White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Robert P. Jones.
Reviewed by Jemar Tisby in the NY Times
In 1968, James Baldwin wrote in The New York Times: “I will flatly say that the bulk of this country’s white population impresses me, and has so impressed me for a very long time, as being beyond any conceivable hope of moral rehabilitation. They have been white, if I may so put it, too long.” Robert P. Jones, who leads the Public Religion Research Institute, a polling firm focused on the intersection of politics and religion, draws on Baldwin’s quote for the title of his book “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity.” Jones calls on his fellow white Christians to extricate themselves from what he asserts has defined their religion for too long: the imagined superiority of white people and anti-Black racism as its inevitable corollary.
Jones sets out to prove that “American Christianity’s theological core has been thoroughly structured by an interest in protecting white supremacy.” According to him, white Christianity has not merely been a passive bystander in the construction of this nation’s racial caste system, it has been the primary cultural and religious institution creating, promoting and preserving it.
Jones builds his case with evidence, drawing on an eclectic blend of history, theology, sociology and memoir. His use of autobiography works especially well. Before the cascade of data can turn his narrative into a detached analyst’s clinical dissection of the problem, Jones gets personal, writing about his family’s slave-owning ancestors or his own teenage years sporting the Confederate battle flag on his car’s license plate.
The book reaches its apex of evidence around its midpoint, when Jones draws on his extensive experience with polling about religion to introduce a “racism index” — a set of 15 survey questions designed to assess attitudes toward white supremacy and Black people. The findings are clear: “The more racist attitudes a person holds, the more likely he or she is to identify as a white Christian.” The results hold true for regular and infrequent churchgoers, across geographical regions and for white evangelicals, mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics. It’s hard to argue with his conclusion that white supremacy is somehow genetically encoded into white Christianity in the United States.
“White Too Long” is part of a dynamic and growing field of contemporary nonfiction that calls the white church to task for its failings when it comes to racism. Recent works that pair well with this one include “Jesus and John Wayne,” by Kristin Kobes Du Mez, “Taking America Back for God,” by Andrew L. Whitehead and Samuel L. Perry, and “Reconstructing the Gospel,” by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove. These books reflect what may be a critical pivot point in the direction of white Christianity in the United States.
Events of the past decade and especially recent months have pushed conversations about race to the forefront of the national consciousness. It is a cultural moment that is forcing white Christians to declare their allegiances — whether to a religion that reinforces white supremacy or to one that dismantles it. Jones’s book challenges people of faith to chart a new path forward.
But that is where the real trouble begins. “White Too Long” convincingly reveals the myriad ways that white Christianity has cultivated the religious, political, economic and social superiority of white people despite all efforts, modest though they may have been, to fight these tendencies. If everything he says is true, there remains then a chilling question to address: Is there anything worth salvaging?
White Christians have to face the possibility that everything they have learned about how to practice their faith has been designed to explicitly or implicitly reinforce a racist structure. In the end, “White Too Long” seems to present a stark choice: Hold onto white Christianity or hold onto Jesus. It cannot be both.
