We shall have nothing to say...

Philip Yancey quotes Martin Marty regarding Christian input regarding the Holocaust: "I can only respond with silence. Non-Jews and perhaps especially Christians should not give advice about Holocaust experience to its heirs for the next two thousand years. And then we shall have nothing to say." In some ways, this sentiment occurs to me as the most appropriate answer for the white evangelical Christian church with regard to race issues. In too many past instances, the white church stood silent with regard to the need for a prophetic voice, courageously speaking out against the sin of racism. Due to its silence in the past, white evangelicalism has forfeited the right to complain or lament the lack of racial harmony in America. By failing to stand up for social justice, the white evangelical community now has to bite its collective tongue when it finds the tone of an increasingly non-white America to be less evangelical, or less Christian than they would like.