White Evangelical Racism by Anthea Butler

Martin Luther King and others were called communists because they wanted civil rights. People who did missionary work were abusive.

People who believed in Jesus also held slaves. NCR: What is the story white evangelicals tell themselves about how American evangelicalism has responded to racism?īutler: Evangelicals like to tell themselves a story about how they were great about abolitionist movements and missionary work, how they were against communism. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. NCR spoke with Butler about how racism has shaped American evangelicalism and how this history implicates the U.S. 'Most Catholics don't understand that Catholic teaching is about the poor, or anything else, because they have aligned themselves so closely with evangelicals that they look like Catholic evangelicals instead of Catholics,' she said.īutler delved into this history in her latest book, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. The partnership has caused some Catholics to act as if it is perfectly moral to support the death penalty, treat the Eucharist as a political weapon and block asylum seekers from finding refuge in the U.S., Butler said. From Georgetown University's sale of 272 enslaved people to pay off its debts in 1838 to Weyrich's harnessing of racial resentments to form an alliance on the religious right, the Catholic Church's trajectory has also been shaped by racism.īutler worries that the political bargain Weyrich helped strike decades ago is corrupting how Catholics put their faith into action today. Catholic Church is not exempt from these criticisms, she added. Evangelicalism has become so synonymous with whiteness, Butler added, that evangelicals of color who enter these spaces, as she used to, must learn how to navigate white evangelicals' cultural expectations and political priorities. It is impossible to tell the history of American evangelicalism without acknowledging how racism helped shape its theology, institutions and culture, Butler said. 'And why everybody else let them pretend that they're really moral people when this is about power, not morality?' 'Why is it that evangelicals have not come to grips with the racism that's been inherent in their movement?' she asked NCR.

White Evangelical Racism by Anthea Butler