March 19

“UNDOING RACISM”: A DOCTRINAL CHANGE-AGENT PLOY!
By Jack Evans, Sr.

To understand and appreciate this treatise on the above subject, one must be familiar with the Internet and written dialogue between this writer and Rich Atchley, minister of the North Richland Hills Church of Christ, which is a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas. The dialogue was precipitated when, on January 28, 2004, Rick Atchley preached a sermon at his congregation titled “Reconciliation to Reckon With,” in which he stated that it was his dream to pursue racial reconciliation with “the African-American community in Tarrant County,” the county in which his congregation is located. This “dream” would be a noble idea, were it not wrapped in a shroud of subliminal condescension and blatant racism itself, as well as that of using the idea as a ploy to denigrate the New Testament church as revealed in the Bible and recruit as many young African-American “insurgents” to assist him through his own concoction of a “Da Vinci Code.” And sadly enough, there are a few, very few, African-American young men who, unwittingly, maybe, have made themselves available to be used by this man whose ultimate purpose is to change the doctrine of the body of Christ. And to further scrutinize the full scope of this dichotomy between Rick Atchley and this writer, go to www.jackevansonline.com. You will note in reading that dialogue that this writer, after giving a critical review or exposé, dated March 19, 2004, of Rick’s sermon of January 28 of that year, issued the invitation to him to have a public dialogue regarding the doctrinal tenets on which we differ, but he never accepted that invitation.

While stating in his sermon that his “dream” was that of “reconciliation” of the white and African-American people, which is sociology, ninety-five percent of his “dream” sermon was on how African-American churches of Christ differ from some white American churches of Christ in religious belief, which is theology. This writer wonders if Rick knows the difference. It is not that we differ in sociology, the equality of all human beings, based on a correct understanding of the U.S. Constitution; it is in the realm of theology, the immutable, absolute authority of Jesus Christ, where our differences come. One must embrace the correct theology first, and the sociology will automatically be resolved (Gal. 3:26-29). Therefore, Rick and his pied-piper followers, white and black, should concentrate in their forthcoming “retreat” on theology, which includes acceptance of the doctrine of Christ as revealed in the New Testament (Rom. 6:17-18; 2 Tim. 1:13; Jude 3). But it appears that they have a semantical problem with the word RECONCILE. This word means “to reunite” or “to bring together again.” Thus African-American and Anglo-Americans cannot be reconciled through man-made means, because they have never been conciliated on a racial basis. They have never been united on the basis of racial equality in this nation, and never will be, on the basis of man-made means. The only hope of true reconciliation is that all men be first reconciled TO GOD THROUGH JESUS CHRIST (2 Cor. 5:16-20; Eph. 2:16; Col. 3:15). And all of this is done in the one New Testament church, which is that “church-of-Christ-only-going-to-heaven-teaching” (1 Cor. 15:24-28; 2 Cor. 5:1-7; 1 Thess. 4:16-17), so strongly condemned by Rick Atchley in his “Reconciliation to Reckon With” sermon. To refresh your and Rick’s memory, I offer the following excerpts, verbatim, from Rick’s sermon:

Here’s my dream. The truth of the matter is, historically in churches of Christ our African-American congregations have struggled with a lot of the legalism and sectarianism that some of us knew growing up. THEY STILL DO. AFRICAN-AMERICAN CHURCHES STILL OFTEN PREACH ‘THE-CHURCH-OF-CHRIST-IS-THE-ONLY-ONE-GOING-TO-HEAVEN’ kind of sermons. IT GRIEVES ME TO SAY THAT, BUT IT IS TRUE. Here’s what grieves me more: the reason that’s true is because for decades the Christian schools of churches of Christ denied African-American young men to come study. THE PREACHERS IN THOSE CHURCHES DIDN’T GET GOOD THEOLOGICAL TRAINING. It was in my own lifetime that that changed. I remember when I first started preaching, a lot of the young black men that graduated from ACU with Bible degrees would come see me and say, ‘We don’t know what to do. We’ve learned to preach GRACE; the black churches won’t hire us, and the white churches won’t even talk to us. WHAT ARE WE SUPPOSED TO DO?’ In Atlanta I got canceled by a black church. They said they wanted me to come because they had heard about people we were winning to Christ. And then the preacher called me up and said, ‘I hear you have a praise team. I hear you believe that people besides the church of Christ can go to heaven.’ And he canceled me, not because he wasn’t willing to listen, but because he was afraid of what his preaching peers would say. AND THIS IS THE CULTURE IN AFRICAN-AMERICAN CHURCHES FOR YEARS...BUT; THERE’S A NEW GENERATION OF YOUNG, AFRICAN-AMERICAN PREACHERS THAT WANT TO BREAK FREE FROM THAT. They have started meeting. They formed their own retreat. They are getting together. And they need encouragement; because in black churches of Christ if you stand up and preach some of the things that we have been preaching in this pulpit for thirty years, you can still get into a lot of trouble. They need encouragement. So, I am going to their next retreat to encourage them. And I am going to invite them to come in 2005 here to this church and be encouraged and know that they have a future. And when this church models to our fellowship that we believe that there can be a new day of freedom and grace, that explodes in African-American churches across America, it will make a statement that needs to be made.

You will note in the above diatribe about something that he least understands, Rick, in “a great white father” mode, states that he was going to help the “new generation of Young African-American preachers...break free from that,” not elucidating on what “that” meant. Was he speaking about their culture or their preaching the scripture? He also said that he was going to invite these young African-American preachers (some of whom are as old as he is or older) to come to his church in 2005 for a “retreat,” and to let them know that they have “a future.” What kind of “future” can Rick Atchley assure for these young men in the church of Christ? This would be analogous to Colonel Sanders’ assuring the chickens of a future. This writer considers this “retreat” as a socio-religious retreat from truth. Its primary, subtle purpose is to try to make inroads into the African-American churches of Christ with a false doctrine about “Christians in all denominations,” under the guise of “grace,” not mentioning that “grace and truth” are inseparable (John 1:17). But “they shall not pass!”

This “retreat” is scheduled to convene on August 26-27 at the North Richland Hills Church of Christ, hosted by Rick, one of the most virulent leaders of the change of doctrine (apostasy) in the churches of Christ, armed with the false teachings of Max Lucado, Rubel Shelley, and others of their doctrinal persuasion. And to make their purpose more palatable, this activity is titled “New Wineskins Retreat 2005,” which shows their misunderstanding of the new wineskins principle in the Bible referencing Old Testament and New Testament teachings. This writer, therefore, refers to the modern day “new wineskins” group simply as the “new coonskins,” both white and black. For Jesus was not dealing with human chronology in Matthew 9:17 in reference to “wineskins.” It is also this writer’s belief that some of these young African-American ministers have been caught up in this doctrinal change movement unaware of the real purpose of Rick and the other change agents with whom they are aligning themselves. It is hoped that such young men will soon realize this ploy and quickly disassociate themselves from those apostate change agents who are literally misusing some of them under the fallacious term of “progressive element of the churches of Christ.” If such young African-American men continue in doctrinal digression with the change agents, after ample admonition, they, too, must be “marked” and withdrawn from for teaching false doctrine and heresy (Rom. 16:17-18; Titus 3:10-11; 2 Thess. 3:6). For those young men are, unknowingly, limiting their ministry in the church of Christ, which concerns this writer, personally.

To further advance and disguise their true motives, and make them more acceptable to African-American young men unaware of their real purpose, the change agents are using the theme for this retreat this year, “Undoing Racism,” which any minority person wants to see done. And one would be prompted to ask, what is wrong with that theme? The answer is, nothing; it is a good theme. But Rick said at the beginning of his sermon on Reconciliation, that “...one area I mentioned was with the African-American community in Tarrant County.” To do that, all Rick needs to do, having several thousand white members huddled together in the North Richland Hills congregation, an area with very few African-Americans living there, is to take maybe two thousand of his white members and go into the African-American community in Fort Worth, where the majority of the African-Americans live in Tarrant County, and bring them to Christ. And then some of them, maybe even Rick himself, could just move into that community (as well as into the Hispanic sections) and worship there with them, permanently, in a truly integrated church setting. Why must the minority race always acquiesce to the will and way of the majority race? The prominent question is, what has the ninety-eight percent white congregation of the North Richland Hills Church of Christ done to undo racism in the American community of Tarrant County in the last forty years, besides inviting a few “safe” African-American people over for membership in a “gilded cage.” With the exception of possibly one or two, even the African-American churches in Tarrant County know very little about the North Richland Hills Church of Christ, let alone anything about Rick Atchley, who seemingly has the “great white father complex.”

There is an eerie resemblance of the tactics of the white doctrinal change-agent leaders in churches of Christ and those moral change-agent leaders of the gay lifestyle in America. The similarity is this: the “gay rights” leaders try to connect the Civil Rights movement to the “gay rights and same sex marriages” movement in this country, when the two movements have no relationship whatever. Homosexuality is not a civil right; it is a perverted, moral wrong. Similarly, the doctrinal change agent leaders in churches of Christ try to connect their apostate teachings to racial equality, as has always been right there in the Bible. The apostates of today, unlike the old-line racists in this country of the 1800s and early 1900s, will use the Bible to “undo racism,” but will not use the Bible to “undo” denominationalism. “Consistency, thou art a jewel!” And like the “gay rights” leaders, who use the derogatory epithets like “homophobics” and “gay bashers,” the change agents among churches of Christ use epithets like “legalists, patternists, conservatives, sectarianism and ‘old-line church of Christism’,” just to name a few. But such ungodly tactics will not deter people who still believe the Bible and hold fast to its mandates in morality and doctrine (2 Tim. 1:13; 2:19; Titus 2:11-13).

In conclusion, since a part of the mission statement of the “new wineskins” is to preserve “...an open atmosphere conducive for honest dialogue and strategic planning,” this writer requests to have such a public dialogue with Rick Atchley and any of this group, not on “racism,” which we have “talked to death,” and on which the Bible is very clear in condemning, but on the “principles” of the doctrine of Christ (Heb. 6:1) on which we disagree (Acts 15:1-2, 24). This writer awaits a response from Rick Atchley and/or anyone who supports his doctrinal stance.

[Rick Atchley's Sermon On Racial Reconciliation]

[Rick Atchley's Apology]

[Dr. Evans' response to Rick Atchley's Apology]

[Return to JackEvansOnline] [Return to SwCC.edu] [Return to Dialogue Archives]