Enslaved Christians, Tisby writes, were “encouraged to be content with their spiritual liberation and obedient as slaves.”ĭuring the Civil War, pastors like J. But the Anglicans of the Virginia General Assembly broke decisively with this tradition by condemning their black brothers and sisters to perpetual slavery. According to Church of England tradition, Christian brothers and sisters could not enslave one another. The book begins in the colonial era, examining debates about whether evangelizing and baptizing slaves would confer freedom upon an enslaved person. Instead, as Tisby demonstrates, Christians chose again and again to propagate the American racial caste system. The Color of Compromise corrects the record by surveying key points in American history where the tide of racial oppression could have been turned back-or at least minimized-had the church stood against it. Brutal racial injustice would not have persisted as long as it did, Tisby writes, without “the relative silence, if not outright support, of one of the most significant institutions in America-the Christian church.” The Path of Least Resistance And admirable as they are, they can’t be allowed to obscure the underlying truth: Many white Christians actively participated in racism, and many more sat idly by as it infected every inch of American life. Of course, as Tisby points out, that these exemplars were small in number and greatly abused by fellow Christians for speaking against racial bigotry.
Others, confronted with the church’s inadequate response, shift attention to a multiracial cast of heroic figures-like William Wilberforce, Francis Grimke, or Martin Luther King Jr.-whose contributions paint the church in a better light. Because this history is so painful to remember, many believers would rather bury it. Kaffee, demanding that American Christians learn and teach the hard truth about the church’s complicity in racial injustice.įor far too long, some in the church have assumed the defiant pose of Col. In The Color of Compromise, Jemar Tisby (president of the black Christian collective The Witness) adopts the posture of Lt. At the climax of the 1992 classic A Few Good Men, Colonel Nathan Jessup (Jack Nicholson) famously screams, “You can’t handle the truth!” Responding to questions from Lieutenant Daniel Kaffee (Tom Cruise) about a military cover-up, he confirms his role in the scandal but maintains that the public would rather not know the ugly and gory details of his job.
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