The Myth of Colorblind Christians

Abstract

The Myth of Colorblind Christians uncovers the little-known history of black and white evangelical encounters in the second half of the twentieth century. Amid the upheavals of the civil rights movement, black evangelicals insisted there must be no color line in the body of Christ. In an effort to preserve the credibility of their movement, white evangelicals discarded theologies of white supremacy and embraced a new theology of Christian colorblindness. But instead of using this colorblind theology for antiracist purposes, white evangelicals found new ways to invest in whiteness in the name of spreading the gospel. Through their churches, schools, and parachurch ministries, white evangelicals prioritized the interests and identities of the white majority while embracing the rhetoric of Christian unity. When black evangelicals demanded more concrete racial reforms, white evangelicals responded that these race-conscious efforts threatened the unity of the body of Christ. The Myth of Colorblind Christians shows that white evangelicals’ turn to a theology of colorblindness enabled them to create an evangelical brand of whiteness that occupied the center of American evangelicalism and shaped the American racial order from the 1960s to the 1990s. The claims of Christian colorblindness became key drivers of evangelical identity and infused the nation’s colorblind racial order with sacred fervor. At the center of colorblindness’s enduring appeal in American life was the vitality of evangelical religion.

Racial and Religious Convergences and Divergences among Christian Students’ Approaches to Color‐Blindness, Color‐Cognizance, and Race in Christian Organizations

“…Racial reconciliation emerged in response to the Civil Rights Movement, Black Power Movement, and hard lined segregationists (Alumkal 2004; Wadsworth 2014) and became increasingly popular in the 1990s (Emerson and Smith 2000). Racial reconciliation promotes racial unity through religious faith, interpersonal responses to racism that emphasize individual relationships, and explains existing racial inequality as the result of individual actions rather than systemic injustice (Alumkal 2004; Curtis 2021; Emerson and Smith 2000; Oyakawa 2019; Wadsworth 2014). Although early proponents of racial reconciliation encouraged political action, racial reconciliation became primarily about transforming relationships and understanding racism through individual frameworks as it spread among White audiences (Alumkal 2004; Emerson and Smith 2000; Wadsworth 2014).…”

“…Tranby and Hartmann (2008) argue that the individualism and antistructuralism of racial reconciliation identified by Emerson and Smith (2000) is not race neutral but reflects a White racialized worldview. Indeed, Butler (2021) and Curtis (2021) argue that racial reconciliation was formulated in a color‐blind manner and allows White supremacy within evangelicalism to persist (see also Smith 2019). Much scholarship has since shown the ways racial reconciliation falls short of delivering racial equity and instead maintains a White racial status quo .…”

“…In the aftermath of the 2016 elections, many scholars noted the importance of the intersections of race and religion in Donald Trump's ascendance, pointing to Christian nationalism (Baker, Perry, and Whitehead 2020; Gorski and Perry 2022; Whitehead and Perry 2020) and the White racial demographic of evangelical Trump supporters (Yukich and Edgell 2020). Since then, research examining the intersections of race and religion and racial inequality has continued to grow (for examples, see Curtis 2021; Davis and Perry 2021; Edwards and Oyakawa 2022; Harris, Jones, and Monson 2022; Park, Chang, and Davidson 2020; Yukich and Edgell 2020). As sociologists of religion increasingly emphasize how religion is racialized (Yukich and Edgell 2020), organizational sociologists have also drawn attention to how organizations are not race neutral but are racialized structures (Ray 2019).…”

“…Racial reconciliation is a primary way White evangelical Christians approach race (Curtis 2021; Emerson and Smith 2000; Smith 2019). Scholars note that racial reconciliation is a type of White racial frame (see Feagin 2020; Tranby and Hartmann 2008) and color‐blind racist ideology that maintains the racial status quo and White racial dominance (Alumkal 2004; Butler 2021; Curtis 2021; Smith 2019; Tranby and Hartmann 2008). Color‐blind ideology purports that racial inequality and structural injustice are largely an issue of the past (Bonilla‐Silva 2013).…”

“…Color‐blind ideology purports that racial inequality and structural injustice are largely an issue of the past (Bonilla‐Silva 2013). In a similar way, racial reconciliation proponents often view structural inequality as immaterial and focus on personal prejudice and remediation on an individual and relational level (Alumkal 2004; Curtis 2021; Emerson and Smith 2000; Oyakawa 2019). Beyond color‐blindness, color‐cognizance—recognizing the significance of race on life's outcomes—can result in divergent views: recognizing the disadvantages of people of color, on one hand, versus believing White people are disadvantaged, on the other (Lopez Bunyasi 2015).…”