I was surprised to see a story in the Seattle Times about evangelicals saying ‘we repent’ about racism, mainly because the writer isn’t known for her coverage of people of faith and the newspaper hasn’t exactly been burning the midnight oil on religion news.
Especially anything having to do with evangelicals.
So I was surprised to see how this story hit up a lot of the major players in the region on this issue. It’s as if someone in the newsroom discovered a long-disused Rolodex of religion sources and actually used it. In the five years I’ve lived here and been reading the Times regularly, I’ve never seen any of these folks — black or white — quoted before.
Here is what social issues reporter Nina Shapiro came up with:
Joseph Castleberry, president of Northwest University, an evangelical school in Kirkland, was sitting at his desk in early May when he started seeing Facebook posts about a Black man killed while jogging through a coastal Georgia town.
As Castleberry read about 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery, fatally shot by white men shown on video chasing him down, he said: “It just broke my heart.”…
Having grown up in small-town Alabama where racism was front and center, Castleberry, whose photo runs with this piece, decided he had to speak out.
Around the same time, Harvey Drake, an African American pastor presiding over Emerald City Bible Fellowship, in Seattle’s Rainier Valley, was also issuing a call — on Facebook, naming Castleberry and other white evangelical leaders he considers influential. “I’m tired of apologies and I’m tired of sympathy,” Drake said, explaining the gist. “There’s got to be something else you can do.” He suggested a news conference or an open letter.
Castleberry already was drafting a condemnation of the Arbery killing and statement of solidarity with African Americans he wanted the university’s board members to approve, which they did. Spurred on by Drake, he invited evangelical leaders nationwide to sign it. Eight hundred have done so.
Castleberry also sent it to Scott Dudley, senior pastor of a 4,000-member evangelical congregation at Bellevue Presbyterian Church. Dudley broadened it into a letter of lament and repentance, and nearly 200 pastors from around the region signed that.
Northwest University, by the way, is affiliated with the Assemblies of God, which makes it Pentecostal as well as evangelical — an important distinction. Whereas there is some debate over whether the Assemblies of God is one of the more integrated of the American denominations, this RNS story says its younger members are extremely diverse — which fits with the movement’s history.
Bellevue Pres, as the locals call it, is a huge evangelical crossroads. Bellevue, the home of Bill Gates, the world’s second-richest man, is very well-to-do and where a lot of the white flight from semi-socialist Seattle has gone.
While many churches often advocate social justice, white evangelicals are better known for opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. They consequently voted in overwhelming numbers for President Donald Trump even as he was giving succor to white nationalists by calling Mexican immigrants rapists. While evangelical churches and schools sometimes engaged in “racial reconciliation,” they did not generally offer searing indictments of racism or advance deep societal changes.
That second sentence is grossly unfair in that it implies that evangelicals approved of Trump’s rhetoric.
Many evangelicals didn’t vote for Trump because of his views on Mexicans; they voted for him because the alternative, Hillary Clinton, was (in their minds) worse. Tmatt has written about this again and again. Read both of those GetReligion posts.
“I think it is a tipping point, honestly,” said Royce Yuen, pastor of Common Good Church in Bellevue. Pastors — including, he said, Asian Americans like him who often come out of the white evangelical tradition — are talking about racism from the pulpit.
Whereas some evangelical churches took part in the protests (of which there were a lot in Seattle), had study sessions on the topic and invited in speakers on racism, others hesitated because of the lefty focus of the actual Black Lives Matter organization.
Yet, some half-dozen pastors spoke passionately about Black lives and white privilege at a prayer rally Yuen helped organize at Bellevue’s Downtown Park in late June, attended by several hundred people from 15 churches.
A video of that gathering is atop this piece. The article then quotes from a bunch of evangelical notables, including a professor from Seattle Pacific University (left-of-center evangelical), local pastors at the rally and GetReligion contributor Ryan Burge, who talked about Trump’s approval ratings among white evangelicals dropping by 10 percentage points or more.
Still, Burge is skeptical of how far these changes go. He said the evangelical elite tends to be more moderate than the rank and file. … Pastors who stray too far from their congregants’ views, Burge said, risk being fired.
Interestingly, the piece says that exact phenomenon is happening at Bellevue Pres and Northwest University.
After Floyd’s death, hundreds of congregants poured onto Bellevue Way carrying signs saying “racial justice” and “peace.” Bellevue Presbyterian put a message on its website celebrating Juneteenth.
Still, the focus on racism has angered some people in the congregation, who feel the church is turning political, and a few have left, Dudley said.
Castleberry said he has gotten questions about a scholarship in Floyd’s name he created. “People want to know, why are you doing that?”
In all, the article hit almost every base.
A few black pastors were interviewed, many of them glad to see some change among the area’s white Christian elite but wary of whether the change will stick.
Bishop Garry Tyson of Goodwill Missionary Baptist Church in Seattle grew up in Florida seeing Ku Klux Klansmen lighting crosses. Decades later in Seattle, Tyson, who is Black, came out of a bookstore to find police, investigating a bank robbery, pointing a rifle at his 13- and 14-year-old children, who had been waiting in the car.
Asked about white evangelical pastors speaking out about racism, Tyson said: “They do not get it. And when they say they get it, they still don’t get it.”
I said “almost” in the above paragraph because there was one thing missing in the entire story — women.
Every person quoted was male, which leaves one to wonder if anyone who is anyone in the local black or white church cultures has to be a guy. Those of us who’ve been steeped in evangelicalism for many years know that gender, not race is the last line to be crossed. I have lost count of how many times I’ve seen conferences listed in evangelical magazines where the range of all-male faces on the brochure shows a variety of black, Hispanic and Asian personalities.
As for women? Don’t hold your breath.
There are black female pastors in Seattle, and I quoted one, the Rev. Hariett Walden of Mothers for Police Accountability in this piece several weeks ago.
Other than that, the article covered a lot of ground, touched on many of the local evangelical power brokers and taught me about a lot of folks I wasn’t aware of. It’s the kind of piece the Seattle Times could — and should — do more of but sadly, because of the lack of a religion reporter, it doesn’t. When I moved here five years ago, I contacted the paper, asking about a religion beat, and was told they didn’t have the money. Soon after that, they hired a new reporter to cover the real-estate beat.
About 16 months ago, after I published a large piece in the Times Sunday magazine about Delilah Rene, a local evangelical star who is the most listened-to woman on American radio, I put out some feelers again to the paper about whether they would like some occasional religion news.
I was told there was no budget. And until the powers that be stop making excuses, truly insightful pieces in the Times about the undercurrents of local faith community will remain rare.