Evangelicals and Bill Bennett

Bill Bennett has been a darling of Evangelicals since the publication of his Book of Virtues. It made him a hero because he espoused old-fashioned values that Evangelicals tout loud and clear. But has this hero-worship of Bennett curtailed their ability to criticize him when he makes outlandish statements?

Recently, while speaking at a jam-packed Evangelical church, I expressed my upset over remarks about aborting black babies made by the former Secretary of Education. On his radio show, Bill Bennett responded to an inquiry as to whether the declining crime rate in America was due to the legalization of abortion, which in turn was the result of Roe vs. Wade.

He answered, “But I do know that it’s true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country and your crime rate would go down.”
I told the white Christians in the audience that this was an occasion when we should stand up for our African-American brothers and sisters and decry Bennett’s statement. “We all know,” I went on to say, “that the generally inferior education America offers to black children; the discrimination that blacks experience in the marketplace; and the resulting poverty that is disproportionately evident in their communities are the major factors contributing to their high incidence of crime.”

Tendencies to commit crimes are not racial traits and I suggested that what I heard in Mr. Bennett’s remarks was nothing more than blaming the victims for society’s sins.

To my chagrin, I was besieged by congregants afterwards. Some told me that I had taken Bill Bennett’s words out of context. When I asked what his statements meant in context, my critics had little or nothing to say.

Others told me that he was speaking in hypothetical fashion, but when I asked why such a hypothetical statement was not filled with racist overtones, there was no response.

I expected outrage from the NAACP and from Jesse Jackson. It was no surprise to me that the White House distanced itself from Bill Bennett’s remarks. What did surprise me was the absence of any kind of outcry from my Evangelical brothers and sisters, who of late, have tried to posture themselves as repentant of their racist past.

Martin Luther King, Jr. once said that in the end it would not be so much the words of his enemies that would have hurt him the most, but rather the silence of those who had called themselves his friends.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the famous Christian martyr in Nazi Germany, once said, “Those who do not speak out for the Jews have no right to chant Gregorian.”

I say that those who do not speak out against racist jokes at parties or stand up and condemn racist statements by prominent public figures have no right to sing of a Christ who is no respecter of persons.

We Evangelicals lost a lot of ground in our struggle against racism because our most prominent spokespersons and leaders did not condemn Bill Bennett’s remarks. The silence in our circles spoke volumes to those African-Americans who have already have reasons to be cynical about our so-called messages lauding racial harmony. In the end, we Evangelicals may have exposed more of who we are by what we didn’t say than by anything that we have said.