The Spiritual Discipline of Ignoring White Christianity

White Christianity’s commitment to coercive power isn’t new. Thankfully, there are alternatives for those desiring to see.

On January 15, former president Donald Trump won the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses by the largest ever margin by a non-incumbent president. 55% of white “born again or evangelical” Christians supported Trump in the first primary race, prompting political science professor Jeff VanDerWerff to comment in Christianity Today, “The thing that’s just been really fascinating to me over the last eight years, has been this slow migration and now this real embrace, it seems, of Trump. That he’s become or is seen as this instrument of God.” Posting on Threads, David French represented the sentiments of many Christian leaders toward the persistent white evangelical support of the former president when he wrote, “There’s just no excuse for this. It’s dreadful. And scary. This is the Trump movement — religious zeal stripped of religious virtue.”

The lament about Trump’s resounding win in Iowa and again in New Hampshire and the evangelicals who helped make it happen was a little surprising. After all, the past few years have uncovered no shortage of evidence that the majority of white Christians support the former president, some begrudgingly but increasingly with fervor bordering on religious zeal. Recent books have examined the attachment between white evangelicals and Trumpism from political, theological, and sociological perspectives. While Trump’s first primary wins were resounding, they weren’t surprising.

But maybe these lamenting responses have less to do with a couple of primary wins than they do with the dawning awareness of how committed white Christianity is to forms of coercive power. In a recent article, The Atlantic columnist Tim Alberta wrote about coming to recognize some of the un-Christlike tendencies in the church in which he grew up, the church pastored by his dad for many years. Returning to this congregation for his father’s memorial service, Alberta learned that conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh had derided his book about President Trump during a recent broadcast. Something strange happened as this son of the church stood in the receiving line, waiting to be greeted by those who had nurtured his faith over the years.

They kept on coming. More than I could count. People from the church—people I’d known my entire life—were greeting me, not primarily with condolences or encouragement or mourning, but with commentary about Limbaugh and Trump. Some of it was playful, guys remarking about how I was the same mischief-maker they’d known since kindergarten. But some of it wasn’t playful. Some of it was angry; some of it was cold and confrontational. One man questioned whether I was truly a Christian. Another asked if I was still on “the right side.” All while Dad was in a box a hundred feet away.

About this bruising experience, Alberta writes, “They didn’t see a hurting son; they saw a vulnerable adversary.”

There is a dawning awareness of how committed white Christianity is to forms of coercive power. Click To Tweet

That white evangelicals, and white American Christians more broadly, are regularly captive to visions of coercive power – power which aims to bend others to one’s will, agenda, or ideology – is a characteristic which is lately attracting a lot of attention. Kristen Du Mez’s historical overview of white evangelicalism is the best-known of the genre but there are plenty of others. In Shoutin’ in the Fire, Danté Stewart writes about his years of membership in a white church. “It seemed that after every high-profile event of a Black body being murdered or terrorized, they joined in a chorus of white Christians who wanted to use our voices and bodies not so much to free them both, but to make themselves look better than they actually were.”

Coercive power.

While this feature of white Christianity is having its moment of exposure, there is nothing new about this version of the faith and its entanglement with bullying power. In The Color of Compromise, Jemar Tisby writes about “the American church’s sickening record of supporting racism.” In his historical overview, Tisby shows in detail how white “men and women have used tools like money, politics, and terrorism to consolidate their power and protect their comfort at the expense of black people. Christians participated in this system of white supremacy…even if they claim people of color as their brothers and sisters in Christ.”

The history of mainstream Christianity in the USA is littered with examples of the acceptance and pursuit of bruising power. Early Puritan leader John Winthrop believed God, having used the smallpox virus which decimated Indigenous communities, “hath hereby cleared our title to this place.” In the 1600’s, the Virginia House of Burgesses passed legislation ensuring that an enslaved person’s baptism would not allow them to pursue emancipation. Eminent theologian Jonathan Edwards was a slave-owner. In the years following the Civil War, white Christians supported their local Citizens’ Councils and its efforts to enforce segregation and the racial hierarchy, often through terror and violence.

We could go on, couldn’t we?

White Christianity has not only been captive to coercive power; God uses even the most cracked and corrupt of us to advance his good purposes in the world. And there is no unspoiled version of Christianity, culturally or theologically, on which to pin our aspirations. However, there is something uniquely untrustworthy about a version of the Christian faith which depends on racialization for its self-understanding.

Racial whiteness, as a social construct, was developed as justification for theft. European powers had gone all in on colonial conquest and their wide-scale plunder of both places and people required an explanation. Classifying people by racial, pseudo-scientific taxonomies allowed these so-called Christian societies to accumulate wealth not simply in spite of the eighth commandment – thou shalt not steal – but by thoroughly and systematically transgressing it. 

To notice, then, the tendency for white Christianity to use power to exclude and exploit others is to see something that is neither occasional nor exceptional but fundamental. The racialized nature of white Christianity means that this repressive characteristic is stamped completely, however subtly at times, into its deepest assumptions. While appealing explicitly to racial difference as a rationale for deploying controlling power has generally faded in these communities, the tendency remains. And it will as long as these forms of Christianity do not disrupt the norms of racial whiteness.

While acknowledging the old and unholy marriage between white Christianity and coercive power might lead to despair, particularly for those who are only slowly awakening to this basic fact, the opposite is also possible. Because once we begin to notice what has been true from the beginning, it’s also possible to begin learning from those Christians who’ve always known and persevered through this terrible reality. It’s from these sisters and brothers who we can learn the meaning of hope. 

Racial whiteness, as a social construct, was developed as justification for theft. European powers had gone all in on colonial conquest and their wide-scale plunder of both places and people required an explanation. (1/2) Click To Tweet

Classifying people by racial, pseudo-scientific taxonomies allowed these 'Christian' societies to accumulate wealth not simply in spite of the eighth commandment – thou shalt not steal – but by systematically transgressing it. (2/2) Click To Tweet

For example, Frederick Douglass repeatedly and publicly differentiated the “the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ” from “the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.” Ida B. Wells was under no delusions about the motivations of white Christianity, noting the deafening silence of its preachers and priests in response to the epidemic of lynching. Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement chose to continue writing and organizing for racial equality even as donors directed their dollars elsewhere. Fannie Lou Hamer’s activism grew from an abiding faith and knowledge of Scripture. She once reflected, “And I have walked through the shadows of death because it was on the tenth of September in ’62 when they shot sixteen times in a house and it wasn’t a foot over the bed where my head was. But that night I wasn’t there—don’t you see what God can do? Quit running around trying to dodge death because this book said, ‘He that seeketh to save his life, he’s going to lose it anyhow!’ (Luke 9:24).”

I say it’s possible to begin learning from those like Douglass, Wells, Day, and Hamer who maintained a very different experience of Christianity because it’s not inevitable. While the current deluge of commentary and analysis about white Christianity’s corruption by power is telling a true story, it’s not telling the whole story. Taken as a whole, these books, articles, podcasts, and lectures serve to keep our attention focused on white Christianity. Rather than redirecting our interest and curiosity to the peaceable Christianity of Christ, it’s possible that, in our legitimate critique, we remain captive to the deforming gravity of racialized religion.

Looking away from white Christianity is a spiritual discipline. We might think of it as an intentional act of attention. Knowing what we do about its corruptible motivations, we can decide to look away from this utterly compromised expression of faith to bear witness to the testimonies of the sisters and brothers who’ve chosen the costly and joyful way of Jesus.

I’ve been given countless examples of this kind of Christian witness in our community. One friend pastors the church in which he grew up in his majority African American neighborhood. As Latin American migrants have recently been housed in the church’s community, he has led the congregation to care for them even as they continue serving their long-term neighbors. Another friend pastors a church which meets in a shuttered public-school building. Rather than watching the building fall into disrepair, he has filled it with programming throughout the week which meets needs the community itself has identified. Another friend leads a congregation which has convened an impressive coalition of universities, hospitals, non-profits, and businesses to address the trauma of gun violence and other forms of systemic harm in our city. 

Looking away from white Christianity is a spiritual discipline. We might think of it as an intentional act of attention. (1/2) Click To Tweet

Knowing what we do about its corruptible motivations, we can look away from this utterly compromised expression of faith to bear witness to the sisters and brothers who’ve chosen the costly and joyful way of Jesus. (2/2) Click To Tweet

Each of these pastors proclaims a gospel which would sound familiar in many white churches. Yet their expression of that gospel and the assumptions behind how they demonstrate Jesus’ good news are categorically different. Take, for example, a worship song by Common Hymnal, “The Kingdom is Yours.” One stanza goes like this,

Blessed are the ones who suffer violence
And still have strength to love their enemies
Blessed is the faith of those who persevere
Though they fall, they’ll never know defeat

While the lyrics obviously reflect Jesus’ teaching, the convictions expressed in them run bluntly across the grain of white Christianity. Here is a discipleship that is not dependent on force, which does not imagine inflicting its agenda as a manifestation of God’s will. This way of following Jesus assumes good news for the poor, the mourning, the meek, the hungry, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, and the persecuted. It’s a discipleship which explicitly renounces the way of coercive power, trading swords for plowshares and bully pulpits for basins and towels. 

It’s not a pristine version of Christianity we are searching for. But neither can we assume that white Christianity is simply one version of the faith among others; its racialized character is unique. Thankfully there are many faithful communities of Christians who, by choice or by exclusion, have long existed outside the bounds of racialized religion. Their historic and contemporary witness has the power to form our own discipleship in this season fraught with idolatries and ideologies. But for our imaginations to be shaped by these sisters and brothers, we first have to see them. And to do that, we’ll have to learn to ignore the racialized religion which has, for far too long, demanded our attention.

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David Swanson is an author and the founding pastor of New Community Covenant Church who lives with his family on the South Side of Chicago. He is the founder and CEO of New Community Outreach, a non-profit organization dedicated to healing community trauma through restorative practices. David’s first book, Rediscipling the White Church: From Cheap Diversity to True Solidarity was published with InterVarsity Press in 2020. His forthcoming book, Plundered: The Tangled Roots of Racial and Environmental Injustice, will be published in October, 2024.

Thankfully there are many faithful communities of Christians who, by choice or by exclusion, have long existed outside the bounds of racialized religion. Their witness has the power to form our own discipleship. (1/2) Click To Tweet

But for our imaginations to be shaped by these sisters and brothers, we first have to see them. And to do that, we’ll have to learn to ignore the racialized religion which has, for far too long, demanded our attention. (2/2) Click To Tweet