Jesus and the Long Shadow of Racism

Robert P. Jones, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity

Circumstances have changed little since 1963, when Dr. King described 11 AM on Sunday morning as “the most segregated hour of Christian America.” But Robert P. Jones, social scientist and Baptist minister, thinks the situation is worse than that. Segregated Chrsitianity isn’t a symptom of persistent American racism, he claims; it’s a cause. And American Christianity is long overdue a reckoning for its participation and leadership in racist institutions.

Pastor Jones founded the Public Religion Research Institute to study American Christians and their relationship with power. What he’s found is frequently grim. He brings his multiple backgrounds to bear in considering how White Christianity has provided moral justifications of violence and injustice. Now, even as increasing numbers of Christians want restorative justice, White churches continue handling the situation with silence and evasion.

Recent attempts at demystifying American history mean we’re all more aware of how deeply rooted racism has been. It’s tainted politics, art, commerce, and everything it touches. Jones unpacks how a legacy of racism at the top of Americans largest denominations created moral systems that justified bigotry among ordinary Christians. What’s more, though most churches’ leadership now rejects such belief, it’s much harder to shake among rank-and-file believers.

Jones devotes the most pages to his denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. The SBC was founded on justifications for chattel slavery, and though it’s verbally disavowed this purpose, its attempts to seek reconciliation have often been rushed, with little time dedicated to meaningful atonement. The SBC is hardly unique in this history, however. Jones shows how the Lutheran, Methodist, Episcopal, and Catholic traditions have been structurally enmeshed in racism.

Moving into the present, Jones uses his social science research to demonstrate how these historical forms persist into the present. Asked how they perceive Black Americans, most White Christians express positive feelings—in the abstract. On more practical details, daily life, and attempts to atone for past violence, White Christians are more likely to demonstrate racism than the general population. This includes Evangelical, Mainline, and Catholic Christians.

Robert P. Jones

This doesn’t, however, mean Christians are uniformly racist. The magic ingredient is seemingly Whiteness. Black Christians show beliefs on race and public life similar to religiously unaffiliated White Americans. The junction of Christianity and White identity apparently encourages believers to defend race-based privileges and the existing order. Significant numbers of White Christians don’t defend racism, certainly; but the combination of White Christianity correlates powerfully with racist beliefs.

Such history and social science accumulates powerfully in Jones’ telling. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed, and Jones himself admits sometimes feeling that way too. But in the culmination, Jones looks at ways that some American Christians have taken steps to face history squarely and work toward a better future. The ways Jones describes begin simply with getting to know others, as they are, without defensiveness or pride.

Easier said than done, certainly.

Finally, Jones calls for a “reckoning.” To him, this means a full account of the transgressions American White Christianity has performed, and frequently continues performing. Once we’ve made such an accounting, it will be possible to plan how we’ll fight against the injustices we’ve lived with for generations. Such a reckoning won’t be easy; Jones calls it dying to the old self. But it’s consistent with the love demonstrated by Christ.

Implicit in Jones’ plan is the “born again” experience. Though he doesn’t state it directly, as a Baptist, Jones’ theology prizes the conversion experience, wherein with God, one dies to sin and becomes a new creation. That, Jones declares, must happen to American Christianity overall: the institutions which built and defended an unjust order must be born again, and with God’s guidance, must live renewed.

Jones takes his book’s title from James Baldwin, once among the foremost Black voices calling America to account. Like Baldwin, Jones attempts to speak from a position of love, but that love means abandoning our own ego and living authentically. Jones admits not only his church’s historic racism, but his own, as the starting position for future reconciliation. Only after we’ve stopped defending ourselves can we love our fellows equally.

This book isn’t light reading. Some chapters are haunting; others are detailed, and require patience to comprehend. However, I’d say this book is necessary. We White Christians have participated in some of history’s worst injustices, and we need to take steps to undo the harm our ancestors caused. Ignoring it or verbally apologizing haven’t brought atonement any closer. Only hard work and patient honesty have any hope of making progress.