Christians Believe in White Christian Privilege. By Noah Berlatsky

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Christians Believe in White Christian Privilege

Noah Berlatsky

7 - 9 minutes

For a non-Christian, Khyati Y. Joshi's White Christian Privilege: The Illusion of Religious Equality in America is a relief not only because of what it talks about, but because of what it doesn't. The book is a straightforward discussion of the way that Christians benefit from an American culture that sees them and their priorities as a default. Its analysis, though, is almost entirely material, cultural, and logistical—there's little to nothing about Christian doctrine or ethics. It's in sharp, and welcome, contrast to a popular discourse that tends to frame Christian supremacy as either an outgrowth of or in contrast to a Christian essence.

Christian Privilege, Christian Power

Joshi argues that Christians in the US enjoy numerous structural advantages and privileges that are all the more powerful because they generally aren't acknowledged, or even thought about. "Christian beliefs, norms, and practices, and indeed, a Christian way of looking at the world, infuse our society, enjoying countless legal, structural, and cultural supports whose roots reach back to the arrival of Europeans and the founding of the country," she writes.

The work calendar is built around Christian holidays. Public and professional meals cater to Protestant Christians—one of the few religious groups globally who have no dietary restrictions as part of their faith. Norms of dress and appearance in public are aligned with Christian norms that mandate lack of adornment—unless the adornment is a crucifix. And so forth.

All of these subtle and not so subtle cues enforce, and build upon, an assumption that Christianity is part and parcel of US national identity. In theory, Joshi says, the First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion to all, and proscribes state interference in religious practice. In fact, for the entirety of US history, religious minorities have been denied equal standing, and often have been denied citizenship itself.

Most enslaved people were Black non-Christians, and their status as "heathens" was used to justify their disenfranchisement and subjugation. Similarly, indigenous peoples in the Americas were not Christians, and that was explicitly used as the grounds for viewing their land as open for "discovery" and dispossession. The Immigration Act of 1924, which drastically limited immigrants from countries like China, was intended to maintain Christian numerical and cultural superiority.

Christians often see their hegemony as righteous and natural. If it is challenged, they believe they are being discriminated against. They become suspicious and enraged at marginal gains by religious minorities into public space they consider "theirs"—as evidenced for example by the outrage and bigotry that often greets the construction of mosques. Courts also favor Christians, in part by embracing Christian visions of what does and does not count as sacred. The courts have been reluctant to acknowledge the way that Native American religion is connected to sacred places rather than to doctrinal books or beliefs; despite the First Amendment, the government often attempts to build roads or pipelines through native land.

Christianity and Whiteness, the Privilege Twins

Much of this analysis of Christian supremacy will sound familiar; it almost exactly parallels many scholarly studies of white supremacy. You could replace "Christian" and "Christianity" in the last section with "white" and "whiteness" and it would all still scan, whether talking about slavery, indigenous genocide, or immigration restrictions.

Joshi isn't suggesting that Christian privilege should be used as a lens instead of race. Rather, she's arguing that religion and race intertwine—or as she puts it, "Christian privilege in the United States has always been entangled with notions of White supremacy."

People who are not (Protestant) Christian are discriminated against in part because they are perceived as less, or not exactly, white and as not exactly (or not at all) American. By the same token, people who are Black—like, say, Barack Obama—may be seen as foreign and non Christian, even when they are, in plain fact, Christian.

Whiteness and Christianity and national identity are not absolutes, determined by science and/or doctrine. Rather, they're mutually reinforcing and interlocking cultural constructs, which the white Christian majority uses to evaluate, interrogate, and police those it decides are different and/or a potential threat to its power. And the blurring of the whiteness, Christianity, and national identity enables each to be used as an excuse for the others—as with Trump's "Muslim ban" which the Supreme Court found unconstitutional as a ban on Muslims because of the First Amendment, but allowed as a ban on foreign nationals from particular (overwhelmingly Muslim) countries.

Faith in Christian Supremacy

Again, Joshi's discussion of Christian privilege discusses how Christians dominate public space and how they work to perpetuate that domination. She has little to say about the content of the Christian faith. She doesn't talk about Jesus' support for the marginalized, for example, or argue about whether Christian doctrine includes censure of LGBT people. None of that is really relevant. The issue isn't what Christians do or do not believe; the issue is what Christians—as a dominant class—do or don't do.

Reading White Christian Privilege made me realize just how rare it is to see discussions of Christianity that don't assume a predominantly Christian audience—or that don't assume the naturalness and rightness of a predominantly Christian audience. Joshi doesn't even bother to argue about whether Christianity is in essence liberatory or not, which is often a focus of atheist critiques from ex-Christians. The issue doesn't come up, because why would it? Whether Christianity is true is only really of relevance to Christians or people who feel implicated in or determined by Christian truth. For the rest of us, the question isn't what Jesus said about turning the other cheek or smiting. The question is whether his disciples are going to leave us alone or whether they're going to keep thumping us.

Which is to say, discussions of Christianity's social and hegemonic role in the public sphere are themselves very much determined by white Christian privilege—by the assumption that Christian truth claims should be taken seriously, and that Christian self-estimations of themselves should be the predominant frame for any analysis of Christian action and ethics. Christian evangelical support of Trump, for example, is almost always framed as a contradiction or a surprise. Same for Christian antipathy to immigration, or Christian opposition to programs that lift children out of poverty. Public discourse assumes that the Christian thing to do is the moral thing to do, which means that when Christians do bad things, there's a disjunction that needs to be reconciled.

Joshi, though, doesn't try to reconcile, because she doesn't assume Christianity is some sort of default good. Instead, she talks about Christians as a social/cultural group defined, not by belief or ethics or virtue, but by power. The core truth of Christianity (and especially of white Christianity) is not the word of Jesus, or the crucifixion, or the resurrection. The core truth of Christianity is that Christians historically, and still, are in a position to elevate themselves and marginalize everyone else. Whatever else they may believe, if you're not a Christian it's perfectly clear that many White Christians believe first and foremost that they should rule.