White Evangelical Racism

I am a white woman who immigrated to this country some forty years ago. I have witnessed American politics since the election of Ronald Reagan. I remember his welfare queens, purportedly black women who have child after child with different men and live off of welfare. I remember Bill Clinton’s ‘welfare reform’ that imposed work requirements on people unable to obtain work. The constant blaming of the poor for their plight, the allegations of laziness and sloth. I remember the differing punishments for crack and regular cocaine use, which ended up filling our prisons with scores of young, black men who had never committed any violent offences. I watched the casual stinginess and airy cruelty the Republican party displayed toward people of color and poor people, while giving tax breaks and advantages to the rich. I watched the beating of Rodney King by the Los Angeles police, and the careless, casual killings of black people by police everywhere (in this context, an Aha! Moment happened to me recently when I learned that the white supremacists in this country actively recruit among the ranks of the police). Over the years I have watched the growing alliance of the evangelical community with the Republican party and the party doing more and more of their bidding as the party became more and more captured by right wing Evangelicals. I have watched the Evangelicals’ steadily growing political power and influence. I grew up in an evangelical family and was taught as a child that Evangelicals are good, God-fearing people. Growing up I knew, watching my own family and church, that this was not true. But beyond that, American Evangelicals always seemed to me to be different somehow. I saw with dismay the vilifying of black and brown people coming from the Republicans and their evangelical supporters over the years. My eyes were not closed to these realities. But nothing could have prepared me for the election of Trump, a man who called all Mexicans rapists, who cruelly made fun of a disabled reporter’s facial expressions and mannerisms, a man who sexually assaulted numerous women and ten bragged about it and called them dogs, a man who separated children coming here for asylum, including babies at the breast, from their desperate parents as a matter of national policy. But none of this seemed to shake the Evangelicals. I should have known. After the 2016 election, in full cognitive dissonance, I began a long quest for explanations. I read everything I could get my hands on, including articles in a wide variety of publications and several dozen books. Initially the explanations were centered around the displacement of the people in the coal mining regions of the Appalachians. This was disputed by JD Vance’s book. Or the disrespect that people living in the middle, fly-over part of the country, or the “real Americans” as they liked themselves to call, were purportedly experiencing at the hands of coastal elites. Other theories followed. Shocked and disoriented public thinkers ranged far and wide for explanations. I was captured by some of these explanations and considered them seriously for a time. But I eventually concluded that at the root of all this was the shock to the nation of the election and popularity of its first black President, Barack Hussein Obama, the man whose Christianity and American citizenship racist right-wingers cast doubt upon because a black man, especially a black man in power, is never really legitimate. Hence, I concluded, simple racism. When I voiced this theory to my all-white book group, I was met with silence and then statements like, “well maybe, but it’s probably more complicated than that.” I watched members of my evangelical family in Europe succumb to the same weird siege mentality as that voiced by the American evangelical community, which now enjoyed the support of the most powerful man in the world. And I concluded that the inexorable demographic trends towards greater numbers of black and brown people making up our population were the likely cause of this mentality. The feeling that whiteness itself was threatened. I was not wrong. But reading this book was the final eye opener and cemented for me, once and for all, that racism, in particular the racism of the evangelical community, is at the root of all of this. Ms. Butler carefully and brilliantly details the development of evangelism over the course of American history, and how racism has always undergirded it from the beginnings. She describes the theological explanations, espoused by the Evangelicals, for slavery and for the support of Jim Crow, hostility towards integration, voting rights laws, voting rights, and any form of equality of people of color. She allows us into her experience in the white, evangelical church where she realized that, despite a show of meetings with black churches and welcoming black church members, black people were always simply regarded as visitors, regardless of how hard they worked to belong. She describes the evangelical community’s single-minded focus on obtaining political power and prestige, by aligning itself with the Republican party. She shows how prominent figures in the church, such as Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell and others, were always more invested in reaching the highest echelons of the power elite: The courting of Presidents and powerful figures; the mega church pastors who became immensely rich. She describes the events of the late 20th century that all of us have witnessed: The powerful figures of the church who were discovered soliciting prostitutes; the pastors railing against homosexuality who were found engaging in gay sex; the sordid extra marital affairs, the lies and fake apologies and tears, the abject hypocrisy of it all. And throughout all of it runs the evangelical church’s racism, the utter unwillingness or inability to take itself to task, once and for all, instead of engaging in futile performative gestures and window dressing and the never-ending quest for more political power. This book cleared the last cobwebs from my eyes and affirmed for me what I have known for a while. This country is racist and the evangelical community is racist to its core and is engaged, first and foremost, in defense of whiteness. It explains clearly how Trump could have been elected, how nothing this terrible man had done and did, no matter how inhumane and immoral and sinful, could shake the support of the evangelical community for him. The book describes clearly how Trump was a means to an end for the evangelical church and how the supreme moral maxim, that the end never justifies the means, no longer resonates among Evangelicals, those ends being: The end of abortion, gay marriage, gay adoptions, and women’s rights, the suppression of people of color, the imposition of their rules on an entire country, the turning of America into a theocracy through wholly immoral means, and throughout it all the maintenance of white supremacy. And, of course, lots of rulings from the Supreme Court that privilege so-called religious freedom over people\’s right not to be discriminated against – maybe the worst twisting of the meaning of the first amendment imaginable. This is a very important book that explains much of what is wrong at the root of the American project. You don’t have to agree with all of it but you absolutely should seriously engage with it if you have any interest in improving our country. Please don’t be one of these people who write one-star reviews without having read the book because your fragile Christian ego feels threatened by any criticism, because you’re so set in your convictions that you are never willing to engage a different viewpoint or engage in a bit of thinking. If you can’t write an honest review, please don’t lob bombs from the shadows. After reading this review, you may think that I have given up all hope for this country, but you would be wrong. Trump decisively lost the last election (although a horrifyingly large number of people decided that this terrible man was right for this country – chiefly among them the Evangelicals). More people are revulsed by police brutality towards young, black and brown men and by the misogyny that men like Trump have openly engaged in with impunity for centuries. Millions of whites have seen George Floyd die gasping for air and were horrified by it. Young people are leaving the ranks of the Evangelicals in droves. The younger generation is no longer as beholden to racist and homophobic ideologies as the older generation of whites, and that generation is slowly dying out. We have made a new start in compassion towards the poor and the unprotected instead of continuing to engage in open and proud cruelty towards them. Maybe we will make some strides in overcoming racism as well. Two days later: I add this comment after having also read Jesus And John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez. Du Mez\’s book brilliantly traces the history of violent male masculinity that is at the core of the evangelical movement in America. Racism is in there but not her main focus. Butler\’s book focuses more on tracing the terrible history of racism and white supremacy in the evangelical movement, which has culminated with the open support of the openly racist Trump. You should read both books. They are complimentary and shine a light on both of these underpinnings of white evangelicalism in America.

This book is very well-written and provides an illuminating history of the white evangelical movement and how it consistently promoted white supremacy and racism. The book relies on thorough research, and is filled with discussions of relevant court cases, documents, articles, and quotes of leaders of the evangelical movement. The other reviewers who gave this book one star and claim it is racist have apparently not read the book, and they don\’t provide even a single example of how a book exposing hard-core, avowed racists is racist. There is nothing bigoted or wrong about exposing the racism inherent in the white evangelical movement, and by amply documenting such racism with direct quotes and documentary evidence.

Not everyone likes the truth

There are certain books one reads with a deep sense of recognition, a moment of “Oh, YES! Of course!!” That was definitely my reaction to “White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America” by Anthea Butler. Although this is a short book, less than 170 pages including a very thorough Index, it is well-organized and very much to the point. More significant from my point of view is the fact that it deals with a historical evolution that needs to be clearly delineated if one is to understand the seeming contradictions of our present situation. Perhaps comments made in a previous review of this book were too personalized, and therefore did not satisfy the guidelines for an acceptable review. Therefore I am revising my discussion of this excellent documentary to omit all such material. However, it is important to say that Anthea Butler has provided a thorough, in-depth and very cogent analysis of the evolution of evangelical Christian theology and practice in the United States from the highly segregated congregations of the 19th Century to the “colorblind” ethos which emerged in the latter part of the 20th Century to the extremely politicized stance of these churches at the present time. Many present-day believers in what is being called “Progressive Christianity” are bemused as well as appalled at the way in which the apparent stance of “repentance” for the sins of slavery and subsequent segregation evinced by various evangelical denominations and spokespeople metamorphosed into the extreme politicization of racial and ethnic differences. However, Butler clearly demonstrates in her thorough investigation that it is, in fact, simply a peeling away of the “cover story” of purely moral issues, laying bare the inherent dynamics of white power, scripturally reference ideas of ethnic purity, and free market capitalism carried to its ultimate extreme. This book is brilliant, timely, probing, and incisively articulated.

White Evangelicals and racism have a turbulent relationship throughout history. More than doctrines, the leaders, actions, and policies of evangelicals have supported white supremacy and racism—with few exceptions! Dr. Butler has explicated the informal and formal aspects of white evangelical racism with tact and compassion. She has empathy for evangelicals even as she chronicles their misdeeds and ignorance. In a very concise manner, Professor Butler exposes how Republican politics have compromised the integrity and relevance of evangelicals over and above any doctrinal pursuits. Redemption is possible if evangelicals learn from this poignant monograph. Racism has no place in a diverse world.

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