Religion cannot be separated from the story of white Christian nationalism and white supremacy in America, said participants in a Sept. 19 panel discussion at Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky.
The panel was convened to respond to an address given the same afternoon by Paul Raushenbush, president of Interfaith Alliance. His topic was “Courage and Faith in a Time of Authoritarianism.” He gave the church’s annual Johnson Lecture.
Panelists argued religion can be part of the response to the divisions threatening American democracy if religious communities are willing to confront racism, resist attempts to define Christianity narrowly, defend religious pluralism and show courage in public life.
Mark Wingfield
Baptist News Global Executive Director Mark Wingfield moderated the panel, which included Lauren Jones Mayfield, executive director of the Center for Interfaith Relations; former Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer; theologian Darvin Adams; and Dan Canon, a constitutional litigator and professor at the University of Louisville.
Wingfield opened the discussion by observing, “You cannot tell the story of white Christian nationalism or white supremacy in America apart from the religion story. They’re intertwined.”
What’s Christian?
Wingfield cited recent comments by Robert Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas, about Mainline Christians and the Christian identity of Texas politician James Talarico. Jeffress’ disdain for Talarico illustrates the narrow ways some political and religious voices define who is “in” and who is “out,” he said.
Panelists responded that Christianity in America is more diverse than the public image created by its most politically prominent voices.
“The Christian Coalition, starting in the ’70s and ’80s, figured out how to play the media so that they became the religious voice of America.”
Raushenbush said conservative evangelicals have convincingly presented their opinions as absolute truth, creating a conflation of the Christian gospel with the meanspirited message of white Christian nationalism. “The Christian Coalition, starting in the ’70s and ’80s, figured out how to play the media so that they became the religious voice of America, and so that anything that diverged from that was out of bounds.”
As a result, 48% of young people and a similar share of LGBTQ people reject Christianity today because of its association with the MAGA movement, he said. “But what I always feel so saddened about is that you’re not listening to all the other voices that are Christian voices that actually have something beautiful to say.”
But there are encouraging reasons to believe perceptions of the faith are broadening beyond the harsh exclusivity of Christian nationalism, Raushenbush said. One is the Democratic U.S. Senate campaign being waged by Adam Hamilton, the pastor of a United Methodist megachurch in Kansas. Another is the inspiring leadership of incumbent U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock, a Baptist pastor in Georgia.
Both men are using their heightened platforms to promote religious and political beliefs contrary to those of Christian nationalism, Raushenbush said.
The country is in the midst of “a shifting landscape” in which it’s becoming clear that people like Trump apologist Jeffress and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s pastor, Doug Wilson, do not speak for all evangelicals, Raushenbush said. “I’m not an evangelical in the sense that I really don’t care if you’re a Christian or not. I don’t. But I do want you to actually understand why I might be, and why I might love Jesus and why I might be inspired by Jesus’ compassion.”
“I hate the way that people immediately approach me when I say I’m a Christian or I’m a Baptist.”
However, being mistaken as a conservative simply because of religious adherence continues to be aggravating, he added. “I hate the way that people immediately approach me when I say I’m a Christian or I’m a Baptist.”
The solution is to find ways to elevate compassionate religious voices, he advised. “And not everybody has to be a Democrat, but we have to be clear there is faith that inspires love.”
Greg Fischer
Fischer said he has been inspired by how the nonjudgmental Christian witness of Warnock and Talarico translate into the “secular words of love and kindness and inclusion and freedom.”
The three-term mayor’s publicity describes him as having “the head of a businessman and heart of a social worker.” As mayor, he was known for his community building and compassion.
All too often, ministers who value love and kindness and inclusion retreat from civic engagement, Fischer added. “What I saw (while in office) was a lack of courage amongst religious leaders, time and time again. When the city needed healing more than ever during the racial justice protests, most of the religious people ran for the hills because they did not want to be othered or seen as taking a side.”
Book bans
The discussion also turned to the issue of book bans, an issue Wingfield said was inspired by Raushenbush’s observation that banning books leads to banning beliefs.
“So, when I hear about banned books, I don’t think as much about the reading or the interpreting as much as I think about the experience of learning in and of itself,” said Adams, adjunct professor of theology and biblical languages at Simmons College of Kentucky in Louisville and pastor of Lane Tabernacle CME Church in Hopkinsville, Ky.
Darvin Adams
Book banning has correlations to very frightening moments in U.S. history, Adams said.
“In the days of slavery, when slaves were caught reading, when the slave master realized or found out that the slave could read for himself or herself, at least 90% of them were killed on the spot — hung or lynched, shot or fed to the hungry dogs around the corner and behind the tree.”
Expanding on his comment from the lecture, Raushenbush said the targets of racism and fear today are librarians, especially in rural areas.
“They are getting slaughtered right now by people who view them as dangerous or are naming them as dangerous for their communities and doxing them, so much so that they have to leave their hometowns because they’ve been accused of grooming (children) because they have dared to have books that are deemed dangerous for the community,” he said passionately.
Antisemitism
Wingfield turned the discussion toward another hot topic of the day, the question of whether criticism of Israel equates to antisemitism.
After a long pause, Raushenbush was the first to answer the question.
“I’m not entirely comfortable having this conversation in Christian settings without Jewish people present and able to talk about it,” he said. “But there are many conversations and many Jewish colleagues who are very much trying to work very hard to have a conversation about separating out criticisms of Israel with criticisms of antisemitism.”
Dan Canon
Among the challenges in parsing out the differences between true antisemitism and being critical of Israel is that most of the data is secondhand, said Canon, civil rights attorney and assistant professor of law at the University of Louisville. “For example, you’re getting that information filtered through various media, and the media universe is so large today that it’s quite difficult to live in the same reality as someone who lives next door to me.”
Lauren Jones Mayfield
Jones Mayfield cautioned against treating Jewish, Muslim or Christian communities as though each has a single position. She described efforts by interfaith organizations to bring Jewish and Muslim leaders together for sustained conversations about freedom of expression and democracy.
Such conversations can be difficult because participants sometimes face criticism from within their own religious communities simply for engaging with people from another faith, she said.
Yet disagreement does not prevent cooperation, she added. “We don’t have to agree on everything in order to show up for one another.”
She also urged Christians to listen carefully to Jewish neighbors who feel isolated and to recognize the reality of antisemitism while maintaining space for debate about government policies and the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
“Just like there is not one opinion of anything on Christianity,” she said, there is not one opinion within Judaism, Islam or other religious traditions.
Related:
Revival needed to respond to Christian nationalism, Raushenbush says