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.
As Michelle Alexander recently noted in The New York Times, there is an inextricable link between the Trump administration’s policies of mass deportation and mass incarceration. They are both central strategies of the current regime and the white power structure more broadly to entrench white minority rule and prevent changes in demography from creating a true multiracial democracy. Let’s be absolutely clear about what the stakes are: If most white Christians support the dangerous brand of fascism that is ascendant these days—which has always been painfully and violently present, especially for people of color—we will lose the authenticity of our faith. This movement toward fascism and white nationalism, which we see around the world, is led by one of the most effective marketers of America’s worst instincts and demons, Donald Trump.
What is at stake is a test of democracy and a test of faith—the future of the nation and the future of the church. That’s why my prayer in this moment is indeed for repentance on a national scale. I am asking God to help us stop the overt white nationalism that’s the central strategy of a president and a political party and turn us in a new and redemptive direction.
Let’s begin that this Lent with deeper prayer and regular fasting—perhaps one day a week until this fall—and asking God what repentance, turning around and going in a whole new direction, means for us in this crucial time.
Jim Wallis is the founder and former president of Sojourners. He is the inaugural holder of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Chair in Faith and Justice at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy and director of its new Center on Faith and Justice. His latest book is The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.
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