A few weeks ago, my wife and I visited our daughter’s family. Along the way, we saw farms and forests, rolling plains and majestic mountains, corn fields and cattle ranches, grain elevators and stockyards.
In Colorado, we visited Paint Mines, a natural wonder that I’d never heard of before. You might google it, and look at the photographs. It is a place of stunning beauty, comprising multi-colored layers of clays that have eroded into canyons with fantastical spires, caves, and other formations. As we were leaving the Paint Mines, in the afterglow of encountering this majestic beauty, we saw a pickup truck, decorated with decals unambiguously proclaiming the white supremacist beliefs of its owner. The conversation changed.
America is a beautiful, and complex place. As we walked through Paint Mines, we encountered many other groups of visitors. They all appeared perfectly civil, and the closest thing to anti-social behavior we observed were people climbing on the formations in defiance of the signs and potential for damage, in search of the perfect selfie. Most of the groups were white, but there were groups of Hispanic visitors and at least one African-American couple. Except for that truck, there was no visible indication of racial animosity. But the truck was undeniable witness to the animosity held by some.
The extent to which white supremacist views have become normalized over the past few years shocks me. Perhaps they were kept in check by the World War II generation, who understood Nazism as politicized white supremacy and wouldn’t abide it. I remember the sense of shock when KKK leaflets began to appear in local south-side communities a half-dozen years ago. Now, such things hardly raise an eyebrow. I believe we have a particular responsibility to stand against the rising public manifestations of white supremacy.
Our faith calls us to believe in “one Lord, one faith, one baptism,” and that “there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!” We remember the story of Acts 8, that the first Gentile convert to Christianity was a black man. Black lives matter.
