A “Post-Racial” Society: Vision for the Christian Nation

I picked up this term listening to NPR. A quick google search produced a lot more results. It is the idea of living in a world where we are beyond racial differences. Most of the discussion seems to be whether we are entering that new place with the potential election of Senator Obama as President this fall.

So, here is an awkward conversation, a white pastor talking about race. I won’t be so naïve as to say that I am not racist. There is racism in my makeup, I haven’t met anybody who, with sufficient honest conversation, does not have this most blatant and particularly American sinfulness.

My personal work on racism is to confess it when it comes out of my mouth and be aware of it in the sin life that still tries to drag me down.

And as a person of the ‘white’ color, a “European-American”, I don’t think any meaningful discussion on race can begin without personal confession.

A post-racial society needs to be theologically considered under the idea of the “already-not yet” mystery of the Christian Nation when we consider it as a synonym for the Kingdom of God. We can already work at it, but it not yet finished, and will not be until sin itself is finished.

So if post-racial is, to use the political terms of the upcoming conventions, a plank in the platform of what it means to be a Christian Nation, the best measure for achieving it comes from Martin Luther King’s famous words that people “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character”.