ERLC Calls Race a “Gospel Issue”…in 2023

This week, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion’s Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion released an arti­cle declar­ing that racial con­ver­sa­tions and quo­tas are a “gospel issue.” The arti­cle was based on an inter­view with Ram­ny Perez, pas­tor of Ford­ham Com­mu­ni­ty Church in New York City. In the inter­view, Perez spoke about the need for racial uni­ty in the church:

“I believe that some have checked out of this con­ver­sa­tion, in part, because of the cal­lous­ness of heart that has set in. Oth­ers, par­tic­u­lar­ly minori­ties, are just tired of try­ing to con­vince their fel­low Chris­tians that these are gospel issues. Per­son­al­ly, for our church, we want to build on what we see is bib­li­cal­ly good and faith­ful and not con­cern our­selves with debat­ing those who are unin­ter­est­ed in racial uni­ty.”

In the open­ing, Perez crit­i­cizes those who have “checked out of this con­ver­sa­tion” due to a per­ceived “cal­lous­ness of heart” and lack of inter­est in racial uni­ty. Perez does not both­er to explain what he means by “racial uni­ty,” what the sub­stance of a con­ver­sa­tion on that top­ic would entail, nor why those who may not want to engage in that type of con­ver­sa­tion are cold­heart­ed. These are seri­ous accu­sa­tions to lev­el at Christ’s church, but the inter­view­er did not give any fol­low-up ques­tions that would force Perez to give evi­dence for his charges.

Perez also makes the claim that racial uni­ty is a “gospel issue.” Con­trast that idea with 1 Corinthi­ans 15:3–6, in which the apos­tle Paul defines the gospel as the death, bur­ial, and res­ur­rec­tion of our Lord Jesus Christ. The con­cept of race or uni­ty is not the gospel and is thus not a gospel issue. While it is true that eth­nic uni­ty is a con­se­quence of the shared iden­ti­ty, shared fam­i­ly, the new “eth­nos” in Christ, Chris­tians from dif­fer­ent back­grounds enjoy, pas­tors like Perez come close to cre­at­ing a dif­fer­ent gospel when they make skin col­or a cen­tral focus and asso­ciate race with the gospel.

How­ev­er, Perez does give some clar­i­ty to his def­i­n­i­tion of racial uni­ty lat­er in the inter­view when he asserts: “Our church, by God’s grace, has been able to reach and be com­posed of the diver­si­ty in our neigh­bor­hood. This has led us to focus on the procla­ma­tion of the gospel and the Word of God in a way that is not col­or­blind.” For Perez, “racial uni­ty” entails hav­ing a cer­tain amount of racial diver­si­ty in a con­gre­ga­tion, and not being “col­or­blind” when pro­claim­ing the gospel. This strat­e­gy aligns with the ERL­C’s pri­or calls for “king­dom diver­si­ty,” which amounts to arti­fi­cial­ly mak­ing local church­es more diverse. This strat­e­gy can­not be found in the Bible. When the apos­tle Paul was con­vert­ed to Christ, he went to Judea, Galilee, and Samaria, preach­ing repen­tance and the for­give­ness of sins to all, and that is how the church was and is built up (Acts 9). It is done through preach­ing the good news of Christ, not by cater­ing to dif­fer­ent shades of melanin.