WHITE EVANGELICAL RACISM: THE POLITICS of MORALITY in AMERICA (audiobook) by Anthea Butler

 















Published by Tantor Audio in 2021.
Read by Allyson Johnson.
Duration: 3 hours, 44 minutes.
Unabridged.

This book takes a short look at how the people that refer to themselves as Evangelicals and their forebears have dealt with race over time.

An interracial marriage protest. The signs
claim that interracial marriage is Communist
and a sign of the anti-Christ.
The book starts with the justifications that religious leaders used to defend slavery. After the Civil War, they modified those justifications slightly to defend the Jim Crow system. Butler contends that the Evangelical movements in the 1900's were worried about things like Communism, but it usually had a racial overtone to it - like when Martin Luther King was accused of spreading Communism to Black communities all over the country when he was just asking for the rights that White Americans already had.

The heart of her book is about Billy Graham and what she calls out as a wishy-washy approach to racism. I am a bit more forgiving of Billy Graham because there was no model in American history for true racial equality, including (and sadly) in the church. Graham probably felt like he was taking giant steps, but nowadays he was clearly taking baby steps. What if he had taken bigger steps? Would he have lost his place as America's Evangelist or would he have moved the country forward?

I have no qualms with her look at Trump Era White Evangelicals. She calls out the hypocrisy correctly (including well-deserved criticism of Billy Graham's son Franklin Graham.)

However, I am only going to give this book 3 stars out of 5. Not because it is incorrect and not because it is not well-written. It is simply too short and does not include a wide enough net in its discussion. For example, women's rights are not discussed in any meaningful way.

The reason I am giving it 3 stars is because this topic has already been dealt with better and more extensively in the book JESUS and JOHN WAYNE: HOW WHITE EVANGELICALS CORRUPTED a FAITH and FRACTURED a NATION by Kristen Kobes du Mez.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here WHITE EVANGELICAL RACISM: THE POLITICS of MORALITY in AMERICA by Anthea Butler.

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