Overview

The American political scene today is poisonously divided, and the vast majority of white evangelicals play a strikingly unified, powerful role in the disunion. In this clear-eyed, hard-hitting chronicle of American religion and politics, Anthea Butler argues that racism is at the core of conservative evangelical activism and power. Propelled by the benefits of whiteness, white evangelicals used scripture to defend slavery and nurture the Confederacy during the Civil War era. 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. 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. In a new preface to the second edition, Butler takes stock of how the trends she identified have expanded as Donald Trump mounts a third campaign for the presidency, evangelicals celebrate and respond to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, and ferocious backlash against racial equity has injected new venom into evangelicalism's role in American politics.

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9781469681511

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Reviews

[Butler's] ability to weave together history, personal experience, and contemporary reflection in such a cohesive and approachable manner makes White Evangelical Racism stand out. . . . By critiquing and unequivocally condemning White evangelical racism while also acknowledging another evangelical lineage, Butler presents masterful critique while still providing space for a much-needed nuance often missed when [we speak] about the tradition in America as a whole.""—The Christian Century ""White Evangelical Racism has dropped a bomb on the playground of many historians of evangelicalism who have been insufficiently attentive to their subjects' history, specifically to their racism and nationalism from the nineteenth century to the present.""—American Religion ""In her elegant and unrelenting monograph White Evangelical Racism, Butler provides us with a cogent argument for inverting the narrative of evangelicals in American history. The book is brief, pointed, and accessible. Her argument, consistently made from start to finish, leaves no doubt where she sees the debate. Her clarion call to recognize the normative whiteness of American Christianity, especially in the media and politics, is timely and necessary.""—The Journal of Southern History ""A strong work of synthesis designed for a popular audience, White Evangelical Racism deftly weaves together cutting-edge scholarship on evangelicalism from the last twenty years.""—Christianity Today

"[Butler's] ability to weave together history, personal experience, and contemporary reflection in such a cohesive and approachable manner makes White Evangelical Racism stand out. . . . By critiquing and unequivocally condemning White evangelical racism while also acknowledging another evangelical lineage, Butler presents masterful critique while still providing space for a much-needed nuance often missed when [we speak] about the tradition in America as a whole.""—The Christian Century ""White Evangelical Racism has dropped a bomb on the playground of many historians of evangelicalism who have been insufficiently attentive to their subjects' history, specifically to their racism and nationalism from the nineteenth century to the present.""—American Religion ""In her elegant and unrelenting monograph White Evangelical Racism, Butler provides us with a cogent argument for inverting the narrative of evangelicals in American history. The book is brief, pointed, and accessible. Her argument, consistently made from start to finish, leaves no doubt where she sees the debate. Her clarion call to recognize the normative whiteness of American Christianity, especially in the media and politics, is timely and necessary.""—The Journal of Southern History ""A strong work of synthesis designed for a popular audience, White Evangelical Racism deftly weaves together cutting-edge scholarship on evangelicalism from the last twenty years.""—Christianity Today"

Author Information

Anthea Butler is Geraldine R. Segal Professor in American Social Thought 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.

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