What does a person do on an ordinary Tuesday with the knowledge that, for most of American history, churchgoers who never harmed anyone kept a racial hierarchy running by going along with it? This guide answers that in two steps. First comes a slow, honest check of your own reflexes. Then comes a seven-day practice built on what Dr. Jemar Tisby says the work actually requires: a lasting habit of mind, trained over time, instead of a single event.
You can work through it alone in one or two sittings with a notebook, or with a group over one long meeting or two shorter ones. The practice takes a week either way. Nothing here asks you to confess anything out loud. Where a prompt invites sharing, sharing is optional, and silence is a fine answer.
Before anything else, write one sentence
Take a blank page. Finish this sentence in your own words, quickly, without editing: When someone tells me the American church was complicit in racism, my first honest reaction is…
Do not judge what you wrote. It might be agreement, fatigue, defensiveness, grief, anger, or something you cannot name yet. Fold the page and set it aside. You will come back to it at the end, so you can see whether anything moved.
If you are leading a group, have everyone write privately. Do not collect the pages or ask people to read them aloud.
Why more facts will not finish the job
Tisby is a historian, and he still says history alone does not change people. Earlier in his work he felt the case for racial justice was airtight, yet resistance stayed strong. He came to believe that “you could pile facts from the floor to the ceiling, and it won’t do anything if hearts are not softened to receive and hear the stories and experiences of other people.” So this guide adds no new facts. It works on the softening.
He does not dismiss history, though. He values it because it exposes how much of what feels normal was built. History reveals, he says, that “the things you assumed to be natural and just sort of universally true in the atmosphere” were in fact shaped by people. Hold onto that. The first day of the practice asks you to test one of your own assumptions this way.
In the conversation, Lisa Fields names the objection she hears most from white evangelicals: they understand the history, but they did not do anything. Her answer moves the question from guilt to position: “you might not have done anything, but you benefit from those who have done something.” That sentence is the hinge of this guide. It does not accuse you of the acts of earlier generations. It asks you to see where you stand in relation to what those acts produced.
Three people in Scripture who located themselves
Read each passage slowly, out loud if you can. Answer the observation question before the interpretation question. Read the surrounding verses so you know whose story it is.
Nehemiah 1:4-11
Nehemiah is a Jewish official in the Persian court when he hears that Jerusalem lies broken. He weeps, fasts and prays. In the prayer he confesses the sins of Israel and includes himself: “both I and my father’s house have sinned” (Nehemiah 1:6).
Observe: Find every place Nehemiah says “we” or “I” in this prayer. Whose failures is he naming? Did he personally commit all of them?
Interpret: This is a narrative prayer. It describes what Nehemiah did and does not command every reader to do the same. Some Christian readers see in it a pattern of faithful people standing inside the history of their community instead of outside it. Does that reading seem fair to the passage? What does Nehemiah gain, and what does he risk, by saying “I” where he could have said “they”?
Luke 19:1-10
Zacchaeus is a chief tax collector who meets Jesus and responds this way: “Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; and if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold” (Luke 19:8).
Observe: Zacchaeus says nothing about feelings. Everything he says involves money and specific people.
Interpret: Zacchaeus is repairing wrongs he personally committed. Nehemiah confesses wrongs that run through his family and people. Lisa Fields’s line about benefiting from what others did falls somewhere between the two. Which of these men does your own situation resemble more? Does the difference change what repair might look like for you?
Romans 12:9-16
In a list of instructions for life inside the church, Paul writes, “Rejoice with them that do rejoice, and weep with them that weep” (Romans 12:15).
Observe: This is a direct instruction to believers. It assumes Christians will be present for one another’s pain as well as their own.
Interpret: Weeping with someone requires first believing their grief is real. What does that rule out? Hold the question for two sections.
The heart check: where do you actually stand?
Tisby borrows a spectrum used by social psychologists and people who work on race: racist, non-racist and anti-racist. The first actively promotes hostility, and the last actively works against an unjust order. Most people, he says, sit in the middle as non-racists, intending no harm, “but simply by being passive in it, they’re sort of upholding it.” He describes earlier generations the same way. Most committed no open acts of terror, “but what they did do is they sort of co-signed it by their silence.”
The strongest objection deserves a hearing before you place yourself. Silence is not always cooperation. A person may be silent because they lack any power to change a situation, because they are still learning, or because speaking would endanger someone. Structures also differ: some clearly advantage one group, while others are disputed, and benefiting from an arrangement does not by itself settle how much responsibility a person carries. Tisby’s reply is that the system “has been deliberately set up” in politics, economics, healthcare, housing and education, so passivity has effects whatever the intent. Test his claim against the objection on one real case in your life. What would you need to know about a specific structure to decide whether your silence there is upholding something or simply silence?
Answer these on paper. Give each one a few minutes. Groups may discuss them in pairs, and anyone may pass.
- Think of the last time race came up in a conversation at church, work or home. What did you actually do in the first thirty seconds? Describe what you did.
- Where in your life is silence the easiest option? Name a specific room, group chat or relationship.
- Of the systems Tisby names, in which do you have any real influence, even a small amount?
- What would it cost you, concretely, to stop being silent in one of those places? Name the cost honestly: a friendship, an awkward meeting, a reputation, money, time.
Facilitators: defensiveness tends to rise here. Read it as information about where the group is. If the room drifts into arguing politics or whether the history happened, bring it back to the question on the page. You are asking people to describe what they do. And if someone in the room describes a real wound, do not let others rush to rebut or qualify it.
What Tisby asks for first
When Lisa Fields asks what repentance looks like for people who benefited without taking part, Tisby starts small. Speaking of Black church folk, he says, “It’s just acknowledgement.” He explains that white believers who have not experienced racism often “dismiss, discount, sidestep our experience,” and he calls that one of the most painful things of all. Whether you were involved or not, he says, “you can be involved in my experience simply by acknowledging that it’s true by expressing empathy.” This is the Romans 12:15 instruction in concrete form.
Acknowledgment is where the work begins. Tisby would almost rather pastors not raise race at all if it only comes up on Martin Luther King Jr. Day or during Black History Month. His standard is that “racial justice is, is not an occasion, it’s a disposition,” and he adds, “it’s not a moment. It’s an attitude.” A disposition grows through repetition and through error. Tisby knows many white Christians fear getting it wrong, and he answers that fear directly: “your mistakes will actually build your capacity to be an ally.” Then: “Make missteps, trip and stumble. Get up and keep walking.”
He also warns against stopping at friendship. Many people, he says, are comfortable with handshakes, coffee and shared worship, but “what they’re not doing is pushing any of the systemic or institutional practices that perpetuate inequality.” Relationships matter. His argument keeps going past them.
Seven days from assumption to repair
Keep brief notes each day: what you did and what it cost. Two lines are enough.
- Day 1. Trace one assumption. Choose one thing about your church, neighborhood or workplace that feels natural: who attends where, who lives where, who leads. Find one documented source on how it came to be, such as a congregation’s founding record, a denomination’s published history or a local archive. Write down whether what felt natural was shaped by decisions. If you are a Black believer, you might also turn this toward what you were taught about yourself. Tisby wrote partly out of love for Black people and the need to “discover, rediscover and recover the image of God in ourselves.” He insists the record holds struggle and that “there’s also been incredible joy.” Let your tracing include both.
- Days 2 to 4. Practice acknowledgment. At least once, when someone describes a racial wound, do not explain, qualify, compare or correct. Say plainly that you believe them and that it sounds painful. Then stop talking. Afterward, write down what you wanted to say instead. That impulse is your reflex.
- Day 5. Name one system. Pick one practice in a place where you have influence: how your church chooses leaders, how your team hires, how your neighborhood association spends money. Using the test from the heart check, write down what you know and what you would still need to learn about whether it favors one group. Keep the note where you will see it again.
- Day 6. Consider money honestly. Tisby argues that money must be part of repair because slavery was an exploitative economic system. He anticipates the reply that people earned what they have, and says, “I certainly get that impulse.” He answers it with history, pointing to New Deal and GI Bill benefits that he says largely excluded Black workers and families, while noting he speaks as a historian, not an economist. One form of repair he suggests is “writing a check, not to an individual, but to an organization whose work you trust.” Lisa Fields adds that a donor can “give the money quietly and say, Hey, I trust what you’re doing” without seeking credit. Faithful Christians weigh the policy questions around reparations differently. Your task is smaller: research one minority-led ministry and decide whether you trust its work enough to support it without your name on it.
- Day 7. Reread. Go back over the week’s notes. Where did you misstep? Where did you go silent, and where did you speak? Write one sentence about what you would do differently next week.
Questions for the group
- Nehemiah said “I” when confessing his people’s sins. Zacchaeus repaired what he personally took. Which model seems closer to what Scripture asks of you, and why?
- Tisby says facts alone do not change people. Think of a belief you changed. What actually changed it?
- Where is the line between acknowledging someone’s experience and agreeing with every interpretation of it? Is that line as clear as it first seems?
- After testing Tisby’s claim against the objection, did the non-racist middle look more or less defensible to you? What decided it?
- Which of the seven days was hardest to carry out? What does that difficulty tell you?
- What mistake are you most afraid of making, and what would getting up again look like?
Back to your first sentence
Unfold the page from the beginning and read what you wrote.
Underneath it, finish this prompt: Now, when someone tells me the American church was complicit in racism, I… End it with something you will do. Compare the two sentences. If nothing moved, that is worth knowing, and the week can be repeated. If something did move, the next task is keeping it alive past this week. Tisby’s word for what you are building is disposition, and it shows up on an ordinary Tuesday with nothing on the calendar asking for it.