The Whitewashed Sepulchre

There was a brief period in American public discourse when white people, and not just liberals, actually acknowledged their racism. I'd say it lasted from the 1960s to 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan. After that white people were exempt from such unpleasant exercises of introspection. Reagan himself could openly campaign against "welfare queens," a crocodilian segregationist like Strom Thurmond could be rehabilitated as a cuddly mainstream politician (and his habit of groping the clerical help passed off as 'an eye for the ladies'), but they were no longer accused of being racists. African-Americans who said otherwise were themselves charged with playing the race card.

This whitewashing coincided with a dramatic rise in the power and influence of fundamentalist, evangelical churches led by figures like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, Ted Haggard, and John Hagee. Some of those churches, whose ministry and congregations were predominantly white, had provided segregation with much of its theological armor. Or, to slightly alter the metaphor, they had been the keep into which whites could retreat after the Episcopalians, the Methodists, and even some Baptists went over to the enemy. That was part of the reason for their popularity.

Another reason for their popularity had to do with the way they defined sin, or rather, with where they located it. Like their Puritan precursors, the old fundamentalist congregations were haunted by the presentiment of personal guilt and the prospect of personal damnation. Their ministers glared down from the pulpit and railed at the failings of the men and women sitting in the pews below. They scolded them for sloth and adultery, drinking, gambling, blasphemy, worldliness. Going to those churches was like walking into the woodshed where your father waited with a handful of switches and made you select the one he would thrash you with. It couldn't have been pleasant. And, of course, outsiders made fun of you for your masochistic scrupulosity. Think of the way the media made fun of Jimmy Carter for admitting that he had committed adultery in his heart.

But the new breed of fundamentalists were unconcerned by the sins of their congregations. The sins that galvanized them were taking place elsewhere-- in abortion clinics and college classrooms, in gay bars, in the courts. Who cared about adultery? The preachers stopped scolding their flocks. They congratulated them. And the flocks congratulated themselves. From time to time, they might be reminded that they were sinners and hang their heads. But a moment later the sermon would swing back to homosexuals and the ACLU, and everyone would be happy again.

Racism is as common as any other sin, and as ugly, and it must be owned the way other sins are before it can be rooted out or made less noxious. But this can never happen in a church that locates sin elsewhere. To the members of such a churches, the only racists are people like Al Sharpton and the Reverend Wright.