america's original sin

Lucas Kwong 9-23-2021

Photo of John Calvin via rook76 / Shutterstock.com. Illustration by Mitchell Atencio.

As a post-evangelical, I have no interest in rehabilitating Calvin’s ideas about double predestination or his justification for the execution of Michael Servetus. Nonetheless, I’m unwilling to cast Calvin and his theological legacy in exclusively negative terms; I believe that confronting racial injustice today actually requires recuperating Calvin’s infamous doctrine of “total depravity,” or a spiritual condition staining humanity from birth. Doing so can help us better understand why both progressive and reactionary heirs to Calvinist thought fall short — and how we might work to transform our fallen world instead.

Jim Wallis 12-10-2020

Photo by bantersnaps on Unsplash

At a recent annual meeting, seminary presidents in the Southern Baptist Convention doubled down on the SBC’s dismissal of “critical race theory,” which examines the issues of embedded racism across institutions and culture in American society. CRT shows how white supremacy — the belief that some people are more valuable than other people because of their skin color — is not just a personal prejudice but a structural and societal practice in America.

Jim Wallis 2-25-2020

Illustration by Jackson Joyce

WE'RE LIVING IN a fearful time, and 2020 has thus far served to amplify and validate many of our fears about the future of the nation, our faith, and the world. What’s at stake this year is perhaps a last chance to decisively reject the overt white nationalism that we’re up against, which is as bold and brazen as at any time in decades.

The racism that has been present in this land since before the founding of this nation, a nation built on the forced labor of kidnapped Africans and the displacement and genocide of Indigenous people, represents America’s original sin. The history of the U.S. is one of halting, tentative steps toward repenting of that sin, juxtaposed against white people doubling down on racist systems, structures, and beliefs. It’s important to note that repentance does not mean feeling bad or sorry but rather stopping, turning around, and going in a new direction. We are at a moment of national decision, between repentance on the one hand and active retreat from that progress on the other, meaning the reaffirmation and reinstitution of America’s original sin.

Lent is traditionally a time for deep reflection, often with prayer, fasting, study, and repentance. Given the crisis we are now facing in both nation and church, such deep Lenten reflection is urgently needed. Answering the questions that Jesus asked during his ministry, as I laid out my book Christ in Crisis, is the best response to our current political, moral, and religious crisis. It’s a response that could set us on a path toward true national repentance from America’s original sin.

Stephen Mattson 7-22-2019

Two people hug at the site where Heather Heyer was killed on the one-year anniversary of the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville. REUTERS/Brian Snyder

The president has used racism to spread his political agenda, and American Christendom has been an eager participant.

Jim Wallis 7-18-2019

 Image via REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

If we hear silence from white people of faith, we are in deep spiritual trouble. Christian moral objection to the president’s racist language must grow every day and from many quarters, but so farno word at all from the president’s most prominent evangelical supporters. Those Trump supporters have other issues and moral concerns, including differences with Democrats on abortion (as others of us do too); but will they call out the President on racism? That has now become an urgent moral and theological test.

Da’Shawn Mosley 1-25-2018

TA-NEHISI COATES is an atheist, but in We Were Eight Years in Power he atones for sin. In a 2008 article about Bill Cosby for The Atlantic, Coates failed to thoroughly report on the sexual assault allegations brought against the comedian, only mentioning them briefly. On page 12 of We Were Eight Years in Power, Coates repents. “That was my shame,” he writes. “That was my failure. And that was how this story began.”

By “this story,” Coates means his ongoing career as a correspondent for The Atlantic, during which he has received a MacArthur genius grant, a National Magazine Award, and several other honors for his writings on race in America. Coates is one of the nation’s most popular living chroniclers of the plight of African Americans. But despite that, he is acutely aware of his failings.

We Were Eight Years in Power is both a collection of Coates’ best articles published by The Atlantic and criticism of those pieces. Prefacing most of the articles are short essays by Coates about the stage of life he was in when he wrote each article, the pieces’ triumphs, and their flaws. With sometimes savage specificity, the essays map the evolution of Coates’ writing skills as well as his personal foibles. At the same time, the articles themselves document the flaws of the United States and how the country consistently does wrong by its African-American citizens in favor of doing more than right by its white citizens.

Coates’ writing process is a metaphor for the social corrective he pursues: the abolishment of white supremacy.

Jim Wallis 8-24-2017

What now? Where do churches go from here? Here are five initial thoughts I would like to share, knowing the answer isn’t simple — it will take our collective discernment from the whole diversity of our churches to continue addressing our post-Charlottesville way forward.

Jim Wallis 2-16-2017

Ku Klux Klan parade in Washington, D.C. in 1926.

The only answer to the racial divide among Christians — evangelicals in particular — is to go much deeper into what racial equity and healing will require. America’s Original Sin was written for such a time as this. It is a book written to and for white Christians and white churches — to help lead them to new conversations with black and brown Christians and their churches. It could be that studying racism in congregation after congregation, and especially between congregations across racial lines, could be a fundamental building block for genuine racial reconciliation in America.

9-22-2016

On Monday, Sept. 12, Rev. Dr. Jim Wallis opened Calvin’s Center for Faith & Writing fall 2016 series with a speech about his new book, “America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America.” The bestselling author, activist, preacher and theologian drew a large crowd to the CFAC. All seats were full, and some visitors had to park in overflow lots near the Seminary and science building.

9-12-2016

“White privilege is an ideology. It’s an idol.”

8-23-2016

There are fundamental ethical, moral, and even religious choices that will have to be made by all of us now — Republicans, Democrats, and Independents; conservatives, liberals, and those who feel politically homeless (like many of us); Christians, Jews, Muslims, those of other faiths and none at all. And those choices are much deeper than partisan politics

8-23-2016

At Washington National Cathedral on Sunday, an interracial group of clergy gathered to discuss the role of the white church in perpetuating racism. And what the church might do to heal the wounds. A tough subject, but dealt with unflinchingly

8-23-2016

Every black parent in America has to have “the talk” with his or her sons and daughters — about how to act and not act in the presence of white police officers with guns. It’s a painful family ritual that is slowly being discovered by America’s white parents as more and more police killings of young African Americans occur and are nationally discussed.

8-23-2016

Should Donald Trump’s racist comments, since the inception of his campaign, be morally disqualifying for him to become the president of the United States?

Trey Lyon 4-22-2016

New initiatives are seeking to curb what is often portrayed as a growing epidemic of heroin use in America. But as Ekow Yankah wrote in a brilliant piece last month, titled “When Addiction Has a White Face" this new attention to the plight of the addicted and the justification from law enforcement that “these are people with a purpose in life” has only come when the faces of addicts are no longer black and brown, but white.

3-30-2016

Jim Wallis, social activist, author and one of America’s most influential Christian voices discusses social justice and the Christian life.

3-28-2016

Listen to the interview here.

Outspoken evangelical preacher Jim Wallis has been arrested many times at civil rights and anti-war protests over the years. In the wake of the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, he tells Andrew West it's time for America to confront its 'original sin'—racism.

3-28-2016

We must resist the terrible teachings of Donald Trump

This week, as Christians mark the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, we find ourselves traveling from the darkness of Good Friday into the light and joy of Easter Sunday.