You can read more about Kyle J. Howard here, if you aren’t already familiar with him. For lack of a more concise summary, Howard is a man of white and black ancestry who was born and raised with the silver spoon of privilege in an affluent Atlanta neighborhood, and his parents were both attorneys. Howard has fabricated a false life-story about having been in a gang in High School, through which he learned to identify with the oppressed. We put out a thousand-dollar bounty on anyone with any evidence that Howard was in a high school gang, but thus far none of his imaginary friends have contacted us to collect.
He’s now looking for a church (whether to pastor or attend, we do not know) that is “predominately ethnic minority.”
A few things:
First, and I’m not a mathematician, but it seems to me that you cannot be predominately ethnic minority. You know, because of math and everything. Like, if you’re predominately black, you’re not the minority.
I think what Howard means is that he’s looking for a church with mostly non-white people in it. I somehow doubt that a predominately-white church in South Africa (where whites are the minority) is what Howard is looking for.
To be clear, Howard is looking for a church with a specific ethnic make-up, choosing to judge people not by the content of their character but the color of their skin. This is true racism, and the Bible tells us not to regard people according to such superficialities in places like Colossians 3:11 and Galatians 3:28.
Second, Howard isn’t even “predominately ethnic minority.” He has a white parent. Does somehow having blackness overcome your whiteness? Does one black parent genetically outweigh having one white parent? And if so, who writes these rules? Who says that Howard is a black man and not a white man? If being black equates to oppression and being white equates to privilege (as Critical Race Theorists argue), Howard is whiter than I am.
Third, might I suggest that if the ethnic makeup of your church is important (and it’s not), it would be so far down on your list of priorities to be concerned with you couldn’t possibly fit it within 280 characters. How about a list like (A) doctrinal fidelity (B) thoughtfulness in worship philosophy (C) biblical leadership (D) a like-minded Confession of Faith (E) a belief in inerrancy, sufficiency, authority, and inspiration of Scripture, and (F) other important things to include, but not limited to, the quality of church potlucks, the comfort of the pew cushions, a paved parking lot, and proper barometric pressure. All of these things are more important than the predominate skin pigment of the worshippers around you and should be considered well before ethnicity.
This is the kind of racism the church should really be working hard to combat.
