White Evangelical Racism

The Politics of Morality in America

This title was previously available on NetGalley and is now archived.
Buy on Amazon Buy on BN.com Buy on Bookshop.org
*This page contains affiliate links, so we may earn a small commission when you make a purchase through links on our site at no additional cost to you.
Send NetGalley books directly to your Kindle or Kindle app

1
To read on a Kindle or Kindle app, please add kindle@netgalley.com as an approved email address to receive files in your Amazon account. Click here for step-by-step instructions.
2
Also find your Kindle email address within your Amazon account, and enter it here.
Pub Date 22 Mar 2021 | Archive Date 05 Mar 2021

Talking about this book? Use #WhiteEvangelicalRacism #NetGalley. More hashtag tips!


Description

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals plays a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly consequential question for electoral politics: Why do they claim morality while supporting politicians who act immorally by most Christian measures? In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler answers that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power.

Butler reveals how evangelical racism, propelled by the benefits of whiteness, has since the nation’s founding played a provocative role in severely fracturing the electorate. During the buildup to the Civil War, white evangelicals used scripture to defend slavery and nurture the Confederacy. During Reconstruction, they used it to deny the vote to newly emancipated blacks. In the twentieth century, they sided with segregationists in avidly opposing movements for racial equality and civil rights. Most recently, evangelicals supported the Tea Party, a Muslim ban, and border policies allowing family separation. White evangelicals today, cloaked in a vision of Christian patriarchy and nationhood, form a staunch voting bloc in support of white leadership. Evangelicalism’s racial history festers, splits America, and needs a reckoning now.

Anthea Butler is associate professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Women in the Church of God in Christ: Making a Sanctified World. A leading historian and public commentator on religion and politics, Butler has appeared on networks including CNN, BBC, and MSNBC and has published opinion pieces in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and many other media outlets.

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals plays a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. These evangelicals raise a starkly...


Advance Praise

"Every so often a book comes along that distills essential truths so crisply, so powerfully, that it feels not just valuable but vital--alive with the clear, brilliant, and even thrilling thinking we need like we need water and air. Anthea Butler writes with force and grace of what is, how it came to be, and why it must change. White Evangelical Racism is an American revelation, in the real, deep sense of that rightly troubling word."—Jeff Sharlet, best-selling author of The Family and This Brilliant Darkness

"Spotlighting how white evangelicals have espoused and practiced an enduring commitment to white supremacy and anti-Blackness from antebellum America to Donald Trump and beyond, White Evangelical Racism stands out for its historical breadth and for Anthea Butler’s unique gifts as both an accomplished African American historian and a popular media writer. This book will be greeted with great anticipation and attention."—Lerone A. Martin, author of Preaching on Wax

"Terrific. Provocative. Solidly argued. Amid all the efforts to make sense of evangelicals’ political identity, I know of no one besides Anthea Butler who does so with such a disciplined and historically grounded approach—combined with a fluid, direct, and personal style. While focusing on evangelicals’ history, Butler shows how we’ve all been shaped and indicted by racism, and she doesn’t let us off the hook."—Julie J. Ingersoll, author of Building God’s Kingdom

"Every so often a book comes along that distills essential truths so crisply, so powerfully, that it feels not just valuable but vital--alive with the clear, brilliant, and even thrilling thinking we...


Available Editions

EDITION Hardcover
ISBN 9781469661179
PRICE $24.00 (USD)

Available on NetGalley

NetGalley Shelf App (PDF)
Send to Kindle (PDF)

Average rating from 30 members


Readers who liked this book also liked: