From the Jim Crow period to the current day, Christianity has been co-opted to serve white supremacy, alienating many Black leaders and communities.
After emancipation and Reconstruction, which introduced the thirteenth, 14th, and fifteenth Amendments — abolishing slavery, granting citizenship, and increasing voting rights to Black males — a backlash emerged in Jim Crow legal guidelines. These legal guidelines enforced segregation and disenfranchisement within the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, usually justified by Christians citing the Bible. Teams just like the Ku Klux Klan seen themselves as “Bible-believing” Christians, utilizing scripture to uphold white supremacy.
A major instance is a misreading of Genesis 9:20–27, the place Noah curses Ham’s son, Canaan, to be a “servant of servants.” Many white Christians claimed Ham’s descendants have been Black individuals and that this “curse of Ham” sanctioned their subjugation. This interpretation validated slavery and segregation. Figures like George Wallace, a Christian and proud segregationist, and Bob Jones Sr., founding father of Bob Jones College, preached sermons arguing that segregation was divinely ordained.
After Brown v. Board of Training dominated segregation unconstitutional, ministers like Rev. Carey Daniel wrote “God the Unique Segregationist,” opposing integration on biblical grounds. Such acts led many Black Individuals to see Christianity as a “white man’s faith,” used to oppress moderately than liberate.
Conservative white Christians cited Acts 17:26, which states God decided “allotted durations and bounds” for nations, as proof that segregation was divinely mandated. Romans 13:1–7, which urges submission to authorities, was used to insist Black Individuals settle for segregation as God’s will. White supremacy was offered as divine favor, merging whiteness, Christianity, and American id into the “Christian nation” superb. Segregationists resisted integration by calling it a risk, arguing that interracial relationships would foster immorality.
In fashionable occasions, the politics of many white conservative Christians proceed to reflect this historical past of opposition. After the Barack Obama administration, over 80% of white evangelicals backed Donald Trump, viewing him as a “modern-day King Cyrus” chosen to meet God’s objective. His survival of an assassination try solely strengthened this perception. Underneath Trump, conservative Christians pushed to finish Variety, Fairness, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, Crucial Race Idea, and “wokeness,” calling them threats to American values. After Biden’s election, these efforts intensified, culminating in Trump-led reversals of anti-racism insurance policies.
As Black Historical past Month unfolds in 2025, critiques of Christianity by Black leaders who rejected the religion stay related. Their disillusionment with a faith co-opted to keep up white supremacy echoes in right now’s non secular and political panorama.
Marcus Garvey, Stokely Carmichael, Huey Newton, James Baldwin, Elijah Muhammad, and Louis Farrakhan are examples of Black leaders raised in Christian properties who later rejected the religion. Their departures weren’t rejections of morality however critiques of Christianity’s complicity in oppression.
Marcus Garvey
Born in Jamaica in 1887, Marcus Garvey grew up in an Anglican family the place his mom instilled Christian values, and his father emphasised schooling. These influences formed Garvey’s dedication to group. He used Christian rhetoric, likening the African diaspora to Israelites and calling for a “return to Africa” because the Promised Land. Via the Common Negro Enchancment Affiliation (UNIA), he employed biblical themes to advertise unity amongst African-descended individuals. But Garvey condemned Christianity’s function in colonialism, criticizing a religion that promoted submission over resistance. His challenges to “white Christianity” paved the way in which for future leaders to query its function in Black oppression.
Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)
Raised in a Christian family in Trinidad, Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture) grew up with robust group and ethical values. Nonetheless, as he grew to become radicalized, he rejected Christianity, seeing it as a instrument of colonialism and management. As chief of the Scholar Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), he shifted the group’s philosophy from integration to Black self-determination. He popularized the time period “Black Energy,” advocating for international solidarity amongst African-descended individuals. Carmichael criticized Christianity for pacifying the oppressed by specializing in struggling and salvation within the afterlife moderately than justice within the current. Influenced by anti-colonial struggles, he noticed Christianity as a weapon wielded by European powers to dominate Black individuals.
Huey Newton
Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Celebration, was raised in a Christian family in Oakland, California, by a Baptist minister father. Regardless of his non secular upbringing, Newton rejected Christianity as he embraced Marxist and revolutionary ideologies.
The Black Panther Celebration emphasised group service and collective duty, values Newton doubtless inherited from his Christian background. Nonetheless, he critiqued Christianity for perpetuating white supremacy and discouraging resistance. Rejecting the “flip the opposite cheek” philosophy, Newton seen faith as a instrument of management, advocating as a substitute for direct motion and self-defense within the pursuit of justice and liberation.
James Baldwin
Celebrated author and social critic James Baldwin was raised in a Pentecostal family in Harlem. By his teenage years, he had turn out to be a youth preacher, however he later rejected Christianity, seeing it as complicit in systemic racism and oppression.
In works similar to “The Fireplace Subsequent Time” and “Go Inform It on the Mountain,” Baldwin examined how faith upheld white supremacy whereas failing to deal with racial injustice. He argued for a radical reimagining of human relationships primarily based on love and equality, rejecting a religion that prioritized submission over liberation. Baldwin’s departure from Christianity was not a rejection of morality however a refusal to align with a religion that, in his view, did not reside as much as its beliefs.
The critiques of figures like Garvey, Carmichael, Newton, and Baldwin remind us of historic patterns of resistance and backlash. Their voices remind us of the necessity for a religion that liberates moderately than oppresses — a imaginative and prescient of justice and equality that challenges the enduring misuse of Christianity within the service of racial inequality.
Ed Gaskin is Government Director of Better Grove Corridor Fundamental Streets and founding father of Sunday Celebrations.
