Abstract
As a white reader, I did find this initially difficult to read as a mixture of guilt, shame and slight annoyance kept crowding my head. No-one likes being blamed for wrongdoing, and the small voice in my head kept saying, ‘but I didn’t do that’, then I remembered that white privilege is alive and well and we all have a responsibility to acknowledge it and resist it. This and Miguel saying a few pages in that he knows all white folk are not the same did help but not for long! He states at the beginning that he did not write the book for white folk or as a series of solutions for fixing white complicity in racism, but he wrote for those communities still marginalised and discriminated against who ‘remain precious in the eyes of God’ (p. 5).
It would be very easy to say that what he describes is the situation in the United States and not in the United Kingdom, but again this is naïve; perhaps we do not have the same kind of religious right wingers as in the United States, but Brexit, asylum seekers and Black Lives Matter (BLM) have shown us clearly that as a country the United Kingdom is as mired in racist attitudes as the United States. What is described in this book as religiously motivated attitudes makes my heart sink especially once one realises that the so-called ‘mad preachers’ are not at all the minority in the right wing of religion and further that they and their supporters have vast amounts of money with which to influence politics. It should not be surprising that a country set up on stolen land, which used slave labour to thrive but had a form of elect remnant theology at its heart, should develop as it has. White superiority had to be embedded in that country and culture and was done through violence and oppression.
Although the book is aimed at a US audience, the description of Christian foundations remains true wherever it is practised. Miguel shows how Eurocentric Christianity was right from the start an apologist for authoritarian regimes from emperors, to kings, popes and military dictators. Why might this be, Miguel makes a suggestion and this is that authoritarian regimes support traditional family values and this plays well with right-wing Christians who have clear ideas about how this might look. For example, the abortion laws in Texas being the most recent example of how fundamentalist views are affecting the lives of all Texans, not just those who are on the religious right. Strangely, this same family-oriented group of people encourage and tolerate the stripping away from their parents of very young children and the placing of them in cages with no water or sanitation. He reminds us of the 2-year old handcuffed as a suspected terrorist – and terrified. Or the 3-year-old Honduran girl taken away from her parents and put into foster care where she was sexually abused and then sent back to Honduras. And their crime? Being brown children in a white supremacist society.
Miguel declares that Eurocentric Christianity has been from the start white supremacist through its worship of a white God, a white Jesus and the practice of white hermeneutics played out in white liturgy. This is disturbing for white readers, but when he explains how this looks, it becomes clear that the gospel followed by this supremacist form of religion is not the kind of gospel that many white people would follow.
Right-wing preachers have in the twentieth century attempted to reduce the democratic process by stating that non-whites should not vote and that the only way to keep Republicans in power is to reduce the voting pool by any means possible. As the demographics of the United States changes, the white Republicans fear for their power and this leads to violence such as was witnessed in Charlottesville. Respectful debate is not possible for those who feel so under threat politically and culturally, the white man feels he is becoming irrelevant and this, as we saw with Trump, is handled by undermining the democratic process itself. In the name of protecting the integrity of the voting system, voter ID laws are changed, polling stations in black areas close early and racial gerrymandering takes place, all in plain sight. Miguel warns that democracy in the United States will not be overthrown by invading armies but by white nationalist Christians wishing to openly impose a dominion theology and by voter lethargy. Also and most shockingly for this reader, he claims there is a deafening silence from non-nationalist white Christians who should be challenging this white supremacist form of belief. Even those who talk the talk do not walk the walk and this is what Miguel is asking for since he feels these people are the most dangerous for people of colour. Why? Well because the educated white elite do not wish to give up privilege even as they speak of inequality and most certainly do not wish to examine the ways in which white skin automatically grants access and privilege. The biggest sin of white liberal churches is not to denounce conservative white Christians, but Miguel realises this may be the pot calling the kettle black! The major obstacle to becoming one body of Christ is in Miguel’s view the refusal by liberal Christians to admit there is a widespread problem. He does not entirely blame white Christians as he acknowledges that white minds have been as colonised as those of the physically colonised. So a first step to being a badass believer as a white person is the decolonisation of one’s mind and turning that towards one’s church and theology. Then comes solidarity but the kind that walks with not beside, he gives as an example the Egyptian Muslims who in a time of religious strife acted as human shields outside Coptic churches so that Christians could worship in safety. This he compares with what he calls white middle-class hope which in his opinion fosters a last praxis. It also makes white Christians an Easter Sunday people, while their marginalised brothers and sisters are an Easter Saturday people living amid the gore and brutality of Friday and not yet a resurrection people. He is not saying hopelessness is despair and giving up, rather it propels the marginalised with nothing to lose towards praxis. He urges white Christians to give up the comfort of hope and get into the dirty difficult business of creating more just social systems. How is this to be achieved well Miguel advocates what he calls an ethics ‘that fucks with’ (para joder), that becomes a pain in the ass of the powerful and consciously disrupts the established norms of white supremacy. This is a praxis that refuses to play by the rules.
I am glad I made it to the end of this book despite the feelings of uncomfortableness that it brought up in me. I would encourage people of all colours to read this book and to begin the process of decolonisation of your mind and life that it urges.