James Dixon, the pastor of Community of Faith Church and president of the NAACP Houston Branch, spoke at U.S. Congressman Al Green’s Slavery Remembrance Day Legislative Update last year about the link between the crime against humanity known as the enslavement of African people and the faith/theology of those who engaged in the enslavement (human trafficking, kidnapping, torture, rape, and murder) and made money off of stolen labor.
Dixon stated: Slavery revealed people’s serious immorality. And a lot of them were holding bibles. A man with a whip and a bible will never impress me. Because you don’t represent the God I serve if you can beat me with one hand while holding a bible in the other.
Dixon continued after it.
Furthermore, given that HISD is taking control, that we lack a Voting Rights Act, and that our schools lack libraries, where are the preachers who carry bibles and quote from the Bible today?
Dixon added that America owes God an apology for these past and contemporary transgressions committed in the name of faith.
Dixon was effectively criticizing adherents of what some Black religious experts refer to as white Christianity. And despite a chorus of Christians who assert that their faith transcends all races and colors, a horde of academics and preachers beg to differ.
WHAT IS WHITE CHRISTIANITY
According to Reverend Andrew Seegars, white Christian culture is deeply entwined with the myth of white supremacy and the reality of white nationalism. Critics of white Christianity agree that not all white people practice that brand of faith, but rather those who do so consciously or unconsciously.
A specific demographic and political movement in the United States that is largely made up of white Christians who think that the country should preserve its cultural, racial, and religious identity as a white, Christian nation is frequently referred to as “white Christian nationalism,” according to Seegars. There is a historical and well-established link between white Christianity and acts of violence and oppression against people.
According to Seegars, the core tenets of white Christianity—white nationalism and the myth of white supremacy—have been and continue to be widely invoked to defend acts of violence, racism, and discrimination against Native Americans, Black people, and other marginalized groups.
All Christians should oppose and denounce the poisonous ideas of white supremacy, white nationalism, and consequently white Christianity.
Philip Gorski of Yale University contends that the ideology behind the January 6, 2021, attacks on the US Capitol was White Christian Nationalism, his term for white Christianity.
Gorski contends in his book The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy that the following fundamental components of white Christian nationalism served as inspiration for many of the attackers on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021:
- The belief in the myth that America was founded as a Christian nation by white Christians and that its laws and institutions are based on Protestant Christianity;
- America is divinely favored and has been given the mission to spread religion, freedom, and civilization;
- This mission and it values are under threat from the growing presence of non-whites, non-Christians (i.e. Christians and others who don t espouse White Christian Nationalism), and immigrants;
- Those posing this threat have corrupted and stolen America and White Christian Nationalists have to take it back.
HOW IT SHAPED DEEPLY AMERICAN BELIEFS
The ideas of this white Christianity, according to its detractors, have long served as the cornerstone of the American way of life. By describing God, Jesus, the Hebrews, the angels, and other entities as white and everything wicked as black, they contend that white Christianity is a type of Christianity that emphasizes whiteness. Massa was considered God’s emissary on earth during the enslavement era, and Black slaves were obligated to obey their master by divine decree. Accepting enslavement was the only way for the enslaved to access the gates of heaven, and resisting it would be against God’s will.
As a result, Black people have been battling for equality for centuries, starting with those who wanted to abolish slavery and continuing with current campaigns for equal access to healthcare, voting rights, and criminal justice reform. For adherents of this white Christianity, educational materials have been perceived as wicked, incorrect, misdirected, and/or un-Christian.
HISTORY OF WHITE CHRISTIANITY
White Christianity has always prioritized whiteness and political power over humanity and piety, according to Dr. Earle Fisher, pastor of Abyssinian Missionary Baptist Church, Memphis’s Blackest church and a community organizer and leader. In order to achieve this, it has intended—and still does—to kill and destroy Blackness as well as anything that contradicts whiteness, including divinity. Since Constantine and the Roman Empire imperialized Christianity centuries ago, at the latest, white Christianity has been slaughtering Black people.
In other words, Velma Maia Thomas, a clergyman and award-winning novelist, stated that you are in trouble once your rescuer is also your oppressor.
White Christianity, according to Fisher and Thomas, encouraged and pushed eurocentric religious imagery, preached segregation, fought against civil rights, voting rights, integration, and other issues, and disregarded the Supreme Court’s Brown v. Board decision, which ended school segregation in public schools and established segregation academies (churches that constructed adjacent buildings with classrooms so white children wouldn’t have to attend school with Black children).
MODERN IMPACT OF WHITE CHRISTIANITY
According to Fisher, Thomas, and others, contemporary white Christian advocates oppose DEI policies, Black history and viewpoints taught in schools, and Black Lives Matter.
Dr. Abdul Robert Muhammad, a student preacher at Muhammad Mosque #45 in Houston, stated that white supremacy is a worldwide system that has tainted every aspect of contemporary human life. Almost every political, economic, educational, and religious structure has been utilized as a means of exploitation and oppression rather than as a means of achieving fair progress for all members of the human race within the framework of this satanic mindset.
The demonization of Muslims and immigrants, the anti-CRT movement, and attempts to thwart police and gun reform have all been connected to fundamental white Christian beliefs. Both pro-Israel and anti-Semitic views have also been rejected, as has the necessity of environmental and climate justice.
Consequently, for years, numerous Black religious leaders have maintained that white Christianity is detrimental to Black life.
According to historian and theologian William Moore, the previous 400 years have demonstrated that white western Christianity is an ideology that debilitates non-white people. Our pleas for justice, equality, and freedom will go unanswered the longer we give our suffering, loss, and anguish to a fake white Euro-savior. For our ultimate emancipation, healing, and transformation, we must seek for the Godpower that already exists within us.
HOW CAN WE PROTECT OURSELVES FROM IT?
Randy Brown, a theologian and native of Beaumont, feels that if Black people are to defend themselves against the harmful effects of white Christianity, an alternative understanding of the Bible is required.
According to Brown, Black people’s reliance on Western biblical interpretation has led to a mistrust of all things Black and a bipolar, love-hate relationship with white people. Black people’s goals and future are not served by the agenda of white Christianity. In order for Black people to live with dignity, we must create our own interpretation of the Bible that puts our history, culture, and lived experiences front and center in how we engage with the Bible’s narrative. Black folks won’t understand what it truly means to be free until then.
The following is a list of Actions to Take in order to develop and live out a version of Christianity that acknowledges Black humanity:
- Recognize the importance of the spiritual teaching Man/Woman, know thyself, which speaks to the importance of knowing one s history.
- Make geography and history an integral part of Christian education. Doing so will reveal that the vast majority of the Bible story took place in Africa during a time when different Black nations were interacting with one another in both positive and negative ways.
- Don t be afraid to explore and reconnect with African roots, and the influence faith systems like Ma at out of ancient Egypt/Kemet had on Christianity and other faith systems, as history reveals that all religions borrowed elements from neighboring faith traditions.
- Welcome knowledge from books beyond the Bible.
- Stop letting white Christian definitions of good and bad, evil, and just guide you
- Challenge yourself to read about and study the history of biblical times to get a better understanding of the context in which the faith emerged
- Explore the assertion of legendary Black Theologian, the late Dr. James Cone who argued the most humanist and universal theology is Black theology because it recognizes the equality of all.
