{"id":49760,"date":"2020-09-14T10:53:47","date_gmt":"2020-09-14T14:53:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/?p=49760"},"modified":"2020-09-14T10:53:47","modified_gmt":"2020-09-14T14:53:47","slug":"when-christian-means-white-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/lovejoyfeminism\/2020\/09\/when-christian-means-white-people.html","title":{"rendered":"When “Christian” Means “White People”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Last week, televangelist Pat Robertson had this to say<\/a> of the Black Lives Matter movement:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re talking about Marxist communism. They\u2019re talking about destroying the nuclear family. They\u2019re talking about destroying essentially Christianity as being racist. And all the way through, they want to upend the capitalist structure and destroy America.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople should be aware that they\u2019re not just standing with the poor oppressed Black people. Of course we want to stand with people against police brutality. Of course we do. But we don\u2019t want to go along with a lesbian, anti-family, anti-capitalist Marxist revolution.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

He went on to say that Black Lives Matter was\u00a0\u201canti-family\u201d and \u201canti-God.\u201d It\u2019s true that the decentralized Black Lives Matter movement is not tied as intrinsically to the Black church<\/a> as the civil rights movement, which was largely organized through Black churches. However, leaders in the Black church are still\u00a0front and central<\/a> in the Black Lives Matter movement.<\/p>\n

Why does Robertson say that BLM is \u201canti-family\u201d and \u201canti-God\u201d? In part, he\u2019s responding to the fact that the formal leadership of the Black Lives Matter movement\u2014which is largely organic and not top-down\u2014 is supportive of queer identities and of a diversity of family forms (i.e., they do not believe that the \u201ctraditional\u201d family is the only valid family structure). To Robertson, this is \u201canti-family\u201d and \u201canti-God.\u201d (The executive director of Black Lives Matter, which I didn\u2019t realize existed until just now because of how decentralized the movement itself is, disagrees with his assessment<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s something more expansive going on here.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been reviewing a book by fundamentalist religious guru Debi Pearl. The main characters in her book are printing illustrated graphic novel Bibles to share with people around the world. One people group that has come up repeatedly as a target of their proselytization is the Hmong people in Vietnam. Debi appears not to know that\u00a0the Hmong are largely Christian,\u00a0<\/em>and have been for generations.<\/p>\n

When you start looking for it, this is all over the place. For instance, in Debi\u2019s book, the main character\u2019s husband runs a Christian ministry at a prison. One of the book\u2019s main characters, a Black man named Omar, was converted to Christianity through this ministry. Here\u2019s the thing, though: people in U.S. prisons are actually\u00a0largely Christian<\/em>. Most people in prison are Christians,\u00a0not<\/em>\u00a0unsaved.<\/p>\n

You know all those white evangelical Christians who set up churches in cities, to minister to people there? They call them \u201cNew City Church\u201d and suchlike. This is referred to as \u201cchurch planting.\u201d This has sometimes angered Black Christian leaders, because\u00a0people in cities already have churches.\u00a0<\/em>These white evangelicals with no knowledge of the area come in as though they\u2019re ministering to the unchurched, and don\u2019t even make the first attempt to minister with the many pastors already there.<\/p>\n

Walk through any city, and you\u2019ll see a huge proliferation of storefront churches. Many are Black churches, others are Hispanic. These churches are frequently Pentecostal<\/a>, emphasizing the coming of Christ and the pouring out of gifts like healing. They create community and minister to the poor. And yet somehow, they\u2019re almost entirely invisible<\/em> to white evangelical Christians.<\/p>\n

And there\u2019s more, too. When I was a teen, I went on a missions trip to a country in South America. Guess what? I just looked it up, and 90% of the people in that country are Christians.\u00a0<\/em>That\u2019s a far higher rate than in the U.S.! And yet, we were there to convert<\/em> people to Christianity! It\u2019s wild!<\/p>\n

Of course, the people in that South American country are largely\u00a0Catholic.\u00a0<\/em>And here we begin to see the problem. White American evangelical Christians widely discount the Christianity of those who are not evangelical<\/em> like they are. They also routinely discount the Christianity of those who aren\u2019t\u00a0white\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Republican,\u00a0<\/em>even if a group\u2019s theology is actually\u00a0very\u00a0<\/em>evangelical\u2014and rather conservative as well.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a myopia that\u2019s almost disturbing in its breadth and arrogance.<\/p>\n

Black Lives Matter is only anti-Christian if Black Christians are not Christian. But then, white evangelical Christians like Robertson have proven more than willing to believe that Black Christians\u2014and other non-white Christians as well\u2014are not Christian,\u00a0<\/em>so this isn\u2019t terribly surprising.<\/p>\n

I have a <\/b>Patreon<\/b><\/a>! Please support my writing!\u00a0<\/span><\/b><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Black Lives Matter is only anti-Christian if Black Christians are not Christian. But then, white evangelical Christians like Robertson have proven more than willing to believe that Black Christians—and other non-white Christians as well—are not Christian,\u00a0so this isn’t terribly surprising.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":845,"featured_media":49761,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[208],"class_list":["post-49760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evangelicalism-fundamentalism","tag-race"],"yoast_head":"\nWhen "Christian" Means "White People"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Black Lives Matter is only anti-Christian if Black Christians are not Christian. 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