The past several weeks, pictures and videos of the response in Ferguson, MO to the shooting of Michael Brown by a police officer have looked eerily similar to protests during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Christians from around the country got involved and insisted that the life and value of all people must be honored. While not a solely Christian movement and not one that originated in the church, the protests and voices coming out of the Ferguson case have called people to both repentance and action: repentance in the face of our country's still-present racism and action against the injustice that devalues people based on the color of their skin.
I am grieved to note, however, especially in the early voices, that many white Christian leaders were silent. Lisa Sharon Harper points out that in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, "residents of Ferguson, local and national leaders of historic black churches, and some multi-ethnic mainline Protestant and Catholic church clergy engaged. White evangelical leaders largely fell silent." One of the reasons for this silence is the structural racism still present in our culture and the identification that race issues are a "black problem" rather than a "white problem."