Racism/white supremacy is seemingly ineradicable, despite its contradictions to the gospel and American ideals. James Baldwin perceived the reason: whites’ fears of their own mortality. He did not demonstrate the truth of his claim, but Terror Management Theory (TMT) provides empirical confirmation for it. The Church has declared reconciliation to be the heart of its mission. So TMT must shape its new, effective strategies, like the processes that produced the two influential pastoral letters in the early 1980’s. Not everything that is faced can be changed; but nothing can be changed until it is faced. — James Baldwin.