Wednesday, October 07, 2020

White Privilege, White Supremacy, and White Evangelicals

Last week my bike got stolen off the front porch. I wasn't sure if it was worth calling the police since bikes get stolen all the time. It did however have a bright red kids passenger trailer attached to the back, so I thought the chance of them finding it was higher. When the officers arrived they were professional and patient. My children, who witnessed the theft, didn't have many details to give them, but we chatted casually about the bike and any distinguishing features it might have.

Surprisingly enough (to me and the officer) he was actually able to find the bike and was waiting on me at my house when I returned from the grocery store just a few hours later. Given the frustrating beginning, this turned out to be a very positive experience for my family. We got our bike back with minimal pain. We learned an important lesson about using bike locks. My neighborhood (we have a text chain) was encouraging throughout. My children got to interact and see what community policing looks like.

This is what the Black Lives Matter movement wants for all Americans. Regular, normalized, police interactions. Civil rights has always been a push to give the disenfranchised what the privileged already have. In fact, our next door neighbor, who just so happens to be black, jokingly said “if I ever have anything stolen I’ll be sure and have you call the police for me!”

As is painfully aware, this has been difficult for white America to understand. If we only use our own experiences to understand the world, we will only understand our world. So I wanted to follow up that story with some content that has helped me gain a greater understanding of reality.



I’ll also note that these links I gathered to speak directly to one specific group of white Americans: white evangelicals. I am a Christian. I attend a theologically orthodox church. And I believe these people, my people, have the most potential to come into a right understanding on this issue.

This first link is a podcast that describes the modern political history of this group known as “evangelicals”. It starts all the way back in the founding days of the United States, but if you want to skip to when the movement truly began, you can start at minute 37:45.

What this podcast above shows is that race and segregation, not abortion, was the initial unifying political force for white evangelicals in the 1970’s. Even though racial integration was explicitly a key issue for the white evangelicals politically, I don’t think that’s as obvious today. It confirms what I wrote in this old post before the 2016 election about how the abortion issue, especially in presidential politics, is largely a red herring. And here’s more recent link about the abortion conversation among Christians from an old blogging friend.

There can be an assumption, based on white experience, that the issue of race is not important today. However, there are some stark differences living in this country and a black citizen. Unless you believe there is an inherent difference between races, then the only explanation for such a gap is hundreds of years of a 2 steps forward, 1 step back. Here is a video from an evangelical Christian laying out many examples of such inequalities.



Racial inequality is real. The compounded effects of centuries of legal and societal policies are real. The threat of white supremacy continues to be real. The lack of modern institutional improvements with those realities in mind is also very real. I’ll close with a very specific theological call to the white evangelical community. Here is a video from the most prominent member of my denomination, Tim Keller. It directly addresses why Christians, more than any other group, should be comfortable with the reality that the actions of previous generations can bring both blessing and curses that we need to mourn.