Doctrine and Race: African American Evangelicals and Fundamentalism between the Wars (Religion & American Culture)

by Mary Beth Swetnam Mathews

In 1927, Wright expanded and refined his call for equality under the banner of Christianity by employing the Hebrew prophet Amos and likening white Christians to “oppressors.” “Moral failure,” he declared, “proceeds with treading upon the poor all sorts of economic robbing,” including denial of crops, undercharging for labor, segregated and inferior school facilities, and the like. The “oppressors are morally decaying,” he continued, “whether they call themselves Israelites, Christians or what not. And God’s justice will certain assert itself if there is not a change.” The case was simple: white America had become what Amos had warned against—excesses and injustice. Wright chose verses from Amos, including the passage that Martin Luther King Jr. would later make famous in his “I Have a Dream” speech, “But let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (Amos 5:24). “Amos does not mince words,” Wright aptly observed, “God wants Israel to repent, ‘to hate evil and love the good’—that is the only thing that will satisfy the justice of God.” But the United States was not engaged in such an effort. Instead, he argued that “it is wrong to mistreat your brother and think you can make it all right with God by giving Him a burnt offering. One of these days this American nation will wake up to understand the justice of God is not in the fine churches or great educational institutions, the wonderful choirs and eloquent sermons, it is in hating evil a...