Editor’s note: This report has been updated.
A study by two university professors, one White and one Black, found that White Evangelical churches
are not as race-forward as some would like to believe.
In fact, according to the study’s findings, White Evangelicals apply “race tests” on people of color to see if they can be kept in the fold, or need to be expelled.
“We argue that social actors in white evangelical churches play a central role in continuing racial segregation by executing what we term ‘race tests, on incoming people of color,” the authors write in the study, titled “Race Tests”: Racial Boundary Maintenance in White Evangelical Churches.
“Simply put, white institutional space is created through a process that begins with whites excluding people of color, either completely or from institutional positions of power, during a formative period in the history of an organization,” they state in the study’s introduction.
