Racism among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious. That's no coincidence.

TagliatelliMonster

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For most of American history, the light-skinned Jesus conjured up by white congregations demanded the preservation of inequality as part of the divine order.

Over the last several weeks, the United States has engaged in a long-overdue reckoning with the racist symbols of the past, tearing down monuments to figures complicit in slavery and removing Confederate flags from public displays. But little scrutiny has been given to the cultural institutions that legitimized the worldview behind these symbols: white Christian churches.
A close read of history reveals that we white Christians have not just been complacent or complicit; rather, as the nation's dominant cultural power, we have constructed and sustained a project of perpetuating white supremacy that has framed the entire American story. The legacy of this unholy union still lives in the DNA of white Christianity today — and not just among white evangelical Protestants in the South, but also among white mainline Protestants in the Midwest and white Catholics in the Northeast.
For more than two decades, I've studied the attitudes of religiously affiliated Americans across the country. And year over year, in question after question in public opinion polls, a clear pattern has emerged: White Christians are consistently more likely than whites who are religiously unaffiliated to deny the existence of structural racism.
For example, surveys conducted by PRRI in 2018 found that white Christians — including evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics — are nearly twice as likely as religiously unaffiliated whites to say the killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans.
And white Christians are about 30 percentage points more likely to say monuments to Confederate soldiers are symbols of Southern pride rather than symbols of racism. White Christians are also about 20 percentage points more likely to disagree with this statement: "Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class." And these trends generally persist even in the wake of the recent protests for racial justice.

As a white Christian who was raised Southern Baptist and shaped by a denominational college and seminary, it pains me to see these patterns in the data. Even worse, these questions only hint at the magnitude of the problem.
To determine the breadth of these attitudes, I created a "Racism Index," a measure consisting of 15 questions designed to get beyond personal biases and include perceptions of structural injustice. These questions included the three above, as well as questions about the treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system and general perceptions of race, racism and racial discrimination.
Even at a glance, the Racism Index reveals a clear distinction. Compared to nonreligious whites, white Christians register higher median scores on the Racism Index, and the differences among white Christian subgroups are largely differences of degree rather than kind.
Not surprisingly, given their concentration in the South, white evangelical Protestants have the highest median score (0.78) on the Racism Index. But it is a mistake to see this as merely a Southern or an evangelical problem. The median scores of white Catholics (0.72) and white mainline Protestants (0.69) — groups that are more culturally dominant in the Northeast and the Midwest — are not far behind. Notably, the median score for each white Christian subgroup is significantly above the median scores of the general population (0.57), white religiously unaffiliated Americans (0.42) and Black Protestants (0.24).
This disparity in attitudes about systemic racism between white Christians and whites who claim no religious affiliation is important evidence that the common — and catalyzing — denominator here is religious identity. This consistent perception gap was the central research finding that launched the work on my new book, "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," out on Tuesday.
When confronted with unsettling results such as these, many of my fellow white Christians tend to explain them away with two objections. First, they assert that it is not white Christian identity itself but other intervening variables that account for such correlations. Second, they argue that even if white Christian identity is implicated, the results are muddied by the inclusion of people who have no real connection to actual churches, folks who are "Christian in name only."

But even when controls are introduced in a statistical model for a range of demographic characteristics, such as partisanship, education levels and region, the connection between holding racist attitudes and white Christian identity remains stubbornly robust.
The results point to a stark conclusion: While most white Christians think of themselves as people who hold warm feelings toward African Americans, holding racist views is nonetheless positively and independently associated with white Christian identity. Again, this troubling relationship holds not just for white evangelical Protestants, but also for white mainline Protestants and white Catholics.
Moreover, these statistical models refute the assertion that attending church makes white Christians less racist. Among white evangelicals, in fact, the opposite is true: The relationship between holding racist views and white Christian identity is actually stronger among more frequent church attenders than among less frequent church attenders.
I suspect many of my fellow white Christians will be appalled by these findings, asking with genuine dismay: "How can this be?" Haven't white Christians created charities of all kinds, built the infrastructure of much of our civil society and provided leadership on a host of social reforms, including the abolitionist movement, which was led in part by Christians moved by their faith?
But when we allow ourselves to cast our gaze beyond the rosy stories we tell about ourselves as champions and representatives of all that is good in America, a terrifyingly troubled alternative history emerges.
While it may seem obvious to mainstream white Christians today that slavery, segregation and overt declarations of white supremacy are antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, such a conviction is, in fact, a recent development for most white American Christians and churches, both Protestant and Catholic.
The unsettling truth is that, for nearly all of American history, the light-skinned Jesus conjured up by most white congregations was not merely indifferent to the status quo of racial inequality; he demanded its defense and preservation as part of the natural, divinely ordained order of things.
Consider the cultural context in which American Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, was born. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as Protestant churches were springing up in newly settled territories after Native American populations were forcibly removed, it was common practice — observed, for example, at the Baptist church that was the progenitor of my parents' church in Macon, Georgia — for slaveholding whites to take enslaved people to church with them.
The practice had it that whites sat in the front while enslaved Blacks sat in the back or in specially constructed galleries above. In late 18th-century Maryland, one-fifth of those included in a Catholic census were enslaved people owned by white Catholics or white Catholic institutions. And as late as the 1940s, urban Catholic parishes in major cities such as New York still required Black members to sit in the back pews and approach the altar last to receive the bread and wine of the Eucharist.
Moreover, the content of what was preached confirmed that white supremacy was part of the Christian worldview. Sermons, by necessity, tended to be light on the themes of freedom and liberation in Exodus, for example, and heavy on the mandates of obedience and being content in one's social station from the New Testament writings of Paul.
In these seedbeds of American Christianity, an a priori commitment to white supremacy shaped what could be practiced (a slave master could not share a common cup of Christian fellowship with his slaves) and preached (white dominance and Black subservience were expressions of God's ideal for the organization of human societies). Such early distortions influenced how white Christians came to embody and understand their faith and determined what was handed down from one generation to the next.
The plain testimony of history is that, alongside what good we white Christians have done, white Christian theology and institutions have also declared the blessings of God on the enslavement of millions of African Americans, the construction of a brutal system of racial segregation enforced by law and lynchings, the resistance to the civil rights movement and the mass incarceration of millions of African Americans. When the patterns in the current public opinion data are seen in this light, they seem unsurprising and, indeed, inevitable.
As monuments to white supremacy are falling all across America, a great cloud of witnesses is gathering. Our fellow African American citizens, and indeed the entire country, are waiting to see whether we white Christians can finally find the humility and courage and love to face the truth about our long relationship with white supremacy and to dismantle the Christian worldview we built to justify it.



This is very true and observable fact, I've even seen it myself browsing on this site from Christians.
 

floss

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Etagloc, missed you. I'm not white but I love white Christians, most down to Earth folks I've ever met. Shout out to my white Christians brother and sister in Christ. Hallelujah!
 

Wigi

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Messages
891

For most of American history, the light-skinned Jesus conjured up by white congregations demanded the preservation of inequality as part of the divine order.

Over the last several weeks, the United States has engaged in a long-overdue reckoning with the racist symbols of the past, tearing down monuments to figures complicit in slavery and removing Confederate flags from public displays. But little scrutiny has been given to the cultural institutions that legitimized the worldview behind these symbols: white Christian churches.
A close read of history reveals that we white Christians have not just been complacent or complicit; rather, as the nation's dominant cultural power, we have constructed and sustained a project of perpetuating white supremacy that has framed the entire American story. The legacy of this unholy union still lives in the DNA of white Christianity today — and not just among white evangelical Protestants in the South, but also among white mainline Protestants in the Midwest and white Catholics in the Northeast.
For more than two decades, I've studied the attitudes of religiously affiliated Americans across the country. And year over year, in question after question in public opinion polls, a clear pattern has emerged: White Christians are consistently more likely than whites who are religiously unaffiliated to deny the existence of structural racism.
For example, surveys conducted by PRRI in 2018 found that white Christians — including evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics — are nearly twice as likely as religiously unaffiliated whites to say the killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans.
And white Christians are about 30 percentage points more likely to say monuments to Confederate soldiers are symbols of Southern pride rather than symbols of racism. White Christians are also about 20 percentage points more likely to disagree with this statement: "Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class." And these trends generally persist even in the wake of the recent protests for racial justice.

As a white Christian who was raised Southern Baptist and shaped by a denominational college and seminary, it pains me to see these patterns in the data. Even worse, these questions only hint at the magnitude of the problem.
To determine the breadth of these attitudes, I created a "Racism Index," a measure consisting of 15 questions designed to get beyond personal biases and include perceptions of structural injustice. These questions included the three above, as well as questions about the treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system and general perceptions of race, racism and racial discrimination.
Even at a glance, the Racism Index reveals a clear distinction. Compared to nonreligious whites, white Christians register higher median scores on the Racism Index, and the differences among white Christian subgroups are largely differences of degree rather than kind.
Not surprisingly, given their concentration in the South, white evangelical Protestants have the highest median score (0.78) on the Racism Index. But it is a mistake to see this as merely a Southern or an evangelical problem. The median scores of white Catholics (0.72) and white mainline Protestants (0.69) — groups that are more culturally dominant in the Northeast and the Midwest — are not far behind. Notably, the median score for each white Christian subgroup is significantly above the median scores of the general population (0.57), white religiously unaffiliated Americans (0.42) and Black Protestants (0.24).
This disparity in attitudes about systemic racism between white Christians and whites who claim no religious affiliation is important evidence that the common — and catalyzing — denominator here is religious identity. This consistent perception gap was the central research finding that launched the work on my new book, "White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity," out on Tuesday.
When confronted with unsettling results such as these, many of my fellow white Christians tend to explain them away with two objections. First, they assert that it is not white Christian identity itself but other intervening variables that account for such correlations. Second, they argue that even if white Christian identity is implicated, the results are muddied by the inclusion of people who have no real connection to actual churches, folks who are "Christian in name only."

But even when controls are introduced in a statistical model for a range of demographic characteristics, such as partisanship, education levels and region, the connection between holding racist attitudes and white Christian identity remains stubbornly robust.
The results point to a stark conclusion: While most white Christians think of themselves as people who hold warm feelings toward African Americans, holding racist views is nonetheless positively and independently associated with white Christian identity. Again, this troubling relationship holds not just for white evangelical Protestants, but also for white mainline Protestants and white Catholics.
Moreover, these statistical models refute the assertion that attending church makes white Christians less racist. Among white evangelicals, in fact, the opposite is true: The relationship between holding racist views and white Christian identity is actually stronger among more frequent church attenders than among less frequent church attenders.
I suspect many of my fellow white Christians will be appalled by these findings, asking with genuine dismay: "How can this be?" Haven't white Christians created charities of all kinds, built the infrastructure of much of our civil society and provided leadership on a host of social reforms, including the abolitionist movement, which was led in part by Christians moved by their faith?
But when we allow ourselves to cast our gaze beyond the rosy stories we tell about ourselves as champions and representatives of all that is good in America, a terrifyingly troubled alternative history emerges.
While it may seem obvious to mainstream white Christians today that slavery, segregation and overt declarations of white supremacy are antithetical to the teachings of Jesus, such a conviction is, in fact, a recent development for most white American Christians and churches, both Protestant and Catholic.
The unsettling truth is that, for nearly all of American history, the light-skinned Jesus conjured up by most white congregations was not merely indifferent to the status quo of racial inequality; he demanded its defense and preservation as part of the natural, divinely ordained order of things.
Consider the cultural context in which American Christianity, both Protestant and Catholic, was born. In the 18th and 19th centuries, as Protestant churches were springing up in newly settled territories after Native American populations were forcibly removed, it was common practice — observed, for example, at the Baptist church that was the progenitor of my parents' church in Macon, Georgia — for slaveholding whites to take enslaved people to church with them.
The practice had it that whites sat in the front while enslaved Blacks sat in the back or in specially constructed galleries above. In late 18th-century Maryland, one-fifth of those included in a Catholic census were enslaved people owned by white Catholics or white Catholic institutions. And as late as the 1940s, urban Catholic parishes in major cities such as New York still required Black members to sit in the back pews and approach the altar last to receive the bread and wine of the Eucharist.
Moreover, the content of what was preached confirmed that white supremacy was part of the Christian worldview. Sermons, by necessity, tended to be light on the themes of freedom and liberation in Exodus, for example, and heavy on the mandates of obedience and being content in one's social station from the New Testament writings of Paul.
In these seedbeds of American Christianity, an a priori commitment to white supremacy shaped what could be practiced (a slave master could not share a common cup of Christian fellowship with his slaves) and preached (white dominance and Black subservience were expressions of God's ideal for the organization of human societies). Such early distortions influenced how white Christians came to embody and understand their faith and determined what was handed down from one generation to the next.
The plain testimony of history is that, alongside what good we white Christians have done, white Christian theology and institutions have also declared the blessings of God on the enslavement of millions of African Americans, the construction of a brutal system of racial segregation enforced by law and lynchings, the resistance to the civil rights movement and the mass incarceration of millions of African Americans. When the patterns in the current public opinion data are seen in this light, they seem unsurprising and, indeed, inevitable.
As monuments to white supremacy are falling all across America, a great cloud of witnesses is gathering. Our fellow African American citizens, and indeed the entire country, are waiting to see whether we white Christians can finally find the humility and courage and love to face the truth about our long relationship with white supremacy and to dismantle the Christian worldview we built to justify it.



This is very true and observable fact, I've even seen it myself browsing on this site from Christians.
Boring article and click baity thread title that affirm things without proofs.
The sin of discrimination is a problem in human's heart that exist even in a non religious and secular environment. Now look at the facts and see who actually conduct humanitarian actions in third world countries because I'm seeing many Christian organisations and christian volunteers involved.

Whether we're white, black, yellow it doesn't matter :
"there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all."
Colossians 3:11
 
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If it’s so unbelievable, why are there zero racist billboards and signs outside of the Bible Belt?
 

Kung Fu

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White Christians who live in the Bible Belt are probably some of the most racist Christians you'll meet. But I feel it has less to do with their religion and more with the type of culture and upbringing they're exposed to down there.
 

LittleLady

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That's because originally, those whom God made were not White. They were of his appearance; dark skin tone, woolly hair. It's not racism, it's God wanting his people to look like him. He is their heavenly father after all.

There are some Israelites that act rather unnecessarily towards any White person they see, which they shouldn't. They should know how to teach, and remain calm. Edomites, (originally called red) which are the so called "White people" were only made to punish the Israelites for disobeying the laws of God, and they still exist today because they are to fulfill prophecy via these times are the times that their kingdom starts to collapse.

The Edomites have to fall in order for the kingdom of Israel to rise. America, Rome, Germany, Italy, Turkey, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Russia, China, etc etc, these Nations have to fall, and if you didn't notice, they're being judged right now as we speak- especially America.

But Gods elect within these Nations will be saved from their destruction. It's the Nations themselves that will fall, not the few of Gods elect that dwell within them. There's two sets of Gentiles. There's the Gentiles that aren't chosen, those are the ones God doesn't care for. And then there's the Gentiles who are Israelites living within these Nations due to slavery, which are the ones that are offered salvation.

Notice how the virus is mostly wiping people out from European Nations. Notice how White women are getting abortions. Notice how a lot of White people are going nuts, and their name given to them by the internet is known as, "Karen" for the females and "Daren" for the males. Notice how those with long straight/wavy hair are getting lice (which was one of the plagues in Egypt)

To anyone who is an Edomite/not part of Gods 1/3 elect here, I'm sorry, but this is your kingdom and I would recommend you enjoy it while it lasts, because it's slowly falling and you've had your fun here, but you gotta go.

This isn't racism, this is God preferring his Nation over the other Nations. Not because of skin color, but because he loves his people, which is why they were chosen originally anyways before Esau even existed.
 
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Kung Fu

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That's because originally, those whom God made were not White. They were of his appearance; dark skin tone, woolly hair. It's not racism, it's God wanting his people to look like him. He is their heavenly father after all.

There are some Israelites that act rather unnecessarily towards any White person they see, which they shouldn't. They should know how to teach, and remain calm. Edomites, (originally called red) which are the so called "White people" were only made to punish the Israelites for disobeying the laws of God, and they still exist today because they are to fulfill prophecy via these times are the times that their kingdom starts to collapse.

The Edomites have to fall in order for the kingdom of Israel to rise. America, Rome, Germany, Italy, Turkey, France, United Kingdom, Spain, Portugal, Russia, China, etc etc, these Nations have to fall, and if you didn't notice, they're being judged right now as we speak- especially America.

But Gods elect within these Nations will be saved from their destruction. It's the Nations themselves that will fall, not the few of Gods elect that dwell within them. There's two sets of Gentiles. There's the Gentiles that aren't chosen, those are the ones God doesn't care for. And then there's the Gentiles who are Israelites living within these Nations due to slavery, which are the ones that are offered salvation.

Notice how the virus is mostly wiping people out from European Nations. Notice how White women are getting abortions. Notice how a lot of White people are going nuts, and their name given to them by the internet is known as, "Karen" for the females and "Daren" for the males. Notice how those with long straight/wavy hair are getting lice (which was one of the plagues in Egypt)

To anyone who is an Edomite/not part of Gods 1/3 elect here, I'm sorry, but this is your kingdom and I would recommend you enjoy it while it lasts, because it's slowly falling and you've had your fun here, but you gotta go.

This isn't racism, this is God preferring his Nation over the other Nations. Not because of skin color, but because he loves his people, which is why they were chosen originally anyways before Esau even existed.
God does not look anything like His creation. He is unique and He is One.

I really don't care for anything else you believe.
 
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LittleLady

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God does not look anything like His Creation. He is unique and He is One.

I really don't care for anything else you believe.
Sorry, but Gods people are made in his image- just as Yashua was. He is described as having extremely dark skin, and woolly hair. If you want to think otherwise, go ahead.
 

Tidal

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Racism among white Christians is higher than among the nonreligious. That's no coincidence.
I've even seen it myself browsing on this site from Christians.

Depends exactly how you'd define "racist" mate.
As a white Christian i simply don't want to see hordes of heathen immigrant scroungers invading my country doing drugs and crime and messing with our women and kids, it's not rocket science..:)
Jesus said- "It is not good to take the children's bread and throw it to the dogs....do not throw your pearls before swine, or they will trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you to pieces" (Matt 15:26,Matt 7:6)
 

Aero

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I thought the angry male archetype was called "Kevin" not "Daren".

Either way, there are racist people everywhere. And I don't agree with the fallacy circulating on twitter, that minorities can't be racist. They most certainly can be, but I would also chalk most of it up to people being products of their environment.

All I'm saying is, the idea of racism exists independently from any person or background. Basically I'm describing a racist archetype that is another classic example universals. Racism just exists, and it's not going to go away unless we come up with a universal solution.
 

LittleLady

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I thought the angry male archetype was called "Kevin" not "Daren".

Either way, there are racist people everywhere. And I don't agree with the fallacy circulating on twitter, that minorities can't be racist. They most certainly can be, but I would also chalk most of it up to people being products of their environment.

All I'm saying is, the idea of racism exists independently from any person or background. Basically I'm describing a racist archetype that is another classic example universals. Racism just exists, and it's not going to go away unless we come up with a universal solution.
Kevin, Daren,
Karen, Becky, Susan, etc. Eh, doesn't matter.

Yes you're right, there's racism everywhere on the four corners of the earth. We're about to experience wars and plagues, so if we're going to that extent, what makes you think we could possibly all come together and agree that racism needs to end, when we're about to have some wars?

The truth is, that is why everyone needs to be separate. If slavery didn't happen, we'd all be in our own lands making friends with our own people, getting married with our own people, and racism wouldn't be a serious thing as it is today. Actually, if slavery never happened, then we'd all be made in the image of God and we would dwell in Jerusalem, but you get the point.
 

The Zone

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White Christians who live in the Bible Belt are probably some of the most racist Christians you'll meet. But I feel it has less to do with their religion and more with the type of culture and upbringing they're exposed to down there.
No offense bro, but what would you know about the American bible belt being from Canada? I can assure you that there is not nearly as much racism from Christian white folks in the south, midwest and such as you seem to think. Now, if you have facts over rare examples okay. But that comment drew my ire. I did realize with a reread you dis say "probably." The bottom line is racist people are racist people and religion has little to do with it.
 

Aero

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Kevin, Daren,
Karen, Becky, Susan, etc. Eh, doesn't matter.

Yes you're right, there's racism everywhere on the four corners of the earth. We're about to experience wars and plagues, so if we're going to that extent, what makes you think we could possibly all come together and agree that racism needs to end, when we're about to have some wars?

The truth is, that is why everyone needs to be separate. If slavery didn't happen, we'd all be in our own lands making friends with our own people, getting married with our own people, and racism wouldn't be a serious thing as it is today. Actually, if slavery never happened, then we'd all be made in the image of God and we would dwell in Jerusalem, but you get the point.
Good question.

As I've been working on developing a universal philosophy I asked myself the same thing. The best answer I have so far is that people don't need to all come together per se. The universal doctrine must be totally compatible with everything, and also easily integrated into their culture. In that sense, people only need to rally behind the philosophy. We can all keep our differences and be on our separate paths.

My aim is to make everything better. That involves getting to the root of the problem. In that sense, slavery seems more like a point of origin rather than the root. But I'll try to incorporate what you're saying into my calculation. The point of origin is an important piece of solving this crisis of consciousness.
 

Yahda

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The irony when you have more black racist israelites on this forum than racist white Christians. :p
God is the one with CHOSEN people. It’s not the black Israelites. Take it up with God.

Imo, Christians no matter the color are indeed some of the worst people on the planet period. There is no denying that. Who can really disagree?
 
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