When will Christians learn from the unending engagement cycle of evangelicalism and race?
As the executive director of the Wheaton College Billy Graham Center, one of my joys is leading people through our museum. Filled with historical artifacts and pictures, it’s a testimony to God’s faithfulness. One of my favorite pictures is of Billy Graham standing next to Martin Luther King Jr. I start by telling people how Graham took down segregation ropes for his meetings in the South.
But the story doesn’t stop there. Historian Grant Wacker notes that as the civil rights movement intensified, Graham distanced himself from King by attempting to chart a moderate path. Decades later, Graham himself would speak of his lack of engagement in the civil rights movement as one of his great regrets.
This same story of engagement, retreat and regret has come to define an evangelical culture that is bigger than Billy Graham. For more than a century, the broader evangelical movement has been in a cycle of engagement when opportunities arise, retreat when pressures and obstacles intensify, and regret at the failure to achieve any lasting change. Worse, the burden of this regret too frequently falls on evangelicals of color, as they are left abandoned only to be greeted with new promises next cycle.
In this context, the evangelical movement embarked on its newest episode recently when evangelist and writer Josh McDowell stepped away from his ministry after making comments about race on Sept. 18 at a meeting of the American Association of Christian Counselors.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/09/28/bible-evangelicals-duty-fight-racism/5847173001/
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