Anthea Butler: White Evangelical Racism

Sam Goldman interviews Anthea Butler, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, columnist for MSNBC and author of a new book, White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America. Order her book here and follow Dr. Butler via her website antheabutler.com or on Twitter at @AntheaButler.

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Transcription:

Episode 63 6/13/21

Anthea Butler 00:00

Evangelicals like authority and they like authoritarian power. People think of them as moral agents in society. They’re not. They’re agents of power who use morality in society. They’re playing a role of voter suppression. They’re playing a role in the pushback against critical race theory. All of these things come together to make for a fascist kind of movement. Most people don’t understand how much this could up-end a democracy. Some of their theologies and beliefs will help bring in fascism if we are not careful.

Sam Goldman 00:51

Welcome to Episode 63 of the Refuse Fascism podcast, a podcast brought to you by volunteers with Refuse Fascism. I’m Sam Goldman, one of those volunteers and host of the show. Today, we’re sharing an interview with Anthea Butler, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, columnist for MSNBC, and author of a new book, White Evangelical Racism, the Politics of Morality in America. This conversation is extremely timely coming as a spate of white supremacist education laws are being discussed and enacted across this country. It matters whether the history and present reality of racist oppression in this country is taught in schools at all levels. And yet, the fascist movement is succeeding in banning, “critical race theory” from curriculums without even defining what that means. This is leading to canceled classes, and a spreading chill as school administrators look to act in line with these laws by avoiding all discussion of the core lessons of US history, slavery, genocide, and the lasting experiences of oppression experienced by descendants of enslaved people, and other marginalized groups. This will be the topic of our next episode. So you’re gonna want to tune in next week. They’re agents of power who use morality in society.

I want to take a moment and give a shout out to the educators in 22 cities who joined protests June 12, against this fascist assault, and pledged to teach the truth. Meanwhile, we continue to grapple with the effects of the Trump years and how the fascist movement diffused, is now interacting with a population increasingly unwilling to tolerate racism and oppression, especially in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests of the past year. This week, for example, the Southern Baptist Church is holding their national convention. Known as the denomination that splintered from the rest of the Baptists in order to uphold slavery, their current president, while still very conservative, publicly called on followers to declare Black Lives Matter last summer. This sort of simple acknowledgement that systematic racial oppression is real and morally wrong, was apparently just too much for the fascists in the group, who are mobilizing to attend the meeting this week with a goal of “taking the ship” away from leaders like this. This weekend, a section of these Christian fascists gathered in a suburb of Dallas to rally against so called “wokeness.” One of these leaders, Pastor Owen Strachan with the Family Research Council, was quoted as saying “the elections were stolen from us. We will call upon the name of our God, and He will vindicate us.” Making sense of all this, understanding how and why the bulk of white evangelicals supported Trump and continue to support Trump and the fascist cause he represents is very hard to do without diving into the history of this country.

Now, my interview with Dr. Butler. It’s an honor to welcome Dr. Anthea Butler, Associate Professor of Religious and Africana Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Women in the Church of God and Christ Making a Sanctified World. Dr. Butler is a leading historian and public commentator on the intersection of religion and politics. I’ve been wanting to discuss Dr. Butler’s latest book White Evangelical Racism since it came out. The thesis of her book is encapsulated in this quote from her introduction, “Racism is a feature, not a bug of American evangelicalism.” This book chronicles American history since slavery, covering the numerous ways that white evangelicals have contributed, whether through active collaboration, such as their role in lynchings, or facilitated through complicity in the face of violence to the white supremacy that dominates and defines American life. I want to welcome, Dr. Butler/ Thank you so much for chatting with us.

Anthea Butler 05:41

Thanks for having me.

Sam Goldman 05:43

I want to start with how you are approaching white evangelicalism. Christianity is a very broad subject with a long diverse history, and many different strands in the present. And I’m hoping you can tell our listeners some of the most important features or events that mark and shape the white evangelical movement that you delve into, in this book.

Anthea Butler 06:08

Well, that would usually take a semester long class. But since we don’t have a semester, I’m going to try to make it very simple for you. There’s Protestantism as you know, which is not Catholicism. Evangelicals are a subset of Protestantism. They are a subset of Protestantism, depending on how they want to look at themselves and how they tell their stories. But I’m going to tell the story my way because I’m a historian. In the latter part of the 18th century into the 19th century with revivalism in the United States. You know, evangelicals today as people like Billy Graham, who one author said that an evangelical is anybody who likes Billy Graham. You know them as a political force and as a religious force. Evangelicalism can be something like the Southern Baptist, or non-denominational, big giant, mega church. They can be Calvinist. They can be a lot of different things. And so it’s messy. But I think for the purposes of my book, I’m talking about evangelicalism in two ways, one, as a series of religious groups that are Protestant in the United States that have particular kinds of belief systems, and then second, a religious group that also votes highly Republican, and is highly partisan, and sees themselves as a way in which the nation could be better by legislating morality.

Sam Goldman 07:27

One thing that I found really clarifying in your book, one of the many things, and I’m just going to read this quote, because I think it’s helpful, “Evangelicalism is not a simply religious group at all, but a nationalistic political movement, whose purpose is to support the hegemony of white Christian men over and against the flourishing of others.” You go on to say that it is an Americanized Christianity born in the context of the white Christian slaveholder. It’s sanctified and justified segregation, violence and racial prescription.” It really just gets right to the heart of the matter. And I’m wondering what’s the most common myth about white evangelicalism as a movement — not as individual people holding ideas — that you hope to dispel?

Anthea Butler 08:12

I hope to dispel the fact that people think of them as moral agents in society. They’re not. They’re agents of power, who use morality in society as a way to get what they want, politically and socially. And I think that’s the most important thing. For many people, you see evangelicals on television talking about religious freedom or talking about, “we don’t believe in abortion, we’re pro-life” and all these things. These are not just moral beliefs, they are political beliefs. And if you understand them as political beliefs that are being used and deployed to control a narrative to gain power, to gain authority, then it makes a lot more sense to you. And it makes a lot more sense about the kinds of things that people have been wringing their hands about, like, why so many evangelicals support Donald Trump. Well, duh, it’s not about Donald Trump. Donald Trump gave them everything they wanted. And I think that’s really important to sort of understand in the scheme of things. It’s basically don’t get snowed by all the things that they say about themselves. What they do is more important.

Sam Goldman 09:13

Yeah, I think that we have seen that perhaps more starkly than ever in the past five years. I mean, people were dumbfounded by how those who profess to be “pro-life” could not only condone but celebrate the ripping of babies out of their mother’s arms through the previous regime’s child separation policy. And I think that understanding this, the centrality both of white supremacy and power to this evangelical movement is really key. One thing that we’ve talked about on this show with quite a few guests from different perspectives, and you pointed out in your book as well, is that evangelicals are declining in numbers, yet they wield enormous political power. Why is this?

Anthea Butler 10:02

Because they’ve been really well organized. And you don’t have to have numbers to wield power. What you do have to have is a great infrastructure of organization. So if you think about organizations like Focus on the Family, Family Research Council, American Family Association, and a host of others that fundraise and lobby in Washington and do all these things, this is how they achieve power. Because they’ve been able to do that through lobbying, through pushing legislation, through working in the local, state and national level. And I think what’s really important for your listeners to understand is while you think that this is just churches, these churches work in concert with other kinds of organizations to get what they believe their message is out. And I think that’s an important part of this. And there’s the old phrase “follow the money.” Nobody’s really following evangelical money. And you need to follow evangelical money to figure out how these organizations, and especially rich donors, are influencing our political system.

Sam Goldman 10:57

It really is mind-boggling in some ways how effective their organizing is. Not just schools. Some people are able to say, “Oh, they don’t just have churches, they have schools.” But they have a whole media apparatus. It’s a tremendous amount of power there. I wanted to shift more to the recent history, the January 6 coup attempt. It began with a prayer by Trump’s spiritual advisor, Paula White, calling to God to in her words, “let every adversary against democracy, against freedom, against life, against liberty, against justice, against peace against righteousness be overturned right now in the name of Jesus.” Then Trump on that stage shortly after calling people to fight like hell, and hours later they did. They tore through the Capitol, alongside white supremacist, fascist street fighters, Proud Boys, Three Percenters, etc. White men wearing Jesus t-shirts erected giant crosses, waved cross-emblazoned flags, screamed they were doing it in the name of God and Christ as they climbed the walls, broke windows, beat and killed police officers. And once inside the Senate, they raised their arms in prayer for allowing, again, their words not mine, the “United States to be reborn.” Sarah Posner and others have documented as well as we have on the show the instrumental role that Christian fascists, my words, played in this coup attempt. I’m wondering how and why you think it is that we’re in a situation in which people who seize the capital, were doing it in the name of religion, and in particular, in the name of Christianity?

Anthea Butler 12:39

They really believe God called them to do this. And this has been something that’s been building for a long time. I mean, I think that people thought this was a surprise. It really wasn’t, because lots of churches and organizations were sort of rolling up to this. And if you couple this with the “stop the steal” language about this, they thought that they were on a holy quest, and God called them to do this. But even more importantly than that, this is about Christian nationalism. And it’s about a nationalism that’s existed for a long time. And I think that it’s been to our detriment as a public that we have not paid attention to the ways in which violence and nationalism and patriotism have come together to make this kind of a very potent stew in the hands of someone like Donald Trump. I mean, when you can say that Donald Trump was, as a lot of people said, “God’s man,” that he was King Cyrus, he was the one that was appointed. And then you have that man who they think is God’s man saying that the election is stolen? Well, of course, people are going to go out there and fight for him and do what they want. But I think it’s a deeper problem about evangelicalism. That deeper problem is, is that in the quest for power and authority in this country, that they have lost their way. And they’ve lost their way in terms of trying to think of themselves as religious actors. And now they’re religio-political actors who have set themselves up against the government. And that’s really important because they think God is more important than the government. Okay. So if you understand what they were doing on January 6, they really believe that God called them to take down the Capitol, and that they wanted to establish God’s government and God’s government’s representative was Donald Trump. And that’s hard for a lot of people understand, but I think you need to understand it, and be fearful and mindful of the fact that although January 6 failed, you still have a lot of people out here who embrace that belief.

Sam Goldman 14:32

It’s incredibly ominous that that continues to assert itself. I learned so much from your book around racial reconciliation, of the illusion of it, and connected to it, that patriotism and the role that taking up being an American and defining what being American was something that was really honed and developed within the white evangelical movement. This movement has a really peculiar view in my opinion of the individual. They view slavery as a sin, but the slave master as innocent. And it’s really hard for my brain to do the gymnastics that they’re able to do. They imbue law enforcement with all that infallibility, blame those who are beaten or murdered. They blame them for their own suffering, even their own death. And peoples’ place in life is never, it seems, due to any oppressive class or social forces, but their individual worthiness, or whether they’re religious enough. And while doing this, they simultaneously project all these notions into an almost pathological anti-communism with delusional notions of communism as almost an unforgivable slavery, where evil people have all the power. And I was wondering if there’s a common thread there.

Anthea Butler 15:58

I think the common thread is there’s always an enemy, right? And part of it is that the enemy is different things. Theologically, they’re able to do the gymnastics. But if you could support slavery, you could support other kinds of things that are invasive. You can support prison, you can support all these other things that maybe aren’t in the Gospel, so to speak, but you can support them in terms of two things. One is what you think hierarchy is, and then secondarily what you think the world should run like. And what I mean by that is, your worldview is a worldview that men should be running everything, and that white men are the ones who run everything. That’s the way you’ve grown up and if what you see is that men are superior to women, and superior to other people who don’t look white, then you have this issue. I think that becomes really important. Putting communism in there is a little bit different, though, because for the people in the 1950s, especially Billy Graham, communism was seen as a religion. And I think that people sort of miss that now, because it’s so far away from our understanding of it. Essentially, they thought communism was going to supplant Christianity, and that they had to fight it because it was an atheistic religion. And so for them, that became a very big fight. It’s different than a racial one. But the reason why race gets clicked into this is because anybody who’s fighting against Jim Crow, who’s looking for civil rights, they got called communists. And so that’s where we make this racialized connection between slavery and the 1950s. And all of this and the things about law and order, because these are the people who want to usurp the order of things that are happening that would benefit other people.

Sam Goldman 17:40

Do you see some of that reasserting itself?

Anthea Butler 17:43

Yeah, definitely. I mean, I see it in terms of how people think about race and talking about race and racism in this country. I see that in the ways in which people don’t want the January 6 incident investigated. And there’s a lot of ways you can you can see this playing out in American society right now.

Sam Goldman 18:01

Some commentators have said, and I think that this was in The Atlantic a few days ago, that Trump tarnished the white evangelical movement. They didn’t say why, but that evangelicals needed to move away from Trump.

Anthea Butler 18:17

If they move away from Trump it’s going to stop everything? I’m like dudes, you were already there before Trump got here! And that’s the whole point of this book, really, in a nutshell. This book does not have a lot about Donald Trump in it at all, if you notice, and that was done on purpose, because I felt as though the question that people were asking is why did they go after Donald Trump? That’s not the question. The question is, why have they always been this way? And so if you understand it, from a historical perspective, then coming to Trump is just the natural end to what evangelicals have been doing for the last 200 plus years. This is not some kind of surprise. Moving away from Trump doesn’t help the situation because the situation is already dire for them. It’s going to take a lot more than just move away and saying “we’re not going to date you anymore,” to make it work out.

Sam Goldman 19:03

And the way that it’s even written about is this love affair-like language. And one of the things that struck me as really clear, in the very limited remarks you made about Trump, is that he was perfectly suited to be their champion, and that this is who they were all along. They think they were transformed by the process, whether they wanted to be or not, they were transformed as a movement. They were given more power than they ever had to wield. And not only was society at large transformed by the power that they held, but I think that as a movement, they were too. I was wondering whether you see their unwavering allegiance to Trump changing any time soon? And when I say to Trump, I should say to Trumpism, to those ideals.

Anthea Butler 19:47

I don’t see that changing. I think I see that hardening actually, in a way. I mean, now that he’s not there. Part of it has to do with their own ideas about themselves and the persecution complex. They will always see themselves as a persecuted minority. So therefore, it doesn’t matter whether they move away from Trump or not, they’re always going to be a persecuted minority that they believe because of who they are. Because of their beliefs in God that they should have special treatment, that they should be acceded to in society, that they should have a special place, that they are the ones who are holding up the nation because of their prayers, because of their goodness, because of their support. I know it’s really difficult for people to understand who are outside of this, but that’s not going to change anything whether Trump is there or not. Now, the issue becomes, is there some other charismatic figure that arises that can grab them better than Trump? And that could be possible. But I think right now, I don’t see a move away from Trump changing anything about them, nor will it change the way they believe about their place in the nation’s history.

Sam Goldman 20:49

I’m wondering how they are exerting their power? Are they losing influence? Or do you see them exerting their power in different ways now that they don’t have their man in the White House? Do you see them focusing on certain things that we should be paying attention to? Are they playing a role in this massive voter suppression?

Anthea Butler 21:12

They’re playing a role of voter suppression. They’re playing a role in the pushback against critical race theory, using that as this sort of canard to get into the educational system again. You could see it in terms of the decrease in abortion rights. I mean, it is a misnomer, and I really want to stress this very clearly, to think about this as a one-man led movement. There are many heads to the hydra. And the hydra is on a local, state, national level. What people don’t understand is that, you know, evangelicals are very organized. They’re organized with the Republican Party politically. We have leaders like Greg Abbott in Texas, and Ron DeSantis in Florida and the Georgia governor. All these guys are close to evangelical Christianity, moving with them, bringing these people into positions of power they are working with and in tandem with that. And so all the things you see, whether that’s voter suppression, reproductive rights, state educational rights, all these kinds of things are the pushback against something as simple as giving unemployment benefits, taking care of people during a pandemic, and making sure they get everything. This is what they’re involved in. And I really think that it is to the journalists’ detriment, and to our detriment to think that this is just about Trump, because it’s not.

Sam Goldman 22:26

I wanted to close with giving you an opportunity to touch on anything that we didn’t cover that you think listeners need to walk away with, especially those who are interested in, as our podcast says, refusing fascism.

Anthea Butler 22:41

Let me just say, I think that evangelicals like authority, and they like authoritarian power, and so if you are listening to Refuse Fascism, and you’re trying to understand what this is, it’s not that evangelicals are bad people. It’s just that some of their theologies and beliefs and the people who have upheld, the kinds of systems that they are structured around, will help bring in fascism, if we are not careful. The whole idea that women are supposed to be subservient to men, that women can only be in certain kinds of roles because of complementarianism. (That’s a whole other kind of thing we’d have to talk about later.) The ways in which they racialized things, the ways in which they have sacralized the flag…all of these things come together to make for a fascist kind of movement.

I think that a lot of people would like to think that well, America is never going to go there. Because you know, this didn’t happen in Weimar Germany, this was very different. The German situation was very different than the American situation. But what we have is a ready-made system that is understandable and intelligible to everyone. But most people don’t understand how deeply the rot goes, and how much this could up-end a democracy. And I think that’s really important. So the things that you see now in terms of discussions about critical race theory and all that. On the one hand, these are serious, but on the other hand, it’s a way in which to get people up in arms about something so that you get them mobilized against everything. That’s the whole point: that if you have enough of an aggrieved populace, of evangelicals, they are going to push back against everything. And so this naiveté of which they don’t want to deal with our history in America is a way for them to say, oh, we’re just going to push back against The 1619 Project. Oh, you hate America. Oh, you do this? Oh, you do that. And that’s how people begin to get vilified and are persecuted.

Sam Goldman 24:33

Dr. Butler, thank you so much for sharing your time, your expertise, and perspective with us. I encourage everyone to support an independent bookstore and get your copy of White Evangelical Racism, the Politics of Morality. It’s also available as an e-book and as an audio book. You can check out Dr. Butler at AntheaButler.com or on Twitter @AntheaButler. Thanks for listening to Refuse Fascism.

As regular listeners know, Refuse Fascism as an organization has been arguing since before Trump was inaugurated that it would take the people to stop fascism. Here we are months after the attempted insurrection on January 6, and none of the political leaders of that action have been charged with any crimes; only their thugs were caught on the grounds of the Capitol. We also learned this week that Trump’s DOJ seized records from Apple for data of House Intelligence Committee members, their aides and family, including a minor, and placed a gag order on Apple preventing them from informing those who had data shared. Biden’s DOJ has not investigated Trump or any of his henchmen for any of the assaults on democracy. But as we learned this week, the DOJ is defending Trump against E. Jean Caroll’s defamation lawsuit, and his argument that he was acting in his official capacity as President when he denied her rape accusations by saying she “wasn’t his type.” Biden’s administration is more focused on stability than justice.

The lesson we must learn, before it’s too late, is that the fascists don’t care about stability, and they won’t meet Biden in the middle. They are still itching for power, and determined to get their way no matter what, fueled by revenge. It continues to be up to us to Refuse Fascism. Thanks again for listening rating and reviewing and sharing the show. Thanks also for donating and showing that you want to see us continue to provide these conversations on a weekly basis. You can pitch in at RefuseFascism.org or Venmo @Refuse-Fascism. As always, we want to hear from you. Your thoughts on this episode questions you have topics you want covered? Guess you want to hear from reach me on twitter at SamBGoldman. Email [email protected] or leave us a message (917) 426 7582 or hit the button on anchor.fm/refuse-fascism. You might even hear yourself on the next episode. Thanks as always to Richie Marini and Lina Thorne for helping produce the show. In the name of humanity, we refuse to accept a fascist America.