Lightly edited copy of a blast email Debi and I are sending out to members of our congregation, Peace Lutheran Church of Springfield, in advance of the first meeting an adult faith formation book study on “The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racismz” by Jemar Tisby. We call the group Sundays@6, and it meets over Zoom Sunday evenings.
Hi everyone!
Just a reminder that Sundays@6 will resume on Sunday, Feb. 4, at 6 p.m. on Zoom. As those who have attended our previous group sessions know, we like to open the Zoom session 15 minutes early each week so we can chat if we want to, or at least make sure our technology is working. So you can connect with us beginning at 5:45 p.m. each week.
In this email are the handout we’ll be using for our first week’s discussion (posted as an attachment), along with a link to a YouTube video previewing the book we’ll be reading, “The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism” by Jemar Tisby.
The books were ordered through a Thrivent Action Team grant and free copies are available in the church office on a first-come first-served basis. We do ask that you only take a book if you are planning to participate in the class. Leftover books will be donated to the church library and available for check-out.
“The Color of Compromise” takes us on a historical, sociological and religious journey from America’s early colonial days through slavery, the Civil War, the Jim Crow laws and the civil rights era to the current Black Lives Matter movement.
Tisby details how American churches have helped create and maintain racist ideas and practices every step of the way by either actively working against racial justice or maintaining complicit silence in the face of injustice. He then challenges Christians of all races and denominations to create a more equitable and inclusive environment in our churches and offers concrete suggestions for doing so.
Tisby begins “The Color of Compromise” by telling of the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, killing four young Black girls, and of a young lawyer named Charles Morgan Jr. who said the entire city was complicit: “Who did it? Who threw that bomb? … The answer should be, ‘We all did it’.” His family received death threats, and Morgan soon closed his law practice and moved to Atlanta.
Reading this, Pete was reminded of the Rev. Paul Turner, pastor of First Baptist Church in Clinton, Tenn., in his home county, who in 1956 escorted Black students to the newly integrated high school during a city election when tensions were running high. As he was returning to the church, he was savagely beaten by an angry white mob. “There is no color line at the cross of Jesus,” he said from the pulpit the next Sunday. But the “aftermath of the event left him without support of many of those who encouraged him to make his stand,” as a Texas newspaper profile delicately put it in later years. After two years, he left Clinton.
Charles Morgan went on to a distinguished career, holding office in the ACLU and representing Muhammad Ali on appeal to the US Supreme Court, among other landmark legal cases. Turner also had a good career. He went on to pastor a large church in Nashville and to teach at Golden Gate Theological Seminary in California.
But in 1980 Turner took his own life. “His family and friends said he had experienced depression ever since being mistreated in Clinton,” said an article in Tennessee’s Baptist and Reflector.
We often think of racism as a personal matter, but Tisby reminds us, repeatedly, that “[r]acism can operate through impersonal systems and not simply through the malicious words and actions of individuals.” What institutional and cultural systems were Morgan and Turner up against? What can their experience tell us about the complicity of the church and our other institutions in systemic racism? About opportunities to overcome it?
We’re sending this email to everyone we can think of who has joined Sundays@6 in the past; is part of Peace Lutheran’s adult faith formation program; or who just might be interested. Young people are also invited to join us if they wish! Please feel free to forward this email to anyone, of any age, that you think would be interested.
For more information, contact Debi and Pete Ellertsen at [redacted].
We look forward to seeing you on February 4!
— Debi and Pete
Links and Citations
Jemar Tisby Color of Compromise, Extended Trailer , YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BNmm9cvmxmY&t=21s
Charles Morgan Jr., Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Morgan_Jr.
Gregory Samford, “Rev. Paul Turner, a Little-Known Civil Rights Hero,” Galveston County Daily News, Dec 2, 2018 https://www.galvnews.com/opinion/guest_columns/rev-paul-turner-a-little-known-civil-rights-hero/article_a546cb0a-b0db-55e1-bf0f-e040b610ca86.html
David Roach, “Tennessee Pastors Paid a Big Price,” Baptist and Reflector, Franklin, Tenn., Feb. 6, 2018 https://baptistandreflector.org/tennessee-pastors-paid-big-price/
[Uplinked Jan 30, 2024]
Ordinary Time 
I still have the paper copy of Letter From a Birmingham Jail penned by King in 1963. I was only 16 but quite engaged in the fight.
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Pete. Deb.
Whoa! Tibsy must have written a “must read” book. The subject is tough. I attempt to never be prejudice and I know I am. There’s often a bias. If I recognize it, I’ll do what I can to “right” myself but there have been times, thankful of no repercussions, but times when I am prejudice.
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