White supremacy in American Christianity

Christianity isn’t inherently white supremacist. But Christian faith in America has been interpreted in a way that upholds the tenets of white supremacy, which is built on 18th and 19th century Western hegemonic values. These cultural values, which have been intertwined into mainline American Christianity, protect and uphold the system of white supremacy.

“All men are created equal,” claims the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration was written while black people were enslaved. It also excluded women. The belief behind this statement is that white people (particularly white men) are superior and should dominate society. Such hierarchy is mirrored in the church.

Racism goes hand-in-hand with capitalism: it limits people economically based on phenotype. Capitalism is built upon the concept of the American Dream, which presumes that non-white Americans have more social mobility than the evidence suggests they actually do. And capitalism presumes a strong individualism, in which resources belong to whoever grabs them most vehemently. America’s early history includes the stealing of land from Native Americans and the theft of labor from enslaved Africans. Both accumulated wealth for white Americans, which was concretized by individualism and often validated by the church.