Pastor Ken Claytor of Alive Church in Gainesville, Florida, USA, told Joni Lamb on an episode of Daystar Television’s Table Talk last month that one’s identity as a believer should not be rooted in racism but in Christ.

He said, “A lot of people, they look at themselves as a black person or a white person or a Hispanic person. I look at myself as a born-again person, washed by the blood, who is a child of God that happens to be black, I don’t have a problem with my heritage or my race. I love what I am.”

Claytor, the author of the book, As it is In Heaven: How a Church That Resembles Heaven Can ‘Help’ Heal Our Racial Divide, noted that racism is a result of living in a fallen world, adding that “some of the racist rhetoric was coming from the Church, especially in the South.”

“There were Jim Crow laws that were passed in the South, and some people believed that segregation was a godly thing. Not sure what scripture they were using for that one because I got other scriptures that say the opposite,” he said.

He also stressed that the Church should always be able to address the topic of racism since it comes from living in a sinful world.

“It’s almost this pressure, ‘let’s keep putting our head in the sand and act like this isn’t a problem,'” Claytor noted. “But as long as we live in a fallen, broken world, there’s going to be all kinds of -isms; sexism, racism, whatever the -isms are. And we have to address it.”

Claytor further encouraged Christians to forgive others who have hurt them in light of Christ’s forgiveness of their sins.

“As Christians, we have to forgive because we’ve been forgiven of so much. And I think we live in a time where it’s almost suggested, ‘Well, no, this has been so bad that you can’t forgive someone.’ And that’s just not true,” he said.

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