Reflections on a Firestorm

The banned couple

There is this tiny Free Will Baptist church in rural Kentucky that recently banned an interracial couple from it worship services by a vote of 9 to 6 (yes, 9 to 6) according to an Associated Press report in the Toledo Blade (see here).  You would have thought that racism was reborn in the South from the response in the media, which has given extensive coverage to what otherwise would be an event of no consequence whatsoever beyond the confines of this little church itself.  According to an article in the Los Angeles Times (here), the Gulnare Free Will Baptist Church in Pike County, Kentucky, has since voted unanimously to overturn the ban, and the church's parent denomination, the National Association of Free Will Baptists, has issued a statement (here) affirming the right of interracial couples to marry and denying that the denomination is racist.

In one sense, it's good this happened.  It has afforded American society and American churches another opportunity to affirm our still imperfect commitment to racial equality and justice.  In another sense, it exposes the fact that even today our churches are still mostly racially exclusive by the apparent choice of all concerned. More largely, we are still a segregated society, and it is not always easy for mixed-race couples and families to live comfortably in our nation.  And in another sense, people of faith can only regret the fact that we in the churches have received "bad press" yet again because of the unloving actions of a few badly misguided "believers".  It's not that we are all so perfect otherwise, but it was Christian folk of both races who provided the motive power for the civil rights movement.  It was the biblical story of the Exodus that inspired the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King.  It is even to the credit of the members of the Gulnare church that they so quickly came to their Christian senses and righted the wrong done by an ignorant few in the church.

So, we can be sorry and glad that this incident happened.  It demonstrates in one swell foop how far we've come and how far we have to go both as a society and in our faith(s).