Why Did the Church’s Racial Reckoning Fade

Most people can name a conviction they once held with real heat and then quietly set down. In 2020 many Christians felt that about racism. Latasha Morrison, founder and CEO of Be the Bridge, and Lisa Fields, founder of Jude 3 Project, talked about why that season faded so fast. Their answer applies well beyond race. A conviction usually fades when it rests on a feeling and nothing is built to carry it once the feeling wears off. Lasting commitment comes from tying the conviction to something that does not depend on your mood: a responsibility you accept, a cost you plan for, and people who will hold you to it.

This guide turns that diagnosis on your own life. You will find one conviction you set down, test honestly why it faded, read three passages about hearing without doing, and build one standing commitment. You can work through it alone in about an hour with a pen and paper. A group can use it over one or two meetings. Nobody has to say out loud what they write down. The writing is where most of the work happens.

Begin with one you set down

Before reading anything else, take five minutes and write answers to these. Be as specific as you can. Vague answers protect us.

• Name one conviction you genuinely felt and then let go. It may be about race. It may be a friendship you meant to repair, a habit you swore off, a person you promised to visit, or a cause you gave to for a while.
• When did it start to cool? Name the month or season if you can.
• What was it asking of you right before it cooled: time, money, an awkward conversation, the approval of someone you care about?
• Was there ever a concrete step attached to it, or did it live mostly as something you felt and talked about?

Keep this page. You will come back to it at the end and see whether your first account of what happened still holds.

What wore off in 2020

Lisa Fields described the pattern she watched after George Floyd’s murder. People were moved and changed direction. Then, she said, “the conviction, the guilt, wore off, and then when it wore off, their money went with it.” She added: “Their priorities went with it.” Her broader conclusion was that “we see how fast people change if there’s nothing in place to make them stay in a posture of considering the other.”

Notice the two words she set side by side: conviction and guilt. That pairing is the most useful thing in this guide for self-examination. Guilt is a feeling, and feelings are meant to pass. If a commitment runs on guilt, it will last only as long as the guilt does. When the guilt faded, the giving stopped. Nothing had been wrong with the money. It had simply been attached to the wrong thing.

Lisa Fields made the point with a line she credited to Martin Luther King Jr., that the law cannot make a man love you but it can stop him from lynching you. Her application was about society, where law holds people in place after the heart cools. For a single person, the parallel is not a law. It is any structure you set up while the conviction is clear so that it still binds you once the feeling is gone.

Latasha Morrison adds a second distinction that changes how the structure should be built. She remembered “a collective lament” in 2020, and she described what happened when people were asked to stay in it: “instead of really sitting in the lament, we automatically assume that this is, you are trying to make me feel guilty.” Her alternative was to let discomfort be what it might actually be: “maybe that’s conviction. Let’s sit here in it for a while. Let’s lament in it.”

Then she separated fault from responsibility: “We didn’t break it. It’s not our fault, but it is our responsibility as believers to be a part of the solution, because what impacts one and our body impacts the other.”

Put the two speakers together and you have a working test. A commitment grounded in guilt asks, Am I to blame? Once you decide you are not, or once the feeling of blame fades, the commitment has no reason to continue. A commitment grounded in responsibility asks, What am I bound to because of who I belong to? That question still has an answer on a day when you feel nothing at all.

Go back to your page. Next to the conviction you named, write one sentence that begins with the words I felt and one that begins with I am responsible for. If you cannot finish the second sentence, that may be the reason the first one faded.

Three passages about hearing and walking away

Read each passage slowly, out loud if you can, and answer the observation question before the reflection question. The first question asks what the text says. The second asks what it might say to you. Keep them in that order.

Luke 8:13

“They on the rock are they, which, when they hear, receive the word with joy; and these have no root, which for a while believe, and in time of temptation fall away” (Luke 8:13).

Jesus is explaining the parable of the sower. The seed is the word of God, and this soil represents people who hear it gladly. In its context the passage concerns receiving God’s word itself, not every good resolution a person makes. Using it to examine a faded conviction is an application, and it should be held that way.

Observe: What does this verse say these hearers lacked? What does it say they had? Notice that their joy is never called false.

Reflect: If the joy was real and the root was missing, what would a root have been in the case of the conviction you wrote down?

James 1:23-24

“For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was” (James 1:23-24).

A “glass” here is a mirror. James is writing to believers whose faith showed up in words more than deeds, and the verses that follow name care for orphans and widows as one form that doing takes (James 1:27).

Observe: The man in the mirror sees accurately. What goes wrong, and when?

Reflect: What did you see clearly during the season your conviction was strong? What happened in the space between seeing it and walking away?

2 Corinthians 7:11

“For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter” (2 Corinthians 7:11).

Paul is describing how the Corinthian church responded to a painful letter he had sent. The verse before contrasts godly sorrow, which leads to repentance, with the sorrow of the world (2 Corinthians 7:10). “Carefulness” means earnestness, and “revenge” here means the righting of a wrong. Paul is not describing race in America. He is describing what real grief produces.

Observe: List what Paul says their sorrow produced. How many items are feelings, and how many are actions or changes of direction?

Reflect: Paul could point to evidence. If someone asked what your conviction produced, what could you point to?

Test your reasons before you revive anything

Not every conviction you set down should be picked back up. Sometimes you let something go because you learned better. A view you held for one emotional season can turn out to be mistaken, and setting it down is growth rather than failure. Faithful self-examination has to allow for that, or it turns into guilt by another name.

So test honestly. Did your mind change because of a reason you could state and defend to someone you respect? Or did the cost go up and the conviction go quiet? Write down the actual reason. If you changed your mind, you should be able to say what persuaded you.

Morrison names one way people avoid this test. In her experience, reconciliation work met a run of labels: “this is CRT,” Marxism, liberal, woke. She was blunt about the effect: “It’s ignorance, but it has hindered the progression of the work,” and “it’s created a boogeyman.” A boogeyman does a specific job. It lets you leave a conversation without having to answer the person in it.

Real theological concerns do exist. Some ideas about race, justice or politics deserve careful scrutiny, and a Christian is right to measure them against Scripture. Jude 3 teaches that biblical justice, defined by God’s character and Scripture, is the standard, and that a word like “woke” should be clarified before it is judged. A genuine concern can survive that discipline. A label used as an exit cannot. Here is the difference you can check in yourself. A real concern can be stated in a full sentence, tied to a specific claim, and held while you keep listening. An exit is a single word that ends the listening.

On your page, write any word you reached for when the conviction became uncomfortable. Then try to turn that word into a full sentence about a specific idea. If you can, you have a concern worth discussing. If you cannot, you may have found the exit you used.

A practice: give one conviction something to stand on

Choose one conviction from your page that passed the test above. Do not try to recover the feeling. Spend this week building what will hold it after the feeling is gone. Each step answers one of the ways a conviction faded in 2020.

1. Write the responsibility sentence. Write one line that begins with Because I belong to Christ and his body, I am responsible to and finish it. Keep it small enough to obey this month.
2. Attach a cost before you feel like paying it. Lisa Fields noticed that money left when guilt left. So decide now what this conviction will cost and put it on a schedule: a recurring gift, a standing hour on your calendar, a monthly visit. A decision made in advance does not have to be remade every time you feel tired.
3. Listen under a rule. Morrison described round table discussions she led at a church in Austin where long-time members of color shared their experiences. Her instruction to the staff was this: “my rule was that you have to listen and you cannot ask questions right now. You just have to listen.” The staff learned of many racialized incidents they had never heard about. “They had no idea,” she said. Find one person whose experience bears on your conviction and ask to hear it. Follow her rule. Write questions down for later instead of asking them, and do not explain, correct or defend.
4. Tell one witness. Morrison’s advice to people in hard spaces included this: “make sure you have a strong community of people that believe you when you say something.” Commitment needs that kind of company too. Tell one person what you have committed to, and ask them to ask you about it on a specific date.
5. Set a review date. Put a date about three months out on your calendar. On that day, read your responsibility sentence again and ask whether the practice is still happening. If it has lapsed, you will know when it lapsed. That gives you something concrete to repair, which is far more useful than a vague sense of failure.

Morrison also gives a warning that keeps this practice honest. Speaking to people who stay in difficult spaces, she urged them to ask, “what am I getting out of this?” She observed that “sometimes we get something out of being the only one and being that only voice.” The same temptation applies here. A commitment can become a badge. If your practice is mainly visible to others and changes little for anyone else, revise it.

For groups

If you are leading others through this, start by saying plainly that the aim is self-examination, not settling anyone’s politics. Morrison herself makes the distinction when she says that politics “doesn’t have to be partisan.” If the discussion turns into an argument about a policy, ask the person speaking how the point connects to the conviction they wrote down. Let people keep their pages private. Some will want to say what they found, and many will not. A person can finish the practice without speaking a word of it aloud. If someone reacts defensively during the discussion of labels, do not treat it as a disruption. Morrison’s own question fits the moment: “Why are you gonna deny and defend and deflect when I’m saying I’m hurting?” Ask gently what the defense is protecting, and then let it go.

Questions for discussion or private reflection

• Think of a time you were moved by something and a time you were actually changed. What was present in the second case that was missing in the first?
• Lisa Fields paired conviction with guilt. In your experience, how can a person tell which of the two is driving a decision?
• Morrison separates fault from responsibility. Is there a situation where you have used “it’s not my fault” to end a question that responsibility would have kept open?
• In Luke 8:13 the hearers’ joy is real, yet they have no root. What does that suggest about how much weight to put on strong feelings during a season of conviction?
• What is the difference between a theological concern you hold and a label you use to leave? Can you think of an example of each, in yourself or in someone you admire?
• Whose experience have you been explaining to yourself instead of hearing from them directly? What would it cost you to listen under Morrison’s rule?
• Look at the list in 2 Corinthians 7:11. Which item is most missing from the way you usually respond to hard truths?

Return to your first page

Read what you wrote before the study began, especially your answer about why the conviction cooled. Does that explanation still seem complete? Many people find that their first account blamed circumstances, and a second look shows a cost they avoided or a structure they never built. Some find the reverse, a conviction they were right to set down. Either finding is worth more than the feeling you started with.

Morrison put the root of lasting change in one line: “it has to be a conviction.” This guide adds the other half from her conversation with Lisa Fields. A conviction has to be given something to stand on. The question to carry into the coming months is a plain one. On your review date, what will exist in your life that did not exist before, and who besides you will know about it?