Divided by Faith reading response

The recurring question in my mind as I read Divided by Faith was how can white evangelicals be brought to see structural issues and not just individual problems in race relations? This lead to a second question, viz. how have I learned to see structurally and not just individually, because in the not so distant past I was a prototypical white evangelical. I remember thinking many of the things that Emerson and Smith heard from white evangelicals, e.g. “We don’t have racism here. I think it’s in your big cities” or “yes there’s a race problem here, but it’s not as bad as people make it out to be.” In particular, I recall thinking about problems completely individualistically, that if individuals just tried hard enough they could overcome their disadvantages etc. Somehow, however, my thinking changed over the last ten years and today I tend to think more like Marx than Horatio Alger.

The pressing question for me, then, is how did that happen? How did I as a white, more or less evangelical, Christian come to see differently? Because if I can figure that out maybe I can help other white evangelicals think differently.

To be honest I probably need to chalk something up to my cynicism; it just makes sense that the system is rigged, prejudiced against certain groups. However, my cynic nature would not have been stirred without the education I have received. Ironically, education is a notoriously difficult variable to predict; for example, according to James Loewen, people with a college education disproportionately supported the Viet Nam war. Likewise, Emerson and Smith note that while well educated Euro-American evangelicals are more likely to be highly segregated from African-Americans, because they possess the keys to the “American dream” and are therefore more likely to live in exclusive suburbs and occupy the elite positions that African-Americans are inhibited from holding. Education alone does not answer the question.

If education alone does not answer the question, the kind of education may offer helpful clues. For example, I certainly learned much more than history while taking a class in Latin American history. By the time I took the course my mode of perception was already significantly changed from my former western liberal, free-will individualist view, however learning the history of countries that have very much been forced down over and again by global structures and western hegemony cemented a more structuralist way of thinking. In this way, learning the stories of individuals, groups and countries played a significant part in opening my eyes to structural sin.

Let me shift gears and briefly note some other questions that the book raised for me. The latter chapters, 6-8 in particular, sparked several thoughts. Emerson and Smith’s analysis of religion in the U.S. is helpful for understanding how we have gotten here, however it raises the disturbing question of how can we change the shape of things given these powerful social and psychological forces? For example, while the religious marketplace has contributed to the commoditization of religion and to the racialization of this country, does anyone really want a return to medieval religious monopoly or some state-sponsored church? Are racialization and commoditization inevitable results of religious pluralism, or can things be different? Finally, in some passages Emerson and Smith seem to imply that the goal is a unified religious scene without difference. Social conventions that give rise to distinct cultural groups are discussed with a slightly negative tone, like that used by a Victorian-era housewife when speaking of sex—necessary or unavoidable, but unfortunate. Perhaps I am inferring things because I have also read the follow up book United by Faith, which made mileage off the term mestizaje, a term that is uncomfortably close to “melting pot” for my pluralist taste. To put my concern another way, is the goal for Emerson and Smith an intercultural dialogue, or for all distinctions to fall away so that monologue may be achieved? Perhaps I am misperceiving their tone, but I was uneasy with it at certain points.