Squires: Black Christians need to answer a simple question: Is my Bible more important than my “black card”?

Christians in the United States are tested daily by a culture openly hostile to our faith. From the closing of churches to the promotion of drag queens in schools, true believers are separated from Christians in name only (ChrINOs) who believe that Jesus was simply a good teacher with important moral truths.

There are myriad forces trying to attack the Christian faith, but there is one group of Christians who are dealing with a different kind of struggle.

Black Christians are at a crossroads as our faith is increasingly challenged by ancient notions of racial solidarity and, given the current state of race in America, “Black” and “Christian” identities can not coexist. One must rule over the other.

This does not mean that a person of African descent cannot be a Christian. On the contrary, biblical anthropology is quite clear: all humankind is descended from Adam, and every person of every race, nation, tribe, and ethnic group is a sinner in dire need of a savior.

Those who turn from their sin and believe that Jesus died for their salvation will be saved by God’s grace. Since salvation is of God, no one can take credit for his own righteousness. The Bible says that God’s people come from different tribes and nations, speak different languages ​​and have different cultures. These different people groups are united in Christ, not by skin color or any other superficial characteristic.

There is nothing contradictory about being a Christian who also recognizes national or ethnic identity. We need not be ashamed of anything that God created to show His glory. The trouble for believers begins when any other aspect of our identity is elevated above our identity in Christ. This leads directly to the sin of idolatry.

Many Black Christians in America are grappling with this tension as we speak because blackness has largely become black, to paraphrase Nikole Hannah-Jones politically Identity. For this reason, Joe Biden felt comfortable declaring that black voters who didn’t support him “are not black.”

What makes this worse is that black political identity largely overlaps with one party and is defined in opposition to what is considered “white” by that party. The National Museum of African American History and Culture released a list of beliefs, values, and behaviors she claimed represented “white culture” a few years ago. These included the nuclear family, rational thinking, hard work and punctuality.

The people behind this project, like many progressives, have come to believe that “Blackness” challenges “white” social and cultural norms. For this reason, racial activists frame abortion, body positivity, prison abolition, homosexuality, transgenderism, and feminism as necessary tools in the fight against “white supremacy.”

This is one of the reasons why many black Christians, including several prominent black evangelicals, do not pastors, try to thread the needle of promoting Black Lives Matter as a slogan while rejecting the organization. This is extremely difficult given that the organization’s co-founders popularized both the phrase and the movement.

Trying to “redeem” BLM is also unnecessary. Christians of all colors do not need a Marxist organization to affirm the value of black image bearers. God already did that in Genesis 1:27 and needs no help from people who claim to value all black lives except those that develop in the womb.

In fact, 18 civil rights organizations today released a statement requesting a meeting with President Biden to overturn abortion following the Supreme Court decision Deer vs Wade. That Notice on the National Urban League website this passage contained:

This letter specifically highlights the disproportionate impact this decision will have on black women, other women of color and vulnerable women, and the undeniable link between access to abortion and other social justice issues, including voter disenfranchisement, abuse by the Police, criminal injustice, poverty and economic injustice, housing inequality, LGBTQ+ rights, the immigration crisis, food insecurity, medical bias and environmental injustice.

It is clear that authentic blackness, as defined by the left, requires full support for abortion, as well as all other policy priorities of the Democratic National Committee. The NAACP should be renamed the National Association for the Abortion of Colored People because it shares the same commitment to black population reduction as Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood. The country’s largest abortion provider also receives support from the Black Congressional Committee and BET.

Black Christians are at a crossroads. Some of the most prominent pro-Black institutions are committed to our annihilation, and “Christian nationalist” is used pejoratively to describe believers who want biblical definitions of sex, marriage, and family to be reflected in the law.

Black believers must choose. We can believe that the greatest source of man’s bondage is sin, or we can argue that Jesus came to earth to ensure justice in all walks of life for marginalized people of color.

We can either argue for the inherent value of all life, or we can sing “Black Lives Count” in solidarity with people who think it’s better for a child to be killed in the womb than to be born to a poor black mother.

We can either affirm that sex is established at conception and remain unchanged throughout our lives, or we can join BET as it “stands”. Zaya Wade and agree with black professors who believe men can get pregnant.

We can accept God’s plan for the family—a devoted man and woman and all the children that result from their union—or we can continue to participate black intellectuals who think marriage is obsolete and fathers are optional.

Enslaved Africans were viewed as inhumane possessions by white slave owners who actually believed in the inherent supremacy of some ‘races’. The civil rights movement was characterized by the pursuit of equal citizenship, but was driven by the recognition that every human being, regardless of the color of their skin, was created in the image of God.

Today’s black leadership has reversed that picture you revolution on its head. The same people who believe WEB DuBois was right when he said that “the twentieth century problem is the color line problem” are now pushing the twenty-first century problem: binary gender rejection.

The groups that claim to fight in the spirit of their ancestors now advocate the annihilation of their descendants and insist that “real” blacks must agree with them. Some of the same black Christians who believe that white evangelicals made an idol of national pride have made an idol of racial identity.

This ambiguity cannot go on. We can keep the Bible or our black cards. We can’t have both.