Tony Evans: ‘Failure of the Church’ Has Led to America’s Current Racial Problem

Texas pastor Tony Evans says churches have an obligation to help fix the current divide in America because churches stood on the wrong side of multiple issues of race during the past 200 years.

Evans made the comments this month to Scripps National News and to the Don Kroah Show on WAVA in Washington, D.C.

“The only reason this problem has existed this deep for this long is the failure of the church,” Evans said on the Don Kroah Show of racism and racial injustice. Evans is the author of Oneness Embraced and the pastor of Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship in Dallas.

“Had the church not endorsed slavery, had the church not endorsed … segregation, Jim Crow and many of the systems, [then] they would not have been adopted and perpetuated in the culture. So since the church contributed to this mess, the church has got to fix it,” he said.

Evans gave examples of how he has experienced racism.

“I was the first African American to earn a doctorate from Dallas Seminary, but if I would have applied a few years before I did, they would not let me in because of the laws of segregation,” he said on the Don Kroah Show. “The only reason I’m on radio is [because] James Dobson intervened, because the radio stations told me that a black speaker would be too offensive to their white listeners. He intervened, and that opened up some doors. … 

“When I was in college in Atlanta, I walked…