Whiteness Is a Jealous God

EUROCENTRIC CHRISTIANITY, since the days of Constantine, has predominately served as an apologist for authoritarian regimes, be they emperors, kings, crusading popes, or military dictators. In the last century alone, Eurocentric Christian jargon sustained and supported brutal regimes guilty of unimaginable human rights violations. Think of how the Catholic Church, fearing the loss of power during Spain’s Second Republic, threw its support behind the right-wing politics of the usurper Francisco Franco, who cloaked himself as a defender of religious liberties. The church stood by him as he ignited a civil war against the seculariziation of society, turning a blind eye to the Spanish killing fields.

Or recall how, earlier, the Catholic Church in Portugal supported the right-wing regime of Estado Novo, whose coup d’état against the democratic First Republic ushered in a reign of terror, again justified because he advocated family values. We also cannot forget that the rise of Hitler was aided by conservative Protestant Christians calling for Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer. This is not to say all conservative Christians are fascists, nor that the left is innocent of harboring those who exploit secularism to impose intolerance. Multiple leftist dictatorships around the world are as oppressive as right-wing dictatorships. Still, the point is that conservative Christians have maintained a tolerance for family values promoted by authoritarian rulers who have engaged in all sorts of heinous injustices in Christ’s name. If indeed Christ is the head of the church, and man is the head of his wife, then why be surprised when Euro-American Christianity celebrates patriarchy? What many of us find damnable is that proclamations of “family values” become the basis for a populist movement that is defining its family values by separating Brown families at the border.

White Christianity is now and has historically been an apologist for white nationalism. This is a Christianity that has failed to detect evil even though the faithful are staring directly into its eyes. The current spiritual leaders of Trump’s political party don the religious garb of the persecuted and martyred while at the same time drinking from golden goblets filled with the abominable filth of spiritual adulteries. Rather than issuing a clarion herald for justice, Euro-American churches—all too often—are cults perpetuating whiteness by embracing a white God, a white Jesus, a white liturgy, white biblical hermeneutics, and a white theology reinforcing centuries of white supremacy. This supremacism established a white affirmative action securing the power, profits, and privileges obtained through the sweat of others’ brows and the strength of others’ arms. With white feet firmly planted upon land acquired through genocide, living in houses constructed through the enslavement of Black bodies, located within an empire carved out of the cheap labor and natural resources stolen from the Global South, white people lift their eyes to the heavens in thanksgiving to their white God, who richly blessed them according to the loving mercies God holds for “his” chosen. But woe onto us who lack faithfulness to whiteness, for this is a jealous God. How curiously different is this white God from the one preached by Jesus, who understood faithfulness by how we treat the hungry and thirsty, the naked and alien, the incarcerated and infirm. This white God of empire may be appropriate for global conquerors who benefit from all that has been stolen and through the labor of all those defined as inferior, but such a deity can never be the God of the conquered.

Reprinted with permission from Eerdmans.