Brittany Kim
Recent events have led me to reflect on the myth of innocence that permeates certain segments of our culture. As a White American Christian, I see a myth of innocence bound up with each of these three aspects of my identity—impeding efforts toward racial reconciliation, damaging the integrity of our nation, and poisoning the church. These myths of innocence are always paired with a corresponding myth of guilt, creating a clear binary between “us” (good people) and “them” (bad people) and often leading to the demonization of those deemed “others.” If we are going to move forward from our current situation, marked by deep-seated divisions, we must confront these myths of innocence.
Let’s begin first with the myth of American innocence. When I was growing up, my dad would listen to conservative political commentator Michael Medved in the car. Again and again I heard the U.S. lauded as “the greatest nation on God’s green earth,” accepting the claim without question. When I learned in school about things that might have given me pause—like our history of slavery—the accent fell on Lincoln and Emancipation, and such flaws were quickly swept aside.
It wasn’t until much later that I was forced to reckon with the significant tensions between the “greatness” of the U.S. and its long history of atrocities—not just slavery but also, among other things, the seizure of land belonging to Native Americans, Jim Crow laws, internment camps and the use of the atomic bomb during World War II, and, more recently, the torture of prisoners in the War on Terror and the separation of children from their parents at our southern border. Such actions were justified by dehumanizing the victims. Native Americans, African Americans, Japanese and Japanese Americans, Muslim Arabs, and undocumented Latino immigrants were painted as uncivilized or barbaric, while the barbaric nature of our nation’s treatment of them went largely unacknowledged.
The American church has sometimes thought of the U.S. as a new Israel. I see that comparison as problematic for several reasons. But even if that comparison were granted, we should take note that the Bible speaks freely about Israel’s many national failures. In light of our current cancel culture, I should clarify that I’m not advocating for a wholesale condemnation of my country. I’m deeply grateful for our ideals of freedom and equality, for our democratic elections, and for the wisdom our founding fathers demonstrated in distributing power among the three branches of government. But if we don’t reckon with our checkered history in a posture of humility and repentance, then we will be forced to relinquish the moral ground we claim to stand on and will be in danger of repeating our most grievous sins. Indeed, Richard Hughes, a Scholar in Residence at the Center for Christianity and Scholarship at Lipscomb University, goes so far as to say that “the myth of American innocence is the enemy of the nation that may yet destroy us.”1
The myth of American innocence is closely intertwined with the myth of White innocence. Together with the assumption of Black guilt, this myth provided the foundation for the practice of lynching in the post-Civil War era, blinding those involved to the shocking contradiction of “innocent” law-abiding citizens engaging in brutal murder. The contradiction is compounded when we consider that lynching was often based on unsubstantiated charges or some perceived slight on the part of the victim. At times, when an intended victim could not be found, a family member was lynched in their place. In The Cross and the Lynching Tree, James Cone observes that many who participated in lynching self-identified as Christians, failing to recognize the irony that they worshiped a God-man who also died at the urging of a violent mob.2
In more recent events, the largely hands-off approach of law enforcement toward armed White protesters in contrast to their more militant posture toward Black Lives Matter protesters also illustrates the myth of White innocence. Similar racial disparities may be found throughout the criminal justice system, as demonstrated in a Washington Post essay by Radley Balko.3
These disparities are particularly striking when it comes to drug charges. Black people are more than five times as likely as White people to be incarcerated for drug offenses, even though some studies suggest that they use and sell drugs at around the same rates.4 Poor Black (and Latino) areas are targeted for stop-and-frisk policing and drug raids by SWAT teams, who burst into homes in the middle of the night, sometimes on the basis of faulty evidence. The results can be disastrous, as in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor last March. By contrast, wealthy White students at elite colleges and universities can use illicit drugs with little fear of incarceration. Our society tends to see such students as merely “experimenting,” assuming that they will go on to make significant contributions to society. Yet poor Black youth who use drugs are frequently viewed as “thugs,” who have little to offer to their communities.
I grew up in the “colorblind” Pacific Northwest, and it was only when I began dating my now husband, who is Korean American, that I began to question my perspectives about race. I gradually discovered racialized stereotypes that operated beneath the veneer of my colorblindness, influencing things like whom I perceived as threatening. Many Black men have shared stories about White women crossing to the other side of the street to avoid walking past them. I’m sure at times I was one of those women. When I volunteered at an urban ministry in a predominantly Black community on the West side of Chicago while I was in graduate school, I looked at every man I passed with suspicion and distrust as I drove through that neighborhood. The work of detangling these stereotypes from my evaluations of particular people and situations is slow and difficult. But if we have any hope of healing the racial tensions in our nation, we must confront our implicit biases and especially our racialized assumptions about innocence and guilt.
Finally, within the church lurks a myth of Christian innocence. As Christians, we sometimes see ourselves as bearing a banner of truth and righteousness in a battle against particular groups of “others”—whether secular humanists, communists, abortionists, homosexuals, criminals, or whomever we deem “unrighteous.” It’s easy to point fingers at the worst offenders to bolster our own claims to virtue. But the New Testament testifies that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23), and the biblical narratives unflinchingly illustrate this truth, portraying God’s own people as engaging in brutal acts of violence and oppression. Even David, the man after God’s own heart (1 Sam 13:14) was an adulterer—or, more likely, a rapist—and a murderer (2 Sam 11).
Closer to home, we’ve seen many Christian leaders brought down by serious moral failures. Instead of being shocked when a prominent pastor has to resign because of sexual misconduct or some other type of abuse, perhaps we should acknowledge that we’re all capable of the worst kinds of evil and design our discipleship models and ecclesiological safeguards with that in mind. What would happen if every Christian community instilled rigorous practices of self-examination and provided grace-soaked, truth-telling structures of accountability for all members, but especially for leaders?
At the same time, recognizing our own propensity toward sin could lead us to tear down the walls that separate “us” from “them” (whoever “they” may be) and work toward building the “beloved community” for which Martin Luther King Jr. longed. In Change of Heart, Jeanne Bishop recounts the story of the personal transformation that led her to seek reconciliation with David Biro, the man who had killed her sister, brother-in-law, and their unborn child decades earlier. She describes a particular moment of insight along the way: “I had always made a divide between Nancy’s killer and me. Him: bad murderer. Me: innocent victims’ family member. The truth was that we were the same; there was no division between us before God. We were both flawed and fallen. We were both God’s children.”5
Bishop had no idea how Biro would respond to her overtures. Early signs pointed to the likelihood that he was a sociopath, incapable of empathy. But the man Bishop encountered through letters and prison visits reflected someone capable of growth and change, who could show genuine remorse for his actions. Her decision to enter into dialogue with him has come at great personal cost, but it has also brought her to a place of deeper healing and freedom.
I don’t know if I have the depth of grace and courage to do what Bishop did, but I’m on a journey of learning not to write anyone off. I’m slowly growing in my ability to look past the labels and see people just like me—marred and broken but created in God’s image. My first experience with the criminal justice system came when I had jury duty a decade ago. The case was a gang shooting that resulted in the death of an innocent bystander. When I looked at the defendant, I saw primarily a “dangerous murderer.” But as Bryan Stevenson, a lawyer with the Equal Justice Initiative, says, “each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.”6
This past fall brought my second experience with the criminal justice system. I had the opportunity to audit a correspondence course through North Park Theological Seminary with students who are serving time in the maximum-security Stateville Prison. The only “outside” student in my small group, I was met with warmth, hospitality, and depth of insight from the “inside” students with whom I interacted. These men have served many years in prison, exiled from a society that deems them unredeemable. Yet they have much to teach the “outside” church about faith, hope, suffering, and perseverance if we’re willing to let go of the oft-intractable assumptions about innocence and guilt that divide us.
As a White American Christian, I hope that I can lay these myths of innocence down at the feet of the only truly innocent one, who died to conquer all evil, including mine. Taking both “us” and “them” together, Christ sought to “create in himself one new humanity out of the two, thus making peace, and in one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility” (Eph 2:15–16). May it be so.
Brittany Kim (PhD, Wheaton College) is an adjunct professor at North Park Theological Seminary and Northeastern Seminary. She is the author of Lengthen Your Tent-Cords: The Metaphorical World of Israel’s Household in the Book of Isaiah and a co-author (with Charlie Trimm) of Understanding Old Testament Theology: Mapping the Terrain of Recent Approaches.
Image: James Tissot, David See Bath-Sheba Bathing
- Richard T. Hughes, Myths America Lives By: White Supremacy and the Stories That Give Us Meaning, 2nd ed. (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois, 2018), 234.[↩]
- James H. Cone, The Cross and the Lynching Tree (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2011), e.g., 30–31.[↩]
- Radley Balko, “There’s overwhelming evidence that the criminal justice system is racist. Here’s the proof,” The Washington Post, 10 June 2020, Online: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/opinions/systemic-racism-police-evidence-criminal-justice-system/.[↩]
- See Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010), 7. Even the more nuanced discussion by John F. Pfaff (Locked In: The True Causes of Mass Incarceration and How to Achieve Real Reform [New York: Basic, 2017], 47–49) acknowledges significant racial discrimination.[↩]
- Jeanne Bishop, Change of Heart: Justice, Mercy, and Making Peace with My Sister’s Killer (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 72.[↩]
- Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (New York: Spiegel & Grau, 2014), 17–18.[↩]