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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhite Supremacy Shaped American Christianity, Researcher Says
Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, comes from a line of white American Christians that stretches back before the Revolutionary War. His ancestors werent large plantation owners or Confederate generals, or ― as far as he knows ― active members of the Ku Klux Klan. For much of his life, Jones believed the unremarkable nature of his familys background meant that white supremacy wasnt a part of their history.
But hes recently started to tell a different kind of story ― one that acknowledges that white privilege shaped his familys sojourn on American soil.
His ancestors were wealthy enough to own slaves, Jones said. The family settled in Georgia on land the government seized from indigenous Creek and Cherokee people. They became Southern Baptists, part of a denomination founded in 1845 on the belief that it was perfectly moral for Christians to be slave owners.
Decades later, after Joness great-grandfather was killed in a clay mining accident, co-workers allegedly killed an innocent Black worker in retaliation. Jones still remembers how satisfied his great-uncle appeared while retelling that story, as if this arbitrary and unjustified act of racial violence helped balance the scales after a white mans death.
https://www.yahoo.com/huffpost/white-supremacy-christianity-robert-jones-160000229.html
Baitball Blogger
(46,775 posts)dlk
(11,588 posts)malaise
(269,237 posts)who were racist to the core for hundreds of years before the United States was a country
stopbush
(24,397 posts)misanthrope
(7,433 posts)to those who know history.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)I don't even enter churches of any kind, but the signs are everywhere.
misanthrope
(7,433 posts)At least some Southern Baptists are now admitting as much in recent years.
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/13/676333342/southern-baptist-seminary-confronts-history-of-slaveholding-and-deep-racism
I also like that the cover of Jones' book doesn't just resemble a church steeple but a KKK hood. Alabama artist William Christenberry made some of the same connections in his sculptures, paintings and drawings.
WhiskeyGrinder
(22,474 posts)dominant religion, as well.