Thread by @AlsoACarpenter

1. Here is a thread containing every post thus far in the series, “What Is & Isn’t Being Said.” The goal is to clarify, to the best of my understanding, the argument for Racial Reconciliation from a Biblical perspective, including history and sociology as well. (So I can pin it.)

2. The first post tries to answer what exactly “race” is. Is it biological? Is it a social construction? Is it “real”? And what do we learn from the Scripture on the topic?

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/04/26/wha…

3. The second post moves on to discuss the social construction of race, particularly in America, demonstrating its “reality” and lasting consequences.

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/04/29/wha…

4. Over time, it became clear to me that my own biases had led me to treat “whiteness” as a given in the above post, as normative; I sought later to remedy this in these three posts, offered as clarifications to the part 2:

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/12/05/cor…

5. After demonstrating the movement from disparate laboring people groups to the category “Christian,” in this post I work from “Christian” to the category “white men and women,” previously unheard of.

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/12/10/cor…

6. Last in this clarification series, I follow the transition from so-called “racial biology” to the entrenchment of “white supremacy,” as properly defined, in American law and society.

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/12/12/cor…

7. Moving back to the original progress of the series, I next move on to the notion of “white privilege,” what it does and doesn’t mean, using the Scripture and our own history as guides.

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/05/22/wha…

8. Smith and Emerson, authors of Divided by Faith, were kind enough to allow me to publish a parable from their book, hoping to grant further clarity to the idea of white privilege.

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/05/28/wha…

9. I next moved on to what some have called “color-blind theology.” I argue that the Scripture is not color-blind, but rather seeks to build lived unity out of eschatological unity by acknowledging the actual history of people groups.

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/06/07/wha…

10. Having shown that color-blindness is not a Biblical ethic, I next show how color-blindness operates to maintain racialized societies and segregated churches.

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/08/01/wha…

11. Two claims kept coming up over and over in response to the articles in this series. The first is that “racism isn’t the problem, sin is the problem.” I offer a clarification in reply to this claim here:

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/09/25/rac…

12. Next, many also seemed confused as to the connection between the NT Jew/Gentile conflict and modern racial conflict, thinking there is no connection or, alternatively, a perfectly one-to-one connection. I clarify here:

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/09/27/wha…

13. Next, we move on to a discussion of the difference between individual racism and structural, systemic, or institutional racism.

alsoacarpenter.com/2018/08/23/wha…

14. Having promised in Part 7 to give examples of systemic racism, to help clarify the category, I chose to use the “Narrow” Spirituality of the Church as a historic and continuing example. In the first part, I cover the proponents.

alsoacarpenter.com/2019/01/14/wha…

15. In the second part, I cover the African American tradition in regard to the Spirituality of the Church as well bring the discussion into the present, demonstrating the continued power of systemic racism in the Church.

alsoacarpenter.com/2019/01/17/wha…