“Christianity embedded in white supremacy has become the dominant tradition,” Dr. Yolanda Pierce, dean of the Howard University School of Divinity, said at the Christianity and White Supremacy: Heresy and Hope conference held March 29-30 at Princeton University.
“The reason the tradition is a problem is it presupposes superiority and we need to name that,” said Pierce, speaking on a panel during the conference’s opening night. Her remarks drew applause from a racially-mixed audience seated in pews inside the university chapel.
Pierce, an ordained minister, later told Faithfully Magazine that some White evangelicals were unable to recognize that the faith they practice is one of white supremacy and not the faith of Christ.
“Those are two very different things. Even though our nation has unfortunately conflated them, I think the work of Christians is to be able to tear them apart. So what I am is a follower of the Christ. What I am not is a follower of empire. I think it is very hard for people to do that,” she said.
Pierce appeared on the panel alongside Dr. Andrew Wymer of New Brunswick Theological Seminary, Dr. Josiah Young of Wesley Theological Seminary, Dr. Eric Barreto of Princeton Theological Seminary, and activist Mark Charles. Dr. Shively T. J. Smith, assistant professor of New Testament at Boston University, moderated their discussion.
Barreto, Charles, and Pierce argued on the panel, and in separate interviews with Faithfully Magazine, that the way forward for Christians is to acknowledge their complicity, start telling the truth, and become better interpreters of the Bible.
One place to begin is to stop insisting on America’s exceptionalism, Charles told Faithfully Magazine.
Americans “want to believe that we are one of the good guys” and that God sees us differently, said Charles, who is of Navajo and Dutch heritage. Christians go along with that narrative because they can’t bear the thought that a nation that massacred Native Peoples and enslaved African Americans “doesn’t care about human life,” he said.
But change cannot happen without a willingness to face the ugliness of what white supremacy has wrought, according to Pierce.
“The reason I’m encouraging a certain kind of truth-telling is because I actually think we try to make it more pretty than what it really is,” she said. “Part of what I hope a conversation like this does is lays bare how ugly it is, when the tradition itself is the cause for so much of the problem.”
However, Pierce also pointed to the emergence and resilience of historically Black church denominations, such as the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the National Baptist Convention, and the Church of God in Christ.
“Those traditions have been traditions of resistance, traditions of liberty,” she said. “Black Christianity in this country is birthed out of a resistance tradition. It’s a liberatory tradition. And it has always countered itself to the dominant narrative.”
In addition to hosting panels, the Christianity and White Supremacy conference also featured intimate roundtables among attendees. The roundtable topics included “Preaching to White People About White Supremacy,” “Decolonizing the Bible for the Liberation of the Church,” “Why Ivy League Theologians Support(ed) Slavery,” and several others. These discussions were confidential, so as to allow participants to speak freely.
Margaret Ernst, program manager for the Nashville, Tennessee-based Faith Matters Network, co-moderated the “Overcoming the Investment in Whiteness” roundtable. Ernst said her goal at the conference was to find strategic ways to “invite people out of that heresy (of white supremacy).”
“As I’ve become more clear about my particular responsibility and role as a White person and a White Christian and this historical moment and political moment, I became really clear that we have to get really, really serious about organizing White Christians out of a white supremacist vision into a racial justice vision, a liberating vision of God,” she said.
Barreto, a Baptist minister and New Testament professor, said one way to dislodge U.S. Christianity from its white supremacist foundation is to question the sources and voices presented as authoritative.
“I think when it comes to the reading of Scripture, we never do it by ourselves. We’re always in these webs of belonging, these webs of power. So (what) we need most is somebody sitting to my left and to my right, who sees the world very differently than I do. And I think that’s when the Bible comes alive. That’s when the Bible can be an ally for us, in combating white supremacy, injustice and oppression of all kinds,” Barreto told Faithfully Magazine.
Acknowledging that the history of white supremacy leads some Native Americans to reject Christianity, Charles explained during the opening panel that he is a believer because he has read the Bible. He is convinced “the church doesn’t have a clue who Jesus is.”
“They don’t know Christ at a communal, systemic, generational level,” he said.
But Charles’ focus remained on the Doctrine of Discovery and the “heresy of Christian Empire” that he believes are “rooted in the center of the church.”
Instead of following Jesus’ call for his followers to “stand in opposition to empire,” Charles said the Christian church has “prostituted itself out to the empire.”
“My call to the church is, we have to get out of bed [with the empire]. We have to become the prophetic witness that the church was meant to be. We need a church that is able to call out the sins of the left and the right,” Charles said.
The Christianity and White Supremacy: Heresy and Hope conference drew about 200 people to campus, according to Rosed Serrano, communications coordinator for Princeton University’s Office of Religious Life. Serrano said the event had been in the works since last fall, when 30 scholars, activists, and theologians were invited to consult on the project.
Founded by Presbyterians in 1746, the private Ivy League university has been grappling with making amends for its own racial history. Princeton Theological Seminary released a report last year detailing its early financial reliance on slave owners. In response, a group of Black seminarians launched a petition demanding reparations in the form of grants for Black students and the development of a Black Church Studies program.
