Who said god is a white racist

The legacy of this unholy union still lives in the DNA of white Christianity today — and not just among white evangelical Protestants in the South, but also among white mainline Protestants in the Midwest and white Catholics in the Northeast.

For more than two decades, I've studied the attitudes of religiously affiliated Americans across the country. And year over year, in question after question in public opinion polls, a clear pattern has emerged: White Christians are consistently more likely than whites who are religiously unaffiliated to deny the existence of structural racism.

For example, surveys conducted by PRRI in found that white Christians — including evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics — are nearly twice as likely as religiously unaffiliated whites to say the killings of Black men by police are isolated incidents rather than part of a pattern of how police treat African Americans.

And white Christians are about 30 percentage points more likely to say monuments to Confederate soldiers are symbols of Southern pride rather than symbols of racism. White Christians are also about 20 percentage points more likely to disagree with this statement: "Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for Blacks to work their way out of the lower class. As a white Christian who was raised Southern Baptist and shaped by a denominational college and seminary, it pains me to see these patterns in the data.

Even worse, these questions only hint at the magnitude of the problem. To determine the breadth of these attitudes, I created a "Racism Index," a measure consisting of 15 questions designed to get beyond personal biases and include perceptions of structural injustice.

These questions included the three above, as well as questions about the treatment of African Americans in the criminal justice system and general perceptions of race, racism and racial discrimination. Even at a glance, the Racism Index reveals a clear distinction. Compared to nonreligious whites, white Christians register higher median scores on the Racism Index, and the differences among white Christian subgroups are largely differences of degree rather than kind.

Not surprisingly, given their concentration in the South, white evangelical Protestants have the highest median score 0. But it is a mistake to see this as merely a Southern or an evangelical problem.

The median scores of white Catholics 0. Notably, the median score for each white Christian subgroup is significantly above the median scores of the general population 0. This disparity in attitudes about systemic racism between white Christians and whites who claim no religious affiliation is important evidence that the common — and catalyzing — denominator here is religious identity.

This consistent perception gap was the central research finding that launched the work on my new book, " White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity ," out on Tuesday. When confronted with unsettling results such as these, many of my fellow white Christians tend to explain them away with two objections. First, they assert that it is not white Christian identity itself but other intervening variables that account for such correlations.

Second, they argue that even if white Christian identity is implicated, the results are muddied by the inclusion of people who have no real connection to actual churches, folks who are "Christian in name only. Sign up for our newsletter Get our newsletter, Dear Penn , delivered to your inbox every weekday morning.

In September, she received criticism for a tweet linking a movie to the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi and saying that the filmmaker should be put in jail for inciting the attack. Dear Penn Stay plugged into Penn with this daily newsletter rounding up all of the top headlines from top headlines from the DP, 34th Street, and Under the Button.

Sign up ». The Toast 34th Street Magazine's "Toast" to dear old Penn is a Sunday morning newsletter with the latest on Penn's campus culture and arts scene. Penn, Unbuttoned "Penn, Unbuttoned" is Penn's only intentionally satirical newsletter, giving you your weekly dose of comedy from Under the Button. The Weekly Roundup The week's top stories from the DP and beyond, meticulously curated for parents and alumni, and delivered into your inbox every Sunday morning.

It is, however, important to understand that giving a man his due may often mean giving him special treatment.

To misremember King in such a way as to erase his thought in a document released on the day on which our nation honors King's own work — this, in addition to the above — is why the white racist God of the " Report" is, and clearly remains, so dangerous to the Christian thought. Craig A. Ford Jr. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin. He writes at the intersection of queer theory, critical race theory, and the Catholic moral tradition.

Follow him on Twitter: cfordjr. Send your thoughts and reactions to Letters to the Editor. Learn more here. Join now. We must reject the white racist God of the ' Report' Feb 4, Washington Delaware c. The conclusion of the new document presents this perspective in an especially moving way: America's founding principles are true not because any generation — including our own — has lived them perfectly, but because they are based upon the eternal truths of the human condition ….

Enter your email address to receive free newsletters from NCR. Email address. Join the Conversation Send your thoughts and reactions to Letters to the Editor.

Commentary We must reject the white racist God of the ' Report'. Most Recent Vatican financial reform efforts continue amid scandals and deficit Nov 12,