AUTHOR URGES CHURCHES TO PUSH FOR RACIAL EQUALITY

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, February 6, 1993                   TAG: 9302060152
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 3   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BY TOM SCHAEFER KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium
AUTHOR URGES CHURCHES TO PUSH FOR RACIAL EQUALITY
Our steps toward racial equality seem to inch along - sometimes moving forward, sometimes back.
We move ahead when you consider, for example, that more and more blacks are entering political races nationwide - and winning. But we seem to stop or even retreat when such obviously racist attitudes as were admitted to by Cincinnati Reds' owner Marge Schott come to light. (This week Major League Baseball imposed a one-year suspension on her and fined her $25,000 for racial and ethnic slurs she made.)
As Morris Dees, co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala., said several years ago about people who make such racist remarks publicly or privately: "They are helping to spread a few more pieces of racism. These bits and pieces then become the mosaic of our communities."
A new paperback by William Pannell got me thinking about the overall mosaic we are creating and about one of the key institutions that has helped shape it - churches.
The book, "The Coming Race Wars? A Cry for Reconciliation" (Zondervan Publishing House, $9.99) is a harsher analysis than his previous book, "My Friend, the Enemy," published in 1968 following the riots in Watts and Detroit.
When he wrote "My Friend, the Enemy," the Detroit resident said he was trying to explain to white people what it's like to be "evangelical and black among countrymen and Christians whose captivity to the ideology of white supremacy was scarcely admitted and seldom challenged from within its ranks."
In his new book, Pannell, who is now an associate professor of evangelism and dean of the chapel at the School of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., recognizes how, 25 years later, certain things have changed.
Both he and his "friend" are more cautious with one another. A conservative political and religious climate is less sympathetic to the argument that societal problems require society-wide solutions. At the same time, Pannell recognizes that, as a middle-income black male, he, like his white friends, often tries to avoid the ugliness of that festering sore called racism. Only when it becomes obvious (the riots of Los Angeles last year being a prime example) do people have to admit how intense and pervasive racial feelings are - and how bitter.
It is Pannell's belief that the church in general, and the evangelical wing in particular, has done next to nothing to confront these problems that affect both institutions and individuals.
And if you look around, it's hard to deny what he says.
In most cities, there's little cooperation among churches to break down walls of racial division. (Annual exchanges of choirs between churches with predominantly black members and those with mostly white members have minimal effect.)
Instead, says Pannell, churches spend too much time planning major building expansions, bolstering their internal programs and finances and pursuing church growth strategies that end up attracting "people just like us."
As a committed evangelical, Pannell professes the importance of Christian faith and of the community of believers. But when white evangelicals asked Pannell whether blacks need only Jesus to face the world's injustices, his response is: "Well, you need more than Jesus. Why do you think we need less than you do?" If churchgoers are honest, they know he's right.
Meanwhile, churches remain the most segregated communities in America.
So, what does Pannell prescribe? Churches and their followers must take their commitment to reconciliation seriously, he insists. For Pannell, that means churches must stay put and not move away, and ministers and lay people must venture into the neighborhoods they have too long ignored.
"The witness it would show to a confused society grappling for ways to mend broken fences could just result in the greatest growth the church has witnessed in quite awhile."
In many ways, Pannell's book will be unsettling for many white Christians to read. And there are reasons to disagree with him on various points. But if churches hope to have a positive influence on racial matters in this country - and how can they wish otherwise? - then at the very least they must take their professed role as reconcilers seriously.
If they do, it could turn out to be a major step forward in racial equality.

Tom Schaefer writes about religion and ethics for the Wichita Eagle.

by Archana Subramaniam by CNB