We've Reached the End of White Christian America . . . about time.

The Church Community I Grew Up In - 1880s - South Dakota

Sometimes a post just begs for an edit, or more aptly for this one, a total do over.  I stand by everything I said in the original post - sometimes it just takes me three times as many words and examples to say what I could say in a few.  So here goes . . .

White Christianity was the hub of the spoke that dehumanized me as a child.  Sure - I loved the music, what little healthy community there was, and the introduction to the thought that there was something larger than myself that I was connected to.  Problem was, I figured out, so too were the perps that used Christianity to justify and blame me for what was done to me.

While it may have been a fluke of the particular church I attended, I had other churches where  misogynistic ideas about women, the sinfulness of homosexuals, the otherness of people who did not look like us, and the admonishment of people who were living with loss, violence, or trauma as deserving of horrid fates, was upheld and reinforced by clergy and leaders alike.

Debased as I was, I felt so lucky to have been born a Christian, a white Christian. Missionaries would come and speak to our Sunday school.  We gladly gave them our coins so they could continue their work.  These self-sacrificing people would relay their tearful tales of finding brown people, that's what they called them, in Africa and Asia who had never heard of Christ! They'd dab their eyes with their lace and linen kerchiefs as they showed slide after slide, black and white photos of indigenous people in far off places . . . . dressed in our Sunday attire: dresses, suits, hats, gloves, and purses. I thought this odd, as usually the missionaries were donning pieces of the garb they talked these converts out of.

I identified closely with the people in the slides, shared their "deer in the headlights" startled expression listening to the missionaries talk.  I was happy these souls in the pictures would be in heaven one day, but I wondered if us white folks from South Dakota would accept them any better than we were accepting the indigenous people right here in our own state? I had doubts about whether we could actually live the song: red or yellow, black or white, they are precious in his sight.   I liked the idea of all people equal in value, equal in preciousness, but conversations I overheard the adults having as they stood outside the church, smoking and visiting, each Sunday morning informed me otherwise.

Now that I am adult I understand the complexities of relationships and cultural norms and practises. I have healed from most of the perverted experiences of growing up white Christian.  I know some white Christian communities are doing better jobs with gender equality, acceptance of same sex marriage, misogyny, the environment, and social programs. That does not mean they will not continue to lose their relevancy at mach speed.

Until white Christians see themselves as equals to and not superior over all other people on the planet, they will continue to decline - and they should.

Sometimes I write little plays in my mind.  There's one that comes back every so often where Jesus H. Christ comes back to earth.  He's the parent who had to step out for awhile and left his teenage kids in charge of the house and each other while he was out. "Be nice to each other, no fighting, help each other, don't hurt anyone," he calls down as he ascends to another dimensional plane.

Now here he is, 2000 years later, gob smacked when seeing what the teens-turned-adults have done.  He keeps muttering, "In my name?  My name's on that?  You threatened them in my name?" as each child representing the varied systems they call Christianity - Protestant, Catholic, Fundamental, etc. - explain and try to justify what happened to the world they were left to care for. No one offers an apology or admits guilt.  They stomp off to continue doing their own thing when Jesus H. Christ "doesn't understand" them.  The closing scene is JHC reading cease and desist letters from his children's attorneys who accuse him of infringing on their ability to run their business as usual since his return.  They demand he call his new gospel of unconditional love and compassion something other than Christianity.

The name of this playlet is "Jesus Wept."

"The Atlantic" - end of White Christianity