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The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism: A Call to Action
Hear the call to overcome today’s culture of hate and bring healing and hope into our life together. While right-wing conservatives dare to call themselves Christians as they tear down equality and justice, commit horrific acts of violence, and fan the flames of fascism in America, Carter Heyward issues a call to action for Christians to truly hear God’s message of peace and love. Heyward shows how American Christians have played a major role in building and securing structures of injustice in American life. Rising tides of white supremacy, threats to women’s reproductive freedoms and to basic human rights for gender and sexual minorities, the widening divide between rich and poor, and increasing natural disasters and the extinction of Earth’s species--all point to a world crying out for God’s wisdom. Followers of Jesus must first call out these ingrained and sinful attitudes for what they are, acknowledging what the culture of white Christian nationalism is doing to our country and our world, and commit ourselves ever more fully to generating justice-love, whoever and wherever we are.
290 pages, Hardcover
Published September 15, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 16, 2023
Heyward presents a straightforward progressive Christian critique of White Christian Nationalism (WCN). In the first two sections of the book, using a lot of personal reflections, she declares the roots and current actions of those who aspire to see the American Experiment end with a White Christian Nationalist government sinful. Why is WCN so violent today? Her why is reasonably simple: while America has noble ideals, the levers of power have been held by white men who hold a belief the Christian faith should be central to the ethos of the nation - and are afraid of losing their power to a multicultural and "liberal" world. WCN, she decries as evil.
Let me be honest. I agree with virtually everything Hayward argues. What I find lacking is a historical context for her argument that the nation has always been driven by this aberrant theology. Additionally, I found the first two (of three) sections rather angry (and perhaps justifiably so) with prima facie statements. What I was looking for (and this may be the source of my low evaluation) was some historical roots of what today is the core of WCN theology. Simply, who were the major theologians and crafters of this non-Christ like Christianity? What scripture did they use? What did they write and how was the argument crafted? What research suggests that now is the time it is making such a clear effort to overthrow our democratic agenda? While it might be true we have always had a WCN component to the American politic, who and what are the thinkers over the decades who promote it? What quotes would give md some historical thread to follow? Perhaps I went looking for the wrong book, desiring a more academic approach?
Where Heyward shines is in the third and final section. Her analysis of how progressive Christians can stand up to the proponents of WCN is her best work. Often creative and expressive, she gives some crafted arguments here. That said, she often fails to get into theological specifics - for example, how to get a WCN (who often will claim the Bible is inerrant) to grasp a broader, universal Christ over a Davidic hero demanding total power.
Does Hayward make a case for WCN as a sinful ideology? Yes. But I fear she will convince only those who already agree with her.
Let me be honest. I agree with virtually everything Hayward argues. What I find lacking is a historical context for her argument that the nation has always been driven by this aberrant theology. Additionally, I found the first two (of three) sections rather angry (and perhaps justifiably so) with prima facie statements. What I was looking for (and this may be the source of my low evaluation) was some historical roots of what today is the core of WCN theology. Simply, who were the major theologians and crafters of this non-Christ like Christianity? What scripture did they use? What did they write and how was the argument crafted? What research suggests that now is the time it is making such a clear effort to overthrow our democratic agenda? While it might be true we have always had a WCN component to the American politic, who and what are the thinkers over the decades who promote it? What quotes would give md some historical thread to follow? Perhaps I went looking for the wrong book, desiring a more academic approach?
Where Heyward shines is in the third and final section. Her analysis of how progressive Christians can stand up to the proponents of WCN is her best work. Often creative and expressive, she gives some crafted arguments here. That said, she often fails to get into theological specifics - for example, how to get a WCN (who often will claim the Bible is inerrant) to grasp a broader, universal Christ over a Davidic hero demanding total power.
Does Hayward make a case for WCN as a sinful ideology? Yes. But I fear she will convince only those who already agree with her.
January 22, 2023
From a position of strong faith and deep engagement, Carter Heyword writes an eloquent list of the failings of Christianity entwined with governance in the United States today. Here are the sins: lust for omnipotence, entitlement, white supremacy, misogyny, capitalist spirituality, domination of earth and it's creatures and violence.
She does an excellent job describing the origin of each flawed religious assumption, why those beliefs are theologically wrong and what that mindset is doing to the US now.
The last chapters have suggestions for how to right some of these wrongs.
One of the suggestions is a challenge for me: to spend more energy being of service than worrying about my own spirituality. Ouch. After reading so much of the book with a certain righteous agreement about institutional failings, I am challenged to not walk away tutting about other people's problems, but to admit that seeing problems and making my internal life all about me is surely not a help.
She does an excellent job describing the origin of each flawed religious assumption, why those beliefs are theologically wrong and what that mindset is doing to the US now.
The last chapters have suggestions for how to right some of these wrongs.
One of the suggestions is a challenge for me: to spend more energy being of service than worrying about my own spirituality. Ouch. After reading so much of the book with a certain righteous agreement about institutional failings, I am challenged to not walk away tutting about other people's problems, but to admit that seeing problems and making my internal life all about me is surely not a help.
February 25, 2026
The Episcopal Diocese of New York invited Rev. Carter Heyward to lecture on this book. From there, several of us selected it to do a book study. I am grateful that we did this because these ideas have helped me understand and speak out as we witness what is happening in our democracy. So much hate speech, division, and violence is being done in the name of Jesus. Rev. Carter's book helps me understand how this has happened.
She outlines seven sins and gives background for each:
The First Sin - The Lust for Omnipotence
The Second Sin - Entitlement
The Third Sin - White Supremacy
The Fourth Sin - Misogyny
The Fifth Sin - Capitalist Spirituality
The Sixth Sin - Domination of the Earth and Its Creatures
The Seventh Sin - Violence
Rev. Carter is clear that it has taken us decades to get here. Even centuries. Thankfully, she offers ways to recognize these sins and start on a healing path.
Here are some of the ideas and passages that I noted.
"Arguably the most consequential example of this effort over the past two centuries of American history was the expansionist movement that flew under the banner of Manifest Destiny. John L. O'Sullivan, editor and Democratic politician, coined the term in 1845, proclaiming America's 'manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of Liberty and federal self-govermment entrusted to us.'"
"As for America, our chosen leaders, regardless of party, declare this country to be the world's premier nation, exceptional in almost every respect."
"Some are empirically true—America is the richest and most militarized nation on Earth, and America produces some of the best scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and athletes in the world. But neither America nor any country on the planet is best at everything. I doubt that many other nations—except today maybe Russia and China—spend much time worrying about it, at least not since the era of colonialism and imperialism. Yet being best and only has been an obsession among American political and military leaders since the end of the Second World War. Regardless of political party, American leaders have boasted about our country needing always to be regarded by Americans and others as the strongest, most righteous, and most enviable nation on the planet. Those Americans who have proposed that we regard ourselves as one among many excellent nations have risked being caricatured as unpatriotic."
"A radical ambivalence toward women and gays as well as a hatred of independent, self-defined women has been a driving force in Christianity from early in its male-dominated history, although probably not from its origins at a devoted band of friends and followers of Jesus of Nazareth. A strong case has been made by Christian scholars over the past fifty years that women were present alongside Jesus from the very beginning, but that these women were either erased entirely from the New Testament record or have been interpreted by Christian men through the lenses of misogyny: For example, Mary of Nazareth, Jesus's mother, has been lifted up, especially in Roman Catholicism, as the prototype of ideal womanhood, existing only as an impossibility: a nonsexual child bearer. By contrast, Jesus's good friend Many Magdalene has been represented as a whore a prototype for a bad woman."
"Throughout her career, one of her academic and educational passions was economic ethics increasingly in her later years, what she would name 'capitalist spirituality.' Due to physical challenges and diminished energy, Harrison was unable to pursue this topic in her waning years with as much vigor as she had wished, but she talked about it with friends and colleagues right up to the time of her unexpected death."
"Harrison was clear that for much of the past two hundred years, Protestant Christianity in America had aligned itself with capitalism, to the moral discredit of both. As both Protestant Christianity and capitalism had grown stronger in American life during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, each had contributed to the other's loss of any meaningful moral compass. In their shared fixation on the economic advancement and spiritual salvation of the individual (white male) as central to the American way of life, both American capitalism and Protestant Christianity had lost sight of the common good: the betterment of the whole society, not just its upper tiers; the advocacy of liberty and justice for all people, not just some; and a strong, shared concem for the well-being of the earth as a mutual partner, not primarily an object of economic exploitation."
"Harrison laid the responsibility for these failures squarely on the shoulders of both advanced global capitalism, especially its neoclassical foundations and Protestant Christianity, especially its idolatry of the individual white male."
"Is violence against evildoers ever justified? Under what circumstances, if any, might it be? This is a question that might move Christians to consider the life, circumstances, and final choices of the renowned German Protestant leologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a lover of humanity and a teacher of God's peace, who participated in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler, and who was hanged in 1945 for his crime against the Fuhrer. Was Bonhoeffer right or wrong? What do you think? Having wrestled with the question of Black self-defense as justifiable violence throughout his ministry, Martin Luther ing Jr. warned in his final book that "the line of demarcation between defensive violence and aggressive violence is very thin. The minute a program of violence is enunciated, even for self-defense, the atmosphere is filled with talk of violence."
"Paul Washington and Charles Willie were feisty, outspoken Black leader-participants in the Philadelphia ordination of eleven white women priests in 1974. Their liberation ethics required them to stretch the boundaries of justice-ministry into the realm of gender. Barbara C. Harris and Pauli Murray were pioneering Black women whose tenacious spirits led them not only to be ordained in the Episcopal Church but, moreover, into lifetime advocacy for justice in all forms. Over time, I would come to realize that, through the witness of such Black women and men, the Blackness of God had been luring me, encouraging and empowering me to come along for many years."
"To repent the sin of white supremacy is essential, because if honest our repentance signals a taking of responsibility for helping shape the future."
"In fact, repentance is a key to a just and compassionate future. And honest repentance will lead to conversion, a turning around to go the other way. It means not getting stuck, bogged down in guilt or shame, but rather encouraging one another to do the next right thing to work and struggle for liberty and justice for all, not just some. That is what Jesus means when he says to those who are immobilized by guilt, shame, confusion, despair, or any form of inaction, get up and move on. We cannot, in good faith, stay stuck, resigned to the status quo or willing to let others do the right thing while we stand on the sidelines and quietly applaud. We, all of us, must take up our mats, and walk."
"This will take us and our churches to any number of possible social justice endeavors in realms of health care, mental health, addiction, immigration reform and refugee support, criminal justice reform (including law enforce-ment, prisons, rehabilitation, elimination of the death penalty and the 'three strike law' for minors, gun safety laws, etc.). Honest repentance and true conversion will also lead us to the moral matter of reparations."
"Is economic power and privilege to follow Jesus. This young man is not a religious leader. He is simply an observant Jew, like Jesus himself, a goos religious practitioner. But there is just one thing: he is also wealthy and according to Jesus, must share his wealth to follow Jesus, something the man Immediately following this exchange, Jesus says to his disciples something that most of us learned in Sunday school when we were kids, passages that few of us want to talk about: 'Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God' (Matt. 19:23-24 NRSV).
"Now I learned in seminary that the image of the camel going through the eye of a needle may have referred to a particular geographic passage-the 'eye of a needle' being a gate in Jerusalem through which real camels had to pass, often with difficulty. This interpretation has been debated among Christians for centuries. Most Christian teachers' agree, however, that Jesus clearly expects his followers to share their wealth and possessions-and that he recognizes how unlikely it is that the very rich will do this."
She outlines seven sins and gives background for each:
The First Sin - The Lust for Omnipotence
The Second Sin - Entitlement
The Third Sin - White Supremacy
The Fourth Sin - Misogyny
The Fifth Sin - Capitalist Spirituality
The Sixth Sin - Domination of the Earth and Its Creatures
The Seventh Sin - Violence
Rev. Carter is clear that it has taken us decades to get here. Even centuries. Thankfully, she offers ways to recognize these sins and start on a healing path.
Here are some of the ideas and passages that I noted.
"Arguably the most consequential example of this effort over the past two centuries of American history was the expansionist movement that flew under the banner of Manifest Destiny. John L. O'Sullivan, editor and Democratic politician, coined the term in 1845, proclaiming America's 'manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of Liberty and federal self-govermment entrusted to us.'"
"As for America, our chosen leaders, regardless of party, declare this country to be the world's premier nation, exceptional in almost every respect."
"Some are empirically true—America is the richest and most militarized nation on Earth, and America produces some of the best scholars, scientists, writers, artists, and athletes in the world. But neither America nor any country on the planet is best at everything. I doubt that many other nations—except today maybe Russia and China—spend much time worrying about it, at least not since the era of colonialism and imperialism. Yet being best and only has been an obsession among American political and military leaders since the end of the Second World War. Regardless of political party, American leaders have boasted about our country needing always to be regarded by Americans and others as the strongest, most righteous, and most enviable nation on the planet. Those Americans who have proposed that we regard ourselves as one among many excellent nations have risked being caricatured as unpatriotic."
"A radical ambivalence toward women and gays as well as a hatred of independent, self-defined women has been a driving force in Christianity from early in its male-dominated history, although probably not from its origins at a devoted band of friends and followers of Jesus of Nazareth. A strong case has been made by Christian scholars over the past fifty years that women were present alongside Jesus from the very beginning, but that these women were either erased entirely from the New Testament record or have been interpreted by Christian men through the lenses of misogyny: For example, Mary of Nazareth, Jesus's mother, has been lifted up, especially in Roman Catholicism, as the prototype of ideal womanhood, existing only as an impossibility: a nonsexual child bearer. By contrast, Jesus's good friend Many Magdalene has been represented as a whore a prototype for a bad woman."
"Throughout her career, one of her academic and educational passions was economic ethics increasingly in her later years, what she would name 'capitalist spirituality.' Due to physical challenges and diminished energy, Harrison was unable to pursue this topic in her waning years with as much vigor as she had wished, but she talked about it with friends and colleagues right up to the time of her unexpected death."
"Harrison was clear that for much of the past two hundred years, Protestant Christianity in America had aligned itself with capitalism, to the moral discredit of both. As both Protestant Christianity and capitalism had grown stronger in American life during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, each had contributed to the other's loss of any meaningful moral compass. In their shared fixation on the economic advancement and spiritual salvation of the individual (white male) as central to the American way of life, both American capitalism and Protestant Christianity had lost sight of the common good: the betterment of the whole society, not just its upper tiers; the advocacy of liberty and justice for all people, not just some; and a strong, shared concem for the well-being of the earth as a mutual partner, not primarily an object of economic exploitation."
"Harrison laid the responsibility for these failures squarely on the shoulders of both advanced global capitalism, especially its neoclassical foundations and Protestant Christianity, especially its idolatry of the individual white male."
"Is violence against evildoers ever justified? Under what circumstances, if any, might it be? This is a question that might move Christians to consider the life, circumstances, and final choices of the renowned German Protestant leologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a lover of humanity and a teacher of God's peace, who participated in a failed plot to assassinate Hitler, and who was hanged in 1945 for his crime against the Fuhrer. Was Bonhoeffer right or wrong? What do you think? Having wrestled with the question of Black self-defense as justifiable violence throughout his ministry, Martin Luther ing Jr. warned in his final book that "the line of demarcation between defensive violence and aggressive violence is very thin. The minute a program of violence is enunciated, even for self-defense, the atmosphere is filled with talk of violence."
"Paul Washington and Charles Willie were feisty, outspoken Black leader-participants in the Philadelphia ordination of eleven white women priests in 1974. Their liberation ethics required them to stretch the boundaries of justice-ministry into the realm of gender. Barbara C. Harris and Pauli Murray were pioneering Black women whose tenacious spirits led them not only to be ordained in the Episcopal Church but, moreover, into lifetime advocacy for justice in all forms. Over time, I would come to realize that, through the witness of such Black women and men, the Blackness of God had been luring me, encouraging and empowering me to come along for many years."
"To repent the sin of white supremacy is essential, because if honest our repentance signals a taking of responsibility for helping shape the future."
"In fact, repentance is a key to a just and compassionate future. And honest repentance will lead to conversion, a turning around to go the other way. It means not getting stuck, bogged down in guilt or shame, but rather encouraging one another to do the next right thing to work and struggle for liberty and justice for all, not just some. That is what Jesus means when he says to those who are immobilized by guilt, shame, confusion, despair, or any form of inaction, get up and move on. We cannot, in good faith, stay stuck, resigned to the status quo or willing to let others do the right thing while we stand on the sidelines and quietly applaud. We, all of us, must take up our mats, and walk."
"This will take us and our churches to any number of possible social justice endeavors in realms of health care, mental health, addiction, immigration reform and refugee support, criminal justice reform (including law enforce-ment, prisons, rehabilitation, elimination of the death penalty and the 'three strike law' for minors, gun safety laws, etc.). Honest repentance and true conversion will also lead us to the moral matter of reparations."
"Is economic power and privilege to follow Jesus. This young man is not a religious leader. He is simply an observant Jew, like Jesus himself, a goos religious practitioner. But there is just one thing: he is also wealthy and according to Jesus, must share his wealth to follow Jesus, something the man Immediately following this exchange, Jesus says to his disciples something that most of us learned in Sunday school when we were kids, passages that few of us want to talk about: 'Truly I tell you, it will be hard for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God' (Matt. 19:23-24 NRSV).
"Now I learned in seminary that the image of the camel going through the eye of a needle may have referred to a particular geographic passage-the 'eye of a needle' being a gate in Jerusalem through which real camels had to pass, often with difficulty. This interpretation has been debated among Christians for centuries. Most Christian teachers' agree, however, that Jesus clearly expects his followers to share their wealth and possessions-and that he recognizes how unlikely it is that the very rich will do this."
October 17, 2022
Carter Heyward is a theologian and retired Episcopal priest who live here in Brevard; indeed, I know a good many of the folks she mentions in her Acknowledgments.
The January 6 insurrection horrified and outraged her (as it did me) and spurred her to write this book which is clearly the crystallization of m years of thinking about what has been going on around us for the past 40 years or more but has gained momentum in recent years. It is a "movement spawned by white Christian Americans to superimpose their conservative religious values on the laws and leaders of the United States. " It is authoritarian, anti-democratic, and seeks to exclude the voices of those (in most cases the majority) who don't hold their views. They would like something very akin to a theocracy, and while they may or may not have thought through it or articulated it in these terms, a nation where white straight Protestant men hold power and privilege and all others -non-whites, gays, women, Jews etc. are marginalized. it is informed by the sins of racism, misogyny, entitlement, white supremacy to name a few.
I agree with most of what she writes, certainly that this is a political, civic and Christian heresy and a major threat to our democracy, especially since the GOP has rejected the very premise of our nation - the idea that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." Some readers -and she acknowledges this - may be startled or even offended by some of her assertions about the nature and omnipotence of God. She does occasionally overstate her case and tends to be somewhat repetitive, but this does not diminish the importance of what she has to say.
The January 6 insurrection horrified and outraged her (as it did me) and spurred her to write this book which is clearly the crystallization of m years of thinking about what has been going on around us for the past 40 years or more but has gained momentum in recent years. It is a "movement spawned by white Christian Americans to superimpose their conservative religious values on the laws and leaders of the United States. " It is authoritarian, anti-democratic, and seeks to exclude the voices of those (in most cases the majority) who don't hold their views. They would like something very akin to a theocracy, and while they may or may not have thought through it or articulated it in these terms, a nation where white straight Protestant men hold power and privilege and all others -non-whites, gays, women, Jews etc. are marginalized. it is informed by the sins of racism, misogyny, entitlement, white supremacy to name a few.
I agree with most of what she writes, certainly that this is a political, civic and Christian heresy and a major threat to our democracy, especially since the GOP has rejected the very premise of our nation - the idea that "governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed." Some readers -and she acknowledges this - may be startled or even offended by some of her assertions about the nature and omnipotence of God. She does occasionally overstate her case and tends to be somewhat repetitive, but this does not diminish the importance of what she has to say.
January 7, 2024
Regardless of your religious leanings, this book is a tremendous look at our politics, our government and who we, as Americans, are. Hayward, one of the first female Episcopal priests (I am married to an Episcopal priest) and has taught in seminary and worked in parishes. She doesn't hold back in her opinions but she does present some pretty point blank questions on how we are behaving and making the world better (not so much) or worse (it's getting more and more that way daily). There's a lot to think about here and the book would make for a fine book discussion with an open minded group of people.
December 30, 2022
I am white and Christian, but white Christian nationalism is idolatry, pure and simple. It's just another way of the few gaining power over the many. It's about the wolf of control dressed up as the lamb of religion. Don't fall for this heresy. Out of her long experience as a professor of systematic theology, Carter Heyward fleshes out the details of why white Christian nationalism is just so completely wrong. It's always tempting for religious people to want to reshape their nation according to their own religious conceits, but the outcome is always disastrous for all.
August 6, 2024
What a necessary, important, sturdy work. I’m thankful we have this work to keep pointing to, to discuss around and ground ourselves in this continued work of bringing a Good Kingdom here and now. So many essential questions for the Christian, American spaces.
If you feel bogged down in the hard of the Seven Sins in part two, I recommend flipping to the corresponding Part 3 section, so you can also experience some of the light of that section!
If you feel bogged down in the hard of the Seven Sins in part two, I recommend flipping to the corresponding Part 3 section, so you can also experience some of the light of that section!
February 11, 2023
Our current Sunday Forum book at Messiah. The author does a great job of highlighting a variety of progressive Christian perspectives to counter the rise of Christian nationalism. I found it a fair bit basic but definitely works well for a general audience w good discussion prompts at the end of each chapter.
June 3, 2025
Read this for a race and social justice book group. While the book raises important and timely topics, the author left all of us in the group wishing she had done more to buttress her arguments, illustrate her points, or at least prod us to think beyond the text. Still, it'd a good starting point to delve into what is increasngly becoming a threat to pluralistic, democratic systems.
September 1, 2025
Love the structure of this book, and the amount of research she had to do is incredible. Returning to Jan. 6 with each of the sins was also a great point of orientation. The book got a little repetitive at times, and I would have enjoyed having the "call" in the same main chapter. I appreciated the discussion questions at the end of each chapter.
October 29, 2024
A well argued and almost comprehensive look at what the Christian Right has so dangerously wrong. Tracing the threads of patriarchy, racism, classism, and so much more, Heyward weaves together a map not only of what’s wrong, but how we can get it right if we choose to.
October 31, 2025
This was a tough read -- I took so many notes I had to pay a fine because the book was overdue even after they allowed me to renew it. I wouldn't give it up till I finished (the fine was worth it)...
May 25, 2023
Very eye opening account, spurred on by the January 6th insurrection. Good accounting of White Nationalist behavior.
Read
February 5, 2024I'm not the target audience for this, so I am not rating it. I would recommend it more for the Christian layperson over a religious studies scholar.
June 28, 2025
Laminated Cover
July 21, 2025
Deeply disturbing and thought provoking. Carter Heyward is now one of my new heroes. I am so glad to have been exposed to her knowledge and perception about religion in today's world.
November 7, 2025
Not a Christian myself, but Carter Heyward does an excellent job describing the 7 deadly sins and the history behind them. She also gives some very good ideas for discussion and action. She realizes that her writing may be a tad utopic, but she mentions many others who may have been utopic but fought on and helped good change happen. Unfortunately, the people who need to hear her message are the least likely to read her book.
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews