I woke up this Election Day with an unusual urge. I wanted to go back and reread Jamar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism.
I’m not entirely sure why that particular book was on my mind. Perhaps it was the election. Perhaps it was the relentless political rhetoric we’ve endured for years. Or perhaps it was the growing conviction that much of what passes for political debate in America has very little to do with improving the lives of ordinary Americans.
Grady Throneberry
Whatever the reason, I woke up thinking about race, religion, power and the uncomfortable possibility that we have fundamentally misunderstood what much of our political conflict is really about.
For at least the last 30 years, we’ve been told our political divisions are about taxes, government spending, immigration, religious liberty, education and the proper role of government. And certainly, there are legitimate philosophical disagreements about all those things.
But increasingly, I find myself asking a different question: What if much of our political conflict isn’t really about making America better? What if it’s about deciding who gets to remain in control of America?
And more specifically, what if the rise of white Christian nationalism is less about Christianity, less about patriotism and much more about preserving a racial and cultural hierarchy that has existed since the nation’s founding?
That’s a troubling question. But it’s one we need to confront.
The America we remember
There’s a phrase we’ve heard repeatedly in American politics: “Take our country back.” I’ve always found that phrase fascinating and a little disturbing.
Take it back from whom? And take it back to when?
Back to the 1950s, when the economy was expanding, the middle class was growing and American manufacturing was flourishing? There were certainly things about that era worth celebrating.
But let’s not forget what else was happening.
Black Americans were living under Jim Crow segregation. Women faced significant barriers to economic independence. LGBTQ people were forced into silence and invisibility. Religious minorities frequently encountered discrimination. And the opportunities that helped build the American middle class were not equally available to everyone.
“Nostalgia becomes dangerous when we romanticize a past without acknowledging who paid the price for that supposed greatness.”
The nostalgic picture of America that so often appears in political speeches is frequently a picture of an America that worked reasonably well for some people while systematically excluding others.
That’s not to say everyone who longs for a simpler time is motivated by racial resentment. Nostalgia is a powerful human emotion, and economic insecurity is real. But nostalgia becomes dangerous when we romanticize a past without acknowledging who paid the price for that supposed greatness.
Perhaps the question isn’t whether America was once great. Perhaps the question is: Great for whom?
The Color of Compromise
This is where Jamar Tisby’s book becomes particularly relevant.
Jemar Tisby
In The Color of Compromise, Tisby examines the long and often disturbing relationship between American Christianity and racial injustice. He reminds us the church was not merely an innocent bystander during slavery, segregation and the civil rights struggle.
Too often, the church provided the theological justification for maintaining the racial order.
Scripture was interpreted to defend slavery. Biblical arguments were used to justify segregation. Religious leaders preached obedience and social stability while resisting movements for racial equality.
Of course, there were courageous Christians who challenged these injustices. The Black Church, abolitionists and civil rights leaders demonstrated the extraordinary capacity of faith to confront oppression.
But Tisby’s central challenge remains deeply uncomfortable: Christianity in America too often has accommodated racial power rather than challenged it.
And I wonder whether we’re watching another chapter of that history unfold before our eyes.
White Christian nationalism, as I understand it, is not simply Christianity expressed in the public square. Nor is it the belief that religious people should participate in politics. Of course they should. Religious liberty and political participation belong to everyone.
White Christian nationalism is something different.
It merges a particular understanding of American national identity with a particular interpretation of Christianity, often treating white Christian cultural dominance as essential to the nation’s identity.
“White Christian nationalism confuses cultural privilege with divine blessing.”
It confuses cultural privilege with divine blessing. It mistakes the preservation of power for the defense of faith. And it can turn the gospel of Jesus Christ into a religious endorsement of a political and social hierarchy.
That ought to trouble anyone who takes the teachings of Jesus seriously.
The demographic reality nobody can stop
There is another dimension to this conversation we cannot ignore: America is changing.
For generations, white Americans of European descent have constituted the country’s numerical majority and held a disproportionate share of its political, economic and cultural power.
But the demographic composition of the United States is shifting.
Our country is becoming more racially and ethnically diverse. Younger generations already are far more diverse than their parents and grandparents. Census projections anticipate a future in which non-Hispanic white Americans no longer will constitute a majority of the population.
The precise timing depends on demographic trends and how racial and ethnic categories are defined. But the direction of change is unmistakable.
And I believe this transformation helps explain some of the anxiety shaping contemporary American politics. When people have enjoyed cultural dominance for generations, equality can feel like loss. When your traditions have been treated as the national standard, pluralism can feel like displacement. When political institutions have historically reflected your identity, a more representative democracy can feel threatening.
But here’s what we need to understand: Losing exclusive privilege is not the same thing as experiencing oppression.
Losing exclusive privilege is not the same thing as experiencing oppression.
“Losing exclusive privilege is not the same thing as experiencing oppression.”
Making room for others does not mean there is less room for you. Expanding opportunity does not diminish the dignity of those who already possess it. And a democracy that reflects the diversity of its people is not a democracy in decline. It is a democracy confronting the challenge of living up to its promises.
Things that actually improve people’s lives
This is where my frustration with our political culture becomes especially pronounced. Think about the issues that ought to dominate our national conversation.
Why, in the wealthiest nation in the world, do so many people struggle to afford medical care? Why does the quality of a child’s education depend so heavily on the ZIP Code in which that child happens to live? Why do working families struggle to afford housing, child care and groceries while enormous wealth continues to accumulate at the very top?
Why are we not having more serious conversations about poverty, affordable health care, educational opportunity, economic mobility and the dignity of work?
These are not exclusively Democratic or Republican concerns. They are human concerns.
And yet, so much political energy is consumed by arguments about who belongs, whose history should be taught, whose identity should be acknowledged, which immigrants should be feared and whose religious convictions should shape public policy.
I don’t deny that people have sincere disagreements about how to address health care, education, immigration and economic opportunity. Those debates are necessary in a democracy. But I do question a political culture that repeatedly elevates cultural grievance above practical solutions.
“I question a political culture that repeatedly elevates cultural grievance above practical solutions.”
It is worth asking who benefits when ordinary Americans are encouraged to fear one another rather than examine the structures that shape their economic and social lives. It is worth asking whether some of our loudest political controversies serve to protect existing concentrations of power. And it is worth asking whether we have allowed the politics of identity and resentment to crowd out the politics of the common good.
Jesus never asked us to preserve a cultural majority
As a Christian, and as someone who has spent much of his adult life studying theology and serving the church, I find the religious dimension of this conversation especially troubling.
I keep returning to the fourth chapter of Luke’s Gospel. Jesus stands in the synagogue in Nazareth and announces his mission: Good news to the poor. Release to the captives. Recovery of sight to the blind. Freedom for the oppressed. It’s a remarkable declaration.
Notice what Jesus doesn’t say. He doesn’t announce a campaign to restore the cultural dominance of one religious group. He doesn’t promise to preserve the privileges of the powerful. He doesn’t identify national greatness with ethnic purity or religious conformity.
Instead, he announces a kingdom that turns conventional understandings of power upside down. The first become last. The marginalized become visible. The stranger becomes a neighbor. The powerful are challenged to consider the needs of those with the least.
And yet, somehow, we’ve managed to construct a version of Christianity that seems preoccupied with maintaining cultural influence, controlling public institutions and defining who belongs.
I cannot reconcile that version of Christianity with the Jesus I encounter in the Gospels.
Howard Thurman, in Jesus and the Disinherited, explored what the life and teachings of Jesus mean for people who live under systems of domination. Thurman understood faith could become either an instrument of oppression or a source of liberation.
That distinction matters enormously today. Because Christianity does not become more faithful by gaining political power. It becomes more faithful by demonstrating love, pursuing justice, practicing mercy and recognizing the image of God in every human being.
The church’s calling is not to protect the privilege of a few. It is to bear witness to the dignity of all.
“The church’s calling is not to protect the privilege of a few.”
The fear of becoming a minority
I suspect one of the deepest anxieties underlying our current political moment is the prospect of becoming a minority in a country where being part of the majority historically has carried substantial advantages. That fear reveals something important.
If we have truly built a nation committed to equal opportunity, equal protection and equal dignity, why should anyone fear becoming part of a numerical minority?
Could it be that we know, somewhere deep within our collective memory, how minorities have been treated in this country? Could it be that the fear of losing dominance is connected to an awareness of what dominance has allowed?
Those questions deserve serious reflection.
But we should also be careful not to reduce every political disagreement or every expression of demographic anxiety to racism. People can be concerned about cultural change, economic uncertainty and national identity without embracing white supremacy.
The more important question is what political and religious leaders do with those concerns. Do they help people navigate change with confidence and compassion? Or do they exploit anxiety by suggesting the growing dignity and influence of others represents an existential threat?
There is an enormous moral difference between those two responses.
Leadership can enlarge our understanding of community. Or it can shrink our circle of concern until only people who look, worship and think like us are considered fully American.
Democracy is not a possession
A few weeks ago, Paul Brandeis Raushenbush, president of Interfaith Alliance, spoke at my church about courage, faith and the growing challenges facing American democracy.
One of the themes that stayed with me was the understanding that democracy is not something we simply inherit and possess. It is something we continually create.
Democracy is not a museum exhibit to be preserved exactly as previous generations left it. It is an unfinished project, one that requires each generation to expand the meaning of liberty, justice, and belonging.
The Founders articulated extraordinary ideals, even while failing to extend those ideals to everyone. Subsequent generations have struggled, protested, organized, legislated and sometimes sacrificed their lives to bring the nation’s practices closer to its promises.
The abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, the Civil Rights Movement and the expansion of equal protection were not betrayals of America. They were efforts to make America more fully what it claimed to be.
And that work is not finished.
The question before us is whether we will continue that work or retreat into a politics of exclusion.
Grady Throneberry is a speaker, author, coach, pastor, retired police chief and member of Crescent Hill Baptist Church in Louisville, Ky.