How Can We Get “Race Relations” Right?
In 1931 on the campus of Eastern Mennonite School (now University) in Harrisonburg, Virginia, a student literary program featured “a stirring debate on the ever-live question: should the Negro enjoy equal privileges with the white race?” That jolting title caught my attention recently as I read Don Kraybill’s engaging history of EMU. I was relieved, just a little, to learn that the student—a Northerner—arguing for the affirmative was judged to be the winner of the debate.
A few years later, in the spring of 1936, mission-minded EMU students organized a Sunday School for children in Harrisonburg, with one session in the morning for whites, and one in the afternoon for African Americans. Kraybill notes that, though some Mennonites at the time were against segregation, local and state laws forbade integrated meetings. According to one student, “We probably would have had a riot if we had tried to hold a mixed service. People in Harrisonburg would have risen up against us.”
When does fitting in with the status quo become moral compromise and complicity with injustice?
Those episodes in Mennonite history are now nearly a century old, but they bring into focus ongoing questions about how Christians relate to unjust social structures. When is it right to quietly comply with the law, and when does fitting in with the status quo become moral compromise and complicity in injustice?
You’ve probably heard someone say, “You know, there are sincere Christians on both sides of that issue; I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree.” Often that’s a healthy way forward. But sometimes it becomes clear, especially in retrospect, that one group of those sincere Christians was simply wrong—for example, the Christians who argued against “equal privileges.”
The question of when and how to actively advocate for social change is particularly complicated for Christians with a long history of avoiding political involvement. That’s our theological heritage. All the way back in 1527, the Schleitheim articles affirmed for an early gathering of Anabaptists that, though “the sword is ordained by God,” it is “outside the perfection of Christ.” The Anabaptist refusal to assist in the state’s use of the sword quickly resulted in their social marginalization and persecution, and eventually led to a way of life that expected to remain outside of the processes of law and governance.
So perhaps it’s not surprising that in the 1930s, Mennonites, with their Anabaptist roots, were not inclined to challenge the status quo. Additionally, EMU was a culturally conservative college. Conservatives are, by definition, predisposed to conserve what is rather than push for change. That impulse, coupled with non-involvement politically, is perhaps enough to explain why most Mennonites, including CMC Mennonites, weren’t involved very much in efforts to challenge segregation or other enduring legacies of the era of slavery in America.
From the vantage point of the early 21st century, it looks like easy complacency. And perhaps even complicity. When EMU students were launching their segregated Sunday schools in the 1930s and recognized the uncomfortableness of quietly complying with the racial segregation mandated by the laws of Virginia, one refrain was, “You can’t fight City Hall.”
If there is a special danger for Christians whose convictions have generally led them to stay outside of politics, it’s perhaps the tendency to fall back on non-involvement when issues do not directly affect them, but set aside those convictions when something comes along that does.
Just a few years later, faced with the prospect of universal military conscription as the U.S. entered the Second World War, Mennonite leaders collaborated in sending a delegation to Washington to appeal for special consideration for their peace churches. In response, the Civilian Public Service program was launched as an alternative for young men who were conscientious objectors. Engaging the structures of power and advocating for change seemed necessary under those circumstances.
It’s easier to identify mistakes in the past than it is to make good choices in the present. And recognizing that mistakes were made does not answer the question of what good choices look like now.
What are we complacent about that future generations will look back on and ask, “What were they thinking? How could they live passively in the face of that, rather than using whatever influence they had to pursue change?”
We can’t change what they did.
But we have our own decisions to make.
4 Responses
Thanks for this article and for the challenge to think more about these issues. One source of ongoing tension for me is the apparent complacency of the church or portions of the church on certain social issues in contrast to the high levels of engagement from secular activists. What does it look like for the church to get more involved and not just be the religious folks walking right on by like in the story of the Good Samaritan? Or young people feeling like to really make an impact, they have to join a non-church initiative because their church is not doing anything…
Thanks for this historical reflection and invitation to consider its implication for faithful Christian witness today. In addition to the example you cited of selective political engagement in relation to the draft, one might also note the more recent resistance of conservative Anabaptist groups to government mask mandates on the grounds of religious freedom while eschewing political involvement related to the reformation of the criminal justice and immigration systems.
Thanks Jon! Fun to hear references to my home state here. This issue of “when to engage” seems also relevant me to when broader movements in my larger church connections cross personal convictions. It’s a difficult thing.
Thanks, Jon. The decisions we have to make aren’t easy ones, for sure! My mentor was recently sharing about a book he was reading–“Cousins,” by Betty Kilby Baldwin and Phoebe Kilby. It’s been a fascinating read. I find it pretty easy to be against racism in my mind, but story helps me think more deeply about myself. I still don’t know what to do with the very different ways that African Americans and “my people” (Amish youth) are treated in the legal system here in northern Indiana.