On July 4, think about how confronting our past will bring a more just society.
In a recent op-ed Linda Blackford aptly identifies the Right’s hysteria about critical race theory as its “latest bugbear” to prevent Americans from encountering their unfiltered history, such as the shameful 1919 expulsion of black railroad workers by a white mob in Corbin that led to that town becoming one of many in Kentucky that, after sundown, allowed only whites within its limits. One of the key arguments used by promoters of bills that ban CRT is the psychological damage that it purportedly does to the K-12 students subjected to it. Parents complain that exposing their children to the racist underside of our past produces feelings of discomfort, shame, and guilt. The subtext is that education has no business challenging our preconceptions, prejudices, and ignorance. Truth must not prevail at the cost of a student’s emotional equilibrium.
That is a strange stance for Christians, and evangelicals in particular, to take. The crux of evangelical Christianity is the conversion experience by which the individual, responding to God’s preached word, is emotionally driven to confront and acknowledge one’s sins, and to invoke God’s saving grace as the sole means of salvation. “Amazing grace . . . that saved a wretch like me. . . T’was grace that made my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.”
Revivals, for centuries, have been the engine of evangelical Christianity. One of the most famous revival sermons was given in 1741 by the New England Presbyterian savant, Jonathan Edwards. In that sermon, entitled “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Edwards depicted the sinner as a spider being held over a fire, not knowing when the hand grasping him would release him over the flames, but sure that the fire would be his inevitable fate. Edwards was no rabble-rouser preacher. He delivered his sermons in a monotone that should have disturbed no one. But the very words themselves so powerfully brought that scene to life that those in the pews, both young and old, increasingly begged, indeed screamed that he cease tormenting them with his dagger words. But Edwards persisted, proceeding to tell them that the burning pit need not be their end. There was yet time to “hearken to the loud calls of God’s words and providence.”
One will surely say: Edwards was preaching about individual sin and the individual’s responsibility to repent for it. He certainly did not have systemic racism in mind nor was he indicting an entire people. Edwards certainly was no precursor of Martin Luther King or John Lewis, but his theology seems particularly open to critical race theory, particularly his organic notion of Original Sin. This initial transgression of our ultimate ancestors, in Edward’s vision, had a pernicious effect upon all of their heirs, both as individuals and as a society. He would have, I think, readily embraced the notion of slavery as our society’s original sin, which has had a pervasive, lasting influence in the shaping of our civilization, from its folkways to the Constitution and the laws by which we have made a republic. That is a truth from which none of us can be shielded.
Confronting the truth is rarely a comfortable experience. Acknowledging the awfulness of much of our history is not the stuff of Fourth of July celebrations, but is a necessary precondition toward making any progress toward becoming the people that we profess to be. God’s grace comes through countless channels. An honest history that does not suppress parts of our past that we deem too dark for our children’s well-being can bring enlightenment, if we are open to it, that will lay the seed for building a more just society. The Fourth of July seems a particularly suitable occasion for recognizing, indeed celebrating that possibility.
Robert Emmett Curran is a Professor of History Emeritus at Georgetown University.