The Very Real Problem of Racism in The IFB Church

My past faith was a hateful one, and, it taught me that to hate was not only sometimes necessary, it was holy. A holy hate could look like many things; in some cases, it was quite obvious, but other times, subtle.

I know my experiences with the Independent Fundamental Baptist Church wasn't just an isolated experience. It is no big secret, at least among formers, that racism is alive and well in the movement. Whether it was the strict rules and bans on interracial dating, or the very limited leadership roles for people of color, covert racism was a constant undertone.

Not always was the racism covert, however. Bob Jones University, among many other IFB colleges, had strict rules in regards to race and their students. Then, there was J. Frank Norris regarded as the Father of Fundamentalism and the founder of the Independent Fundamental Baptist movement. Norris had known connections to the Ku Klux Klan's top leader of that time in Texas, with the man receiving The Klan's promised protection. We could go on and on about the IFB's history with race relations, but I find the most powerful stories are from those that sat in the pews of Independent Fundamental Baptist churches. I've read many thanks to the countless experiences shared within survivor communities and somehow I can still find myself suddenly shocked.

I, personally, do not need to look back far into my own mind to peel back the layers of an old memory where hate was a normal occurrence. Some would say it was just Southern Pride; others, pride in their heritage. For me, it was witnessing a romanticsm of a one-sided history lesson taught with a spiritual approval. After all, how do you sit in a church service where moments before scripture was preached and the next, "Dixie" sung, and not come away with the thought that things like the Confederacy were God ordained? When you sit in a pew where a Civil War hero is spoke highly of by the man of God in the pulpit, but a Civil Rights champion is considered a "troublemaker," how far from reality can you be removed? The reality is this brand of "reality" is so common place, it's no doubt on why the bigger problem of racism hasn't been solved. When you have entire controlling religious groups fanning the flames of racism, it becomes even clearer how much harder it is going to be to stomp that fire out. In some cases, it can be extreme interpretations of scripture that ignite it in the first place. I'm not suggesting that this is the cause, only that it may have aided in what we see today.

Hate is learned, you're not born with it. But if you're born and raised in a hateful environment, it's very likely you will parrot what others around you say and feel similarly to how you have been led to feel. Sadly, this is common within fundamentalist circles, including the movement I was brought up in.

As a child and teen, I was always back and forth, wanting to find an identity and be accepted by others. I think one moment of absolute disbelief was witnessing some of my peers pledge allegiance to the flag of the Confederacy. In that moment, I felt instantly wicked as I was pressured to recite a rendition of the pledge to the American flag, but instead to the "bars and stars." It felt wrong to me and to this day, I cannot clearly recall if I did in the end, I just remember the conflicting emotions I felt.

Being born in the South and calling near what used to be the capital of the Confederacy home, you still see that Confederate identity flapping in the wind from a neighbor's flagpole or see it smacked to the back of a pickup truck's bumper. And although I witnessed those things sometimes daily, my biggest impressions came from the pew of Independent Fundamental Baptist churches' whose often racism knew no boarders. It was from the pulpit and those around me that I was introduced to racism. It was the racism of fear, of oppressing another because somehow that made you feel above them, and the need to find an identity in what you perceived as heritage. It was holding onto that heritage so tightly, it was in equal importance to your faith. It was racism in the belief that black people bore the "mark of Cain" and were cursed. It was the sometimes opinion that churches should be segregated, because, after all, "blacks worship God differently" and for a white person to do similarly, that would be disrespectful to a god above that was supposed to have made us all.

It was an environment of racism where interracial marriages should be banned, biracial children would be in a home of "confusion," that white IFB kids were told to "act like your race," and the top two sins for a girl were to lose their virginity before marriage and secondly, if this occurred with a young black man.

It was a black and white mentality, literally.

Martin Luther King, Jr. with a photo of three missing civil rights activists.

I still recall a couple of years ago watching a TV special on the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the history of the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s when the story of the 1964 murders of three civil rights activists by Edgar Ray Killen came on. I was choked up not only because of the senseless deaths of three innocent men, but because I knew in solemn recognition that Killen was also a KKK leader and pastor of an Independent Fundamental Baptist church. Smyrna Baptist Church is in Union, south of Philadelphia, Mississippi where James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were murdered by Klansmen. Every Independent Fundamental Baptist should say their names.

To this day, this congregation still holds to their Independent Baptist title.

I could go on about other key stories to show how prevalent racism is in the movement, but I think the biggest thing is the prevalence it had in my own life. Years later, I'm still actively and consciously trying to do better. I take hope and comfort in seeing that I am not alone in this; many other formers of all stripes understand this challenge. Difficult as it may be, it's still an important one. Because down deep racism is a byproduct at times of very controlling environments, a symptom of an underline disease. In my case, that was fundamentalism. A system where segregation and all its evils found a familiar home. Racism tends to breed in the fertile ground of fear and the forced separation in the Us vs. Them war. It's labeled not as it is, but by words such as "separated," "worldly," and "wickedness." It's enforced through grossly interpretations of scripture read by white men in pulpits.

I don't think there will ever be a way to fully understand to what extent one group, or the whole of the greater Christian Fundamentalist movement where many other such movements similar to the one I left find a home, have done to aid in the oppression of African Americans. It's truly up to all of us that have left to take our responsibility as humans seriously and that is to stand with the oppressed, to recognize what seeds of hate could be still planted in our own lives and how that may translate in our interactions with people of color today. It's difficult to unlearn hateful teachings, but to love is a lesson much easier to grasp.

"Love thy neighbor as thyself," are five words I've taken away with me after twenty-one years in fundamentalism, but I left fundamentalism's interpretation of them at the door when I walked out.


Photo courtesy: iShot, Pinterest & Unsplash