At FTE, we are guided by the conviction that excellence and diversity go hand in hand, and we have long supported students from underrepresented racial/ethnic groups in the pursuit of theological education.  As Sharon Watson Fluker, FTE Vice President for Doctoral Programs and Administration, has observed: diversity delayed is excellence denied.  The world in which we live - the world God has created for our pleasure and edification - is a multicultural, multiracial banquet, and this is good.  Yet, building diversity in pastoral and theological education continues to be a challenge.  One of the reasons for this difficulty is that racism is a persistent feature of our lives together.  At FTE we often describe vocation as the call to be agents of God's healing in the world.  Since it is true that racism represents a fundamental wound in our lives together, it is fitting that we hold up issues of race as central to considerations of Christian vocation.  Is vocation too strong a word to describe the Christian responsibility in the face of racism?   As long as racial differences are an excuse for injustice and exclusion, Christians will continue to be called to take up the cross of racial suffering and seek to redeem our world.

In the United States, race presents an on-going dilemma and a constant moral stumbling block.  Beginning with the colonial engagement with the indigenous peoples, and including the forced migration and enslavement of Africans, subsequent exclusionary immigration policies, the internment of Japanese-American citizens, and more recently the response to hurricane Katrina and the exploitation of undocumented immigrants, America has demonstrated a sad history of racial injustice.  The history and present realities of African Americans in this country fully embody this moral failing.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, it has been out of the religious communities of black America that the nation's most compelling voices for racial justice, empowerment and reconciliation have emerged.  Indeed, it seems that the black churches have cultivated the prophetic voices who have served, as Martin Luther King, Jr. suggested, as America's conscience. From David Walker, Sojourner Truth and Harriett Tubman, to Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King and Cornel West, among others, black Americans have reminded us of the necessity of justice and mercy for all Americans.  Further, they have reminded white churches that racial reconciliation is not simply an interest of people of color, but of all who would follow Jesus Christ.

History has taught us this important lesson: The well of racial justice must be replenished with the waters of religious conviction.  It may be that nothing short of God's command and a contrite heart has the power to transform our deep-seated fears and selfishness into righteousness, justice and compassion.  Wherever racial reconciliation has been achieved, God has been part of the conversation.

For example, despite its manifold shortcomings and its own implicit racism, the overwhelmingly white small town church in which I was raised taught me my earliest important lessons about race.  The awkwardness around people of color was real, but it was at that church that I first learned that "Red and yellow, black and white, all are precious in God's sight.  Jesus loves the little children of the world."  A simple children's song awakened me to the fact that race was a problem.  I suppose that even as a young child, I knew that if it were obvious that all are precious in God's sight, we wouldn't need to be reminding ourselves about it in song.  So it was that in my white Sunday School class, I first learned that the world did not treat all as equally precious, and it's where I learned that Jesus did.  Churches, even the ambivalent ones, have always had something important to tell us about race.  To be a follower of Jesus is to be opposed to racism.  It is to be an indiscriminate witness to God's love and healing power in the world.

This is not to suggest that the church's history around race is not a complicated one.  Too often, church leaders and members have stood by and said nothing.  At times, they have even lifted up their voices and arms against their brothers and sisters of color.  But churches have also been the repository of gospel truths that cannot be denied.   All are precious in God's sight.

The demand for Christian leadership around issues of race remains with us today.  Our society's celebration of individualism and multiculturalism tempts us to be self-congratulatory.  Tiger Woods, with his abundant financial resources, his interracial marriage, and his own mixed ethnic heritage can lead us to say, "problem, what problem?" Tiger has become a poster-child for racial diversity.  And none of my white friends would stand by and let someone be subjected to racial slurs or overt discrimination.  We have made progress.   But we're slow to face the more intransigent forms of structural racism: an educational system that despite its rhetoric is leaving minorities, and especially black males, behind; an economic system that benefits immensely from an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants who labor in our fields, tend our lawns, build our homes and make our beds, while issues related to fair wages, health care and political status remain unresolved; a judicial system that treats minorities more harshly, and incarcerates black and Hispanic males particularly at an alarming rate.

Is vocation too strong a word to describe the Christian responsibility in the face of racism?  It was the prophet Amos who encouraged the faithful to "take away the noise of your songs; to the melody of your harps [God] will not listen.  But let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream." (Amos 5:23-24)  As Christians, we are all called to take up the burdens of those who would be oppressed by ideologies of race, by economic oppression, and by that persistent human tendency to cast some as insiders and others as out.   It is indeed a vocation -- a calling from God -- that we struggle against the racism in our hearts and in our social institutions.

Recently, we have honored two of those leaders who have taken up this vocation. Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King helped make this nation more just by staying faithful to the call.  And as Christians, we continue to hear the call.  Recently, Cardinal Mahoney has challenged proposed legislation that would make it a crime to extend care to an undocumented immigrant, instructing his priests to defy the law if it is passed.  As long as racial differences are an excuse for injustice, Christians will continue to be called to take up the cross of racial suffering and seek to redeem our world.  If you are a Christian leader, whatever your color, you do have a calling to redress racial injustice.  Where will that calling lead you?