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

by Jesse Curtis

People didn’t want to be “oddballs” by going to an integrated church, and they didn’t want their kids to develop interracial romances. McGavran hinted at this last possibility rather than stating it outright. He also understood that, all too often, integrated worship in the era of white flight was a temporary phenomenon signaling a neighborhood in transition from white to black. He described “the irresistible march of Negroes to take over white residential areas,” as if black homebuyers were a force of nature reshaping the metropolitan landscape. “Integrated worship,” McGavran observed, “often occurs in churches lying in the path of Negro steamrollers.” It was a revealing metaphor. Steamrollers flatten and crush, overwhelming whatever is in their path, leaving an empty surface in their wake. McGavran’s metaphor seemed to display an assumption of white Christian entitlement in the American city.52