White Evangelical Racism Quotes

“Why do people who identify as evangelicals vote over and over again for political figures who in speech indeed do not evince the Christian qualities that evangelicalism espouses?

My answer is that evangelicalism is not a simply religious group at all. Rather, it is a nationalistic political movement whose purpose is to support the hegemony of white Christian men over and against the flourishing of others.

To put it more broadly, evangelicalism is an Americanized Christianity born in the context of white Christian slaveholders. It sanctified and justified segregation, violence, and racial proscription. Slavery and racism permeate evangelicalism, and as much as evangelicals like to protest that they are color-blind, their theologies, cultures, and beliefs are anything but.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“By creating a history where the brutality and suffering of Black people was ignored in favor of promoting southern life and chivalry, the Lost Cause essentially turned the states of the former Confederacy into defenders of a noble ideal rather than just violent secessionists that had defied the Union.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“If you are an evangelical reading this book, then I would ask you to look around and see what your witness has wrought. The nation is polarized. The candidates you back want to take us back to a mythical time—apparently the 1950s—that honestly did not exist. The bile and hatred of some of the leaders you emulate make it impossible for people to believe whatever witness you have left. While you are clinging to God and guns, mothers are clinging to pictures of children who have been shot dead in classrooms, in streets, in malls, in cars. More people go hungry today than ever before. Inequality is mounting. Calls for law and order mean more Black and Brown bodies dead at the hands of the police. The nation’s infrastructure is failing. Disdain for science has left America behind during a pandemic, while the rest of the world moves forward. The president you followed slavishly declared “American carnage” in his inaugural speech. Look around. You helped make this carnage we now experience. All of these things have occurred because evangelicals, through religious lobbying and interference, supported the political structures that curtailed, limited, or struck down truly important issues. The polarization we are experiencing in government has stymied progress. That polarization has taken on a resemblance to ideological and theological battles. Your nationalistic evangelicalism is hurting others. Your racism is actively engaged in killing bodies and souls. My analysis and prognostications may be dire, but it is never too late to make amends.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Trump isn't the reason why evangelicals turned to racism. They were racist all along.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Even the massacre of nine Black Christians following a Bible study class was not enough to make American evangelicals face the fact that racism remained a major problem within their ranks. They looked to religiosity in symbolism to deflect scrutiny of their own shortcomings and historical failures with regard to the racism in their churches. This willful blindness would open the door for a man who would be revered by them despite all of his moral failings. Donald Trump, who won the Republican primary against sixteen opponents and won the presidency in 2016, would become both the savior and the nadir of the evangelical movement in America. Their embrace of this thrice-married casino-owning reality TV star would both give them new recognition in the Republican Party and destroy the image of morality and uprightness they had so carefully cultivated. Evangelicals’ embrace of an unrepentant racist solidified the place of racism in the history of American evangelicalism. More than that, their embrace tore the covers off the anti-Black racism that had existed since the nineteenth century.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“The election of Barack Obama was the sign of the apocalypse for evangelicals. Because of the marriage of evangelical morality to the Republican Party — all in the service of maintaining white conservative male leadership — the election signaled a failure of the evangelical political machine. It also stripped the gloves off the carefully crafted racial reconciliations of the 1990s and moved evangelicals toward an alliance with outwardly racist movements. Evangelicals found themselves making friends with strange but like-minded conspirators who promoted their ideologies and took them down a bath toward embracing openly racist memes and themes to get their message out.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“All of these seemingly benign organizations [American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Family Research Council] had the specific purpose of lobbying government on evangelical concerns about the family, marriage, abortion, and education. They were also important in fostering an evangelical culture that promoted color-blindness and conservatism. The groups were not overtly racist, and all would at times feature African Americans in promotional materials, on radio shows, and as speakers at conferences. Yet the underlying message of these groups was that morality was essential to preserving the nation and that the sexual immorality of America, including race mixing, would be its downfall.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“While abortion is commonly understood as the issue that began to unite evangelicals in the 1970s, I give that dubious honor to the issue of race. Race hatred played the fundamental role in, first, pushing evangelicals towards a "color-blind gospel," which would provide cover for their racially motivated organizing against the federal government, and, second, their push to block implementation of the hard-won gains of the civil rights movement. This color-blind gospel is how evangelicals used biblical scripture to affirm that everyone, no matter what race, is equal and that race does not matter. The reality of the term ‘color-blind,’ however, was more about making Black and other ethnic evangelicals conform to whiteness and accept white leadership as the norm both religiously and socially. It is the equivalent of today's oft-quoted phrase "I don't see color." Saying that means white is the default color.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Evangelicals are not naïve individuals who were taken advantage of by a slick New York real estate mogul and reality TV star. They were his accomplices. Their prayers and shows of piety surrounding conservative elected officials — most notably in recent times, the 45th president — are a feature, not a bug, of nineteenth- and twentieth-century American evangelicalism. Race and racism have always been foundational parts of evangelicalism in America, fueling its educational, political, social, and cultural mores.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Falwell criticized the civil rights movement, declaring that “preachers are not called to be politicians but soul winners.” He would later apologize for the sermon, but he seemed to have learned from the very tactics he had criticized, going on to use them quite effectively on behalf of the Moral Majority, which he founded in the late 1970s.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Brown v. Board of Education. This landmark decision mandating school desegregation launched one of the defining civil rights battles of the era. In response, many evangelicals took their children out of public school rather than have them attend with African Americans. Churches and other evangelical organizations founded “segregation academies,” private religious schools that were tax-exempt.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Evangelical Christians and churches engaged in lynchings, attending and cheering brutal spectacles of murder enacted upon Black bodies. Many took body parts of the lynched, such as fingers and toes, as souvenirs of the horrendous events, and others sold postcards of mutilated and burned Black men and women.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“The new Klan, reinvigorated by racism and anti-immigration sentiment, staged pageants and parades across the country. Notably, the Klan staged a large march in Washington, D.C., on August 8, 1925, that drew 30,000 members to march down Pennsylvania Avenue. At the end of the march, with rain threatening, district dragon L. A. Mueller proclaimed to the assembled Klansmen and audience, “I have faith enough in the Lord that he is with every Klansman. You ought to have as much faith in him as I have. We have never had a drop of rain in Washington when we got down on our knees.” Almost immediately, a downpour began. The crowd dispersed quickly.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Simply put, “Americanism” meant pride in the nation, in the founders, in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution—and, most important, in the idea that America was a nation ordained by God to save the world.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“While for white evangelicals personal salvation was the first order of business, during this era the second order was for born-again Americans to embrace “Americanism” as a way to protect the nation and its citizens from the communist threat.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“By looking at the new evangelicalism through the lens of Billy Graham and his contemporaries, we see a clear picture of the lines that evangelicals drew around racial, social, and political issues. They held on to their fundamentalist racial ideologies but, under the guise of “Americanist” culture and obedience to the law, updated them to soften the edges. While evangelicals and fundamentalists battled each other over theology and scripture, their cultural and social racism held them together”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“The Secret Service even began to investigate the rallies, fearful of the violence that Palin was provoking on the trail.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Reporters for Al Jazeera, attending a McCain-Palin rally in St. Clairsville, Ohio, were dumbfounded by Palin’s responses to questions about Obama, such as “I’m afraid if he wins, the Blacks will take over. He’s not a Christian! This is a Christian nation! What is our country gonna end up like?” or “When you got a Negra running for president, you need a first-stringer. He’s definitely a second-stringer.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“During this era, evangelicals consolidated power both by aligning themselves with the Republican Party and by taking on a moral mantle that showed off their strong stances against abortion and homosexuality. Indeed, these were the two issues that would allow them to build their power through organizing and fundraising and that would, more and more, allow them to align themselves with electoral, and presidential, power. These issues would definitely increase their visibility in the media while proving to sustain a formidable fundraising machine that would provide means for white leaders, almost always male with the exception of Phyllis Schlafly. Through these means, they would build organizations like Focus on the Family and the Eagle Forum to energetically promote evangelical concerns and values … from a perspective of white hegemony.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“For me, it was the moment I found out that despite my frenetic activity and full-steam participation in the church, I was invisible. For the service, I was sitting by Hayford’s mother, who knew me from several other events. She turned to me at the greeting time and said, “Welcome to Church on the Way.” At that moment, I knew that no matter how much I had worked or served or prayed with people, I was simply a Black person visiting the Church on the Way. Much like many evangelicals of color, I was just a Black person in this woman’s white space. I had been welcomed due to the situation, but I couldn’t possibly be a member of the church she belonged to. That moment encapsulated for me what evangelical attempts at interracial cooperation accomplished. Invisibility.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Much in keeping with Promise Keepers’ and earlier evangelical understandings of racism as individual and not corporate sin, efforts to combat racism over the years have been about comfort, not about substantive change.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Occasionally, individuals would come out with apologies for previous racist behavior, including Jerry Falwell, who apologized for criticizing Martin Luther King Jr.—no matter that Falwell went on to oppose in 1983, along with Senator John McCain, the establishment of King’s birthday as a national holiday. Much in keeping with evangelical theology, racism at that time was not considered a corporate sin—it was an individual sin. Even on that score, not many white evangelicals apologized for the racism that lurked in their hearts. Not until the 1990s did evangelicals begin to consider the possibility of a broader social culture of racism.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“The Christian Coalition, like many evangelical organizations of the day, was concerned with abortion, homosexuality, and other, as they saw it, moral issues, but it rocketed to success as a powerful lobbying arm under the control of Ralph Reed, who was hired as executive director in 1990. Reed, who was president of his College Republicans chapter, had spent his undergraduate years writing columns for the student newspaper about such topics as “Black genocide,” decrying a high rate of abortions in the African American community. This angle was and continues to be an important strategy for evangelicals to reach out to churchgoing African Americans in order to bring them into supporting the pro-life position and into voting for conservative issues.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“In 1977, two major organizations that would prove powerful in the evangelical lobby were formed. That year, Donald Wildmon created the American Family Association, and James Dobson launched Focus on the Family. Dobson’s other organization, the Family Research Council, would be founded in 1981 and incorporated in 1983. All of these seemingly benign organizations had the specific purpose of lobbying government on evangelical concerns about the family, marriage, abortion, and education. They were also important in fostering an evangelical culture that promoted color-blindness and conservatism. The groups were not overtly racist, and all would at times feature African Americans in promotional materials, on radio shows, and as speakers at conferences. Yet the underlying message of these groups was that morality was essential to preserving the nation and that the sexual immorality of America, including race mixing, would be its downfall. Much like the nineteenth-century admonitions to protect white womanhood and discourage miscegenation, the message from evangelicals, specifically white evangelicals, was that they were poised to save the nation and civilization. If people would follow their lead—including adopting their agendas on abortion, education, voting, and nationalism—America would be much better off than it would be in the egalitarian, openly integrationist future being pursued through the civil rights and youth movements of the sixties and seventies.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Evangelicals capitulated. Evangelicals prevaricated. Evangelicals tolerated. Evangelicals participated. Jesus said, "By their fruits you shall know them." Evangelical fruit — the results of evangelicals’ actions in civic life — today is rotten. Racism rotted it.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Evangelicals are not being persecuted in America. They're being called to account. Evangelicals are being judged for not keeping to the very morality they asked others to adhere to. They have been found wanting.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Getting saved didn't mean just leaving the world behind — it meant leaving whatever racial or ethnic or religious world you came from behind. It meant receiving the white version of Christ.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Evangelicalism is at a precipice. It is no longer a movement to which American Christians look for a moral center. American evangelicalism lacks social, political, and spiritual effectiveness in the twenty-first century. It has become a religion lodged within a political party.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“I am vexed by the constant hand-wringing of evangelical scholars and popular writers explaining away their racism or, at worst, not even considering race in their analysis. Their very omission of race continues to promote the supposition that evangelicalism reads "white.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America

“Evangelicals, you have a problem. That problem is racism.”
― Anthea Butler, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America