White Evangelical Racism by Anthea Butler

Butler forgoes academic language, citations of paywalled journal articles, and an in-depth historical narrative in favor of telling a larger story that, in a few short chapters, connects the past to the present. This is evident in the very style and format of the text. Her historical analysis does not claim to be detached from her own story-it is, rather, deeply personal and experiential. The text bears the scars of Butler’s experience as a former evangelical, a story which she includes in the book. As a person of color invested deeply in the redemption and reformation of American evangelicalism, reading Butler’s brief history brought me through a range of emotions: anger, gladness, fury, joy, sadness, hope. Butler argues that racism is not a bug in the system of evangelicalism but rather a distinctive feature of the tradition. White Evangelical Racism is an excellent and scathing critique of American evangelicalism. Evangelicalism's racial history festers, splits America, and needs a reckoning now.Read our latest issue or browse back issues. White evangelicals today, cloaked in a vision of Christian patriarchy and nationhood, form a staunch voting bloc in support of white leadership. Most recently, evangelicals supported the Tea Party, a Muslim ban, and border policies allowing family separation.

In the twentieth century, they sided with segregationists in avidly opposing movements for racial equality and civil rights. During Reconstruction, they used it to deny the vote to newly emancipated blacks. During the buildup to the Civil War, white evangelicals used scripture to defend slavery and nurture the Confederacy. Butler reveals how evangelical racism, propelled by the benefits of whiteness, has since the nation's founding played a provocative role in severely fracturing the electorate. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power. The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals play a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion.

White Evangelical Racism by Anthea Butler