Dangerous White Christians

Those Dangerous White Christians: How We Got Here, and What Happens Now?
The rapid rise of a pugilistic and politicized white evangelicalism occurred in direct tandem with the virulent reaction to the advances of the midcentury civil rights movement.
I have felt for a long time that it is practically necessary to tell my liberal friends that, "I am a minister-but not that kind." Fifty or sixty years ago, no such qualification would have been needed, as many Christians then were also recognized as leaders within progressive ranks, working side by side with progressive rabbis. Figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., and William Sloane Coffin, Jr., were joined by Abraham Joshua Heschel in opposing the catastrophic Vietnam War and demanding action to end segregation and extreme poverty. They made headlines, but they were far from being outliers. As well, back then, it was the hardline Catholic position on abortion that was the outlier position among American Christians as a whole. The vast majority of Protestants, including many evangelicals in that era, took a much more moderate view.
So how did this all change so drastically, so that now the word "Christian" is associated almost universally with a racist, misogynist, anti-democratic mindset? How is it that white Christians now form the most reliable base of support for a would-be dictator?
Berkeley historian David Hollinger knows more about this than any other scholar I know of, and he tells the story well in a recent piece for Religion Dispatches. He notes, first, that a strong reactionary current was always present in 20th-century evangelical Christianity. Think of the Scopes "monkey" trial of 1925 or of the highly effective midcentury effort by LA's Rev. James Fifield to give a Christian veneer to efforts by big capital to roll back the New Deal and crush unions. Think of Billy Graham's response to Dr. King's dream of black and white children walking hand-in-hand in Alabama: "Only when Christ comes again." Liberal, highly educated Protestants may have ruled the cultural roost throughout the middle decades of the 20th century, but their ascendancy was deeply resented by their conservative country cousins.
Liberal, highly educated Protestants may have ruled the cultural roost throughout the middle decades of the 20th century, but their ascendancy was deeply resented by their conservative country cousins.
The big and troubling change, Hollinger writes, came about for two reasons. The factor that is most widely recognized is that one of the national political parties recognized how useful it would be to adopt reactionary white Christians as a primary constituency. Nixon helped to forge this alliance through his Southern Strategy. Republicans took this tack, courting mostly Southern and Western conservative Christians, at precisely the time when evangelicals were beginning to build up their institutions and create far-reaching media networks, using radio and television much more effectively than their liberal counterparts.
Money played no small part in arming the evangelicals for battle. Just as with the corporate support given to James Fifield's "Spiritual Mobilization" campaign of the 1950s, big corporate-friendly players (e.g., the Olin, Scaife, and Bradley foundations) bankrolled a new conservative Christian infrastructure, starting in the late 1970s and cresting during the 1980s and 1990s. With the help of some of these same donors, clever people working on the inside of the religious tent also helped to advance what is now univocal evangelical alignment with the Catholic bishops' stance on fetal "personhood." The clever inside operators also got money to craft strategies for muting what was left of the progressive Christian voice, using vehicles like the Institute for Religion and Democracy.
The second dimension of the big change is much less widely understood. What it amounts to is that a once-vibrant liberal Christian counterpoint to the anti-intellectualism and even the basic biblical illiteracy of the evangelicals faded out fairly quickly over the last decades of the last century. This was not mainly due to attacks from the mobilized Christians. It happened, says Hollinger, primarily because of demographics. So-called "mainline" Protestants-Lutherans, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, etc.-were having fewer kids, and the kids they did have stopped going to church. There was also no longer any social premium involved, as there once had been, for evangelicals to "trade up" and migrate from, say, a Nazarene congregation on the outskirts of town to the swanky Episcopal or Presbyterian church downtown.
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[@Laprogressive]

Long-time ministers talks about the shift from progressive christianity to religious right, white evangelicalism that's connected to racism, homophobia, misanthropy, and full-throated support of Trumpism

[@spartakos3178]

"Progressives" like the founder of Planned Parenthood were eugenicists, and blatant Racists.
The right side of history is those who take God's word seriously and do not follow the delusions of man.

[@wandertree]

Complete lies. You should be ashamed! You are a slave to our sinful culture, and you want to change Christianity and God's Holy nature to conform to whatever trends rule the day. Seek after God, believe the Bible, accept Christ as the only way to forgiveness from God. There is time for you yet - don't fall through the cracks and end up in hell - Satan does everything in his power in each life to trick you into ignoring truth and dying without Christ. Praying for you!

[@buttwagon09]

lol u liked and hearted ur own comment

[@HamSamich99]

Progressive Christianity abuses the scriptures to bend God's will to their own, not their will to God's. Progressive Christianity is sinful and heretical. Deny it, repent, and open your hearts to God's will so that you can have love for all Christians. I think you characterize these people so that you can call them evil but you're making up lies about so many truly honest and faithful Christians living by God's will. That is wholeheartedly wrong of you

[@wandertree]

This is exactly correct!

[@colinchesbrough5772]

Thank you. Lunatics talking about "dangerous white Christian nationalists" supporting Trump, as the very definition of their foe contains racist and Christianphobic statements. Meanwhile, their ideology is one of utter sin in contrast to biblical teaching.

[@robbower5489]

These old boomers have a long hard eternity ahead of them

[@wandertree]

It's so sad. They need to read their Bibles and beg God for discernment before it's too late for them.

[@brendanthompson4463]

Repent and turn from your wicked ways, believe in the True Gospel and come to Christ. I’ll be praying for you all

[@Cody-lc5ws]

15 minutes in and there's still no allusion to Christ. This is heretical clout-chasing.

[@4thgradedropout703]

So much stupid in a 25 minute conversation

[@andrewwashburn3249]

Deus vult.