Repent and Repair: An invitation for white Christians to pay reparations

Zacchaeus was a tax collector, he was very wealthy, and he was short. In Luke 19:1-10, we read about his encounter with Jesus Christ and his decision to make amends for the wrong that he had done. He promises to pay back the people that he had cheated and to give away half of his possessions in order to fix the harm that he had caused to his community by amassing wealth at their expense. Essentially, Zacchaeus chose to pay reparations. He chose to repair the wrong that he had done by paying money to the wronged parties. That is reparations. Though repentance, transformation, and love for our neighbor are all important aspects of the Christian faith and one could argue that reparations are closely tied to all three of those, reparations remain a controversial - and highly avoided - topic in many churches. But I think we need to talk about it, and I think that as white Christians, we should consider paying reparations.

A (very) brief review of history and an invitation

Human beings were enslaved in race based chattel slavery in our country.

That fact, in and of itself, is enough to warrant reparations. But there's more. Enslaved people were not compensated for their labor. They built wealth for others but could not accumulate it for themselves. It was not until the Civil War was almost over that freed people were compensated through General William Sherman's Special Field Order Number 15. The order, issued in January of 1865, designated 400 thousand acres of land in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida to be given to newly emancipated Black people. Each family was to receive up to 40 acres. But under President Andrew Johnson, the field order was overturned less than a year after it had been originally signed and the land was instead returned to the former plantation owners. Even in emancipation, formerly enslaved people were not compensated. The promise of 40 acres was replaced with Jim Crow laws, segregation, disenfranchisement, discrimination, and lynching. Since then, the wealth gap between white families and Black families in the United States has continued to grow, due in part to almost 250 years of slavery followed by almost 90 years of share-cropping, Jim Crow laws, and redlining that prevented many Black families from accumulating wealth, property, and real estate to pass down to their children. Though slavery was abolished in 1865, harm caused by systemic racism and white supremacy was not repaired and has continued to be inflicted since then.

Today, H.R. 40 sits in congress. H.R. 40 is a bill that seeks to create a federal commission to study the impact of slavery and develop a potential plan for reparations. The bill does not actually implement reparations, but merely creates a commission to study the possibility of reparations. H.R. 40 has been introduced to the House of Representatives every year since 1989, but it has yet to reach a committee vote. 

Instead of standing by and waiting for congress to pass H.R. 40, the church - individual congregations and local bodies of believers - could be leading here. Rather than raising money for new buildings, better auditoriums, and state-of-the-art technology, we could keep our buildings as they are (or even sell them and rent space from the church down the street) and start a reparations fund instead. 

The big question

I know there are questions. Many of them are answered by people who have been studying reparations much longer than I have, and there is a list of resources at the bottom of this post that I highly recommend looking at if you have questions that you want answers to. But there is one question that I can anticipate from many people. It usually goes something like this: I didn't own slaves. I wasn't even alive then, so why do I have to pay reparations for something that I didn't do? To address that concern, I do have a few thoughts:

1. I rejoice that Jesus did not refuse to pay for our sins due to the fact that he did not commit them.
   
   
2. Jesus told a parable about a man from Samaria who literally paid to repair a wrong that someone else committed. In Luke 10:25-37, we read about a man who was beaten and attacked, lying helpless on the side of the road until a fellow traveller came by. The traveller bound the man's wounds, spent the night caring for him at an inn, and paid out of his own pocket to finance the man's full recovery. The traveller was not responsible for attacking the man on the side of the road, but the traveller dedicated his time and money to the man's full restoration anyway. He paid to repair harm that he did not cause because he saw a neighbor in need and had compassion. We can do that, too. (In the same parable, the religious leaders ignored the beaten man and passed by on the other side instead of coming to help him. It seems that many churches choose the path of the religious leaders instead of the compassionate traveller.)
   
   But before we get too high and mighty, seeing ourselves as the Good Samaritan, the hero in the story who comes to clean up someone else's mess, I suggest that we consider that we may actually be the robbers in the parable. Historically, the church could have ended slavery before it became an American institution. Instead, the church silently stood by, enabled, and actively participated in some of the most atrocious crimes against humanity by believing lies about the inferiority of Black people and twisting scripture to support the enslavement of people created in the image of God. Historically, the church could have paid reparations - it was invited to in 1969 by James Forman, who delivered the Black Manifesto at Riverside Church in New York. His message, later delivered to other churches and denominations as well, was an admonition to white Christians to collect $500 million in reparations to repair the damage done by white Christian churches. Forman's demands were largely rejected. 
   
   It isn't only the historic church that is guilty - the modern church has also participated in the theft of truth and power. Currently, many churches embrace color blindness that often functions to minimize and ignore both cultural differences and the real ways that many Black people experience racism inside and outside of the church. We promote racial reconciliation and unity without repentance and change. We overlook Black theologians and therefore perpetuate the lie that the correct interpretation of scripture is always the one promoted by white men of European decent. We create multiracial churches and demand that white culture remain dominant.
   
   
3. Those of us who were not alive during the time of race based chattel slavery are currently alive during mass incarceration, police brutality, medical racism, unequal access to education, racist standardized testing, an enduring racial wealth gap, and many other forms of race based harm that need to be repaired. Reparations should consider today's atrocities as well as yesterday's.
   
   
4. Maybe whether or not someone owned slaves is not the determining factor as to if they should pay reparations. Sadly, the people who did own slaves and the people who supported the institution of slavery did not pay reparations. Furthermore, they are no longer living. But generations later, reparations have still not been paid and the consequences of the harm caused by slavery and white supremacy continue to wreck havoc on individuals, families, and communities. Though no one who is alive today was alive prior to Emancipation, everyone who is alive today has an opportunity to repair something that has been broken for generations. Why wouldn't we want to be a part of a solution instead of passing the same problem on to the next generation that the previous generation passed on to us? For people who claim that they want to do God's will, this sure seems like a great way to practice loving our neighbors.
   
   
5. Many of us often give money to help solve problems that we did not cause. People who give money to the American Diabetes Association are not doing so because they created diabetes. They are doing so because they care deeply about the health and safety of people who have diabetes. They want people with diabetes to thrive. They have compassion for people with diabetes. If we refuse to pay reparations because we insist that we are not responsible for the harm that has been inflicted on Black people in our country, can we at the very least choose to repair harm because we have compassion for people?

What now?

For those of you who, like me, want to know what to do next, repentance seems like a very good step to take. Repentance involves sorrow and lament and taking responsibility for the ways our actions (and lack of actions) have hurt people. As Christians, we should be familiar with repentance. It is not a new concept. Repentance for racism, however, is something that we do not do enough of. This repentance can be both individual and corporate. When it comes to corporate repentance, entire congregations can come together and repent of failure to love their neighbors by repairing wrongs, for indifference toward the oppression of people in their community, for contributing to harmful experiences for their neighbors as a community.

But repentance is more than words and goes far beyond apology. Repentance includes life change and pivots in everything from the words we use to the way we spend our money. In this case, repenting for the pain caused by white supremacy involves doing everything we can to repair. There are many ways to repair, but monetary reparations are a good place to start. I have included a list of organizations at the bottom of this post. I encourage you to learn more about these organizations. Many of them are working towards reparations in various ways and are accepting donations. 

In addition to supporting existing organizations that are working towards reparations, what would it look like for local churches to start reparations funds in their own communities? (And no, predominantly white churches, we don't get to decide what reparations look like for the Black people in our communities. We must listen to the Black activists, leaders, and neighbors in our communities and follow their lead on a plan for reparations. And if there are no Black people in our communities, a good place to start would be to figure out who was either historically chased out or barred from entering.) We did not invent the narrative of white supremacy - it is older than all of us. But we don't have to pass it on to our children. It is not our fault that we have been lied to about the supremacy of white people, but it is our fault if, confronted with that lie and the pain that it causes our neighbors, we do nothing to prevent it from continuing to spread. We have an opportunity to divest from white supremacy and disentangle it from our systems and our theologies and our politics, and one way of doing that is by paying the reparations that should have been paid before we were born. Let's do it.

Resources to learn about reparations:

• Reparations: A Christian Call for Repentance and Repair, a book by Duke L. Kwon and Gregory Thompson
• From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century, a book by William A. Darity Jr. and A. Kristen Mullen
• Reparations: The Big Payback, a podcast by Erika Alexander and Whitney Dow
• The Case for Reparations, an article by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Organizations to donate to for reparations:

• The National Coalition of Blacks for Reparations in America (NCOBRA) NCOBRA is a coalition of organizations seeking reparations for Black people in America.
• The National African American Reparations Commission (NAARC) NAARC is a national group of advocates of reparations that supports HR-40 and has created a 10 Point Reparations Program.
• The Fund for Reparations NOW! (FFRN!) FFRN! is the white ally initiative of NAARC and creates opportunities for white Americas to partner with the mission of NAARC and participate in reparations and anti-racist growth.
• Reparations 4 Slavery This is a portal with links to various reparations organizations across the country that are doing work related to reparations.
• There might be organizations in your community that are doing work of reparations. Find them.