Theologians call Christian churches to acknowledge, address systemic racism

Christian churches must acknowledge their historic role in systemic racism and teach that bigotry goes beyond personal sin to unite Americans on racial issues, a panel of Protestant and Anglican theologians said.

Jonathan Tran, Sarah Coakley and Vincent Lloyd argued that many Christians fail to recognize social injustice against minorities because they assume only individual and malicious actions count as racism. The theologians participated in a lively Wednesday night discussion at the National Press Club in Washington.

Structural racism arises from 19th-century slavery embedding the idea that non-Whites are “less...