The Myth of Colorblind Christians: Evangelicals and White Supremacy in the Civil Rights Era

by Jesse Curtis

Reading their own experience into both the Old and New Testaments, many white evangelicals understood Ancient Near Eastern identities as directly analogous to the modern category of race. Had not God separated humanity at the tower of Babel? Then, God called Israel out as a special people and forbade them from intermarrying with the nations around them. Many white evangelicals believed the New Testament confirmed segregation as God’s divine plan. Even the Apostle Paul declared that God had made all the nations and determined “the bounds of their habitation.”24 In watered-down form, the segregationist narrative of scripture held some credibility even at the center of the elite white evangelical movement.