A role in the future, and a reconciliation with the past

February is Black History Month and this year the Canadian government has chosen the theme: “30 Years of Black History Month: Honouring Black Brilliance Across Generations — From Nation Builders to Tomorrow’s Visionaries.”

The hope is to celebrate and honour Black people and their contributions to their communities and country, and to also look forward to tomorrow’s visionaries and empower the next generation creating “a narrative that is both commemorative and forward-looking.” Austin Channing Brown notes in her 2018 book I’m Still Here: “Only by being truthful about how we got here can we begin to imagine another way.”

In other words, sometimes we have to look back in order to move forward. This is important work.

This work becomes especially important when we consider the many ways Black history is being attacked and whitewashed today.

Due to this reality, Clint Smith recently wrote about how crucial it is to maintain private museums. He offered the example of the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Ala., which “is privately funded, receiving no state or federal financial support.” This allows the museum the freedom to depict the very history being de-emphasized across the United States.

It would seem to me that this degree of separation from government is not only important for museums, it is also important for churches.

In his “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King Jr. wrote: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool.”

Unfortunately, many churches have lost their willingness to be a guide or a critic of the state and have instead conflated Christianity with some version of Christian nationalism, choosing to become a servant of the state over a servant of Jesus Christ.

This kind of conflation leads churches away from the messiness of history for the sake of power and comfort, which ultimately weakens its ability to play a role in dismantling racial injustice.

In the Apostle Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians he makes clear that Christ reconciled us to himself and in doing so entrusted us with the ministry and message of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18-19), which should most certainly include racial reconciliation.

Therefore, churches must not turn their backs on this calling, but rather face the truth and allow the Spirit of God to bring about transformation. Brown reminds us that this work is both haunting and holy.

But, too often, because the work is challenging we tend to throw up our hands and declare: “I’ve never owned a slave! I’ve never attended a lynching! I’ve never supported segregation! So, why should I be made to feel guilty about these things?”

While it may be true that we haven’t personally contributed to these realities, we must remember that understanding the past isn’t about pointing fingers in the present for the sake of making people feel guilty.

A good example of this can be found in Germany, where people approach their country’s history in a way that allows them to come to terms with the past, while rejecting collective guilt in the present, and still emphasizing a “never again” ethos for the future.

They are not defined by their past, but remain accountable for the present and responsible for the future. In a similar way, the historical atrocities found throughout Black history don’t have to define who we are, but as the director of the Legacy Museum points out: “We can’t not talk about it and have a proper understanding of who we are.” For this reason the museum forces visitors to confront the past and does not give them an option to avoid hard truths.

Churches must also not avoid the hard truths contained in their past, which include contributions to racial injustice.

If churches refuse to look back, they will have an improper understanding of themselves and will not only be unable to move forward, but will remain vulnerable to further confusion about what it means to follow Jesus.

Again, from Birmingham Jail King wrote these words, which are as relevant today as ever: “If the church will free itself from the shackles of a deadening status quo, and, recovering its great historic mission, will speak and act fearlessly and insistently in terms of justice and peace, it will enkindle the imagination of mankind and fire the souls of men, imbuing them with a glowing and ardent love for truth, justice, and peace.”

My hope is that by engaging in Black History Month we will all be reminded that, although racial injustice seeks to asphyxiate our imagination of what could be, the Spirit of God offers us “an imagination with supernatural lungs,” as Malcolm Foley put it. May an expanded imagination be but a first step in moving forward, because as Brenda Salter McNeil insists: “We have to give feet to our prayers.”

Riley Enns is an armchair theologian and the pastor at Church of the Way in Winnipeg.