White Evangelical Racism, Anthea Butler
White Evangelical Racism, Anthea Butler
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White Evangelical Racism
The Politics of Morality in America

Author: Anthea Butler

Narrator: Allyson Johnson

Unabridged: 3 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 04/20/2021


Synopsis

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.

About Anthea Butler

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.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Bob on December 30, 2020

Summary: A short history of the evangelical movement in the United States, showing its ties to racism and white supremacy from the time of slavery down to the present. This was an uncomfortable book for me to read and review. In our racialized society, I would be identified as white. By conviction, I......more

Goodreads review by Kevin on October 05, 2023

Slaves, obey your earthly masters with deep respect and fear. Serve them sincerely as you would serve Christ. Try to please them all the time, not just when they are watching you. -Ephesians 6:5-7 A FEATURE, NOT A BUG “It was evangelical acceptance of biblically sanctioned racism that motivated believ......more

Goodreads review by Donald on June 12, 2021

A powerful analysis of the role racism plays in the Christian Evangelical phenomenon. This book is a well constructed and historically supported call the "Emperor Wears No Clothes." The author is direct and minces no words in her conclusion. The theme of this book needs to be yelled from the rooftop......more

Goodreads review by Brian on April 27, 2022

Butler gives a brief, pointed history of racist morality in the USA's evangelical churches, from the religious defense of slavery to the rise of modern white ethno-nationalist revivalism. She shows how white evangelicals rallied against the Black civil rights movement, launching their own counter-mo......more

Goodreads review by Jenbebookish on February 20, 2025

This was a 3.5 for me. Informative & compelling, but it wasn’t anything I didn’t already know, which is more a me thing that came as a result of having read several books on this topic prior to this than a flaw of the book. Anthea Butler traces the history of Evangelicalism in American History and hi......more