67 pages • 2 hours read
Jemar TisbyThe Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2019A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “Understanding Liberty in the Age of Revolution and Revival”
Tisby notes the contradictory characteristics of “freedom and bondage” and “racism and patriotism” during the Revolutionary period (41). White American soldiers and leaders declared their right to independence while enslaving Black people. The American church reinforced this contradiction between freedom and enslavement.
The Declaration and War for Independence
The Declaration of Independence proclaimed human rights for all people, but not for the enslaved. Tisby notes that these values of freedom and independence did not include women, Black people, and Indigenous peoples, whose civil rights remained limited. Black people endeavored to connect the revolutionary rhetoric of liberty to enslavement, but the institution continued.
The Great Awakening
As a religious movement, the Great Awakening shaped Protestantism before the Revolutionary War. It signaled the first significant number of Black people’s conversion to Christianity. However, Tisby observes that Black people made the religion their own by finding connections between the idea of rebirth and baptism with the spirituality of their indigenous traditions.
For Black people, Christianity represented “the hope of freedom” (45). Spiritual deliverance for them equaled “earthly liberation.” White Christians resisted the idea of social equality and enslavers were skeptical of Black people’s Christianization. Laws like the Negro Act of 1740 prevented Black people from gathering.
George Whitefield
Preachers during the Great Awakening appealed to lower economic classes of Black and white people. Tisby cites the example of George Whitefield, who was an Anglican minister and evangelist preacher and a prominent figure among the revivalists. While his stance on race was initially moderate, Whitefield’s attitude changed due to the economic struggles of his established Bethesda Orphanage. Whitefield turned to the labor of enslaved people for the financial security of the institution. Tisby claims that Whitefield’s economic motives remain connected to racist ideas about Black people.
Jonathan Edwards
Jonathan Edwards was a Calvinist pastor who emphasized the necessity of rebirth and conversion. Despite his Christian theology, Edwards remained an enslaver, thereby “compromising” his values. He opposed the African slave trade but not enslavement overall while advocating for evangelism.
Tisby notes how evangelism focused on “individual conversion” and failed to confront systemic injustice. White Christians could not see anything in the Bible that prohibited enslavement and accepted it as an established reality.
The Baptist General Committee of Virginia
The Baptist General Committee opposed enslavement with a statement in 1785. This decision caused division among the Baptists who ultimately treated enslavement as a “civil issue” that did not concern the church. They continued to accept the practice while Black Christians saw the connection of racism to the church.
The First Historically Black Christian Denomination
Tisby notes that the Black church started as an “invisible institution” as the first Black congregations remained secret amid fear of persecution. The division between white and Black Christians was not a theological matter but a racial one, notes Tisby, as the white church treated Black people as second class. Racial tension continued to increase in interracial congregations. The African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) is one of the first examples of how the church functioned as an escape from racism. Black Christians continued to depart from white churches throughout American history.
A Limited Revolution
Tisby concludes that the American church “compromised” with racism as it allowed the enslavement of Black people to continue. The contradictions of the revolutionary era made race more “institutionalized” and reinforced enslavement in the 19th century.
Chapter 4 Summary: “Institutionalizing Race in the Antebellum Era”
In the early 19th century, Black congregations were not recognized as established denominations, a fact, Tisby argues, that guaranteed the second-class status of Black Christians in the American church. Black people did not abandon their faith as Black Christianity grew before the Civil War despite the expansion of enslavement and racial inequality. Race was embedded in the foundations of the new nation and in the church.
Slavery’s Constitution
Tisby notes that the US Constitution does not directly use the word “slavery” but it nonetheless remains ambiguous as to whom the citizen’s privileges apply. At the time, it did not ensure the safety of a self-emancipated person. Tisby then discusses the Three-Fifths Compromise. To determine each state’s population, Congress formed the Three-Fifths Compromise that “compromised” the humanity of Black people. The compromise determined that each enslaved person would be considered as three-fifths of a white citizen. Hence, the Constitution did not abolish “race-based” enslavement. Tisby adds that the American church made equal compromises that protected enslavers and justified the institution.
The Chattel Principle and Slavery
Tisby describes the “chattel principle” as a form of “social alchemy” that characterized the manifestation of enslavement in America. Enslaved people were assigned economic values that treated them as “property” and destroyed their family ties. Tisby stresses the particular suffering of Black women who were valued for their productive and reproductive abilities and had the main responsibility for their families. Rape by white enslavers was also a constant threat for Black women.
American Christians remained silent on the dehumanization of Black people during the antebellum period. Tisby explains that they chose to ignore or not confront the traumatic impact of enslavement, thereby protecting their social and economic privileges and becoming complicit in racism.
Slave Resistance and Rebellion
Black people did not remain passive and found ways to resist oppression, such as through escape, learning to read, and rebellions. Christianity became “a source of strength and survival” (62). Unrest and uprisings against colonizers disturbed white people, who began monitoring the Black church and regulating Black people’s mobility and gatherings.
Paternalism and Proslavery Christianity
As the Gospel inspired Black people to resistance and rebellion, white enslavers sought to regulate and control their religion. Tisby stresses that white evangelists “compromised the Bible’s message of liberation” to justify enslavement (66). They developed a form of paternalism to control Black people’s faith and beliefs to avoid uprisings. This brand of Christianity represented white enslavers as benevolent patriarchs that protected their enslaved “children.” This attitude considered Black people continually dependent on white people’s authority and guidance. By adopting this stance, white Christians preserved the racial hierarchy.
Tisby adds that, while some Christian organizations advocated for reforms, the majority of white Christians failed to confront the issue of race-based enslavement. Inequality and segregation still characterized the American church. White evangelists continued to focus on individual conversion, ignoring racist policies and institutional inequality. American evangelism became complicit with racism and more mainstream as enslavement expanded.
Chapters 3-4 Analysis
In this section, Tisby explores race relations and the role of Christianity in the years leading up to America’s Independence and prior to the Civil War in order to establish one of the text’s key claims about The Historical Complicity of the American Church in Racism. He notes that the rhetoric of liberty and independence during the Revolutionary period contrasted with the institutionalized enslavement of Black people. Tisby emphasizes that the ideal of freedom in America was built around whiteness and excluded people of color who remained subjugated and deprived of civil rights. This contradiction between enslavement and liberation was embedded in the country’s foundation and in early-American understandings of Christian theology.
The attitudes of white evangelists during the religious Revivals of the “Great Awakening” further demonstrate The Historical Complicity of the American Church in Racism. Even as evangelist preachers adopted a moderate stance on racial issues and supported the inclusion of “lower economic classes of whites and the enslaved” (46), they compromised the biblical messages of salvation to sustain enslavement as an institution. Tisby mentions white preachers that attempted to justify their status as enslavers and benefit financially from the unpaid labor of the enslaved, noting that these figures argued that the Bible did not condemn enslavement. By looking at particular historical figures that were prominent in the church, Tisby offers concrete evidence for this historical complicity.
Furthermore, beyond noting the fact of this historical complicity, Tisby goes further by grounding the text’s claims in particular aspects of Christian theology. For instance, he extends his analysis on the ideological approach of white Christians, noting that evangelism focused on “individual conversion” and disassociated the religion from larger social issues and structures. This individualistic approach, in turn, facilitated the church’s complicity in racism, as it provided Christians with an effective rationale for viewing enslavement as a political issue outside the scope of Christianity’s spiritual domain.
The religious Revivals during the “Great Awakening” also endorsed the conversion of enslaved Black people, introducing Black Christianity as a Source of Empowerment. While white preachers focused on the conversion process, enslaved Black people absorbed Christian teachings. They formed their own beliefs and spirituality, connecting Christian ideas to African traditions, while exploring the meaning of liberation. For Black people, the message of spiritual deliverance also translated into “earthly liberation” and the “hope of freedom” (45). While revivalists themselves did not propagate such interpretations in their teachings—and thus contributed to the continuation of enslavement—Black people discerned the racist aspects of the church, demonstrating an early racial consciousness. Tisby therefore highlights how the Black church emerged as a response to racism and persecution from the white church, signaling the division between white and Black Christians. Forming their own denominations and Christian ideology, they rejected white Christian theologies that allowed enslavement and oppression, therefore allowing them to cultivate a unique form of Christianity that captured the authentic principles of biblical teaching.
In this section of the text, Tisby continues to pair his historical analysis with an unequivocal condemnation of any complicity, past or present, in racism and white supremacy. He criticizes the attitudes of Christians who, while witnessing the social processes that dehumanized Black people through terror, rape, and destruction of personal relationships, remained silent on the “generational trauma” of enslavement. He notes how white evangelists distorted biblical messages to justify the limitation of Black people’s autonomy. As Christianity inspired enslaved people to resist oppression through rebellions, white Christians returned to paternalism. These paternalistic attitudes endorsed Christianity in Black people but involved their monitoring and supervision by white Christian enslavers to prevent uprisings. White men thus assumed the image of a father-protector of his enslaved “children,” reinforcing a racial hierarchy hinged on white supremacy. Tisby is clear in his statement that these historical realities constitute moments of the church’s complicity with racism and white supremacy that fundamentally belie the basic principles of the Christian faith.
