Abstract
Indeed, she claims that, "No Christian church in America is exempt morally or politically from responsibility for the perpetuation of White Christian nationalism, from the so-called founding of this nation by European Christians to the January 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol" (p. 11). "Christian churches—conservative and liberal . . . have driven the growth of white Christian nationalism" by refusing to "join, much less lead, publicly in the social struggles against injustice throughout much of American history" (p. 15). The history she reviews corroborates this judgment—evident in Christian complicity in the enslavement of Africans; in male dominated White churches; in governmental, legal, and economic structures; in regressive Supreme Court decisions; and in pushback to Black civil rights and the Obama presidency—all of which presume a White, male, Christian sense of entitlement and the providential blessing of a White Christian God.
The sins of Christofascism, contends Heyward, are sevenfold: omnipotence (power-over authoritarianism), entitlement (an abusive presumption and use of privilege), misogyny, capitalist spirituality (which promotes wealth production for the rich that seldom trickles down), and eco-injustice. These sins are not rank-ordered; they are parallel to, and in concert with, each other.
Sin, for Heyward, is a collective condition and behavior that "undergirds our structures of systemic oppression and evil—and that give shape to our personal faults and failures" (p. 45).
As an example, consider power-over authoritarianism or what Heyward calls "omnipotence." January 6, 2021 was, to be sure, an extreme instance of Christofascist yearning for power, but not unusual in the context of the long-standing authoritarian goal of White Christian nationalists to control the American social, cultural, and governmental institutions—a goal commensurate with their belief in the omnipotent God of history. As Heyward puts it, "These people are doing everything they can to reconstruct America as a theocracy in the image of an omnipotent white male capitalist God" (p. 54). In other words, this deadly sin is about power and exercising it over others, both individually and collectively.
Heyward's call to action is realistic about what it will take to eradicate the entrenched hold of Christofascism on American culture. She believes that this will entail a multi-generational effort. With this challenge in mind, Heyward issues seven "calls to action" required of communities that resist White Christian nationalism: first, the mutual empowerment of people correspondent to the "power with" (rather than "power over") activity of the resurrecting God; second, humility that is not self-effacing but bold in speech and action; third, embodiment of the Blackness of God; fourth, empowerment of women and affirmation of gender diversity; fifth, the building of foundations for economic justice that counter abusive capitalist spirituality; sixth, the formation of communities through embodied practices that strengthen a collective sense of belonging to the earth and its creatures; and seventh, breaking of the spiral of violence in our common life.
For me, the most compelling of these challenges is the call to embody the Blackness of God in order to counter the White ideology prevalent in White churches. European American churches, Heyward contends, have normalized Whiteness through a sense of entitlement for White males, a presumption that White worship styles are the only ways to worship God, and the predominance of narratives of White people (past and present) in our air space. In Heyward's view, the most seductive feature of normalized Whiteness is the way in which it diverts our attention from the outer world, anchoring our vision in our inner lives and feelings: "In a theology of normalized whiteness, good Christians pay more attention to how we feel about ourselves and our spiritualities than to how much good we could do in the world if we would" (p. 168). Moreover, theology of normalized Whiteness "diminishes moral sensibilities, which leads us to small personal token acts of sacrifice and service rather than to actually organizing and acting with others toward transforming the structures of oppression that loom large around us in America" (pp. 168-69).
To counter this pervasive "deadly sin," Heyward points to James Cone and other Black liberation theologians who insist that "in the context of white supremacy, we all have to be Black to be either liberated or liberators; that the goodness of all humanity is its Blackness; that God is Black" (p. 172). What she means by this is that it is incumbent upon us all to counter the "color coded universe" of White supremacy that associates "White" with good and pure and "Black" with evil, dirty and dangerous. Given the moral evil perpetuated by Whiteness, the call to embody Black and Blackness is liberating and healing. "Goodness and kindness and joy are Black. People—all anti-racist people, Caucasians as well as Black people—can be Black, regardless of our ethnographic identities" (p. 172). To become Black, for Heyward, entails walking side by side as co-conspirators with Black people (and all people of color) in the struggle towards liberation. It entails hearing their cries and embodying the Spirit of the Black God, which judges Whiteness and its idolatries—not to instill guilt, but rather to call us to repentance and conversion and to empower justice in our communities and world.
I commend this book to every American Christian. It is accessible and urgent reading, accompanied by study questions for personal and group reflection. My only critique is of the price set by its publishers, which many congregational discussion groups may find prohibitive. At some point, I hope the publishers will reissue the book in a more affordable edition to facilitate wide engagement with it.