Not a White Church

I’ve written before about how I was steeped in whiteness and that included growing up in white churches. Someone who was there corrected me. They told me that those were not white churches. That got me to thinking. Why did I consider them white churches?

It wasn’t because everyone at the church was white. Everyone wasn’t white. I was there. My family was there. Other non-white families worshipped with us.

The preachers were white. Every one I can remember. In hindsight that’s disturbing, but that’s still not it.

The God was white. The Bible was white. The songs were white. I grew up in white churches, where I learned a white religion and practiced it in the manner of white people.

The songs were white. This was very clear. I still have a copy of the songbook we used, Songs of Faith and Praise.

Not all the songs were white. There is a whole section of “Spirituals,” from pages 952 to 989. Occasionally, an ambitious song leader would draw something from that section. To my ears it never went well. For the most part we chose from the other thousand or so pages, the white songs.

The Bible was white. I mostly read from the New International Version but occasionally from the New King James or even the King James Version. Some of the older, more conservative congregants had a special affinity for the King James.

The King James Version was commissioned by the king of England and Scotland in 1604 and completed in 1611 under the authority of the Anglican Church. It was, quite literally, a Bible for white people, by white people.¹

The New International Version was more modern. It wasn’t just for white people. It was a new, modern translation put together by a collection of white people called evangelicals. They wanted to bring Christianity to everyone, so non-white people would be more like them.

We didn’t have any pictures of God in church so it wasn’t obvious he was white. But his obsession with rules seemed pretty white to me. This is a guy that would torture you for eternity for the smallest possible infraction.

My favorite sushi restaurant has an open kitchen. I like to look inside. And I’m pretty sure when I do that everyone I see working there is Latino. But they are still making Japanese food. It is still a Japanese restaurant.

The churches I grew up in are far more racially diverse than I think is common in the United States. But the food wrs the same. It’s a white church.