Decolonizing Christianity
Becoming Badass Believers
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- £20.99
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- £20.99
Publisher Description
"How curiously different is this white God from the one preached by Jesus who understood faithfulness by how we treat the hungry and thirsty, the naked and alien, the incarcerated and infirm. This white God of empire may be appropriate for global conquerors who benefit from all that has been stolen and through the labor of all those defined as inferior; but such a deity can never be the God of the conquered."
Echoing James Cone's 1970 assertion that white Christianity is a satanic heresy, Miguel De La Torre argues that whiteness has desecrated the message of Jesus. In a scathing indictment, he describes how white American Christians have aligned themselves with the oppressors who subjugate the "least of these"—those who have been systemically marginalized because of their race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status—and, in overwhelming numbers, elected and supported an antichrist as president who has brought the bigotry ingrained in American society out into the open.
With this follow-up to his earlier Burying White Privilege, De La Torre prophetically outlines how we need to decolonize Christianity and reclaim its revolutionary, badass message. Timid white liberalism is not the answer for De La Torre—only another form of complicity. Working from the parable of the sheep and the goats in the Gospel of Matthew, he calls for unapologetic solidarity with the sheep and an unequivocal rejection of the false, idolatrous Christianity of whiteness.
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De La Torre (Reading the Bible from the Margins), professor of social ethics at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, argues in this incisive analysis that the white supremacist tradition in the Protestant church must be recognized in order for those who have been disenfranchised to understand the inherent lies within these "unjust social structures" and seek ways to move forward. Insisting on white Christianity's inextricable ties to and foundations in genocide, racism, and sexism, the author aims to show how Christianity has been used as a "mask" to cover "death-dealing policies" and to "demonstrate how dispossessed communities have believed the lie of white supremacy." To support his arguments, De La Torre cites America's history of slavery and imperialism ("a white nation built on stolen land, with stolen labor, using stolen resources"), as well as Christianity's complicity in justifying both. Readers should not pick this up looking for fixes; when De La Torre does discuss making change, he focuses on the fundamentals: "Provide food for those who are hungry, give clean water to those who are thirsty… bring justice to the incarcerated, and provide medicine to the infirm." These basic tenets that Christ gave to his followers are, for De La Torre, the key points that white supremacist Christianity forgets. While De La Torre's premise will likely make some bristle, Christians within a Protestant evangelical tradition may find it eye-opening.
