THE IMPOTENCE OF WHITE CHRISTIANITY

 

THE IMPOTENCE OF WHITE CHRISITIANITY

©Wendell Griffen, 2021

 

People throughout the world are talking about the damage done to US standing during Donald Trump's presidency.  Those conversations should also focus on how Trump's presidency exposed the moral and ethical uselessness of White Christianity as a force for good.

White Christians have been silent, conspicuously, while the House Managers for Trump's current impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate methodically expose how Trump incited the deadly January 6 attack on Senators and Members of Congress in a desperate try to prevent confirmation of the Biden-Harris Electoral College victory.

White Christians, who railed against Bill Clinton for lying about extra-marital sex acts, have not denounced Trump for sending domestic terrorists to kidnap and murder former Vice President Pence, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of the House of Representatives, and other Senators and Members of Congress. 

White Christian leaders have not expressed indignation, shame, regret, or remorse about White Christian nationalists who prayed, in the name of Jesus, a prayer of thanksgiving because they assaulted the Capitol.

This is merely the latest evidence of White Christian moral and ethical impotence as a force for truth, justice, and democracy.  We should not forget the mountain of earlier proof.

White Christian voters were the central factor in Trump's 2016 election victory.  They were his most reliable supporters despite Trump's many lies and other transgressions.

White Christians supported Trump despite his "big lie" that he won the 2020 election.

White Christians supported his meritless lawsuits to prevent States from certifying that voters preferred the Biden-Harris ticket over Trump and former Vice President Pence.

White Christians supported Trump's ban on immigrants from countries with majority Muslim populations.

White Christians supported Trump after he referred to Haiti and other nations with Black majority populations as "shithole countries."

White Christians supported Trump when his immigration policies separated infants from their parents.

White Christians supported Trump after his administration refused assistance to hurricane-ravaged Puerto Rico.

White Christians supported Trump when he lied about the coronavirus pandemic.

White Christians supported Trump when he suspended US contributions to the World Health Organization and when he withdrew the US from the Paris Climate accords.

White Christians supported Trump when he pardoned a racist Arizona former sheriff (Joe Arpaio) and when he pardoned military personnel and contractors who committed war crimes - including abuse of dead bodies and murderous assaults on civilian men, women, and children.

White Christians supported Trump after he tried to bully the leader of Ukraine to announce a sham investigation of Hunter Biden, then tried to conceal doing so.

White Christians supported Trump when his administration physically attacked nonviolent demonstrators who protested abusive and homicidal law enforcement agencies and personnel.

White Christians supported Trump when he told the Proud Boys to "stand back and stand by."

 White Christians supported Trump when he used the presidency for financial gain.

White Christians supported Trump when his administration hindered the Postal Service from delivering election ballots.

It is time for White Christian Americans to face the bitter truth people of color have known for centuries.  White Christianity is not a force for truth, justice, peace, or anything else we consider good.

Instead, White Christianity is the delivery system for white supremacy.  White Christians have been long been fierce opponents to desegregated public education.  They are the biggest supporters of Zionism and the Israeli government apartheid regime.  White Christians were complicit in domestic terrorist schemes to kidnap, torture, and kill the governors of Michigan and Virginia. White Christian nationalism is a clear and present danger to democracy, social justice, peace, and efforts to save our planet. 

As the United States struggles with the ethical imperative of reparation for four hundred years of white supremacy that includes 244 years of chattel slavery and another century of Jim Crow segregation, White Christians are in the forefront of efforts to enact state and federal laws to punish publicly funded educational institutions that use the New York Times 1619 Project’s curriculum resources about the history of racial injustice in the United States.  And in the aftermath of the largest voter turnout for a U.S. presidential election in history, White Christians are working with new urgency to enact more laws to make voting more difficult.

For these and many other reasons, whatever hopes I have for social justice in the United States I hold despite White Christians, not because of them.  I join Frederick Douglass, James Cone, Yolanda Pierce, Martin Luther King, Jr., and other Black followers of Jesus along with Black people who rejected Christianity such as Malcolm X (whose father was a Baptist preacher), James Baldwin (who was a Pentecostal preacher during his youth), and Ta-Nehesi Coates (whose parents rejected Christianity and all other religions) in challenging any usefulness of White Christianity as it is transmitted and practiced in the United States. 

White supremacy, not White Christianity, is the dominant religious system in the United States.  Now, as it has done across U.S. history, White Christianity is the primary transmitter and most pernicious perpetrator of white supremacy in the world.   

Hence, when Republican Senators vote in coming days against convicting Donald Trump from inciting the January 6 deadly insurrection and attempted coup against the United States Congress, people should remember to blame White Christianity.  Any religion whose most politically powerful followers reject truth, courage, and honor to serve the self-interest of a would-be tyrant and their own interest in gaining his approval should be denounced.  

White Christianity is not dead.  

White Christianity is not dying.

White Christianity is worthless.

Wendell Griffen is a Little Rock, Arkansas ordained Black pastor in the religion of Jesus, state court trial judge, consultant on cultural competency and inclusion, author, and social justice activist.  Griffen refuses to self-identify as a Christian.