White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America (2021)
by Anthea Butler
University of North Carolina Press
To denounce white evangelicals for being the source and cause of everything wrong in America – particularly with respect to racial issues – has become a pretentious trend.
Accordingly, prodigious efforts have resulted in numerous articles and books written to amplify and reinforce the indictment that white evangelicals are inveterately racist. Some of these books include The Color of Compromise, Good White Racist?, Jesus and John Wayne, and White Lies.
White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America is Anthea Butler’s contribution to this trend.
Butler is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. After George Zimmerman was found not guilty for murdering Trayvon Martin in 2013, Butler wrote at Religion Dispatches that America’s god is “a white racist god with a problem” that is likely “carrying a gun and stalking young black men.”
Her book, White Evangelical Racism, provides a concise, readable, but one-sided historical account of American evangelicalism. It avidly highlights periods in American history – slavery, Reconstruction, segregation and post-segregated America – where evangelicals missed opportunities to personify the true teachings of Jesus (and Christianity) toward American blacks. To recapitulate the religious and theological justifications for the appalling treatment of blacks, in contrast with the religious and theological justifications for how blacks should have been treated, is regrettable.
But the astute observer uses history – good and bad – instructively.
Butler begins with nineteenth century evangelicalism. Despite giving a perfunctory but obligatory concession of evangelical contributions to the abolitionist movement and support for blacks during Reconstruction, Butler is fixated on evangelical support for slavery, the Lost Cause, Jim Crow and the extrajudicial practice of lynching. She maintains that using scripture to rationalize inequality and violence allowed racism and white supremacy to become a permanent part of evangelicalism.
Butler writes,
The nineteenth-century racial practices of white supremacy and violence would affect how twentieth-century evangelical leadership engaged African Americans and their forthcoming quest for civil rights, justice, and full citizenship.
Butler’s investigation depicts a damaging portrait of Billy Graham and several of his contemporaries within evangelicalism – and in turn, evangelicalism’s impact on America.
She is transparent about Graham’s moral and religious ambivalence towards racial integration.
Though Graham grieved the sin of racism, he was “unwilling to break ranks with the white status quo.” Graham succumbed to a bland accommodationist approach that mostly spurned integration at his revivals. To underscore his contribution to evangelical apathy toward racism, Butler ensures the reader understands Graham’s contempt for Martin Luther King, Jr. Graham labeled King a “communist” and condemned the March on Washington. Of King’s “dream,” Graham pessimistically supposed that it “would take the second coming of Christ [to] see white children walk…with Black children.” Such a statement was seen as absolving evangelical accountability to help overcome the sin and evil of segregation. Butler then substantiates evangelical racism by tethering it to the John Birch Society, anti-integrationist W.A. Criswell, and the White Citizens Councils.
Unsurprisingly, Butler spotlights the socio-political beginnings of the “religious right” – the formation of the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition. However, she also includes Liberty University, Oral Roberts University, and Bob Jones University as significant and ongoing developments of racialized evangelicalism. Unsurprisingly, the promising partnership between evangelicalism and conservatism within the Republican Party likewise doesn’t escape her racial denunciation.
Butler attempts set straight the record regarding the establishment of the religious right. She claims the unifying factor that brought evangelicals together in the 1970s wasn’t abortion as traditionally thought. Instead, Butler insists that racism was the unifying factor. Race hatred played a foundational role in unifying evangelicals and pushing them to accept a “color-blind” gospel. She suggests that colorblindness safeguarded evangelicals from their repeated attempts to reverse the civil rights victories of the 1960s.
This biblically affirmed color-blind gospel diminished race to such an extent that if blacks and other ethnic evangelicals wanted access or acceptance, they had to consent and conform to a “cultural whiteness” which included embracing the “white version of Christ.” Correspondingly, when evangelicals purport to “not see color”, they genuinely mean it; Butler is convinced that the only color evangelicals see is “whiteness”.
The “undeniable aspect” of “whiteness” and racism – ceaselessly nurtured within evangelicalism – made evangelicals an influential political coalition “awash in racism and racial animus.” Predictably, Butler is adamant that both fueled the evangelical opposition to Barack Obama and the eventual support for – and election of – Donald Trump. Evangelicals, far from being a religious group predicated on spreading the good news concerning the grace-filled, reconciling ministry of Jesus Christ, are instead a “nationalistic political movement whose purpose is to support the hegemony of white Christian men over and against the flourishing of others.”
It’s important not to minimize the failures of American evangelicalism. Honesty requires us to confess the missed historical opportunities evangelicals had to demonstrate that the racial wall of division was abolished in the body of Christ.
But there are several problems that handicap Butler’s analysis. Her all-encompassing character assassination of white evangelicals is redundant. It has been heard before – many times, in fact.
Another impediment is Butler’s overt racial bias against evangelicals, which is ironic considering her intense condemnation of evangelical racism.
Butler repeatedly claims contemporary evangelicals preserve their interpersonal and institutional racism without citing clear contemporaneous examples specifying which evangelicals, or how evangelicals are worthy of such defamation. She frequently makes racialized claims and allows said claims to stand only upon her declarations, absent evidence to authenticate the claims.
Several, of many, include:
- Christianity is “whiteness” as well as belief;
- Evangelicals politically reaching out to blacks, while defending antiblack policies;
- Evangelicals “racialized” Islam and were responsible for “Islamophobia” following 9/11;
- Opposition to Barack Obama was “racially charged” as opposed to principled disagreement based on policy.
Butler also exaggerates several accusations and attributions. One of the worst includes Sarah Palin.
Butler falsely credits Palin for having said that, “Blacks will take over,” if Obama was elected president in 2008. A Google search shows that Sarah Palin didn’t actually make these discriminatory statements. This “oversight” seems deliberate – a way to further her argument that evangelicals are racists.
There is a nuance present regarding evangelicalism: it’s the ability to hold two realities concurrently. Butler condemns the whole of evangelicalism rather than strategically indicting those within evangelicalism that perpetuate(d) racial supremacy, discrimination, and partiality while commending those who didn’t (or don’t). Some evangelicals do deserve praise and recognition for their moral courage during the dark times in our nation’s history and for bravely speaking against the present spirit of racial divisiveness infiltrating the church.
Butler wonders how long evangelicals will “allow racism to continue to taint their faith”. Consequently, she is clear that she wants to dispense with evangelicalism altogether. As a way to right perpetual wrongs (and to cleanse evangelicalism), Butler’s prescription is that evangelicals join people they disagree with – theologically and politically – in order to make a “more perfect union.” This essentially means evangelicals must become an ill-defined religious, theological, and political alternative that is in reality, anti-evangelical.
White Evangelical Racism is a book-length tantrum that reinforces a certain racial hatred for white people who self-identify with the evangelical tradition.
Comment by Brother Thom on May 11, 2021 at 7:58 am
Anthea Butler is not alone in her thoughts. Anyone who is paying attention to United Methodist News should have picked up on its shift to social justice warriorism since the death of George Floyd. Each and every new issue of the denominational news has at least one article proclaiming how racist America is. One of many sad aspects of this practice is that it gives the appearance that United Methodists themselves are the racists and need to be saved by myriad WOKE programs and a fundamental understanding of critical race theory (both racist ideas themselves).
The reality is that none of that is really true and despite UMNews’ best efforts to paint men like George Floyd, Andrew Brown, and others as victims, the reality is these men were convicted felons in the commission of new crimes, refusing to follow police orders, and resisting arrest at the times of their deaths. This in no way necessarily justifies their deaths, but when we set aside personal responsibility while assuming police should let criminals flee and to look for them another day, we send the wrong signal to younger men who are watching.
We are a nation of laws, and we should obey them, Romans 13:1-7 comes to mind.
Comment by David on May 11, 2021 at 9:56 am
Regarding Graham and Jews:
‘Those are not my words,” Mr. Graham said in a public statement in May 1994. ”I have never talked publicly or privately about the Jewish people, including conversations with President Nixon, except in the most positive terms.”
That was the end of the story, it seemed, until two weeks ago, when the tape of that 1972 conversation in the Oval Office was made public by the National Archives. Three decades after it was recorded, the North Carolina preacher’s famous drawl is tinny but unmistakable on the tape, denigrating Jews in terms far stronger than the diary accounts.
”They’re the ones putting out the pornographic stuff,” Mr. Graham said on the tape, after agreeing with Mr. Nixon that left-wing Jews dominate the news media. The Jewish ”stranglehold has got to be broken or the country’s going down the drain,” he continued, suggesting that if Mr. Nixon were re-elected, ”then we might be able to do something.”
Finally, Mr. Graham said that Jews did not know his true feelings about them. —NYT 3-17-02
Comment by Need proof David on May 11, 2021 at 12:25 pm
David,
Please send a URL or some place where I can read the article and see the transcript for myself. The NYT was not trustworthy as a paper back then, and certainly isn’t now.
While Rev. Graham was not perfect, and it is possible he sinned here, context matters and what he said matters. And in spite of what he did or didn’t say, anti-semitism has been and still continues to be a defining belief of the left (including the Soviet Union and the German NAZI party) not the right. If the ‘religious right’ followed what you accuse Graham of saying the state of Israel would not exist, since it was Nixon and the US that gave massive military assistance to Israel in the 1973 Yom Kippur War that changed the outcome of the conflict.
Comment by David on May 11, 2021 at 3:55 pm
It is unfortunate some people are unable to do an internet search on their own. I know of no English language newspaper that presents more news than the NYT. They even publish corrections and retractions if they published something that was incorrect. How often does your favorite news source do that?
Comment by David S. on May 11, 2021 at 5:27 pm
Unfortunately, this is what happens when one replaces the true biblical gospel and the benefits thereof on society, when properly ordered, with a gospel of works – be it left- or right-wing. But, since we are focusing on the left, it continues to amaze me that the political and religious left in appropriating the progressive label are not really all that progressive. In the end, they put forth a legalistic, works-based religion, much like the Pharisees in Christ’s day. I suspect for all their adulation of Christ, they would also be the first the screech, “Crucify him!”.
The sad thing about all this is that all these denominations in claiming to be for righteousness, truthfulness, compassion, restoration, justice, and the like are in fact against such things. You see it in notably the UMC, TEC, PC(USA), and ELCA. There is only one denomination over the past twelve months, which traditionally mainline, with whom I was impressed by its chief ecclesiastical officer, and that was the UCC. And that was because he took a more measured approach in criticizing the political class in dealing with the pandemic, i.e. giving Republican leaders the benefit of the doubt where appropriate and criticizing the failings of Democrats where appropriate, rather than touting the Democratic Party line like many of the others of always singing the praises of Democrats, even when they bungled it to the clear detriment of lower income and at risk groups, and condemning Republicans, even when they were actually being more Christian by trying to be cognizant of competing needs.
Comment by Jeff on May 11, 2021 at 7:28 pm
Hey NeedProofDavid,
Rev. Graham did actually commit this sin.
Contrary to our favorite punchbowl floater’s unseemly insinuation, however —
a) He apologized and asked forgiveness. And repented.
b) He didn’t go to his grave hated by all Jewry forever. Quite the opposite.
https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/how-should-jews-remember-rev-billy-graham/
Blessings,
Jeff
Comment by floyd lee on May 11, 2021 at 9:00 pm
I have always enjoyed reading The Billy Graham Christian Worker’s Handbook. It’s just a fantastic, practical. powerful book. Really valuable and inexpensive. Cuts right to the Biblical chase on a ton of personal and counseling topics that a Christian might encounter. And now it’s even free, available online in PDF form. (Just thought I’d start out by saying something positive.)
And now for the negative stuff: Someday soon I’ll have to look at this Prof. Butler’s book — so I can try to concisely point out, perhaps to fellow Black Christians, those places where she’s got it wrong, got it misleading, and is (quite honestly) messing up big-time. No joke.
(By the way, the above review article by Derryck Green is quite helpful; I enjoyed reading it.)
Comment by Wow David on May 12, 2021 at 8:40 am
With respect, I can do an internet search. I am interested in reading the transcript of the meeting, which is going to be a little more difficult than a generic google search. While another poster has said he committed this sin, I still would like to read the transcript without the interpretation of the New York Times.
Comment by Fr William Bauer PhD on May 12, 2021 at 8:00 pm
I am age 80 and my hair is really white. I supported the civil rights movement in the 1960s. I learned about racism in the Navy and before the civil rights movement. Many people were brought up with the race thing. It makes no sense to me. I am of Austrian extraction but not so far away not to know that this book is dumbkopf. I remember that a guy from the middle east, who happened to be God, dealt with the race issue. He has the solution.
Comment by Search4Truth on May 14, 2021 at 6:30 pm
Father Bauer, I wish more people could remember that the human race has fallen into sin and who is really God. Maybe we could start to try to love our fellow man instead of working so hard to spread all this hate?
Comment by Diane on May 16, 2021 at 9:16 pm
Anecdotally-
Just an observation after forty years of living in a small Southern community where many White folks identify as evangelical. There’s also a minority of White folks from the “downtown” mainline churches.
I have heard the same line from those evangelical White folks who tend to be “Right” on the political spectrum and from the mainline folks, who are split politically. It’s the same fear-based theme from both sides, though, of course its not representative of everyone on either side. Last I heard it was from an adult daughter of a now deceased UMC pastor (she puts campaign signs in her yard for Democrats, plus a cardboard cut-out of Hillary Clinton when Hillary ran for president).
The fear voiced – in private – from White folks on both sides – reflects a belief that White people are becoming a minority; consequently, Black people will eventually have power and control. It is a deep-seated, racist fear. It was an eye-opener when I heard it from a White, left-wing, former-UMC, Democrat who now worships in a progressive American Baptist church that is co-pastored by a Black woman. She told me she was afraid that Kampala Harris would eventually become president and appoint an all-Black cabinet. Her specifically expressed fear was Black people seeking retribution against White people. When she openly confessed this, I surmised that these fears are more common among White folks, regardless of religious or political persuasion, than I’d like to think. I find it distressing. These fears are expressed most often in the private company of White folks. I have to admit I was not prepared to hear it from this left-wing Democrat.
I also saw the matriarch, if you will, of the Democratic Women’s organization in this town, an elderly White woman, choose to back the long-term White mayor (a Democrat who’d made racist comments) over the primary-election candidacy of a newcomer for mayor, a Black man, also a Democrat. Our new mayor, elected more than a year ago, is the newcomer who happens to be Black; he’s proving to be very popular in his agenda to bring citizens together. Again, it was an eye-opener to see long-time leaders among Democrats favor the elderly White Democrat (who once told me I was crazy for supporting same-sex marriage) over the candidate who was Black.
Racism runs deep on the Left and the Right, if we dare to be honest – at least that’s my opinion after being privy to unsolicited comments across the years. I, too, as a White person born in the 1950s and raised in a White, Protestant -assimilationist culture, have had to challenge my irrational racist fears over the years. The greatest fear I’ve heard articulated, again, I think, is about loss of White power and control. I personally do not share this fear; I want to see greater diversity in positions of power and with diversity, less emphasis on a melting-pot, assimilationist narrative or agenda. The second fear I’ve heard from White folks in private conversations in in re to interracial marriage. I personally know evangelicals whose motivation in enrolling their children in predominantly-White evangelical private community schools reflects the fear that their children would be more likely to meet and marry someone of another race if they were enrolled in racially-diverse public schools.
Just sayin’. Racism doesn’t seem to be the sole province of either the left or the right when I listen to the decades-long truth telling of folks here in the south.
Comment by April User on July 1, 2021 at 10:31 am
It’s probably less about the color of the skin and more about the potential cultural change or influence that skin color represents.
Comment by Don on August 11, 2021 at 7:00 pm
People who bash the NYT just aren’t smart enough to read it.
I always ask, of Times haters, “if not the Times, what is the most reliable source for news?” They don’t really ever answer. Because there isn’t an answer. The Wall Street Journal is a decent publication, but doesn’t have the Times’ breadth. The Economist is good as well, but doesn’t break many stories. Clearly, they mostly listen to Fox and Newsmax and read American Greatness. These aren’t good sources.
Comment by JoeF on April 20, 2022 at 12:36 pm
Excellent review but lacking in that while Green exposes many of the ways that Butler smears white evangelicals and that she’s biased against them, he doesnt offer a full rebuttal to her revisionist argument. Sadly, Butler and the other writer’s listed here are of a class of evangelical writers who lost their minds during the Trump era. Rather than understand the reasons why Evangelicals would support a man like Donald Trump (the loses on culture war issues adn the prospect of a Supreme Court pick), Butler and her ilk seek to deconstruct Evangelicals by linking them together with racism, toxic masculinity, and everything else bad in American history. A full book is needed for a complete rebuttal but these writer’s typically erase from the narrative that progressives and modernists were also guilty of racism, the failures of big government programs (like the New Deal and the Great Society) to achieve their goals, and the conservative critique of said big government policies. There is merit to a switch of Southern Democrats to the Republican party post civil rights era but these writers typically ignore the demographics changes occuring in the South that fundamentally transformed the region post-WW2. The issues that the GOP found that could hold their emerging coalition together was not a new secretly coded, new Jim Crow a la the Southern Strategy but a Suburban Strategy that spoke to working and middle class families across the Sunbelt and articulated a vision of American renewal.
Instead of trying to understand, white evangelicals are responsible for everything that’s wrong with America. What other ethnic group gets the same treatment from liberal writers like Butler? It should come as no surpise that the cynical class of deconstructionists that dominate academia, media, and tech industries see nothing of merit in the American story or the good that evangelicals have contributed to the country. They see America as a myth that needs to be torn down so we can become what they imagine European Social Democracies are like and see Evangelicals as an obstacle to that end, thus they become the bad guys. Cynicism begets cynicism and the country continues it’s slide into demoralization, political polarization, and decline.