I am having trouble understanding, or making sense of, what I am hearing and seeing in this country.
So many white people — and plenty of non-whites as well — are fully committed to the former president. Nothing he has said or done has moved them; the efforts to hold him accountable for his crimes have instead driven more people to support him. People have accepted the lie that the January 6 debacle, where his supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol building, was not done by MAGA supporters but was, instead an inside job, planned and executed by the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI.
Susan Smith
Not even having been convicted of participating in the January 6 mob attack, being on house arrest for three years, and now, heading to prison to serve a five-year term, has dissuaded at least one woman from feeling remorse for her participation in the insurrection. She believes she is a victim and says she “knows” when the former president gets back into office, she will be pardoned. She says so without hesitation. She still believes the 2020 election was stolen, and although her imprisonment will affect her family, the claim of election fraud is correct. She said she’s had issues with elections for some time, so the claim does not surprise her.
Many supporters of the ex-president believe he was sent here by God to take over the country, to make things “right.” What does “right” look like?
At the heart of many who hail the former president as the man sent by God to save this country is racial grievance. Is the main reason so many people are willing to see the destruction of democracy because they have resented the pluralism of this country, the U.S. Constitution and, specifically, the Bill of Rights, which ascribes freedoms to every American, including Black and brown people, and also resented that these “lesser people” have the right to vote?
“At the heart of many who hail the former president as the man sent by God to save this country is racial grievance.”
Have they made God a partner of racists?
On the recent birthday remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr., we certainly heard words that are palatable to so many racists — King’s assertion that he wants to see the day when people are judged by their character and not by the color of their skin. Those words have been used by racists as criticism of those who experience racism precisely because of the color of their skin.
They do not quote the words King wrote in his Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? In that book, he explained how people in this country were taught to believe in the Teutonic Origins theory that claims the Teutonic race (said to be the progenitors of Germanic people) became accepted by whites who had great disdain for Black people and who looked to Christianity and the Bible for reasons to justify their beliefs.
“Religion and the Bible were cited and distorted to support the status quo,” he said, something many of us already know. White people, because of their Teutonic origins, were said to be superior. God did that, not us, they would argue. King said that “logic was manipulated to give intellectual credence to the system of slavery. He quoted a syllogism that was created that helped them explain their theological and ideological worldview:
All men were made in the image of God;
God, as everybody knows, is not a Negro.
Therefore the Negro is not a man.
King took time to develop his theory about why this country is where it is, but he made a statement that has been voiced by many who study racism in one way or another. He wrote: “The greatest blasphemy of the whole ugly process was that the white man ended up making God his partner in the exploitation of the Negro. … Ethical Christianity vanished and the moral nerve of religion was atrophied.”
It certainly seems King’s observation is correct.
He is not the only person who has made the observation. William R. Jones penned the book Is God a White Racist? some years ago, noting the “good” God of the Bible has seemed painfully and notably absent in the machinations of white people who call themselves Christian but who openly show their tendency toward racism while simultaneously decrying that they are not, in fact, racist.
King said the distortion of the religion of Jesus “sullied the essential nature of Christianity.”
“It is very difficult to listen to people compare the former president to Jesus.”
It is very difficult to listen to people compare the former president to Jesus. It is difficult to know that many evangelicals, primarily but not exclusively white, are being taught that social justice is anti-biblical. It is unnerving to hear that some evangelicals, after hearing some words Jesus spoke, voiced indignation that they were being given “liberal talking points.”
I wrote in my book, With Liberty and Justice for Some: The Bible, the Constitution and Racism in America, that there are two gods — one of the Bible and the gospels, and one of white people who totally ignore the teachings of Jesus.
I believe that more now than I did when I wrote the book.
But without an agreed-upon Christology — a man who lived and taught that all people matter and that those who believe in him are obligated to help and minister to “the least of these” — how do we get through this crisis? If the former president wins the 2024 election, what is going to happen to the masses of people who are not white and male and evangelical and cisgender and old?
The seeds of white supremacy and the belief that white people are superior to everyone else and therefore have the right to ignore or even eliminate those who do not look like them or believe as they do are planted deep within the foundation of this country. Adherence to the Doctrine of Discovery and the theory of Teutonic Origins preached and taught in Christian pulpits has indeed, as King said, “sullied” and distorted the “essential nature of Christianity.”
I keep asking myself, “What is wrong with these people who claim to be Christian but who have no regard or respect for the teachings of Jesus? They believe in the former president more than they believe in Jesus, their recognition of Christmas and Easter notwithstanding.”
The question for me is, if there is no basic agreement about the tenets of Jesus, what is going to happen if a non-believing man gets back into office? What is going to happen to the masses if the few tools to help people attain “liberty and justice” are taken away, and the country is run by a person and a team that believes their beliefs are the very beliefs of God?
I shudder to think about it. Thomas Jefferson said, as he remarked about this country which even then was a case study in racial injustice: “Indeed I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep forever: that considering numbers, nature and natural means only, a revolution of the wheel of fortune, an exchange of situation, is among possible events: that it may become probable by supernatural interference.”
If we are approaching a cultural and racial revolution, where will God be? What should we expect if God is as King opined, a “partner in the exploitation” of Black people, and all other groups white supremacists believe are lesser human beings, if human at all?
Susan K. Smith is an ordained minister, activist and author. A graduate of Yale Divinity School, she is the director of clergy resource development for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Conference. Her latest book is With Liberty and Justice for Some: The Bible, the Constitution, and Racism in America.
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