Know Your Place: Helping White, Southern Evangelicals Cope with the End of The(ir) World

by Justin R. Phillips

White evangelicals have struggled to understand or enter into modern conversations on race and racism, because their inherited and imagined world has not prepared them for this moment. American Southerners, in particular, carry additional obstacles to such conversations, because their regional identity is woven together with the values and histories of white evangelicalism. In Know Your Place, Justin Phillips examines the three community loyalties (white, southern, and evangelical) that shaped his racial imagination. Phillips examines how each community creates blind spots that overlap with the others, insulating the individual from alternative narratives, making it difficult to conceive of a world different than the dominant white evangelical world of the South. When their world is challenged or rejected outright, it can feel like nothing short of the end of the world. Blending together personal experiences with ethics and pastoral sensibilities, Phillips traces for white, southern evangelicals a line running from the past through the present, to help his beloved communities see how their loyalties--their stories, histories, and beliefs--have harmed their neighbors. In order to truly love, repair, and reconcile brokenness, you first have to know your place.

212 pages, Paperback

First published May 3, 2021

Reviews

[Justin Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wrote it. I loved writing it. I think it's good. I have no shame.

[Thomas Ryden · Rating 5 out of 5]

I live and work in spaces predominantly populated by white, Southern evangelicals. As for the author, these are “my people.” Sometimes, conversations with “my people” about race and justice get stuck. This book has the tools to get communication going again. With a welcome mix of grace and truth, Know Your Place addresses the problem of white supremacy head on by taking the conversation to its perpetrators, intentional and otherwise.

The personal aspects of the book give the well-researched and well-reasoned argument a human face, one that even a skeptic will recognize. It seems to be a work whose aim is to open up a world of history and thought to a group of folks who might not think “all that race stuff” is for them. Know Your Place leaves the door wide open.

I learned about myself. I was challenged. I was encouraged to learn more. There are even some genuinely funny bits. A great read!

[Kelly Sauskojus]

Methodologically excellent. Love this writing and these ideas. Curious about the unexplored impact of masculinity / gender on this topic tho?

[Lynn Domina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone who is, was, would be, or ever will be a white southern evangelical should read this book. Or if you have friends who are white southern evangelicals. Or enemies or mere acquaintances. It's highly readable and explains so much.

[Ryan Linkous · Rating 5 out of 5]

More thoughts to come, but an absolutely wonderful book. Can’t commend enough to the White, Southern Evangelicals (like myself) the book is addressing. It’s an epistle of love, written to persuade. It’s compelling in its arguments. It’s accessible in its writing.

I’ll buy a copy for anyone who wants to read and have a discussion with me about it!

[David Hutchens · Rating 5 out of 5]

The timing of this book is remarkable. I see that it is copyrighted 2021, so I assume it was written just before the hysteria around Critical Race Theory. Even more remarkable, the author is a teacher (English?) at a religious private school in Tennessee. Honestly, I found myself wondering about the safety of his vocation; The conversation he is hosting here surely puts him right in the middle of the storm.

And what a thoughtful, intelligent contribution to the conversation this is. The writing is wonderful, hitting a perfect tone between academic and narrative / storytelling. It’s a great read.

One thing I love is his affection for his heritage, as a southerner, as a Tennessean, as an evangelical. He’s not here to “bash” anyone (a frequent accusation of those opposing CRT.) Rather, he’s doing the hard work of rolling up his sleeves and reckoning with the tensions he experienced, and is still experiencing, as a man of some privilege. I kept nodding and agreeing. This is an important conversation, hosted with depth and sensitivity.

About his role as a teacher: I kept thinking how fortunate the author’s students are to have this man standing at the front of the room. I hope he doesn’t become the focus of hostile parents at the next school board meeting. If they read “Know Your Place,” they will have an opportunity for dialogue… and I bet they’ll find themselves saying “I want my kid to be in Mr. Phillip’s class.”

[Josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

My head is spinning. This book is seriously so many things; a collection of vulnerable, humorous personal stories and reflections, a cutting indictment of our cultural blind spots, and an incisive academic work all rolled into one.

Justin Phillips has written on the topics of race, culture, history, and faith in a way that is sorely needed in many of our churches and conversations today - with a focus on embodiment. By this, I mean his book focuses all throughout on how the real experiences of being in a specific social location, and really knowing ourselves and the forces that have shaped us, are essential to growth in seeking racial reconciliation and justice.

In three parts, focused on the three embodied realities of "White," "Southern," and "Evangelical," Phillips weaves together the ways in which these identities have perpetuated harm, as well as opportunities we have to awaken to our own realities to seek healing. I'm White and an (ex?)Evangelical, and I saw so much of myself and my blindspots in this book (which was liberating and convicting). And even though I'm not Southern, I benefitted greatly from that section as well, because Phillips shows how the history and peculiarity of Southern identity has impacted our nation and broader cultural conversation today.

This book is truly important, not only because it is academically sound and well-written, but also because it is repentant and models how we might grow.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Know Your Place is a compassionate invitation to those of us who are or grew up southern, white, evangelical or any combination of the three. Phillips (white, southern, and evangelical himself) guides the reader—by way of telling stories from his own past—to a new possibility of how this group can and should acknowledge the deep wound of racism in our country, our complicity in it, and harm we have done. What I love about this book is that it is a good faith effort to engage American evangelicalism while also challenging the reader to honestly sit with uncomfortable truths. Something else I liked is that at several points he outlines the need for white Christians to embrace and seek out Black voices to learn from, making clear that this book is a first, baby step in reconciliation and he doesn’t have all the answers.

I’m so excited that this book exists, and I hope that white, southern, evangelicals will engage this book with as much earnestness as Phillips has engaged them.

[Erin Phillips · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is beautifully written and easy to digest. Each essay is infused with humor and wit but not without hard-hitting truths, grounded in thorough research. The author's vulnerability and courage to share his own experiences and failings on matters of race breaks down your defenses as a reader and made it easier for me to identify and reckon with my own failings. This book was particularly helpful to my understanding the history of racism in my white, evangelical communities and the overt and subconscious ways that these communities have shaped my understanding of race and racism. Having read this book, I am better equipped to listen to and hear others' experiences and to discuss the failings of my own communities. This is not a book calling for you to abandon your beliefs or your friends and families. Rather, it is a a call to know and understand the places and people that formed you and in order to reform your communities rather than abandon them. I encourage anyone who grew up in or adjacent to white, southern, evangelicalism to read this superb work with an eye toward better understanding your communities.

[Adam Shields · Rating 4 out of 5]

Summary: A series of essays exploring what it means to be Christian, White, and Southern in the context of the racial realities as they are.

Racism isn't solely a Southern phenomenon, but there are some aspects to the White Southern Christian culture, and it makes sense to look at it from that perspective. I have read a lot of history and theology regarding racial realities in the United States. I have not grown up in the South, but I have lived just outside Atlanta for nearly 20 years. Because I have been here for a while, but I have not grown up here, I am both an outsider and an inside observer. I very much have witnessed quite overt racism, and the racial innocence that is well described in Know Your Place.

I am going to have three brief illustrations about racial innocence that influenced my reading of Know Your Place. About 5-6 years ago, the church I was a member of had a series of midweek meetings about race and Christianity. The meetings had a large group and small group component. My small group was facilitated by a Black pastor (not from our church). The small group was about 15 people, and as we opened the first session, we went around and introduced ourselves. One of the men introduced himself and concluded, "I was born and grew up and spent my whole life in the Atlanta area, and I do not believe that I have ever witnessed something I would call racist." I believe that she was roughly the same age as my mother-in-law, who also grew up here; her education was segregated until her senior year of high school.

Another friend of mine is retired and grew up in rural Georgia. She privately emailed me after we were in a class together where I had talked about the racist history of Stone Mountain. She was unfamiliar with what I was referring to and wanted to know more about what I meant. We talked, and I sent her some articles about Stone Mountain being dedicated explicitly to white supremacy and being the site of the start of the second founding of the KKK. She had literally never heard of any of that history despite living in Georgia for much of her life.

Several years ago, Georgia passed a law that included a provision that says that teachers cannot teach that "the United States is a systemically racist country." I was discussing this law and the problems of how teachers can teach the required standards, including teaching about the Dred Scott decision in 8th grade, without violating the law. The person I was talking to expressed that all history should be taught but that it was wrong to teach that the country is racist. I continued to ask questions about the history of the US. It was clear that the person both did not know anything about the Dred Scott decision (which said that the US was under no obligation to recognize citizenship or other rights of black Americans regardless of whether they were free or enslaved) or other expressly race-conscious laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act.

I give that way too long of an introduction because one of the problems of discussing race is that we have very different starting places because there is a mix of ignorance, willful blindness, and bad education. Most of the time, there is a mix of the three, but providing history to someone who is willfully blind to racial realities is unlikely to make a difference. Similarly, accusations of willful blindness when the person is simply ignorant or has had a lousy education often will create a backlash. And there is the problem of people defending their "home" because they feel like it is being attacked.

Know Your Place has good history and understands the culture, psychology and sociology of the South well. Phillips also has the theological chops to bring in theological ethics to cultural realities in a way that has grace, but tells the truth.

Early in the book this quote lays out the thesis quite directly.

"Here is the brutal truth about the people and places that I love: The dominant social imagination was, and is, a white-supremacist ideology, employed to enslave, terrorize, dehumanize, or restrict people of color, while at the same time absolving the offenders and their heirs from the guilt of any wrongdoing. These offenses were committed in order to keep people in their place and upon these shared values and stories American life was built, sustained, and defended. My social imaginary has, at its core, white supremacist foundations from which I and many others have benefitted. This is my place in our shared story." (p31)

This thesis as I capture here is going to be too direct for some readers. That doesn't mean he is wrong, it just means that there is a directness that will cause some to be resistant to the message of the book. Phillips quotes Hauerwas, "Courtesy forbids direct speech", but does not practice Hauwerwas' quote. As an outsider to the South, it isn't my place to say whether this is the best approach for those who have grown up in the South. But I do think it is a truthful approach.

It is likely that many who grew up in the South won't have heard quotes like the following:

Henry Holcombe Tucker, Baptist minister and former president of Mercer University and the University of Georgia, posited in an 1883 editorial four key litmus tests for racial orthodoxy: First, human races are and will be forever unequal. Second, Blacks are inferior to whites. Third, intermarriage was detrimental to all races. Fourth, free social intermingling of Blacks and whites “must have its origin in sin.” (p99)

and

Southern tradition, according to Lillian Smith, taught children three lessons that connected God, the body, and segregation: God loves and punishes children. We, in return, love and fear God. Parents possess a godlike quality, enforcing God’s ways, and themselves are deserving of love and fear. The second lesson concerned God’s gift of the body, which was to be kept clean and healthy. Be careful how you use this gift, for God’s morality is “based on this mysterious matter of entrances and exits, and Sin hovering over all doors.”

White skin was the most important feature of the body: This ‘gift’ gave whites status, dictated their control over space and movement, and children learned by watching their elders. The final lesson of southern tradition was that of segregation, an extension of the other two: You always obeyed authorities—“They Who Make the Rules”—and you valued and protected your white body. Even outside of the home “Custom and Church” would continue the education through words and actions. (p107)

Another important theological issue that is still ongoing is the relationship between history and guilt. The issues in the quote below are not new. (Hudson Baggett was editor of the Alabama Baptist from 1966 until his death in 1994).

Hudson Baggett, editor of the Alabama Baptist, rejected the statement, saying the convention “cannot confess the guilt or sins of all other Southern Baptists. Every person must confess his own sins, if they are confessed.” He added, “many people resist the idea of collective guilt, especially if it is connected with certain things in which people felt they have no part directly or indirectly.” Baggett’s words perfectly summarize the perspective that persists today among many whites, Christians included: In the absence of perceived guilt there is no reason to seek forgiveness. Sin works by blinding us to the realities of our failings, individually or collectively. (p145)

I think Know Your Place was well written and directly speaks to the issues of being a White Southern Christian (man) today. It isn't going to be the best book for everyone. But I do think it can be very helpful for those with ears to hear.


This was originally posted on my blog at https://bookwi.se/know-your-place/

[Ellen Melson · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book to be a thoughtful and honest--sometimes painfully honest--look at what it's like to be white, southern and evangelical in America. It's easy to say "I know people like that" and harder to say "I AM people like that." This book is a gentle but well needed reminder that we have unconscious biases and that we need to examine those within the framework of Scripture to make those thoughts captive and obedient to Christ. I would say that the natural progression of this book would be a 4th section about being male, so if the author looks to update the book in the future, here's a suggestion for a new section! It is an excellent read.