What role did white American Christians play in supporting and perpetuating slavery? What lessons does the past have to offer the struggle for racial justice today?   William Yoo, an associate professor of American religion and cultural history at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Georgia, took questions August 6 during an online discussion with the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s ’s Special Committee on Racism, Truth and Reconciliation, which the General Assembly created in 2018 and which will report to the next assembly in 2022. This was the second piece of a two-part conversation — following an Aug. 5 discussion on reparations with Presbyterian minister Mark Lomax. In providing his answers, Yoo drew on an essay he wrote that’s posted on the Columbia Seminary website — an essay that examines the efforts of Presbyterian minister James Henley Thornwell to search for a “middle way” between condemning and extolling slavery – in other words, to avoid schism … [Read more...]

What about reparations? The Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)’s Special Committee on Racism, Truth and Reconciliation – which the General Assembly created in 2018, and will report to the next assembly in 2022 – dug into that concept and talked about what’s needed for a mostly-white denomination to have honest discussions about race during an online conversation Aug. 5 with Mark Lomax, who is pastor of First Afrikan Church in Lithonia, Georgia, and an associate professor of homiletics and worship at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. Lomax also served for three years on the PC(USA)’s Task Force on Reparations, which reported to the General Assembly in 2004. Why reparations? Reparations for Black Americans asks for a nation to consider the humanity of people who have been “grievously harmed for over 400 years,” Lomax said — by enslavement; by sharecropping (“a perpetual system of impoverishment”); by systems using incarcerated people to provide cheap … [Read more...]