What Christian Nationalists Ought to Learn from Malcolm X

Part 2

When I was a child, I was a very picky eater. It was a battle for my parents to get me to eat any fruits and vegetables. Gradually as I matured, more and more fruits and vegetables were at least palatable for me. (There are still a few things I cannot stand like razzberries and grapefruit, but I actually enjoy eating most fruits and vegetables now.) I love oranges now, but oranges were one of the later fruits to join my repertoire. I think Mom was surprised by how long it took me to be willing to eat oranges, but she could understand why. She said oranges are somewhat unpredictable. It is hard to know whether an orange is perfectly ripe and sweet until you actually bite into it. Oranges that are not quite ripe are a disappointment, but when you get a good one, “there is nothing more delicious! Your first exposure to oranges must have been a bad orange,” she surmised. I don’t remember a specific incident with a bad orange, but it is possible, and I also think I was repulsed by the extremely pungent smell of oranges. But sometime in my twenties, I promised my mom that if she sliced into an orange and it was delicious, I would give it a try. Now I know what she is talking about, have overcome my aversion to their strong smell, and will put up with the occasional disappointing orange because the delicious ones are worth it.

For some reason, this memory came back to me when I reached the part of The Autobiography of Malcolm X when he converts to Islam. And then I remembered New Testament passages where humans are metaphorically likened to fruit trees. John the Baptist rebuked the pharisees and Sadducees who came to be baptized, warning them to “Produce fruit in keeping with repentance,” because “The ax is already at the root of the trees, and every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down and thrown into the fire” (Matthew 3:8, 10). In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus warns us to watch out for false prophets, saying “By their fruit you will recognize them” (Matthew 7:16). Paul urged the Galatians, and by extension urges us to cultivate the Fruit of the Spirit so that they/we may inherit the kingdom of heaven (Galatians 5:22-23). There are many other passages that use this metaphor. This is just a sampling.

Given what I am about to say next, and given what is going on in the world right now, I want to unequivocally take a stand and say there is no place in Christianity for Islamophobia. The overwhelming majority of the billions of Muslims worldwide are peaceful people. As one mother suffering in Gaza said in a plea for Israel not to forsake humanitarian aid and compassion for innocent civilians caught in the crossfire of their fight against Hamas, the world needs to remember that Palestinian mothers love their children just as dearly as Israeli mothers do. And as I discussed in my last post, the greatest asset God gave humanity is the collective wisdom of all cultures, and Saint Francis of Assisi who interacted with Muslims way back in the 11^th century recognized that we Christians could learn from the Muslim commitment to spiritual disciplines, especially the commitment to prayer five times a day. But as we discussed in one session of a Systematic Theology course I took at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, there are fundamental differences between the beliefs of Christianity and Islam.

Muslims believe that Jesus was an important prophet, that he was born of the Virgin Mary and healed people, but they maintain that God would never allow a prophet to die on a cross. They insist that God, being all-powerful, saved Jesus from death and took him back up to heaven. Muslims also believe that Jesus was the precursor to Muhammad, but that God’s final revelation to humanity came through Muhammad, not Christ. The Qur’an also categorically rejects the belief in a Triune God, which means that God could not descend into his own creation. Finally, and I think most tragically, Muslims believe that because Jesus never died, he did not pay the ultimate penalty for sin. Rejection of Christ’s death also means rejection of his resurrection, and thus Muslims cannot comprehend the biblical teaching about justification through faith alone, sanctification or grace. I am all in favor of mission outreach to Muslims, as long as it is done with pure motives. In other words, we should share the gospel of Christ with our Muslim friends and neighbors not because they need to become Christians for us to consider them full-fledged Americans, but because our hearts should break for our Muslim friends and neighbors who worship a god who is distant from humanity, whose love must be earned through external behavior, and who offers no hope of salvation or eternal life. But I fear that evangelicals right now are out of step, not giving enough attention to what I would argue is an even more heartbreaking reality that threatens our very credibility at present; the reality that Christians are leaving the church in droves and sometimes converting to other faiths like Malcolm X, but more often choosing no religion at all. Some young people are walking away from Christianity because they have adopted a scientific worldview, but while I have not done official research on this, I think there is enough anecdotal evidence to justify speculation on my part that the more common reason people are walking away from Christianity is because the resurgence of Christian Nationalism in recent years has produced so much rotten fruit in the American church that people who long for the genuine peace and love Christ offers cannot find enough sweet fruit in the American church to motivate them to stay the course, to persevere in their faith. And although Christian Nationalism is not limited to white people, I believe it is white Christian nationalism in particular that drew Malcolm X away from Christ.

Two statements made by Malcolm X stood out to me. When reaching out to black Christians, whom Malcolm X hoped to convert to Islam, Malcolm X said, “The white man has taught us to shout and sing and pray until we die, to wait until death, for some dreamy heaven-in-the-hereafter, while this white man has his milk and honey in the streets paved with golden dollars right here on this earth!” (Page 240) If listeners didn’t believe him, Malcolm X encouraged them to take the New York subway into the white areas of town and observe the wealth and opulence of these neighborhoods compared to the ghettos where they lived. It should sober us white Christians to realize his words are as true today as they were in the 1960s. I must confess that not only am I privileged because I live in an affluent suburb of Milwaukee which, because of systemic racism, is predominantly white. I am privileged because as a blind person, even when we drive through poor, predominantly black neighborhoods, I cannot look out the window and am thus oblivious to the poverty of these areas. But my conscience was awakened when about five years ago, I read Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted, a work of immersion journalism in which Matthew Desmond lived alongside poor families in Milwaukee to document the systemic injustices of housing in America. I was aware that unscrupulous landlords took advantage of college students like my brothers, who lived in a couple pretty run-down apartments that were not up to code near the campus of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. But I honestly didn’t fully appreciate the degree to which this injustice went far beyond college students, that families with children were forced to live in squalor, and under constant threat of eviction, just a few short miles from me. Christian ethics were beyond the scope of Matthew Desmond’s book, but other pastors have rightly pointed out that a truly consistent prolife ethic goes far beyond protection of the unborn. It also includes the right of all image-bearers of God, regardless of race, ethnicity, lifestyle or even bad decisions that may be a part of someone’s past, to live lives of dignity: fair wages, stable, affordable housing that is up to code, food security, quality education and healthcare. (And as a bonus, this commitment to dignity would likely reduce abortions.) I must confess these words expressing awareness of my white privilege feel somewhat hollow, as it is a system I was born into, that I am so deeply entrenched in that I have not yet figured out how God may be calling me to repent of it in a tangible way yet. But cliché as it may sound, the first step toward repentance is awareness of the problem. Malcolm X’s statement should serve as a sobering indictment of us Christians, not only because our inconsistent prolife ethic has produced so much rotten fruit in us that people like Malcolm X gave up on Christianity, but also because I cannot help wondering if at the end of our earthly lives, Abraham (or Jesus) might tell those of us who lived unrepentant lives of opulence while people lived in squalor just a ten minute drive away the same thing he told the rich man who ignored Lazarus, “remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony” (Luke 16:25). I pray we will recognize how short-sighted Christian nationalism and its obsession with political power and privilege for a select few is before it has eternal consequences.

The other quote that stood out to me was when Malcolm X made the pilgrimage to Mecca, and sent a letter back to the United States that he asked be distributed to the press. In this letter, Malcolm X wrote, “During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug)—while praying to the same God with fellow Muslims whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was the blondest of blond, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and in the deeds of the “white” Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers)—because their belief in one god had removed the “white” from their minds, the “white” from their behavior, and the “white” from their attitude” (Page 340). This quote should trouble all who want to be genuine followers of Christ because Malcolm X should have experienced this same sincerity with us. Our belief in one God through Christ should have removed the white from our behavior, minds and attitudes as well. The kingdom of God was never supposed to be limited to a dreamy heaven-in-the-hereafter. Christ called us to offer a foretaste of God’s kingdom now, and the most beautiful feature that is supposed to define this kingdom is that “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28. Jesus and Paul frequently refer to fellow believers as brothers and sisters.

When Malcolm X returned from his trip, having seen the goodness and sincerity that can be found among white people who haven’t been contaminated by Christian Nationalism and the ideology of whiteness—a social power construct that puts European descended people in the role of God on earth—he no longer ascribed to Elijah Muhammad’s teaching that white people are a devil race. But he still felt as though the best hope for lifting up black people was Islam, not Christianity. I still believe that the best hope for all humanity, especially those who have been oppressed, is Christianity, but Malcolm X’s story shows that we have not been good ambassadors for Christ. So before we preach the gospel to unreached people, we ought to first make sure we are leading by example, practicing true Christianity, not the counterfeit religion of Christian Nationalism.