Life together: a passion for reconciliation

RACIAL RECONCILIATION has been the central theme of Chris Rice's life and ministry. It is also the subject of his two books. More Than Equals (Inter-Varsity, 1993) was coauthored by his friend Spencer Perkins, a fellow member of Voice of Calvary Church in Jackson, Mississippi, and the son of the civil rights leader John Perkins, founder of Voice of Calvary. In the memoir Grace Matters (Jossey-Bass, 2002), Rice describes life in the intentional Christian community called Antioch that he and Spencer Perkins helped found and lead. Both books describe Rice's transformation from a naive white "do-gooder" to a person who lives and teaches the message of reconciliation.

After Spencer Perkins 's death at age 44 in 1998, Rice left Mississippi to study at Duke Divinity School. In 2004 he led a study group on reconciliation for the Lausanne Forum on World Evangelization, which met in Thailand (see the group's paper, "God's Mission as Reconciliation," at www. reconciliationnetwork.com). His next assignment is to help establish a center for reconciliation at Duke.

I spoke with him about what he has learned about race and the church, and about the church's mission in reconciliation.

Is it possible to sum up what you've learned from 17 years at Voice of Calvary Church and 12 years of living in an intentional, multiracial Christian community?

I learned there that the way things are is not the way things have to be. In Jackson, Mississippi, a new community was birthed in a broken inner-city neighborhood. Blacks and whites came to be close friends. Our children grew up together, we worshiped together. We showed that over time substantial reconciliation can happen.

I also learned to keep hope small. Black and white people eating together, leaving their isolated worlds and coming together in mission--this is a small sign of hope.

What would you say to someone who thinks there's not much more work to be done in racial reconciliation?

The heart of the gospel is becoming a new community. The Holy Spirit's interruption of this world at Pentecost with a new community of Jews and gentiles, privileged and marginalized, is not realized in the church in the U.S. Ninety percent of African-American Christians worship in all-black churches. Ninety percent of white American Christians worship in all-white churches. Thirty years since the incredible victories of the civil rights movement, we continue to live in the trajectory of racial fragmentation. The biggest problem is that we don't see that as a problem.

For example, the mostly white Presbyterian church of which I am a member has a hundred-year history. Three blocks away from our church in Durham is an African-American church that also has a hundred-year history. For a century these two churches have existed three blocks apart but have not prayed together, read scripture together, celebrated communion together, or joined in common mission. We are doing some small things to change this, but basically Christians don't even ask what it means for us to be members of the one body of Christ in this city.

That's the challenge of this new era--to realize a common life. That wasn't possible during segregation--you would get killed for even praying together then. That doesn't happen now, but we still don't pray together.

I was struck by Spencer Perkins's comment, which appears in More Than Equals, that he wouldn't have bothered with racial reconciliation if he weren't a Christian.

Spencer was willing to speak the truth no matter where it led him--even if it led him to self-criticism or to criticism of fellow African Americans. He would say that black people aren't any more interested in reconciliation than white people.

Martin Luther King Jr. taught us that the oppressed may have to initiate reconciliation. The categories of "oppressed" and "oppressor" are problematic for Christians because we're all called to work for reconciliation. We're all called to become faithful whether it "works" or not. That's a hard message, but I think it is at the heart of what it means to be Christian.

In your books you tell of traveling with Spencer, and how, as you talked and laughed together in public, you would draw stares. You imagined people wondering if you two were musicians, or athletes, or gays. Those groups do a better job of bridging racial lines than the church does.

So does the military--that's the most integrated institution in America. Not the church. No one would think that maybe we were together because we were Christians.

When Spencer and I would go out to speak and stand side by side in front of an audience, we felt like half of our work had already been accomplished.

But it was far from easy. We were together only through years of blood, sweat and tears. But we were together, and that was our message.

How did the Antioch intentional community get started?

In 1983 many of us white members of Voice of Calvary thought things were going quite well in our church, but the African Americans believed there was racism in our midst and organized meetings to address it. There were many confrontations and many people left the church. It was a very painful time.