Race
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Within conservative evangelicalism, the cutting edge approach to race
today is the theme of "racial reconciliation." Ralph Reed seized on this
approach when he was executive director of the Christian Coalition, which
also later became a hallmark of the Promise Keepers (PK), which says
it seeks to eliminate race as a "barrier" to Christian brotherhood. Racial
reconciliation has been criticized as a superficial analysis of racism,
rooted in both religious and gender supremacy and used to deflect historic
and contemporary injustices to African Americans and Native Americans,
among others.39 Dr. Loretta Williams,
[Director, the Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Awards in the Study of
Bigotry and Human Rights], told a conference at Hampshire College in
1997 that the Promise Keepers are treating men of color as "trophy friends". "People
of color are there [at PK rallies] to be hugged" she said, "to be there
for the white male who is afraid of being labeled racist. The black male
is there to serve, once again." While people are talking about race,
she observed, "They are not talking about racial justice."40
One aspect of racial reconciliation involves public ceremonies featuring
people of different races mutually asking for forgiveness for past and
present transgressions. These requests for forgiveness, which can be
personal or on behalf of institutions, or even on behalf of one's race,
can be moving and often are authentic in spirit. Such ceremonies have
marked PK events, notably at the 1997 Stand in the Gap rally in Washington
DC. The notion of racial reconciliation was the brainchild of the late
Rev. John Perkins, an African American whose work was substantially bankrolled
by Christian Reconstructionist philanthropist, Howard Ahmanson.41 This
is significant in part because a central argument in Christian Reconstructionist
theory is that change comes through evangelization and conversion, and
that the government of the converted would be a biblical theocracy, for
which the blueprint has already been drafted.42 Reconstructionists,
like many on the Christian Right, oppose governmental intervention in
significant part because the government is not yet theocratic, and therefore
is illegitimate.
In one of the strangest alliances in recent American politics, Nation
of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan and Unification Church head Sun Myung
Moon joined as the principal sponsors of the Million Family March on
Washington, DC in October 2000. 43 The
two aging demagogues adapted the rubric of racial reconciliation in staging
the event. Like the overwhelmingly White Christian Right, the Black Nationalist
Nation of Islam and the Moon organization have sought to soften their
notorious reputations. Both have seized on images of racial and religious
inclusion in an effort to inoculate themselves against charges of racial
and religious bigotry that have defined each for decades. Echoing PK,
Rev. Chang Shik Yang, co-chairman of the march and a top official of
Moon's World Family Federation for Peace and Unification, (formerly known
as the Unification Church), called for "all the walls" of race and religion
to be torn down. "Color is meaningless," he said. "All human beings are
brothers and sisters in front of God."44 At
the rally, Farrakhan denounced abortion and implied that it was a White
plot. Despite these efforts by Moon and Farrakhan to divide the African
American and other people of color electorates with the "family values" rhetoric
of the Christian Right, in the 2000 elections even most socially conservative
African Americans and Hispanics stuck with the Democratic Party, where
their perceived economic and civil rights interests lay.
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