The Myth of Colorblind Christians: Evangelicals and White Supremacy in the Civil Rights Era

by Jesse Curtis

Uncovers the hidden roots of white evangelicalism's contemporary racial crisis.

The Myth of Colorblind Christians reveals the little-known story of black and white evangelical encounters that brought us to our age of divisive politics and splintering churches. Amid the upheavals of the civil rights movement, black evangelicals insisted there must be no color line in the body of Christ. In an effort to preserve the credibility of their movement, white evangelicals discarded theologies of white supremacy and embraced a new theology of Christian colorblindness. But instead of using this colorblind theology for anti-racist purposes, white evangelicals spent decades investing in whiteness in the name of spreading the gospel.

White evangelicals' turn to a theology of colorblindness enabled them to create an evangelical brand of whiteness that claimed the center of evangelicalism and shaped the politics of race throughout American life. Christian colorblindness became a key marker of evangelical identity and infused the politics of colorblindness with sacred fervor. Historically nuanced and as urgent as today's headlines, The Myth of Colorblind Christians is a book that will change what you thought you knew about evangelicals and race.

Genres: Religion, History, Politics, Race, Nonfiction, Christianity, Theology

320 pages, Hardcover

Published November 9, 2021

Reviews

[Adam Shields · Rating 5 out of 5]

Summary: A history of the White Evangelical orientation toward colorblind approaches to race in the post-Civil Rights era. 

Routinely, usually on Twitter or Facebook, but sometimes in person, I will get someone who will ask me how some particular thing is about race. Often it will be self-evident to me, but it is much less clear for the person asking. Race is often something that people resist openly acknowledging because the very nature of seeing race for those who subscribe to colorblindness is a racialized act that we should avoid.

This book feels very personal to me. I will turn 49 soon, and much of the history here, I have very close connections to. I have met several people in the book. I attended Wheaton College as an undergrad, and I attended Rock of Our Salvation Evangelical Free Church (a church that started of the wreckage of Circle Church and Clarence Hilliard leaving.) I worked for a local association within SBC and interacted with the Home Mission Board (now the North American Mission Board). I spent several years working with Mission America, the United States arm of the Lausanne Conference on World Evangelism. The Myth of Colorblind Christians gave me context, and a lot of new information, about the world that I experienced in the 1990-2000s.

The Myth of Colorblind Christians has six main chapters. The first chapter grounds the book in the Civil Rights era history and rise of modern (Billy Graham style) evangelicalism. The primary orientation of White Evangelicals toward race was either support of segregation (either overtly as God-ordained, or more subtly, as not causing offense and submitting to the cultural mores) or to oppose segregation but to do so through individual conversion and regeneration. The Evangelical orientation toward evangelism and conversion meant that Billy Graham and others did want to evangelize African Americans, and there was some effort in attracting Black Christians that would agree with them about racial problems being primarily spiritual problems. (It's a sin problem, not a skin problem). Billy Graham went as far as to preach against the March on Washington during his Los Angeles crusade that was happening at the same time. “I am convinced that some extremists are going too far too fast,” he declared. “Forced integration will never work.” The racial crisis would “not be settled in the streets but it could be settled in the hearts of man” (p35). Despite Graham's concerns about the March on Washington, "King articulated the ur-text of colorblind America" in his I Have a Dream speech.

Although there were Black Evangelicals, like Howard Jones, the first Black evangelist with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, the relationship was more as a 'Black sidekick' than a full partner. Jones was asked to spend much of his time preaching in Africa, and even when he specifically asked, he was occasionally denied access to evangelistic rallies in the US. In 1965, Billy Graham had an evangelistic rally in Montogmery in direct response to the protest in Selma. Graham told Jones, "I am not sure that it would be wise for you to come to Mongomery just now" (p47). Graham was concerned about a Black evangelist on the stage raising tensions.

The second chapter discussed colorblind Christian College campuses. This is a point where I was often surprised because the history here was contrary to the presentation that I absorbed at Wheaton. Wheaton was an abolitionist college accepting Black students from the 1850s. But what I had not previously heard, but Curtis points out, that Charles Blanchard, the son of the founder, had a different perspective on racial issues. By the early 1900s, there were few Black students, and by 1909, Wheaton was explicitly denying Black students enrollment because of their new segregation policies. For more than 30 years, there were no black students on campus. Even when there was a slow integration (1940s and 50s), Black students were not allowed to live on campus or participate in most student activities.

It was because of sex, more than anything else, that many white evangelical colleges that enrolled black students here or there before the 1960s often saddled them with discriminatory policies. Besides bans or counseling against interracial dating, black students might be forced to live off campus or be encouraged to attend evening classes distinct from the daytime courses of white students living on campus. (p51)

Blacklash against Christian college integration was real. Upon hearing that Wheaton College had a memorial service for Martin Luther King Jr, Tim LaHaye, then a San Diego pastor, said he found it "incredible that a Christian college could participate in honoring an out-right theological liberal heretic whose ‘non-violent’ demonstrations resulted in the deaths of seventeen people." He also said he would no longer recommend Wheaton to his congregation. In 1960, Wheaton College President Edman requested a committee draft a statement on race relations. The statement told how far it had strayed from its abolitionist beginnings and how it had "lost its sense of Christian responsibility on racial matters." But what Curtis cites as the reason for the statement to be buried and one board member to suggest that those who had read it not even discuss it with family was a recommendation to remove restrictions on interracial dating. It would not be until further student protests and an additional decade before the restriction on interracial dating would be removed at Wheaton. (p 52-54)

The discussion of Christian colleges was personal, but the main point was that: "White evangelicals often insisted that unity in Christ was already a reality and that black Christians attacked such unity when they raised questions of systemic reform on the Christian campus." My own time at Wheaton in the early 1990s was similar. During my time, there were petitions about hiring additional Black professors, multiples interracial discussions over campus incidents, and still, only 2% of Wheaton's student population was Black during the time I was there. In the mid-1970s, President Armerding requested that professors be more multicultural in their curriculum and teaching. A professor responded privately, "contributions of the more ‘primitive’ cultures” should certainly be included, but “not to the point of over-reacting with making superficial connections.”

The third to the fifth chapters focus on the church growth movement, the Homogenous Unit Principle, Lausanne Committee on World Evangelism, and local evangelism within the US. Part of what my job was in the late 1990s and early 2000s, working with the Southern Baptists was providing demographic research reports for new church plants or churches that were trying to understand their communities. The church growth movement had vast influence by the early 1990s. Using the Homogogeous Unit Principle, the Church Growth Movement taught pastors and church planters to very narrowly target their church to a small cultural and racial subgroup.

"In a post–civil rights movement age when colorblind Christians dared not defend segregation outright and, indeed, no longer wanted to do so, the CGM enabled white evangelicals to recast their segregated churches and ongoing appeals to white identity as faithful evangelism rather than racism." (p79)

What Curtis made clear was that not only was CGM and HUP giving evangelicals theological and pragmatic justification for continued segregation of churches but that in the 1960-70s when those models were being discussed in missiology circles, they were required for healthy churches. Evangelicals in apartheid South Africa used these models to justify their continued use of apartheid. On my Goodreads page, I have 60 quotes from the book, and many are from these sections detailing overt justification of segregation not for the basis of racism but for evangelism. Others at the time countered that segregated churches violated Christian theological ethics and orthopraxy. But by the time I was working with the local SBC association, very few were continuing to raise objections and concerns about how allowing for segregated churches was counter to the early church's emphasis on crossing class, ethnic and geographic lines. David Swartz's Facing West: American Evangelicals in an Age of World Christianity is another good book on this aspect.

This post is already way too long, but I need to mention at least the final chapter on the 1990s racial reconciliation movement, highlighting Promise Keepers and the friendship-oriented racial reconciliation (which highlighted friendship, but deemphasized broader cultural change). As I mentioned above, I attended Raleigh Washington's church before he left to go work for Promise Keepers, I attended several Christian Community Development Association national meetings in the 1990s, which were more likely to be advocating real racial change. I came to know Clarence Hillard in the early 2000s (although I had no idea of his involvement with Lausanne until I read this book). I never attended a Promise Keeper's event, primarily because I was concerned about their sexism. But at the time, I would have favored friendship-oriented racial reconciliation as a means to get the church more interested in more significant issues of race and policy, and politics. But there were limitations to that thinking that I did not see at the time (although many others did, which is part of the value of this book.)

"Most white Americans believed a firmly colorblind approach to policy and public life—where character rather than skin color counted—would be the surest path to ending racial division.7 If there was more racial tension in the 1990s, the solution was not more racially conscious policies (to reduce inequality), but fewer (to reduce racial consciousness)." (p172)

and

"These phenomena—interpersonal racial reconciliation and public racial reaction—were complementary rather than contradictory. Most white evangelicals perceived no conflict between these positions. Private initiative would replace public bureaucracy and personal friendship would substitute for institutional reform. As the Dallas Morning News perceptively noted, “Much of the [racial reconciliation] action is coming from groups that support the [proposed Republican] cuts” to government programs."(p198)

I think the best critique of the Promise Keeper Methodology is Chanequa Walker-Barnes' I Bring the Voice of My People but Divided by Faith, mentioned at the end of The Myth of Colorblind Christians also spends a chapter on Promise Keepers.

I think one of the most important, problems of the Homogenous Unit Principle was unintentionally revealed by McGavran (the founder of the idea) when he said, “The minorities...are virtually untouched by the church today.” He urged Christians to pray for the “penetration” of all these “untouched” groups. He declared that African Americans and other people of color in the United States were “growing up unchurched” and were effectively “Christo-pagan.” McGavran assumed white normativity and that the Christian faith was best transmitted from White to non-White people. He would have resisted that characterization, but the reality is that the growth of the church is almost entirely among non-White communities in the US and around the world. Because most White Evangelicals assume a normative rightness to White Evangelical theology, the idea that the Black church has something to teach the White church was simply not something he was looking for.

The Myth of Colorblind Christians is an important thread in the current discussion about what Evangelicalism means and at the recent history of the movement. We White Evangelicals will never move forward if we cannot see an honest and accurate history. As a former Wheaton student, I have a very different understanding of institutional racial capacity when I understand that Wheaton was a segregated school that maintained bans on interracial dating until the mid 1970s then I did when I thought that Wheaton had always been an integrated school, even if it did not reflect the diversity of the church as well as it should. These are stories that we need to be discussing. And the unintended consequences of theological decisions like the church growth movement's embrace of segregated congregations through the homogenous unit principle should remind us that blind spots matter.

There are fewer people today that advocate colorblindness as an ideal, but those that do, are still more likely to be White Evangelicals than other religious or cultural groups. We need to see the harm that colorblindness leads to. There are so many other parts of this book that I could highlight. But one last part I think shows how little we have come. In 1985, the National Black Evangelical Association put together a pamphlet for Black students at predominately White Christian schools that themeatically could have been written this year. The Witness: A Black Christian Collective's focus on LeaveLoud has highlighted many of the same points.

"One essay discouraged black students from spending too much energy trying to educate white students. The most likely outcome was emotional exhaustion for the black student and little change on the part of white students."

[Jonny · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jesse Curtis writes an absolute tour de force! This is a great history of colorblind Christianity in the U.S. moving us from the Civil Rights movement into the 70s, 80s, and 90s. And even ending with a little it on Trump. Jesse is a gifted writer who offers a lot of dynamite information that is accessible to read.

[Jaz Boon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well done. Jesse Curtis details the history of the evangelical church’s capitulation to racism and the resulting use of colorblind theology. The adoption of colorblind theology tracks the politically conservative use of colorblindness and this book demonstrates how the church - meant to unify various groups of people - remained a locus of white supremacy. A bit thick and slow at times, but overall very good.

[Daniel Kleven · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jemar Tisby called this "the book on the history of white evangelicalism I have been waiting for" -- now I know why!

I honestly did not know what I was getting into when I picked up this book. I had seen it cited in a footnote in Lerone Martin's new book The Gospel of J. Edgar Hoover: How the FBI Aided and Abetted the Rise of White Christian Nationalism, and it seemed to fit an interest of mine--white evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement. The book covered that, and much, much, much more. It pulled together a surprising number of threads that hit home for me personally, in a way that genuinely helps me understand myself and my white evangelical history deeper than ever before.

Here's another way of saying it -- I attended Bethlehem College, then Seminary, and Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis for 7 years. Bethlehem had been involved in "racial reconciliation" (we called it "ethnic harmony") for decades, as well as global missions to "unreached people groups." But I never fully realized how both of those efforts fit within the broader history of white evangelicalism, how they intersected at Lausanne and reverberated beyond. The Bethlehem told their founding myths, these were always described as "unique" a kind of sui generis "move of God" that made BBC a uniquely special place. Reading this book was a kind of "de-mythologizing" in many respects. If you were (or are) at Bethlehem and were (or are) involved in either "ethnic harmony" or "global outreach" -- I can't recommend this book highly enough.

It covers so, so much -- indeed, the Civil Rights Movement era, Billy Graham, Christianity Today; the chapter on "Creating the Colorblind Campus" and the efforts of white evangelical colleges to "diversify" or move to the "urban centers" was like deja vu--50+ years and literally nothing has changed; I loved the focus on Black evangelicals, or just Black Christians (Bill Pannell, Tom Skinner, Howard Jones, Clarence Hilliard); the chapter on Lausanne, Donald McGavran, C. Peter Wagner, the Homogenous Unit Principle, and the Lausanne conferences was EYEOPENING to say the least. The outright racism and segregation practiced by evangelicalisms leading foreign missions proponents on the world's largest stages was stunning, but in the end, not surprising. I had already deeply appreciated C. René Padilla before this; now I love him even more and his bold stand against these powerful white racist American missiologists. A fascinating look at the 80s and 90s, the SBC, Promise Keepers, and a quick flyover up to the present.

I feel like this book was written just for me. Powerful, and truly informative in the best sense.

[Paul · Rating 5 out of 5]

Curtis has done a masterful job in compiling this history, pulling back the veil on white evangelicals’ maneuvering of language and theology to their advantage. An underlying theme throughout the book is that theology is often the trump card played by white evangelicals to undermine or neuter the rationale of positions on social issues related to race, which has left a long trail of aggrieved or silenced Black evangelicals. [Curtis does not posit that theology is unimportant, but he resists the human interpretation as theology being placed outside the realm for critique.] Curtis unpacks the details for the story from the 1960s through the 1990s, with the Conclusion touching on more recent events up to the time of the book's publishing in 2021. He includes a chapter on the racial reconciliation movement and Promise Keepers, which charts PK's attempts to cut through to greater acknowledgement of white racism and subsequent repentance, even if PK focused on individual relationships as the key to revival and sidestepped addressing systemic injustice. For someone who works at Wheaton College, it is helpful to have him dedicate a chapter on "Creating the Colorblind Campus," which includes details about Wheaton along with a few other CCCU schools. For someone who works in Wheaton's Evangelism and Missions Archives, it is insightful to read his chapters on the Church Growth Movement, principally led by Donald McGavran and C. Peter Wagner; and his chapter on the 1974 Lausanne Congress. Curtis does not skimp on details and his footnotes amply document his findings. Although Black evangelicals were marginalized in evangelical organizations, movements, and events, Curtis lets them speak for themselves up through the Black Lives Matter era.

[Sam McLoughlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read for “20th Century US Religion and Politics” independent study. A strong and much-needed account of race and evangelicalism in America. Curtis makes to important distinctions: (1) Black evangelicals in the early-to-mid 20th century used colorblind language to emphasize a Christian ideal of brotherhood to fight against white supremacy and (2) white evangelicals turned to a language of colorblindness in reaction to Civil Rights Movement that aimed to and effectively reinforced white supremacy. Lots of great stuff in the book and I’m definitely citing it in future projects. Hoping to write research that does what Curtis is doing for American Conservatism.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

well researched and thorough, this is a great ideological history of evangelical’s relationship to race since the middle of the twentieth century. i do wish the author would have approached this issue with some material considerations along with the ideological analysis, but it still does a great job with its sources.

[Kaelie Blair · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting research on Christian Colorblindness. I learned so much from this book and I think everyone interested in the evangelical views on race should read this work!

[Erik Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a tour de force through 20th century white evangelical history and white evangelical refusal to listen to our black and brown brothers and sisters. The author’s historical research and analysis brings much clarity to the tensions still remaining within American evangelicalism after Trump and the Black Lives Matter movement. Why has racial reconciliation not brought healing? Why are evangelical Christians still so segregated? How did the church growth movement continue to inculcate sacred whiteness (even after that term became publicly embarrassing)? Why are racial divisions no more healed today than they were decades ago? Why do so many black folks feel uncomfortable in white churches? Why do so many white evangelicals refuse to reckon with black cries for systemic change in the United States and within American evangelicalism? This book offers important historical answers to these questions, but those answers remain unfavorable to the zeitgeist of white evangelical sensibilities even today.

For those of us who recognize the white preference and even white supremacy which remains hidden within Christian colorblindness, the book can be disheartening. The reader can see that true heart change has never really come to evangelicalism. Historic fundamentalism focussed on mere theological orthodoxy and intentionally ignored the ethical demands of the gospel in the age of Jim Crow, and her daughter, evangelicalism, hasn’t fared much better. By focusing on the gospel alone and ignoring necessary Biblical ethics, particularly around race, white evangelicals have conveniently been able to avoid loving our African American neighbors whenever Christian love required costly change and the de-centering of whiteness from our religion. Colorblindness has so overtaken white evangelicalism that we gone so far as to call people of color racist for bringing their full blackness to their faith. We’re so blind to the effects our white culture has on our faith, that we see every other strain of Christianity as inferior or a perversion. This attitude is an artifact of years of white supremacy, paternalism towards people of color, and the centering of whiteness within white evangelicalism in America.

Sadly many well meaning evangelicals are unaware of the dangers implicit within colorblindness. Many of us are unaware of how our singular focus on a palatable gospel of personal salvation, ignores the diverse community of the catholic (universal throughout all time) Church which does not center white evangelical norms. We forget that Christ is building a church where peoples of all backgrounds are equal members, and where reconciliation requires not merely forgiveness, but repentance, restitution, and the sharing of power. Jesus said the first shall be last and the last shall be first. White evangelicalism in America has never fully reckoned with this in our relationship with evangelicals of color.

This book is critical for acknowledging the past. It is also a guide to helping those of us who want to see change to understand the juggernaut that is white American evangelical opposition to systemic racial reform in our nation and in our churches. This book is a witness. May we lament our sins and how we have despised our neighbors of color, and begin the process of genuine repentance so long eschewed by the majority of white evangelicals. Maranatha!

[Sean Rhoades · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t disagree with the overall thesis but the historical accounts are rather long and drawn out.