A Sin by Any Other Name: Reckoning with Racism and the Heritage of the South - Hardcover

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He’s an on-time God, yes he is.
—Dottie Peoples

I was about to take the stage at the annual Martin Luther King, Jr., breakfast in Statesville when Mother Aleen Alexander caught my eye and motioned for me to join her at her table. When I made my way over, she took my clammy hands--nerves from anticipating the speech I was about to deliver--and looked into my eyes.

“Darkness is after you,” she said.

I come from a mainline Protestant tradition that puts little stock in warnings of spirits and evil. Talk of darkness as a supernatural force isn’t something I’m accustomed to, but in the years that I have known Mother Aleen, I’ve recognized that there is something of the prophetic within her, a rare connection to God. When she speaks in this way, I know in my gut she’s probably right.

“Today is the start of something you’ve never expected,” she continued, unfazed by my fidgeting. “You don’t know what the future holds, but God does, and God has plans for you to bridge a gap.” 

The “today” she referenced was my speech at that morning’s breakfast. I was nervous, unsure why a twenty-four-year-old white minister with limited life experience had been invited to keynote an event that saw the town’s political and civic leaders--black and white--come together for at least one morning of peaceful bread breaking each year. The column I regularly wrote in the Statesville Record and Landmark was sometimes devoted to issues of justice, not always the easiest topic to cover down here. That column had caught the eyes of some local African American activists in town, who invited me to attend an interfaith prayer service at the First Baptist Church, Incorporated, one of two First Baptist Churches in town. It’s nonsensical to have two First Baptists in a single community, until you realize they are divided between white and black Christians. That we continue to accept this as normal shows how much more work we have to do as white Southern Christians to heal the wounds of our racist past. In my column and sermons, I had been advocating for greater relationships between our white and black churches. Deacon William Jones, an activist involved with the local chapter of the NAACP, reached out through a close friend and asked if I might be interested in joining the MLK breakfast.

This was the first time I would speak, rather than write, about race publicly in my hometown. I planned to highlight some of the heroes whose words and actions had prompted me to reflect deeply about the culture of the South, and how that culture had formed my views on race. Statesville is a place I love deeply; it is where the seeds of my faith were planted, where my vocation as a minister was fostered. But it’s also a place that I realize has failed to live up to its own ideals.

Mother Aleen’s words that morning threw me for a loop, but I tried not to spend too much time thinking of them. I had a speech to give. As I walked up the stairs to the platform, I paused and surveyed the crowd of about six hundred people from the community. When I glanced down at the table where Mother Aleen sat, I saw that her head was down and her lips were moving. She was praying for me.

I inhaled deeply and began my talk.

“If black lives don’t matter now, when will they matter at all?” I preached. “I’ve been frustrated with the lack of trust and civility between those in public trust and persons of color, between Muslims and Christians, between Republicans and Democrats. We have forsaken our most sacred values as a nation for the sake of separation and for assimilation.”

A few “amens” went up from the crowd. I relaxed. This was as friendly and supportive an audience I’d find. The encouragement was coming more from the black people in the audience than the white people, which is rather typical of Statesville even now. “We want to talk about race. We want to confront this. Now is the time to confront racism for what it is,” I continued. A few more “amens,” some applause. I glanced at Mother Aleen. She was still praying.

“If not now, when will we have sensible and attainable education goals within our community, our nation, and our world? If not now, when will we call to task our elected leaders for their racist policies that systematically oppress persons of color? If not now, when will we engage in the hard work of truth telling that seeks to put an end to systematic forms of racism in our city square? In moments like these, we need twenty-first-century courage. We need to be people who stare racism in the face and say, ‘You may be great, but I know a God who is greater.’ ”

When I finished, I headed back to that table to hug my then-fiancée, Stephanie, and ask Mother Aleen what she thought of the speech.

“This is the start of something big,” she said.

It was never a blinding light nor a single moment that changed my views of the South. Our region’s attitude toward race can be obscured, hidden behind our polite veneer. But the reality is, our schools and churches remain largely segregated, and it isn’t uncommon to hear the N-word coming from the lips of white Christians. Often there’s a sad acceptance of the status quo, a resignation that things just won’t get better. But for me, ordinary moments like the one with Mother Aleen hold the power of conversion. Only in hindsight do those grace-filled encounters add up to reveal God’s work in our lives.

In the Bible, there’s a story where Jesus comes alongside two of his disciples as they walk the road to Emmaus. At first, the disciples don’t recognize the risen Lord, but he opens the scriptures to his friends, unconcerned that they were initially blind to who he really was. Similarly, Mother Aleen is one of many people who have helped me see the challenges that remain in terms of racial justice, the school-to-prison pipeline, the segregation of our town, and the Confederate monument that sits near our city square. These people have encouraged me to use my voice to do my part. They have shown me the heart of God and the heart of what it means to be a white person in the South.

Our experiences in the South must be told anew. On the good days, these stories intertwine and work together to weave a tapestry as beautiful as the stars and lightning bugs on a summer evening in North Carolina. But they also tell the story of hatred, white supremacy, and fear. We balance these two realities here in the South, and it is my hope that the stories of grace will ultimately come out triumphant. In my own journey, the moments of transformation have come because people of color had the patience to translate to me the song in the heart of God. But recently I’ve come to believe that it is incumbent upon white people like me to “get our own folk” to confront our own power and privilege. There is truth in the statement that once you have seen something, you can’t unsee it. 

The speech I gave at the Statesville Civic Center took place months before Mother Aleen’s words would begin to make sense to me. She said them to me, her hands holding mine, long before the hideous marches in Charlottesville that saw white-hot hatred spill into the streets and kill a peaceful counterprotester, and well before I realized that my family’s connection to General Robert E. Lee gave me a platform and credibility to speak out and be listened to by white people—to confront the racist structures my forebears fought to prop up. 

Shortly after those events, when the hate mail started to pour in and I left the North Carolina church where I’d held my first job as a solo pastor, the darkness Mother Aleen predicted felt more real than I ever imagined. So I focused on the second part of her message: God has a plan for me. I’m starting to believe that despite the darkness, moments of grace extended to me, like the one on that day in the Statesville Civic Center, are what defines us. But in order to recognize and appreciate these moments of grace, we must listen with the ear of our heart, as Saint Benedict put it.

I am a Lee who feels my family has done our fair share of talking. Even this book may come off as more commentary from my family. Now, it’s time to listen, so that the many moments of grace don’t elude us, but serve to inspire us to usher in God’s reign.