While 79% of black Christians feel that the impact of slavery is still being felt by African Americans today, only 42% of white Christians agree with them. Interestingly, Barna also found that two-thirds of Millennial practicing Christians acknowledge ongoing repercussions from the era of slavery.

Interestingly enough, however, Pew put out an study this week showing that only 26% of whites said that slavery was still impacting the black community. This suggests that white practicing Christians, are far more likely (42%) than the general white population to recognize the impact of racial injustice. Perhaps Christians are more progressive than many would have us think.

Christianity, after all, is supposed to be built on the covenant of love, and equality for all, justice for the poor and needy, and mercy to the stranger. This is true even if some Christians are forgetting these basic tenants of loving thy neighbor in favor of political power. Christ sacrificed Himself to save others, but 2019 conservative Christianity seems to prefer to sacrifice others, to save itself – whether it’s refusing to confront the legacies of slavery or through cheering the current immigration policy, embodied so heart-wrenchingly by the deaths of Oscar Martinez Ramirez and his daughter Valeria in the Rio Grande.