A church may have a racist past even if its archives reveal no evidence of support of slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings, segregation or other racist structures, author and historian Andrew Gardner said during a recent webinar hosted by the Alliance of Baptists.
Even so, congregations seeking to cultivate anti-racist cultures and policies should continue digging through archives and local and national histories to discern their churches’ historic racial attitudes and practices — and not assume too much if nothing turns up, said Gardner, a postdoctoral research associate at Baylor University, an Alliance board member and author of Reimagining Zion: A History of the Alliance of Baptists.
Andrew Gardner
“It’s important for congregations to look specifically at what their churches were doing because that’s informing how their racist policies were created, unknowingly or knowingly. And not saying anything is saying something,” he said during the latest installment of the Alliance’s THRIVE Project, which promotes the development of congregational ministry rooted in social justice.
Gardner was brought in to help participants transform information gathered in previous sessions into action by conducting historical research. His presentation covered a basic description of the field of history and provided numerous steps to help church members develop key questions and arguments needed to explore the origins and development of racist or anti-racist patterns within congregations.
Gardner explained that he has been through similar exercises with the Alliance and Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty to help those institutions discern how their organizations previously perpetuated racial injustice.
“An investigation of history can help untangle those systems of white supremacy and bring institutions into an alignment with more of an anti-racist agenda,” he advised.
“An investigation of history can help untangle those systems of white supremacy and bring institutions into an alignment with more of an anti-racist agenda.”
But it’s also important to know the study of history is not just a collection of facts and dates, but an evolving, multifaceted discipline that grows in knowledge and interpretation over time, Gardner said. “Historians … will argue back and forth over whether or not a history is a social history, if it’s an economic history, a political history or a cultural history. There are different types of histories and … there are different ways of interpreting history.”
History also is argumentative and purposeful, meaning it includes interpretations of why events unfolded as they did, he said. “So as a result of history being argumentative and purposeful, there’s a way in which our investigations of history can be geared toward anti-racism.”
Gardner cited the writing of Ibram X. Kendi to suggest church histories can be examined for acts of omission or commission: “Kendi writes that a racist is one who is supporting a racist policy through their actions or inactions, or by expressing a racist idea. Whereas an anti-racist is one who is supporting an anti-racist policy through their actions, or by expressing an anti-racist idea.”
For that reason, congregations preparing to dig through archives and external sources may want to begin with a focus on church policies to examine how, when and why they were constructed, used and overlooked, he said. “History is a powerful tool in being able to investigate how racist policies come to be in our settings.”
Knowing what questions to ask is vital in beginning research, he said, noting those questions in turn will be influenced by when and where churches were founded.
“If your congregation was founded in the 1750s or even the 1850s, you’re going to be thinking about questions of race a little bit differently than if your congregation was founded in the 1950s.”
“If your congregation was founded in the 1750s or even the 1850s, you’re going to be thinking about questions of race a little bit differently than if your congregation was founded in the 1950s.”
Alliance churches established in the 18th and 19th centuries will mostly be in the South, he noted, meaning “you were likely founded in a time in American history when slavery was prominent in the American South and your congregation undoubtedly engaged in questions of enslavement of African peoples. That’s going to shape the type of questions you ask about your congregation, the types of things you want to begin to look at in your congregation — more so than if your congregation was founded in the 1950s. For a lot of Alliance congregations founded in the 1950s, many of them are Southern Baptist congregations that were founded in support of civil rights.”
Yet even those churches established in the mid-20th century have difficult questions to ask, he said. “If your congregation was founded for the express purpose of being anti-racist and supportive of the Civil Rights movement, what happened after 1968? What happened in the 1970s? Did you continue that work? Where did you drop the ball?”
Congregations also should look to U.S. and local history to shed light on their churches’ pasts, Gardner said.
“If you’re one of those congregations that’s founded in the 1750s or 1850s during the period of enslavement in the United States, think about how your congregation might be engaging with slavery. What was the congregation’s stance on the Civil War and reconstruction? Start to think about events that are happening and try and find some dates to ask, ‘What was my congregation doing during this time?’”
The same approach may be taken with more recent history. “What was your congregation doing during Civil Rights? How has your congregation responded to gun violence? What was my congregation doing in the wake of Rodney King?”
Gardner recommended numerous sources for those beginning to delve into congregational histories. These include written church histories, church meeting minutes, sermons, bulletins, liturgies and letters between staff and members of the congregation, and denominational records.
He also suggested websites such as archive.org, hathitrust.org and newspapers.com for researching societal and political forces that shaped church life.
“It’s important for congregations to look specifically at what their church was doing because that’s informing how their racist policies were created, unknowingly or knowingly,” he said.
From there, the purpose of the history can begin to take shape. “Work to develop an argument,” he suggested. “History is not just an assortment of things you find. You need to organize them into some sense of how your congregation has perpetuated systems of racism and white supremacy through active policy or inactive policy.”
Then, translate that information into a plan for action, he said. “Begin to paint a picture of how your congregation is thinking about what type of reparations or repairs your church might make to reorient its priorities away from its past failures.”
In predominantly white congregations, Black people and other people of color within and outside the congregation should be consulted, he advised. “This is not something that can be done in isolation. This is something that takes a whole community.”
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