A HAUNTING, emotionally charged, fact-based narrative, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism covers 400 years of American civil rights history. It is a withering look at the role white Protestant churches played in reinforcing institutional support of slavery and racism. Its main thesis is that moderate Christians have had the clout to rebut racism but have an abysmal record of doing so. This story is woven from a survey of biographies, memoirs, classics of history, and serious journalistic research.
White moderates, Jemar Tisby demonstrates, time and again mouthed sympathetic clichés toward the black community but inevitably supported the status quo. Probably the most iconic example Tisby gives is that of Billy Graham, one of the most prominent Protestant figures of the 1950s and 1960s.
Graham talked a good game: He publicly removed ropes segregating black churchgoers at his massive rallies. But despite these “positive” optics, Graham never participated in civil rights demonstrations. He instead insisted that civil rights was a local matter. He railed against communism, feeding into the term’s use as coded language that marked “subversive” U.S. political activity as evidence of Soviet influence. When the Watts riot broke out in Los Angeles, Graham quickly declared that “rioting, looting, and crime ... have reached the point of anarchy,” while failing to explain the profound issues that caused the rebellion.
Graham, with his national popularity, could have had a huge impact on civil rights, but failed to do so.
He followed a pattern that was created early on by Protestant leaders. Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians all initially prohibited slave ownership, but by the mid-19th century, all three Protestant denominations had split, with the Southern church entities accepting slave ownership. In 1850, Congress passed the draconian Fugitive Slave Act, allowing the federal government to arrest and return runaway slaves. Throughout the country, many people risked their lives to fight this hated law but often without the then-substantial power and influence of Protestant institutions.
Yet, almost 70 years later, with wounds of the Civil War still lingering, high-profile Presbyterian President Woodrow Wilson resegregated the federal civil service. Scapegoating of Jews and Catholics, along with blacks, gave rise to a huge resurgence in the Ku Klux Klan (this time in the North as well). Tisby’s research shows that an estimated 40,000 Protestant ministers were members of the Klan.
Ten years later, under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, Southern Protestant senators chairing key committees found ways to exclude black people from important legislation, such as the 65 percent of African Americans excluded at the time from Social Security benefits because they were maids and farmworkers.
Tisby, who is working on a doctorate in history at the University of Mississippi, has written for The New York Times and The Atlantic and runs the popular website The Witness: A Black Christian Collective (thewitnessbcc.com). Filled with powerful prose, his debut book shines a light on Christians who had the power to change the history of race relations in the U.S. but didn’t want to risk creating a breach between themselves and their religious constituencies. If other Christians continue to follow their example, this country will face many more dire challenges.
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