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

by Jesse Curtis

In the decades after the civil rights movement, as white evangelicals turned to the new “science” of church growth, they were dealing in race whether they knew it or not. The church growth theorists mistakenly believed it was possible to capitalize on white identity apart from racial hierarchy. While whiteness as a benign piece of the American mosaic sounded appealing to some, it was an obtuse reading of the very meaning of whiteness in a society so long structured on white supremacy. Amid national backlash to the gains of the black freedom struggle, white evangelicals described their pursuit of church growth as an expression of their faith in the power of the gospel. It was also a solid investment in the enduring advantages of whiteness. But even as the CGM catalyzed white evangelicalism’s suburbanization, there were other evangelicals who believed God had called them to go to the American city. Their efforts to deal with urban problems in the 1960s and 1970s marked the next phase in the struggle to define Christian colorblindness. 4