Baptist News Global
Sections
  • News
  • Analysis
  • Opinion
  • Curated
  • Storytelling
    • Faith & Justice >
      • Charleston: Metanoia with Bill Stanfield
      • Charlotte: QC Family Tree with Greg and Helms Jarrell
      • Little Rock: Judge Wendell Griffen
      • North Carolina: Conetoe
    • Welcoming the Stranger >
      • Lost Boys of Sudan: St. John’s Baptist Charlotte
      • Awakening to Immigrant Justice: Myers Park Baptist Church
      • Hospitality on the corner: Gaston Christian Center
    • Signature Ministries >
      • Jake Hall: Gospel Gothic, Music and Radio
    • Singing Our Faith >
      • Hymns for a Lifetime: Ken Wilson and Knollwood Baptist Church
      • Norfolk Street Choir
    • Resilient Rural America >
      • Alabama: Perry County
      • Texas: Hidalgo County
      • Arkansas Delta
      • Southeast Kentucky
  • More
    • Contact
    • About
    • Donate
    • Planned Giving
    • Letters to the Editor
    • Advertising
    • Ministry Jobs and More
    • Transitions
    • Subscribe
    • Submissions and Permissions
Donate Subscribe
Search Search this site

A gospel torn in two by a white Jesus

OpinionGreg Jarrell  |  March 5, 2018

Greg JarrellAs a youth I held the title state champion in Bible drill, but was a terrible failure at dating. I suspect those two subjects were related.  Scoring a second date was always beyond my grasp, but I could recite almost the entire second chapter of Philippians from memory. I was overachieving in things that mattered, my Southern Baptist elders assured me. And I was OK with that. The money I did not spend on dates was freed up for regular visits to the Christian bookstore.

“The Sign of the Fish,” the bookstore was called. The name hid in plain sight on a strip mall marquee, a signal to those in the know that some eternal treasure could be purchased within. In 1980s and ’90s suburban Raleigh, N.C., almost everybody was in on the secret, but that did not stop us from buying into the story that the culture of our Christian nation was under attack by the forces of godless liberalism and moral relativism. The resurgent Moral Majority, though, kept us supplied with books and knick knacks and chrome-plated fish emblems for our cars. The playlist in our heads was Steven Curtis Chapman and Point of Grace, both the music of our moment and also the image of it — clean cut, just a little bit country, and white.

A row of t-shirts hung in the back of The Sign of the Fish, for those not ashamed to proclaim the message through apparel. “What Would Jesus Do?” some shirts asked. Others ripped off marketing slogans in half-clever ways. A red shirt with white script announced that Jesus, like Coca-Cola, was “delicious and refreshing,” or something like that. And one shirt, ever seared in my memory, asked, “How can it be a moral wrong and a civil right?” (Confession: though it embarrasses me now, I remember the shirt still because I thought about buying it.) Which civil rights were moral wrongs was unclear, but that was part of the whole project. The Moral Majority, the Reagan Revolution and the Southern Strategy were all built on making tacit statements that resulted in the outcomes of white supremacy, but without naming those desired outcomes in racial terms. Debates were thus about “busing” and “welfare queens” and “voter fraud,” concepts designed and marketed to appeal to the biases of white people without seeming crass. A narrow vision of morality mattered in the movement — a morality shown in the Trump era to be expendable as needed. What really mattered was not morals, but power.

The merchandise in that Christian bookstore, and others like it, was not the gospel of the God whose aim was to “bring good news to the poor and to proclaim release to the captives,” as in Luke 4. Nor was the product a pathway into the mind of Christ, who, as we had memorized from Philippians 2, “humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death.” What filled the shelves, sold to people who were usually doing the best they could to follow the Jesus they had heard preached, was the theological reinforcement of a peculiar half-god: white Jesus. White Jesus’s portrait hung in our churches. He blessed our search for power and our pursuit of an imagined past. We bought the sentimental Thomas Kinkade paintings that showed a “pastoral scene of the gallant South,” as Billie Holiday sang about in Strange Fruit. But edited out of those Edenic landscapes was the strange fruit the soil beneath us had produced — “the bulging eyes and the twisted mouth.” Our selective memory made white Jesus into the most dangerous kind of god — one we made in our image. He would usher in a spiritual renewal devoid of any renewed political or ecclesiological imagination. Conveniently, he would only ever turn over the tables of the folks we despised. He would only ever use his bullwhip to cleanse someone else’s temple.

~~~

Among the unavoidable claims of the gospel is that those following in the way of Jesus will be wounded. The Way leads to abundance, but it is not painless. Teresa of Avila is pierced in the heart in an episode that she describes as both physical agony and spiritual ecstasy. Jesus himself suffers the brutality of empire at the site of his body. But those wounds turn out to be the kinds of wounds that can be healed for the life of the world. The power of God will do this.

A false gospel — or a half-gospel — wounds, but not in a way that brings about healing. White Jesus wounds the body and soul of everyone he encounters, but lacks either the power or the gentle touch to bind up our wounds. He cannot wash away our sin, as we sang in church on Sunday morning and Sunday night. Nor can he make us whole again. Tracing the path back to where our theologies went wrong will force us to wrestle with a specter who haunts America still — the slaveholder. The half-gospel of white Jesus runs right back to the religion of the slaveholder.

In his new book Reconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder Religion, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove wants to help attend to the wounds of those whose Christianity has been infected by racism. Which is everybody, though some may be further down the road toward freedom from it than others. American Christians “carry the wounds of white supremacy in our bodies,” he writes. Recalling Frederick Douglass’ observation that “between the Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference,” Wilson-Hartgrove sets about some patient and fascinating historical work showing the lines that connect the religion of the slaveholder to ongoing Christian practice in America.

Such practice divorces the condition of the body from the condition of the soul, for instance. It eschews political engagement with the powers and principalities of the world, which turns out to be a passive acceptance of the current domination system, a strategy for maintaining white supremacy without having to acknowledge or confess to it. Christian practice that does not resist white supremacy, and offer habits and disciplines for a better way forward, tears the gospel, and those who believe it, in parts. “I am a man torn in two,” Wilson-Hartgrove writes, “and the gospel I inherited is divided.”

The book is not only a work of history, though it contains some fascinating characters from the past. It is also part confession and part personal history. Wilson-Hartgrove tells the story of how he woke up to his whiteness, highlighting the people who graciously discipled him into a gospel that looks more like the freedom Jesus came preaching. Those people — among them Durham, N.C., civil rights leader Ann Atwater, the Rev. Dr. William Barber, and a number of other neighbors — have helped Jonathan to know his racial blindness and, like Bartimaeus in Mark 10, helped him to want to see. Unless we want to see, the blindness of slaveholder religion will maintain its hold on churches and Christians, especially on white churches and white Christians.

The ongoing existence of a Christianity that cannot make basic moral confessions — that black lives matter, for instance — demonstrates the import of Wilson-Hartgrove’s work. The Christianity of the slaveholder still rends souls in two. The wounds within our souls have created people who still cannot see black and brown brothers and sisters as fully human, and who cannot imagine or desire the kind of politics that would heal the souls that have received such wounds.  This is a book for this moment, but not only for this moment, for the work ahead is long. If a nation divided, and a people divided, and churches divided, are to be reconstructed into something worth passing on to our children, such work will not be accomplished by a gospel divided.


OPINION: Views expressed in Baptist News Global columns and commentaries are solely those of the authors.
Tags:Southern StrategyLuke 4Greg JarrellThomas KinkaderacismslaveholderCivil RightsReconstructing the Gospel: Finding Freedom from Slaveholder ReligionBlack Lives MatterAmerican ChristiansFrederick DouglasswhitenessJonathan Wilson-HartgroveAnn Atwaterwhite privilegeWhite Americawhite supremacyWilliam BarberMoral Majoritymoral relativismwhite JesusReagan Revolution
More by
Greg Jarrell
  • Get BNG headlines in your inbox

  • Featured

    • The Black community needs allies who listen and act, scholar says

      News

    • When a Mexican cartel kidnapped a Baptist pastor, they got more than they bargained for

      News

    • Women of childbearing age are least likely to see strict abortion laws as best deterrent against abortion

      News

    • Progress on sexual abuse in the SBC? Not so fast

      Opinion


    Curated

    • Pope orders online release of WWII-era Pius XII Jewish files

      Pope orders online release of WWII-era Pius XII Jewish files

      June 24, 2022
    • Demolishing schools after a mass shooting reflects humans’ deep-rooted desire for purification rituals

      Demolishing schools after a mass shooting reflects humans’ deep-rooted desire for purification rituals

      June 24, 2022
    • Has American conservatism abandoned the Christian right?

      Has American conservatism abandoned the Christian right?

      June 24, 2022
    • In Colorado, a GOP rarity: An abortion rights candidate

      In Colorado, a GOP rarity: An abortion rights candidate

      June 24, 2022
    Read Next:

    Maybe seminaries should offer a class in mergers and acquisitions

    AnalysisMark Wingfield

    More Articles

    • All
    • News
    • Opinion
    • Curated
    • The French Dreyfus Affair and Trump’s Big Lie

      OpinionDavid Gushee, Senior Columnist

    • Women of childbearing age are least likely to see strict abortion laws as best deterrent against abortion

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Independence Day: Not to celebrate but to reflect

      OpinionKathy Manis Findley

    • U.S. State Department calls out Russia, China, Afghanistan, Myanmar for extreme religious freedom abuses

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Two viruses threaten the life of the Southern Baptist Convention: Male hierarchy and dominion theology

      AnalysisEllis Orozco

    • Progress on sexual abuse in the SBC? Not so fast

      OpinionDavid Clohessy and Christa Brown

    • Pranoto, Shaw, Smith and Younger join BNG board of directors

      NewsBNG staff

    • Uyghur American elected chairman of U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • When a Mexican cartel kidnapped a Baptist pastor, they got more than they bargained for

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • The Black community needs allies who listen and act, scholar says

      NewsPat Cole

    • Maybe seminaries should offer a class in mergers and acquisitions

      AnalysisMark Wingfield

    • Reflections on my mother’s funeral: The heart has reasons

      OpinionDavid Ramsey

    • Georgia Baptists hit snag on sale of 16-year-old headquarters property in suburban Atlanta

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • When ‘orthodoxy’ won’t hold: The SBC and the rest of us

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • At Faith and Freedom conference, evangelical Christian voters once again abandon their concern for marital fidelity

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Annual report on Baptist women in ministry finds some gains but serious losses due to COVID

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Seven suggestions for preventing conflict before it happens

      OpinionBill Wilson

    • Church-state separationists join Justice Sotomayor in blasting the Supreme Court’s ruling in a Maine school voucher case

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • The gospel according to mammals

      OpinionTyler Tankersley

    • Conservative clergywoman claims United Methodist system unjust

      NewsCynthia Astle

    • How God used Jay Bakker to teach me about race and loving all people

      OpinionMaina Mwaura

    • In Africa, inflation and a food crisis threaten not just the economy but people’s lives

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • When a teenager gets kicked to the curb by Christian parents

      OpinionDan McGee and Linda Francis Cross

    • American support for abortion rights at highest level since 1995, Gallup says

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Women of childbearing age are least likely to see strict abortion laws as best deterrent against abortion

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • U.S. State Department calls out Russia, China, Afghanistan, Myanmar for extreme religious freedom abuses

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Pranoto, Shaw, Smith and Younger join BNG board of directors

      NewsBNG staff

    • Uyghur American elected chairman of U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • When a Mexican cartel kidnapped a Baptist pastor, they got more than they bargained for

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • The Black community needs allies who listen and act, scholar says

      NewsPat Cole

    • Georgia Baptists hit snag on sale of 16-year-old headquarters property in suburban Atlanta

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • At Faith and Freedom conference, evangelical Christian voters once again abandon their concern for marital fidelity

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Annual report on Baptist women in ministry finds some gains but serious losses due to COVID

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Church-state separationists join Justice Sotomayor in blasting the Supreme Court’s ruling in a Maine school voucher case

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Conservative clergywoman claims United Methodist system unjust

      NewsCynthia Astle

    • In Africa, inflation and a food crisis threaten not just the economy but people’s lives

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • American support for abortion rights at highest level since 1995, Gallup says

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Ministry jobs and more

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • New platform of Texas GOP is laced with Christian privilege

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Author explores contradiction of evangelical support for prison ministry and tough-on-crime laws at same time

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • One year later, awareness of Juneteenth is growing

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Churches in Russian-occupied sections of Ukraine face desperate conditions

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Transitions for the week of 6-17-22

      NewsBarbara Francis

    • Many voices call for prosecution of mob who lynched and burned Christian student in Nigeria

      NewsAnthony Akaeze

    • Religious Liberty Council elects two BJC board members

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • Still no external review of North American Mission Board finances

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Attempt to dismantle SBC Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission fails

      NewsMark Wingfield

    • Brian Foreman named CBF’s coordinator of congregational ministries

      NewsBNG staff

    • Most Americans hang out with people who are a lot like them

      NewsJeff Brumley

    • The French Dreyfus Affair and Trump’s Big Lie

      OpinionDavid Gushee, Senior Columnist

    • Independence Day: Not to celebrate but to reflect

      OpinionKathy Manis Findley

    • Progress on sexual abuse in the SBC? Not so fast

      OpinionDavid Clohessy and Christa Brown

    • Reflections on my mother’s funeral: The heart has reasons

      OpinionDavid Ramsey

    • When ‘orthodoxy’ won’t hold: The SBC and the rest of us

      OpinionBill Leonard, Senior Columnist

    • Seven suggestions for preventing conflict before it happens

      OpinionBill Wilson

    • The gospel according to mammals

      OpinionTyler Tankersley

    • How God used Jay Bakker to teach me about race and loving all people

      OpinionMaina Mwaura

    • When a teenager gets kicked to the curb by Christian parents

      OpinionDan McGee and Linda Francis Cross

    • Unzipped: How (not) to commute

      OpinionEric Minton

    • When it comes to leading corporate prayer, are we really all in this together?

      OpinionMark Wingfield

    • Is America racist at heart?

      OpinionEugene G. Akins III

    • Note to self: Get rid of resting jerkface

      OpinionErich Bridges

    • Don’t keep sweet: Why white Christians need to celebrate Juneteenth

      OpinionErica Whitaker

    • Letter to the Editor: The importance of establishing best practices for pastoral searches

      OpinionLetters to the Editor

    • Hymn Stories: ‘Will You Come and Follow Me’

      OpinionBeverly A. Howard

    • A Bubba-Doo’s regular loses a loved one

      OpinionCharles Qualls

    • The oxymoron of being both anti-abortion and pro-gun

      OpinionEarl Chappell

    • My trip to the seamy world of horseracing

      OpinionBrett Younger

    • In the news this weekend: This is what it means to take God’s name in vain

      OpinionErin Albin Hill

    • Sympathy does not defeat white supremacy

      OpinionWendell Griffen

    • What Kenobi has taught me about God

      OpinionRob Lee

    • Is ‘fascism’ the right name for the Trumpist hard right in America?

      OpinionDavid Gushee, Senior Columnist

    • God in three persons, blessed Trinity

      OpinionBarry Howard

    • Bill Self in 1984: ‘Babylonian Captivity of the Convention’

      OpinionBill Self

    • Pope orders online release of WWII-era Pius XII Jewish files

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Demolishing schools after a mass shooting reflects humans’ deep-rooted desire for purification rituals

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Has American conservatism abandoned the Christian right?

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • In Colorado, a GOP rarity: An abortion rights candidate

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • A church was ordered to rescind its gay deacon. Now it weighs its next step.

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Can the Church Still Enact Justice When a Pastor Sues His Accusers?

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Republican Lauren Boebert jokes about AR-15s and Jesus — and yes, she’s a ‘real’ Christian

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • This World Refugee Day, rising white nationalism meets the largest refugee population in history — which is no coincidence

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • How evangelical Christians are sizing up the 2024 GOP race for president

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Abortion bill, confederate holiday removal signed by Edwards

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Buddhist leader in Bhutan fully ordains 144 women, resuming ancient tradition

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Banning Nancy Pelosi from Communion May Have Backfired

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • How Franklin Graham pushed a domestic abuse victim to return to her husband

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Poor People’s Campaign holds major DC rally to combat poverty

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • An Elite Christian College Has Become The Latest Battleground In America’s Culture Wars

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Wiccan celebration of summer solstice is a reminder that change, as expressed in nature, is inevitable

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Camino pilgrims help rural Spain’s emptying villages survive

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • What Antisemitism Looks Like When It Is Carved into Church

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Humanist chaplains guide nonreligious students on quest for meaning

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • On Juneteenth, Jewish communities are reckoning with their own attitudes on race

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • UK sanctions Russian Orthodox head; decries forced adoption

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • California again seeks to pass human composting bill as Catholic bishops oppose it

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Boise police can’t charge pastor who said LGBTQ people are ‘worthy of death’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Ukrainian archbishop pushes against papal statements, says causes of war ‘lie within Russia itself’

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    • Bishop punishes school over Black Lives Matter, Pride flags

      Curated

      Exclude from home pageBNG staff

    Conversations that Matter.

    © 2022 Baptist News Global. All rights reserved.

    Want to share a story? We hope you will! Read our republishing, terms of use and privacy policies here.

    • Facebook
    • Twitter
    • Instagram
    • LinkedIn
    • RSS