Remembering Our Past to Realize a Reimagined Future

written by Keith Hileman

Roughly 40 years after the American Civil War, Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana wrote his famous warning: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Ironically, Santayana penned these words during the Jim Crow era, as a fresh wave of Confederate monuments rose across the country—monuments that historians now recognize as acts of strategic forgetting rather than true remembrance.

This tension reveals a crucial distinction: there's a difference between remembrance and selective memory, between memorial and truth-telling. For the church engaged in racial reconciliation, this difference isn't merely academic—it's theological. The biblical concept of remembrance offers us both the mandate and the hope needed to face difficult histories redemptively.

The Depth of Biblical Remembrance

The biblical idea of remembrance reaches far beyond historical recall or fond memories. "Remember" is rich covenant language with profound implications for the past, present, and future. The call to remember invites us to RECOGNIZE God's faithfulness (Past), REALIZE our identity (Present), and RESOLVE to live righteously (Future).

Recognize God's Faithfulness

When God "remembers" in Scripture—Noah in the flood, Hannah's barrenness, the covenant with Abraham—it marks moments of divine intervention and deliverance. God's remembrance is God's faithfulness made manifest. For God's people, remembrance begins by recognizing this track record of God's covenant love and justice.

Realize Your Identity

Augustine understood that "we are our memories"—both individual and collective. We cannot function as humans without them, yet they also constitute our eternal burden. In biblical terms, remembrance shapes covenant identity. When Israel remembered their slavery in Egypt, they weren't engaging in historical nostalgia but claiming their identity as a people delivered by God's justice and presently called and equipped to extend that justice to others.

Resolve to Live Righteously

Biblical remembrance always points forward. The prophets didn't call Israel to remember for the sake of guilt or paralysis, but for transformation beginning with faithfulness to the covenant-making God and His revealed will for them.

The Prophetic Tradition of Truth-Telling

This forward-moving remembrance requires what W.E.B. Du Bois called radical honesty about our histories: "Nations reel and stagger on their way. They make hideous mistakes. They commit frightful wrongs. They do great and beautiful things, and shall we not best guide humanity by telling the truth about all of this so far as the truth is ascertainable?"

Du Bois echoes the Hebrew prophets who understood that remembrance could be both blessing and judgment. True remembrance confronts us with both God's faithfulness and our failures, creating space for repentance and renewal. It refuses the temptation to honor "valor" while erasing causes and consequences, or to celebrate progress while ignoring ongoing injustice.

Frederick Douglass understood this tension profoundly. In his famous 1852 Fourth of July speech, he declared that "America is its contradictions"—a nation whose principles were fine but whose practices were "full of hypocrisy and danger." Douglass loved the Declaration of Independence like a Bible, yet he hated how those principles were betrayed in practice. This biblical realism allows us to hold both truths: our history can be awful, while our commitments can point to something great. Biblical remembrance doesn't require us to choose between condemnation and celebration—it calls us to truthful acknowledgment that leads to transformation.

The Church's Unique Calling

Because of this theological depth and provision, Christians, of all people, should not only refuse to be afraid of painful histories but should own them with a commitment to truth-telling and hopeful proclamation. As historian David Blight reminds us, "you have to be ready for the tragedies of history"—and this readiness comes in part from not denying the tragedies of our past.

Some movements across history have sought to deny or erase painful moments—through monument removal, historical revisionism, or "just move on" sentiments. But because of the rich theological foundation of biblical remembrance, the church has the resources to remember even the most shameful histories. Not to condemn or paralyze, but because remembrance is how God's people move from brokenness to healing.

When Jesus commanded, "Do this in remembrance of me," he wasn't asking for pleasant recollections. He was commanding remembrance of his broken body and shed blood—the most painful moment in history—because that's where redemption was born. The Eucharist teaches us that moving forward requires looking back honestly. Just as Passover remembers slavery before celebrating freedom, true reconciliation requires confronting injustice before proclaiming healing.

Embodied Memory for Racial Reconciliation

This is why historical markers like the Equal Justice Initiative's memorial for John Jordan matter so deeply. In Cleveland in 1911, Jordan, a young Black man, was lynched by a white mob—the only recorded lynching in the city's history. The EJI marker unveiled in Cleveland tells this story of racialized violence, honoring Jordan's memory while confronting a truth long buried. Such markers help the church practice biblical remembrance that:

• Recognizes God's heart for justice and God's image in every victim
• Realizes our identity as people called to justice and reconciliation
• Resolves to live differently—dismantling systems of oppression and building beloved community

When we remember the lynchings, the Jim Crow laws, the systemic exclusion, we're not wallowing in guilt or seeking to divide. We're practicing the same pattern that formed Israel and the early church: remembrance that leads to transformation, pain that births hope, a past that shapes a more faithful future.

Hope That Redeems Rather Than Erases

Christ's reconciliation doesn't erase history—it redeems it. Biblical remembrance teaches us that God's future of justice and peace is built not by forgetting our failures but by facing them truthfully within the larger story of God's faithfulness. The cross demonstrates that God's way of healing runs through honest reckoning with brokenness, not around it.

This is the church's distinctive contribution to racial reconciliation: we have theological resources for remembrance that creates hope rather than despair, community rather than division, transformation rather than repetition. We remember because we are a people formed by God's remembrance of us—and called to be agents of the justice and mercy we have received.

The past cannot be changed, but through biblical remembrance, it can be redeemed. And in that redemption lies the hope of reconciliation that is more than mere reunion—reconciliation that births the beloved community God intends.