I recently finished reading the new book from J. Russell Hawkins, historian of American evangelicalism. His book is titled The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy (Oxford, 2021).
Professor Hawkins carefully examines the various anti-desegregation strategies deployed by the Southern Baptist and Methodist churches in South Carolina following the Brown vs. Board of Education ruling by the Supreme Court in 1954. Together with the vast majority of Southern evangelicals at the time, these two Christian denominations were vociferously opposed to the civil rights movement, including the efforts to end racial segregation.
This evangelical fight against racial integration broke out on two fronts. One was motivated by white outrage over the desegregation of public schools. The private, Christian school movement (at least, in the south) was a direct result of this anti-integrationist campaign.
The second wing of the battle was aimed at fighting off the threat of integrated churches. Black people were NOT going to be allowed into their white congregations.
I had intended to review Hawkins’ book myself, but since I recently discovered a good review by Christopher Cantwell at Religion Dispatches, I will excerpt his review here and save myself the trouble. [Click on the link above.]
In the light of current controversies surrounding Critical Race Theory (CRT), however, I do want to note the origins of one particular argument that remains very relevant today. In fact, we hear it all the time. In fact, the Southern Baptist Convention continues to rely on this argue in its recent, public rejection of Critical Race Theory (now forbidden in its seminaries and churches.)
As the civil rights controversy slowly moved from the 1950s into the 1970s, evangelical racists (yes, we must use this word very intentionally here) were aware that the entire country’s atmosphere was changing. While continuing to use their old, racist arguments in private, they saw the need to adopt a more family-friendly, publicly acceptable line of argument in public conversation.
This new line of dissent emphasized the need for a “color blind” society that could only be achieved through “personal transformation” and “spiritual renewal.”
This is a prominent argument appearing throughout the recent anti-CRT best-seller by Voddie Baucham, Jr., Fault Lines: The Social Justice Movement and Evangelicalism’s Looming Catastrophe (Regnery, 2021). [I may post my review of this lamentable book in the weeks ahead. At the moment, I am circulating it for publication elsewhere.]
Falling back on the Christian emphasis upon personal, spiritual renewal, Southern evangelical racists abandoned the overt fight against race-mingling and shifted their fight to emphasize the futility of legislating morality.
Talking about race and racism only stirred the pot and aggravated racial tensions, they said.
Instead, what was needed was internal, personal, spiritual transformation. Racism was a sin problem, we were told, and no public policy could ever change a sinful heart.
Here was a new abuse of Christian theology that many continue to find serviceable. Southern Baptists and other opponents of CRT are still making such logically mangled claims to this day.
The fact that public policy is not intended to change human hearts or personal feelings but to ensure acceptable public behavior was a very deliberate bait-and-switch tactic for the originators of this pro-segregationist argument. They were hoping that no one would notice the illogical non sequitur buried in the heart of their claims. And it seems that most southerners didn’t.
Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. also promoted the hope of a color-blind society, where little children “would not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”
However, Dr. King never left it at that. He knew how to hold two different but related concepts in his mind at the same time.
So, he dreamed of a day when personal transformation would eliminate all racism and discrimination from this world. But, in the meantime, he marched; he agitated; he sought to change the laws of the land. He campaigned for new legislation like the 1965 Voting Rights Act, because he understood that in public, as well as in personal behavior, acting differently often precedes (and generates) new feelings.
New anti-racist behaviors can help to erase old racist dispositions long before the racist prayer meetings pleading for evangelical “revival” will ever feel a fart from the Holy Spirit.
Below is an excerpt from the review by Christopher Cantwell:
Last month, the internal politics of the Southern Baptist Convention became national news after Ed Litton defeated Mike Stone for the convention’s presidency. For months the conservative evangelical denomination had been embroiled in both scandal and controversy after noted Black minister Dwight McKissic removed his 1,600 member congregation from the Texas state convention over the organization’s outspoken repudiation of critical race theory. But McKissic’s departure would become the first of many desertions from the SBC after noted Bible teacher Beth Moore and ethicist Russell Moore resigned from the denomination over its mishandling of sexual abuse allegations and tolerance for white supremacists.
Stone, a hard-right, Trump-supporting minister from Georgia, had spearheaded the denunciation of critical race theory and intersectionality. Litton, meanwhile, was a winsome preacher from Alabama who recently had made racial reconciliation a centerpiece of his ministry. To some, the two candidates represented a referendum on the Trump era, with Litton’s victory serving as something of a reckoning.
But as a new book by historian J. Russell Hawkins suggests, Litton’s election might just be a new chapter in the SBC’s long and sordid history on matters of race.
In The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy, Hawkins places debates like those taking place in the SBC in a much larger frame. Focusing on the denominational workings of both the Southern Baptist Church and the Methodist Episcopal Church in South Carolina, Hawkins unflinchingly shows how segregationist Christians drew from their faith in opposing the modern civil rights movement. But in the book’s reflection upon the relationship between race and religion in modern America, Hawkins also has a lot to teach us about our own moment as well.
You can read the rest of this review here.
of Trumpism in America is the powerful allure of authoritarianism to conservative Christians.
have always had great difficulty in separating our social, economic, cultural preferences – dare I call them prejudices? – from our conceptions of God, Jesus Christ, the Bible, and the gospel of God’s kingdom.
neuroscience and political decision-making, conservative personalities tend to view the world through a binary framework: there is right and wrong, good and bad, black and white, with little if any room for the grayish hues of nuance, ambiguity, or uncertainty.
behavior. But it takes very little life experience to learn that these “codes” rarely apply to authority figures in the same way that they apply to regular folks.
contained more humane, Christian absolutists willing publicly to decry Nazi crimes against humanity, standing firm to the point of death in defending all their fellow citizens. Being absolutely committed to following Jesus is the Christian ideal. So, no, religious absolutism per se is not the problem defacing American evangelicalism.
alone is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. And Jesus never manipulates, coerces, bullies, or publicly shames anyone, especially not for his own advantage.
today. Now, everyone is for its continuation, or so it seems.
and Cargill who were being sued by former child laborers accusing the two companies of trafficking in child slavery in the west