In other words, all those worldview conferences and seminars really may have been about teaching us how to think like white people, not like Christian people. shows quite powerfully that what white evangelicals have labeled “the Christian worldview” bears a striking resemblance to “whiteness,” that is, white-centered and white-hegemonic ways of viewing and arranging the world and responding to human difference. Worldview Theory, Whiteness, and the Future of Evangelical Faith, by Jacob Alan Cook. Taking America Back for God, by Andrew Whitehead and Samuel Perry, focuses on what the authors call “Christian nationalism” but which they more precisely shorthand as (white) “Christian nation-ism.” They demonstrate through sociological studies that a major factor driving our politics is the hunger on the part of a substantial minority for an America dominated by white Christian native-born men.
history, and how every effort to challenge white supremacism has been opposed-theologically, politically, morally-by white evangelicals. The Color of Compromise, by Jemar Tisby, traces the long history of how white racism and evangelical Christianity have been fully intertwined in U.S. The Making of Biblical Womanhood, by Beth Allison Barr, argues that the teaching of female subordination is a historical construct rather than the “clear biblical teaching” her opponents claim that it is. Jesus and John Wayne, by Kristen Kobes Du Mez, argues that white evangelicalism is characterized by patriarchy, toxic masculinity, authoritarianism, nationalism, anti-gay sentiment, Islamophobia and indifference to Black people’s lives and rights. You may have read one or two of them or had church members who asked you about them. Gushee’s article “ The Deconstruction of American Evangelicalism” points to five recent books that have played a role in this project. Therefore, the deconstruction project seeks to “deconstruct” and “decenter” and “decolonize” white, patriarchal theology, which includes prophetically naming white supremacy and patriarchy wherever it shows up, even among friends. Meanwhile, our views of complementarianism lead to the abuse of women and children. For instance, the project would say that our views of salvation are overly spiritualized and individualistic, leading us to ignore injustices done to particular groups of people, like African Americans or Asian Americans.
Worse, our doctrines uphold white male power and participates in the oppression of women and minorities. In other words, white theology, by presenting itself as the norm for “Christian theology,” effectively marginalizes the voices of women and minorities.
Decolonizing theology is also decolonizing epistemology. Here’s new author Danté Stewart:īelieving that white theology is normative and other theologies are “contextual” continues to perpetuate the racist lie that white Christianity is the center of the faith and is the standard of other’s religious legitimacy. White evangelicals center their-or, I guess I should say “our” since I’m white and an evangelical-doctrine and treat it as the norm or standard of Christian orthodoxy. Yet really the project’s indictment focuses on white evangelicals. The indictment here is universal, as if to say everyone is culturally embedded and self-interested in their exegesis and theologizing. One advocate of this project, liberal ethicist David Gushee, observes:Ī healthy post-evangelical approach to the Bible will heighten realism about the fact that the Bible is always an interpreted text, and that we flawed, limited, self-interested people are the interpreters. The basic charge of the deconstruction project is that evangelical doctrine or what we might even call “Christian doctrine” is more culturally conditioned and self-interested than we evangelicals realize. Therefore, I’ve decided to smuggle one more article here into the editor’s note, both to shed some light on the project and to offer counsel on how pastors might respond, particularly as some members strongly respond one way or another. 9Marks equates evangelical doctrine with the “sound doctrine” that Paul tells Timothy and Titus to teach and defend (1 Tim. I did notice one significant hole: in a Journal devoted to sound doctrine, we failed to account for the growing deconstruction project presently occurring in and around so many churches against evangelical doctrine. I look over the table of contents and ask myself, how shall I summarize the whole? And are there any holes? The last task in compiling our quarterly 9Marks Journal is writing the editor’s note.