The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism

Tisby argues that along with political conflicts between the Union and the Confederacy during the Civil War, theological tensions emerged as Southern Christians used the Bible to defend the Confederate cause. He emphasizes that the Christian stance of supporting enslavement in the South demonstrates the interaction between race and religion and the contradictions inherent in the country and the church.

Tisby provides concrete evidence of The Historical Complicity of The American Church in Racism by tracing how the growing division between North and South, between abolitionists and defenders of enslavement, affected the unity of the American church. He argues that enslavement was at the heart of the “schism” between Northern and Southern denominations, as church leaders could not collectively agree whether to oppose or support enslavement. Tisby further underscores the complicity of the church by discussing the fact that Southern Christians formulated “complex theological arguments” to present a positive image of enslavement and support the Confederacy (79). Publishing treatises and using passages from the Scriptures, Christians made the inferiority of Black people “a requirement of biblical orthodoxy” (80). By highlighting how the Bible became a political tool for Southern theologians to challenge abolitionists, Tisby presents the theological dimension of the Civil War conflict.

Tisby reinforces this analysis by continuing to cite the specific theological ideas that Christians used to justify or excuse racism and/or the practice of enslavement. As Tisby argues, during Reconstruction, the white Christian stance contributed to the rise of Jim Crow and the reinstatement of a white supremacist society. The racial progress achieved during the promising Reconstruction period, with the inclusion of Black people in the social and political life of the country, was soon overturned by racist attitudes. Specifically, Tisby claims that white people in the South developed political ideologies and narratives with theological dimensions to disenfranchise Black people. Tisby argues, for example, that the myth of the “lost cause,” which romanticized the antebellum South, was an amalgamation of “Civil War memory and Christian dogma” (94). This myth represented the Confederacy as an “idyllic civilization” invaded by the North and used Christian symbolism to emphasize their position of suffering and loss. The “lost cause” functioned as an “alternative history” that obscured the brutal past of Black people’s enslavement in the South, reinforcing Confederate imagery and segregation in the church. Thus, Tisby links the general social attitudes about racism to specific theological claims within the Church.

Similarly, Tisby examines how Southerners extended the biblical narrative to political ends by appropriating the biblical term “redemption.” Tisby illustrates that “redemption” posed an alternative to Reconstruction as Southerners sought to reinstate the white supremacist racial hierarchy, using theological terminology. The KKK also linked Christianity and religious themes to white supremacy, creating a racist narrative that mainstream white Christians defended. Ultimately, the rise of Jim Crow achieved that end, legalizing segregation and the subordination of Black people in the South after emancipation. Tisby indicates that Jim Crow was a new form of enslavement that sustained white supremacy through racial terror, rape, lynchings, and prohibition of interracial relationships. His analysis highlights The Historical Complicity of the American Church in Racism: The Church remained silent and indifferent toward the renewed forms of violence and oppression against Black people.

Finally, Tisby shows how the Church also adopted theological principles to justify its inaction in the face of racism and white supremacy. He refers to the fact that the Southern church emphasized the idea of “spirituality” to repudiate its connection to racism. Tisby argues that the emphasis on spirituality demonstrated how the American church formed “dualities between physical and spiritual, moral and political, ecclesiastical and social” to abdicate responsibility in Black people’s oppression (85). The doctrine of spirituality allowed the church to support spiritual deliverance but refrain from taking a stand on the issue of enslavement. Hence, the church also adopted a stance of silent complicity to racism during a critical historical moment. Connecting this complicity to specific theological ideas within white Christian churches indirectly bolsters Tisby’s claim about Black Christianity as a Source of Empowerment, since it indicates that the racism and white supremacy rife in the church at the time was a matter of specific theological ideas—ideas that deviated from traditional Christian teaching—rather than a matter of the inherent nature of Christianity itself. Thus, it lends credence to Tisby’s argument that Christianity can be a source of empowerment for Black people in spite of its historical collusion with racism and white supremacy.