Racism and The Gospel in 2012: What To Think About The Trayvon Martin Case

On February 26 in Sanford, Florida, 17-year old African-American Trayvon Martin was shot to death with a semiautomatic handgun by George Zimmerman, a “volunteer neighborhood watchman.”

Although Martin was unarmed and apparently doing nothing but walking (while Zimmerman followed Martin because he “looked suspicious), Zimmerman claims self-defense and was never arrested (he is now in hiding).

How can something like this happen in 2012? How should Christians respond?

Here are three great articles on this subject:

• John Piper gets to the heart of the matter, as always, in Trayvon Martin, Race, and the Gospel. For a larger treatment on the gospel and race, read Piper’s book Bloodlines: Race, Cross and the Christian. Many people feel this is Piper’s best work.
• Shai Linne pointed me to Walking While Black, an eloquent and heart-rending perspective that we all must understand

Last, our own Pastor Mike Cosper wrote about this subject on his new blog. If you haven’t visited mikedcosper.com you should check it out. Pastor Mike writes thoughtfully about everything from worship to culture, leadership and even food (Mike is a great cook — no joke).

From Mike’s The Tragedy of Trayvon Martin:

the issues behind this story are cultural and institutional, and require a solution on the same scale. Many evangelicals tend to believe that the problem is an individual, isolated problem, requiring an individual, isolated solution. ‘We need the gospel to transform racist hearts.’ While that’s certainly true, it’s also not the whole picture. These realities run deep and call for deep culture shifts.

• Have you followed this story? What do you think?