(ChurchLeaders) When Derwin Gray, a former NFL player who pastors Transformation Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, heard the statistics, he wasn’t surprised. Gray, a black man who has long cultivated a more diverse Church body that embraces racial equality, said he’s seen “more of an awakening” from white Christians than ever in the past year, and is encouraged by new data showing that white, church-going Christians have begun to shift their views on race.
According to fresh research from Barna Research, released exclusively today to ChurchLeaders, white, church-going Christians—long resistant to embrace things like the phrase “Black Lives Matter” or admitting racial discrimination is still present in society today—have slowly begun to shift their views on those issues and more.