the Religious Right, and then into the era of the Black Lives Matter movement, it forces us to recognize in a more concrete way the span of racism in its different forms. It takes away our ability to view it as ‘that one time history when slavery happened.’

And as a Christian, it was very eye-opening and disheartening to see the complicity Tisby has disclosed. Christian figures like John Newton, George Whitefield, and Jonathan Edwards all owned slaves at one point. Many Christians saw black people with spiritual equality— meaning they needed to be evangelized and saved and thus were spiritually equal— but somehow did not think they deserved equality in any other manner.

Lynchings happened on church grounds. The KKK contained 40,000 ministers as members and preachers encouraged from the pulpit to join it. Churches maintained segregation and even created Christian schools to keep out black children. Tisby acknowledges that there were many Christians who opposed slavery and segregation but did not do anything about it. Churches split and whole denominations were founded based on differing viewpoints of how black people should be treated, and people refused to see it any differently.

I think before reading this book I would have conceded that there were probably some Christians that got it wrong and supported slavery but that most Christians throughout history were abolitionists and fought for racial equality. It was disturbing to find out how wrong I was.

“American Christians at this time chose to turn a blind eye to the separation of families, the scarring of bodies, the starvation of stomachs, and the generational trauma of slavery… preferring the political and financial advantages that came with human bondage instead of decrying the dehumanization they saw.”

What was most frustrating to me was that the biblical defense Christians used at the time to support slavery and a ‘superior race’ is wack: According to Tisby their main passage they referred to was when Noah’s son walked in on his nakedness and so Noah cursed Canaan, Ham’s son; therefore, they reasoned the different races descended from these 3 sons and that black people, supposedly descended from Canaan were to ‘serve his brothers’, aka other races. (Gen 9) And somehow this apparently made more sense to the people than the opposing interpretation which required, Tisby said, more ‘explanation’ about the difference between the slavery in the Bible and what Americans were doing, the lack of evidence in a racial genealogy from Ham, Canaan’s curse was already fulfilled, etc. That it was letter of the law vs spirit of the law.

“Christians in the South believed the Bible approved of slavery since the Bible never clearly condemned slavery and even provided instructions for its regulation.”

But the Bible does explicitly addresses slavery. For starters (though Tisby did not include these in this book):

1 Timothy 1:9-10- “the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners… the sexually immoral, men who practice homosexuality, enslavers, and liars, perjurers…” (emphasis mine)

all of Philemon- a letter Paul wrote to Onesimus’ slave owner calling on him to consider Onesimus a brother and calling Onesimus “my very heart.”

And to think somehow Christians justified what they did to black people, not just enslaving them but the violence, is absolutely insane. I do not understand it. Some of the accounts Tisby tells are very hard to read. You’ll probably fluctuate between rage and sadness.

Another theme I found throughout this book that I found to be quite powerful, was the recognition of black people’s faith in the same God that enslavers and racists claimed to worship. What a powerful testament to the perseverance and endurance that Paul talks about in his letters. When they are given every reason to reject the God used to justify their despair, they clutched the true hand of God and His Word, trusting God with the outcome. We would do well to learn from their incredible faith.

“Despite the racism black Christians experienced they did not abandon the faith. In fact, the decades before the Civil War served as an incubator for a newborn black American Christianity. Black Christians began developing distinctive practices that would come to characterize the historic black church tradition… The faith of black Christians helped them endure and even inspired some believers to resist oppression."

“One of the primary reasons black people showed so much enthusiasm about reading was because they were finally able to read the Bible for themselves.”

It was humbling to be reminded that white evangelists were arrogant to think that they were the saviors of black people when we see in the Bible that black people had long before been introduced to Christ. Fervor for evangelism is admirable, but if it’s disconnected from humility, compassion, listening and discernment, we could be doing more harm than good. Christianity is found in many different cultures and we must recognize that people don’t worship God in the same ways, and that’s a beautiful picture of God’s diverse family, not a distinction that needs to be remedied.

The strength of this book is in its exposure and recounting of the injustices done to black people in American history and connecting the church to direct and indirect historic complicity. For that reason, I believe this book is worth reading. It will change your understanding of the past and better inform your truth. Truth that is essential to justice.

However, I did find some things that were problematic and hinder our pursuit of truth: inklings of Critical Race Theory (CRT), using false equivalence, lack of clear problem-identifying, a seeming downplay of the gospel, attributing motives where we can’t, including ‘power’ in a definition of racism, and using buzzwords that mean different things to different people and cause a discussion to be more convoluted than clear. Let me explain.

He claims numerous times: “Racism never goes away. It just adapts.” This was my first red flag among many subsequent red flags (mostly in the last couple chapters) that seem to align with a lot of CRT ideology. A main pillar of CRT is that oppressors (white people) will always be racist; they can progress along a spectrum, but they can never escape their privilege and oppressor status. The world is always divided between the oppressed and the oppressors.

I find this to be a little alarming. While I don’t believe it discredits his historical account and facts regarding the church in the past, I do believe it taints his perspective on racism in America today and how he believes the church should be responding right now. CRT is really an entire worldview in its self, attempting to answer questions about who we are, what our purpose is, where our identity lies, and where morality is founded. And their answers do not line up with Scripture.

Another tell-tale sign of CRT is the claiming that there really is nothing we, as white people can do.

Can we apologize?
“Reparation is not a matter of vengeance or charity; it’s a matter of justice… saying “I’m sorry” is not enough. Expressing remorse may begin the process of healing, but somehow that which was damaged must be restored.”

Can we read and learn more to become more aware?
“But awareness isn’t enough. No matter how aware you are, your knowledge will remain abstract and theoretical until you care about the people who face the negative consequences of racism.”

So we also need to invest in relationships and hear people’s stories?
“To be clear, friendships and conversations are necessary, but they are not sufficient to change the racial status quo.”

But aren’t we seeing progress and changes in people’s attitudes toward black people and their tragic history?
“Certainly, changing attitudes can be viewed as a form of progress, but it is also helpful to remember that such positive perspectives on the [civil rights] movement have not always been popular.”

Okay then, we won’t get too excited by signs of progress. Can we work towards changes in legislation to try to correct systemic and institutionalized racism?
“Though it was necessary to enact civil rights legislation, you cannot erase four hundred years of race-based oppression by passing a few laws.” 

Okay, then. So we can apologize, learn, care, change our attitudes, and change the laws, but it’s not enough. Because remember, racism will always exist.

“In previous eras, racism among Christian believers was much easier to detect and identify. Professing believers openly used racial slurs, participated in beatings and lynchings, fought wars to preserve slavery, or used the Bible to argue for the inherent inferiority of black people. And those who did not openly resist these actions—those who remained silent— were complicit in their acceptance. Since the 1970s, Christian complicity in racism has become more difficult to discern. It is hidden, but that does not mean it no longer exists...we must remember: racism never goes away; it adapts.”

So to paraphrase that quote: “We can clearly identify racism in the past because it was public, violent, and overtly expressing ideology of inferior people based on race, but now people don’t do these things. But don’t be fooled into thinking we’ve made progress. I just can’t see it or hear it and can’t identify it. But we all know it’s there. Because it has to be. And it’s because of Christians.”

Thaddeus J. Williams, in his book Confronting Christianity without Compromising Truth, calls out this redefinition of words that has come to be attached to social justice. In this quote we are seeing a new definition of racism being applied. As Williams says:

“Advocates of [unbiblical social justice] say violence doesn’t go away; it morphs, it adapts, it shape-shifts into new forms. Any Christian who stands condemned under the new definition [of racism] is then saddled with the blame of those who were guilty under the old definition, and are called to repent for their ancestors’ violence and their complicity with church-sponsored “violence” today… we are told that this sin [of racism] is the same old sin; it just looks different today than it did in the 1750s or the 1950s. In this way, we can use the new definition to heap historic guilt of racism under the old definition on our Christian brothers and sisters in the present tense. This leads to the body parts of Christ’s church turning to scratch and beat one another instead of celebrating together that “there is now therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

This particular paragraph of Tisby’s gave me pause:

“Christian complicity with racism in the twenty-first century looks different than complicity with racism in the past. It looks like Christians responding to Black Lives Matter with the phrase all lives matter. It looks like Christians consistently supporting a president whose racism has been on display for decades. It looks like Christians telling black people and their allies that their attempts to bring up racial concerns are “divisive.” It looks like conversations on race that focus on individual relationships and are unwilling to discuss systemic solutions. Perhaps Christian complicity in racism has not changed much after all. Although the characters and the specifics are new, many of the same rationalizations for racism remain.”

Tisby seems to uphold this new definition of racism and is applying it to all Christians. The moral difference between these, somewhat unfair statements, and what occurred during slavery and segregation is vastly different.

[Click the link at the top for the large chunk of review missing right here-- and sorry for the inconvenience!]

The Color of Compromise is worth reading to increase our awareness and understanding, but I would implore you to read MORE than this book. The pursuit of justice is a pursuit of truth, and we must be willing to ask hard questions of complex issues.