A group of Black ministers has released a new document to protest white Christian nationalism and provide moral and spiritual strength to African Americans during the coming Trump presidency.
“A Credo to Legatees of the Black Church Tradition” is rooted solidly in the Black church tradition of resistance, praises Black Lives Matter and Critical Race Theory and condemns Project 2025 as an effort to protect “white mythology.”
The document also offers guidance for living in a neo-fascist nation where public education and racial justice are under siege. It urges college-eligible Black students to consider attending Historically Black Colleges and Universities where possible and exhorts African Americans to rediscover the faith that sustained their ancestors through centuries of slavery and subsequent oppression.
Joseph Evans
“I think it helps us psychologically because the document creates aspirations for the future,” said Joseph Evans, senior professor of theology in the public square at Berkeley School of Theology and former pastor at the historic Friendship Baptist Church in Atlanta. “We wanted to create a new paradigm, namely that we have to be honest with ourselves and honest among ourselves, and that we need to work on our own infrastructure that provides better opportunities for equity and justice.”
Evans and more than 20 other ministers began drafting the credo shortly after Donald Trump’s presidential victory, which they saw as part of a white supremacist and anti-democracy movement surging across the country.
“Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were on the ballot, but in truth democracy versus authoritarianism was on the ballot. It was white mythology and genderism and misogyny on the ballot,” Evans said. “If we are going to have a democracy, we have to stand on the ideas of justice.”
Co-authors included Otis Moss Jr., former senior pastor of Olivet Institutional Baptist Church in Cleveland; Otis Moss III, senior pastor at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago; Aidsand Wright Riggins III, former CEO of the American Baptist Home Mission Societies; Barbara Williams Skinner, co-founder of the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Day of Healing; and Warren H. Stewart Sr., senior pastor of First Institutional Baptist Church in Phoenix.
“We are utterly disappointed with the country choosing what I believe to be the closest to thing to neofascism we have seen in this country, certainly in more than 60 years,” Evans said. “But at the end of the day, we as African Americans must decide if we are going to participate in the redemption of America.”
“We as African Americans must decide if we are going to participate in the redemption of America.”
The authors open the Credo by connecting it to major figures and documents throughout Christian history: “In the legacy of the Black Church tradition, we as legatees recognize the sacrificial witness and scholarship of Athanasius of Alexandria, Augustine of Hippo, Clement of Alexandria, Cyprian of Carthage, Origen of Alexandria, and Tertullian of Carthage wherein these African theologians contributed to the development of trinitarian Christianity.”
W.E.B. Du Bois followed their example when he penned his “Credo” in 1904 to proclaim his belief God created all humanity to be “alike in soul” despite differences in race or talents. Additionally, Evans cited the 1969 “Black Manifesto” demanding millions of dollars in reparations from white churches and synagogues for their complicity in slavery and segregation.
One of the pressing issues confronted in the Credo released this month is Project 2025, a 900-page rightwing game plan for replacing democracy with theocracy in part by dismantling many elements of the federal government.
“We legatees believe Project 2025 is an attempt to protect the nation’s white mythology,” the statement says. “It is an effort to maintain the nation’s sanitized and homogenized collective memory. It is a scheme to disremember the nation’s unreconciled hegemonic past — and its laws, policies, and procedures that have inflicted unreconciled pain upon Black people for more than 400 years. Collective Black pain then represents the shared horror of the nation’s indigenous and people of color.”
The document dubs Project 2025 “an immoral strategic plan” comparable to Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf that seeks to tax working class and impoverished Americans, defund the U.S. Department of Education and displace immigrant families.
The document dubs Project 2025 “an immoral strategic plan” comparable to Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf.
But the conservative blueprint represents much deeper and darker impulses, the authors contend. “Our Credo then uncovers that Project 2025 is informed by white Christian nationalism. We believe this Credo is inspired by the Spirit of the Lord. Therefore, our Credo is not a reaction to Project 2025. Instead, it is an ethical response to white Christian nationalism.”
Christianity is described as a protest movement Christ founded to oppose hegemonic and imperial powers: “The Spirit of the Lord birthed two significant manifestations, namely the Black Social Gospel movement, which became a kind of transmutation into the Black Church tradition, and together they shape the Black socioreligious and sociopolitical consciousness and our collective cultural worldview.”
The document also says African Americans share a calling to resist white supremacy in part by traveling abroad to witness the global nature of white supremacy and by “leveraging our collective finances” to invest in Black-owned banks.
It urges supporting Black-owned businesses locally and online. And it encourages “leveraging our (Black) votes in all local, state and federal elections.”
The Credo also emphasizes the need for Black Americans to connect with the church because that’s where the energy and know-how for protest emanates, Evans said. “The taproot of the Black church tradition is a demand for democracy. The taproot of Black Church tradition is resistance to oppression, and we believe God is a God of justice.”
According to the Credo, “We believe Black people should return to the ecumenical Black Church tradition and renew fellowship with their brothers and sisters (this includes other Black faith traditions) to help fight and resist hegemonic practices which continue to endorse under-resourced public and private funding to abolish human poverty.”