Just in time for Easter: The explainer for how Christianity is used to ‘defend white supremacy’

The author’s editors did him no favors by running the article this weekend with the following headline: “On Easter Sunday, Christians must remember how easily and often our faith is used to defend white supremacy. … As a white evangelical in America, I can’t celebrate Easter in 2018 without working to reclaim the concept of redemption.”

NBC News also tweeted a version of the story with a headline that reads, “This Easter, Christians must remember how faith is used to defend white supremacy.”

The story itself misses the mark, but there are some points worth considering.

First, the author, Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove, is not wrong when he claims bad men have used the Christian faith to further their own immoral ends. White supremacists in the United States have, for example, cloaked themselves in the righteousness of Christ’s redemption story to justify their bigotry and crimes, he argues.

“Faith stories have power to catalyze movements for good as well as for evil in our world. Any serious attempt to grapple with American history must acknowledge that faith has played a role on both sides of our major struggles — among the abolitionists and the defenders of slavery in the 19th century; among civil rights activists and segregationists in the 1950s and 1960s,” Wilson-Hartgrove writes.

He is not wrong.

But this is where the story starts to go off the rails: “And what is true about our past is at play in the present: Christianity’s redemption narrative is being deployed again today toward disparate visions of what kind of nation America should become. As a white evangelical in this land, I can’t celebrate Easter in 2018 without working to reclaim the concept of redemption from the forces that attempt to use my faith and its founding stories to defend white supremacy.”

Oh boy.

The rest of the article goes on to argue that President Trump and his supporters are not that far off from the murderous white Southerners of the Reconstruction era.

“Faith didn’t moderate white evangelicals’ desire to hold onto political power in 2016; it fueled their resolve to maintain control by any means necessary,” he wrote, comparing them to a band of murderous racists from 145 years ago.

“We who believe in love and justice in America this Easter must reclaim redemption from those who would use it to prop up white nationalism and bigotry,” he concludes. “To fail to do so … is to reject the life and witness of the resurrected Jesus, whom Christians worship today.”

One problem here is that the author stumbles when it comes to the issue of sorting out those who live faithfully by Christian doctrine and those who merely claim the mantle as a means to an end. The author seems to argue that Christianity can be weaponized for immoral purposes, but that’s a simplistic view. Men pervert faith for their own gain, but that’s not “Christianity” per se. That’s just a confidence scam. To claim that Christianity is used for wrong is to misunderstand what Christianity teaches. People lie; people are misled. That’s not a weaponized “Christianity.” That’s human nature.

Also, Wilson-Hartgrove’s op-ed feels a bit historically tone deaf. To approach the white supremacist who claims to be a Christian as if he were a new phenomenon is to reveal a certain amount of historical ignorance. Religiosity has been abused and perverted for centuries by fanatical partisans and supposed faith leaders. In fact, there’s a great deal in the Bible about both groups and how neither one truly grasps or cares for faith. You can find these mentions in the parts of the Bible that deal with Christ’s death.

Perhaps for next Easter Sunday, certain Christians should give these passages a closer reading.