Imagine beating a brown-skinned man beyond recognition, hanging the mutilated body from a tree on a Saturday, and then going to church on Sunday to worship Jesus Christ–a man who the Bible says had skin like bronze, was beaten beyond recognition, and then hung from a tree. Lynchings in America were often (and still) conducted by people who called themselves followers of Christ.
But how can that be? How could one who professes to follow Jesus of Nazareth commit such atrocities and think they are doing “God’s work”?
I’ll tell you: There is an unholy and abominable union between Christianity and white supremacy.
The so-called “Bible Belt” has historically been the epicenter of racial discrimination in America. Tradition (by way of racist ideology) has consistently taken precedence over scripture. This unholy union reveals itself in the form of Christian Nationalism.
Whether you recognize this unholy union or not, you’ve seen it.
It looks like people who claim to be pro-life saying, “If he had just listened to the police…,” whenever a Black image-bearer is needlessly gunned down in the streets.
It looks like declaring “America First” when Christ tells us to seek first his kingdom.
It looks like sermons preached about how one political party is Satanic and hellbent on taking away our freedoms while claiming that the other is filled with people chosen by God himself.
It looks like preachers standing in pulpits and all but deifying our founding fathers and the congregation saying, “Amen.” I wonder how those people will feel when this life is over and they find out that many of those hallowed founders died and split hell wide open while the slaves they owned traded in scrap wood shacks on dirt roads for mansions on streets of gold.
It looks like Christian school curricula that exalts the white founders of this country as role models while ignoring that 41 out of 56 signers of the Declaration of Independence were slaveholders.
It looks like the slaveholder religion that grossly misinterpreted scripture to justify enslaving an entire group of people while “preaching the gospel” to them from Bibles with entire books redacted.
It looks like churches with just as many Confederate flags in the parking lot as there are Bibles in the pews
It looks like a church that made Barack Obama effigies and hung them from nooses or set fire to them.
It looks like Christians who will spend thousands of dollars to fly across the world to take photos with poor kids in Africa while ignoring the Black and Brown kids down the street.
It looks like saying that racism is a sin but failing to repent of it.
It looks like only listening to the voices of Black people who say the things that white people wish they could say without being called racist.
It looks like saying Black Lives Matter is a terrorist organization after having remained conspicuously silent when it comes to white supremacy, the KKK, the Capitol Insurrection, etc.
Jesus of America and Jesus of Nazareth are two different people. One is Elohim, the living God. The other is an idol.
Christian Nationalism and Christianity are NOT the same thing. They only look the same when you interpret Scripture through red, white, and blue-tinted glasses.