The Spirit of Jim Crow or the Spirit of Jesus? {book excerpt}

 (Here's an excerpt from a recent writing session from my book-in-progress, Unladylike: Resisting the Injustice of Inequality in the Church due out from Civitas Press later this year. I hope I'm hookin' ya!)

In a civil rights case in the late 1800’s, a Black man was arrested when he attempted to sit in a whites only railroad car. A local judge ruled against the defendant. The United States Supreme court upheld that ruling. Its  justification? Separate but equal accommodations did not stamp the colored race with a badge of inferiority. (i) Separate but equal?  Not inferior? This sounds familiar. 

 It was this kind of rhetoric that kept the Jim Crow laws of the South empowered for years. We are troubled today to think of how law abiding, upright  citizens, including Christians, were able to in good conscience live and move in communities that had signs posted like Whites Only, or No Colored People. How effectual would it have been if during the Civil Rights movement when these laws were challenged activists conceded in compromise? Which right would be compromised? Which right would be laid down by Blacks in an effort to preserve the peace? It is ludicrous to put the responsibility of making nice with oppressive conditions on the oppressed themselves. It would have been a half measure that would have availed nothing had Civil Rights activists negotiated which Jim Crow laws to maintain.

Churches that “allow women” to lead in certain pastoral roles but ban them from others due to gender are acting in the spirit of Jim Crow, not the Spirit of Jesus. I believe churches that keep women caged with stained-glass barriers are not fulfilling the scriptural mandate of justice nor biblical equality. It is a half measure when half the church is allowed to be heard to some degree, but  relegated to the back pews in others because they don’t have the correct chromosomes.

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[i] http://www.jimcrowhistory.org/history/creating2.htm,