Michael: In the 2016 presidential election, a staggering 81% of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump. It was a demographic that proved decisive. Kevin: Right, and most people assume that the political movement that delivered that vote—the Religious Right—was forged in the fire of the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Michael: Exactly. But what if I told you that movement wasn't born from debates over abortion or school prayer, but from a fight to keep Christian schools racially segregated? Kevin: Hold on, you're saying the real catalyst was race, not abortion? That completely flips the script on the last 50 years of American politics. Michael: It’s an explosive and meticulously argued claim, and it’s at the heart of the book we're diving into today: The Color of Compromise by Jemar Tisby. And Tisby is uniquely positioned to write this. He’s not just a historian with a PhD specializing in race and religion; he’s also a theologian with a Master of Divinity. Kevin: So he's got the academic chops and the faith-based perspective. I've heard this book became a massive bestseller and is used in church study groups all over the country, which is fascinating given how challenging its message is. Michael: It is. He wrote it out of a deep love for the church, which makes his critique all the more powerful and, for many, all the more painful. He starts with a story that I think everyone knows, but maybe not in the way he tells it: the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama.

Kevin: Yeah, that's a story that’s just seared into the national memory. Horrific. Michael: Truly. It was September 15, 1963. The church was preparing for its annual Youth Day service. In the basement, four young girls—Addie Mae Collins, Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, and Cynthia Wesley—were in their white dresses, excited for the service. And then, a bomb planted by white supremacists exploded. Kevin: It’s just unimaginable. The sheer evil of it. Michael: The blast was so powerful it blew a five-foot hole in the floor. One of the girls, Cynthia Wesley, was decapitated. She was only identified by her shoes and a ring she was wearing. It’s a moment of pure, unadulterated evil. But Tisby’s question, the one that drives the whole book, is this: How does such an atrocity happen in a supposedly Christian nation? In a city filled with churches? Kevin: That’s the question, isn't it? You’d think every Christian in the city would have been outraged and united against the kind of hatred that leads to that. Michael: You would think. But the day after the bombing, a young, white lawyer named Charles Morgan Jr. gave a speech to an all-white business club. And he said something that was both shocking and profoundly true. He asked, "Who did it? Who threw that bomb?" And then he answered his own question: "We all did it. Every last one of us is condemned for that crime." Kevin: Wow. That’s a heavy statement. How can he say "we all did it"? Most people in that room didn't plant a bomb. Is that really fair? Michael: And that's the core of Tisby's argument. It’s not about direct guilt for the act itself. It’s about complicity. Morgan argued that the bombing didn't happen in a vacuum. It happened in a city where respectable, church-going white people told racist jokes, stayed silent when their friends used slurs, and did business with segregationists. They created the climate. Their silence, their inaction, their compromise with racism created the environment where that bomb could be built, planted, and detonated. Kevin: Okay, I see. It's like, if you see a small fire and do nothing, you can't act surprised when the whole forest burns down. You didn't light the match, but you let it burn. Michael: That's a perfect analogy. Tisby builds on this by quoting Martin Luther King Jr., who wrote from that very same Birmingham jail. King said that injustice is like a boil. You can't cure it by covering it up. You have to expose it, with all its ugliness, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured. Kevin: So the compromises, the little acts of looking away, are what keep the boil covered. They allow the infection to fester until it erupts into something as horrific as a church bombing. Michael: Precisely. And Tisby argues this isn't a new phenomenon. This pattern of compromise is the thread that runs through the entire history of the American church's relationship with race. It’s a story not just of active, KKK-style racism, but of the quiet, respectable complicity of moderate, well-meaning Christians.

Kevin: That makes me wonder, then, how did they justify this from a Christian perspective? I mean, we're talking about a faith centered on love and liberation. How do you square that with owning another human being or enforcing segregation? Michael: This is where the story gets even more disturbing. Tisby argues that there was a "theological heist," where the Bible itself was turned into a weapon to defend racism. It wasn't just ignorance; it was a sophisticated, intellectual project. Kevin: A theological heist. I like that. So what were the tools they used in this heist? Michael: The primary tool, for centuries, was the "Curse of Ham." It's a story from Genesis where Noah gets drunk, and his son Ham sees him naked. As a result, Noah curses Ham's son, Canaan, to be a "slave of slaves." Proslavery theologians took this story and performed a series of interpretive gymnastics. They claimed Ham was the ancestor of all African people, and that this curse was a divine decree for race-based, perpetual slavery. Kevin: Wait, so they built a theological justification for chattel slavery on a vague story about Noah being drunk in a tent? That seems like a stretch. Michael: A massive stretch. Abolitionists pointed out the flaws: the curse was on Canaan, not Ham; it was likely fulfilled thousands of years ago; and there's no biblical basis to link Ham to all people of African descent. But the interpretation was powerful because it gave a divine stamp of approval to an economic system. It made slavery seem like part of God's plan. Kevin: So it wasn't just an economic issue; they made it an issue of biblical orthodoxy. Michael: Exactly. And this was bolstered by another powerful idea, especially in the South: the "Spirituality of the Church." This doctrine was championed by influential theologians like James Henley Thornwell. He argued that the church's mission is purely spiritual—preaching the gospel, administering sacraments—and that it has no business meddling in "political" or "social" affairs. Kevin: So the 'Spirituality of the Church' is like a corporate HR policy that says 'we don't get involved in politics,' even when the company is built on slave labor? It’s a convenient way to look the other way. Michael: It's the ultimate theological compromise. It allowed towering figures of American Christianity, like the evangelist George Whitefield and the theologian Jonathan Edwards—men revered for their intellect and piety—to own human beings. They could preach about the soul's salvation on Sunday while profiting from the body's bondage on Monday. They saw slavery as a "civil institution," outside the church's purview. Kevin: That’s a chilling thought. That you can be a theological genius, one of the most influential religious figures in American history, and still be so profoundly wrong because of this compartmentalization. Michael: It’s the color of compromise. And this ability to compartmentalize, to separate faith from justice, didn't just disappear after the Civil War. As Tisby argues, racism is like a virus; it never goes away, it just adapts.

Kevin: Okay, so how did it adapt? After the Civil Rights Act, after legal segregation was dismantled, how did this complicity continue? Michael: This is where Tisby makes his most controversial and, I think, most important point. He argues that complicity shifted from the social sphere to the political one. And he pinpoints the true origin of the modern Religious Right as the key example. Kevin: Right, this is the hook you started with. I've always heard the Religious Right was a response to the Roe v. Wade abortion ruling in 1973. Michael: That’s the popular narrative. But Tisby, citing the work of other historians, argues that's not the full story. In the early 1970s, the Southern Baptist Convention—the largest evangelical denomination—actually passed resolutions supporting the possibility of abortion in certain cases. Prominent pastors were on record saying life begins at birth, not conception. The unified, political opposition to abortion came later. Kevin: Hold on. So if it wasn't abortion, what was it? Michael: It was race. Specifically, it was the IRS challenging the tax-exempt status of so-called "segregation academies." These were private Christian schools, like Bob Jones University, that were founded to allow white parents to avoid integrated public schools. Bob Jones University, for example, explicitly banned interracial dating, believing it was a violation of God's will. Kevin: So the government threatened their tax status because of their racist policies, and that's what lit the fuse? Michael: That was the spark. Conservative Christian leaders framed it as an attack on religious freedom and government overreach. It was an issue that united white evangelicals in a way abortion hadn't yet. It mobilized them into a powerful political bloc. This movement then aligned with the Republican Party, which, under strategists like Lee Atwater, was perfecting the "Southern Strategy." Kevin: I've heard of that. Atwater was the one who admitted they used coded language—talking about "forced busing" and "states' rights"—to appeal to the racial anxieties of white voters without using explicit slurs. Michael: Precisely. So you have this convergence: a political party using racially coded language to win votes, and a religious movement galvanized by a desire to protect racially segregated schools. The result, Tisby argues, is that white evangelicalism became almost synonymous with the Republican party and, by extension, with whiteness. Politics became a proxy for racial conflict. Kevin: And this creates a new form of complicity. You don't have to be overtly racist. You can just vote for "law and order" or "tax cuts" or "school choice," policies that sound race-neutral but disproportionately harm Black communities, and you can do it all while claiming you're just following your Christian convictions. Michael: That's the modern color of compromise. It's subtle, it's abstract, and it allows for plausible deniability. But the outcome is the same: the perpetuation of a racial hierarchy.

Kevin: Wow. This is a lot to take in. It’s a heavy book. So, if Tisby's right about this long, unbroken line of complicity, what's the big takeaway here? It feels overwhelming. Michael: It is overwhelming. But I think the book's ultimate point is that the American church doesn't have a "how-to" problem with racism; it has a "want-to" problem. The solutions are known. Tisby outlines what he calls the ARC of racial justice: Awareness, building Relationships, and making a life-long Commitment to action. We know what to do. Kevin: So what’s stopping people? Michael: In a word: fear. Fear of losing social standing. Fear of being called a "social justice warrior." Fear of making a mistake and saying the wrong thing. Fear of the discomfort that comes with confronting a painful history and a present reality. Tisby points to the Apostle Peter, who ate with Gentiles until other Jews showed up, and then he withdrew out of fear. Fear sabotages solidarity. Kevin: That’s a powerful point. It’s not about a lack of information, but a lack of courage. Michael: Exactly. And that's where Tisby ends the book, with a call to courage. He draws a direct parallel to God's command to Joshua as he was about to lead the Israelites into the promised land, a terrifying task. God tells him three times in the first chapter: "Be strong and courageous." It’s a command, not a suggestion. And it comes with a promise: "for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." Kevin: So courage isn't the absence of fear, but acting despite it, with the belief that you're not acting alone. Michael: That’s the heart of it. Tisby is arguing that for centuries, the American church has chosen compromise. Now, it's time to choose courage. It makes you wonder, in our own lives, in our own institutions, where are we choosing comfort over courage? Where are we making our own small compromises? Kevin: A question worth asking. Michael: This is Aibrary, signing off.