White Christian America Needs a Moral Awakening

Analysis of the composite Racism Index confirms the general pattern: White Christians are more likely than white religiously unaffiliated Americans to register higher scores. The median scores reveal similar attitudes among white Christian groups. Not surprisingly, given their history and strong presence in the former states of the Confederacy, white evangelical Protestants have the highest median score (0.78) on the Racism Index. But the median scores of white Catholics (0.72) and white mainline Protestants (0.69) are not far behind. These numbers stand out compared with the median scores of the general population (0.57), white religiously unaffiliated Americans (0.42), and Black Protestants (0.24).

Even when employing more sophisticated statistical models that control for a range of demographic characteristics, holding more racist attitudes is independently predictive of identifying as a white Christian and vice versa. The results of these models lead us to some remarkable and damning conclusions:

• White Christians think of themselves as people who hold warm feelings toward African Americans, while simultaneously embracing a host of racist attitudes that are inconsistent with that assertion.
• Holding more racist views is a positive independent predictor of white Christian identity overall and for each of the three white Christian subgroups individually. By contrast, holding more racist views has only a very weak effect on white religiously unaffiliated identity, and that effect is in the negative direction.
• Attending church more frequently does not make white congregants less racist. On the contrary, there is a positive relationship between holding racist attitudes and white Christian identity among both frequent (weekly or more) and infrequent (seldom or never) church attenders.
• When we reverse the analysis to predict racist attitudes, being affiliated with each white Christian identity is independently associated with an approximately 10 percent increase in racist attitudes. By contrast, there is no significant relationship between white religiously unaffiliated identity and holding racist attitudes.

Putting this in plain language, our models reveal that the more racist attitudes a person holds, the more likely he or she is to identify as a white Christian and vice versa.

Peter Wehner: The deepening crisis in evangelical Christianity

Today, 400 years after the first enslaved African landed on our shores, and more than 150 years after the abolition of slavery in America, a combination of social forces and demographic changes has brought the country to a crossroads. We white Christians must find the courage to face the fact that the version of Christianity that our ancestors built, “the faith of our fathers” as the hymn celebrates it, was a cultural force that, by design, protected and propagated white supremacy. We have inherited this tradition with scant critique, and we have a moral and religious obligation to face the burden of that history and its demand on our present. Inaction is a tacit blessing on white supremacy’s continued presence as a Christian habit and virtue. Doing nothing will ensure that, even despite our best conscious intentions, we will continue to be blind to the racial injustice all around us.

White Christians must seek justice, rather than reconciliation, as the goal. Even when white Christians try to engage in this work, too many reach immediately for racial reconciliation, which they believe can be achieved through a straightforward transaction: white confession in exchange for Black forgiveness. For example, when the Southern Baptist Convention’s leaders issued a formal apology for defending slavery, opposing civil rights, and “condoning and/or perpetuating individual and systemic racism in our lifetime” at their national convention in 1995, they coupled it with a piece of contrived cultural theater that seemed to imply that a kind of magical reconciliation had instantaneously occurred. Reverend Gary Frost, a Black minister, rose to the podium to accept the apology and issued this brief declaration: “On behalf of my Black brothers and sisters, we accept your apology, and we extend to you our forgiveness in the name of our Lord and savior, Jesus Christ.” The overwhelmingly white delegates erupted into applause. In less than 15 minutes, 150 years of Southern Baptist white supremacy was seemingly absolved.  While some African Americans supported the apology, others were skeptical that it reflected meaningful change. This approach is really a strategy for making peace with the status quo, since it allows white Christians to move past the thornier issues of repair and restitution that real repentance requires.