Rusty Hawkins on Why ‘Color-Blind’ Christianity Still Harms Racial Justice

In 1954, white Southern churches declared that school integration “defied God’s design.” Seven decades later, many of those congregations champion “color-blindness” instead. What changed—and what hasn’t? Historian Rusty Hawkins (Indiana Wesleyan University), co-editor of The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy, joins Faithful Politics to trace the theological through-line from Jim Crow sermons to modern debates over CRT and DEI. Hawkins explains how pastors and laypeople alike used Scripture to sanctify segregation, then re-branded the same resistance as a fight for “quality education” and “parental choice.” He also argues that today’s church can still become a force for racial reconciliation—if it learns from the prophetic witness of the Black church and rejects power for service. Whether you’re a pastor, activist, or history buff, this conversation equips you with the receipts—and the hope—to confront racism’s religious roots.

Guest Bio
Rusty Hawkins is Associate Professor of History at Indiana Wesleyan University, specializing in American religion and race. He co-edited the award-winning The Bible Told Them So and is currently writing a religious biography of Alabama Governor George Wallace. Hawkins’s scholarship appears in Christianity Today, the Journal of Southern Religion, and other outlets, making him a leading voice on how evangelical theology has shaped—and been shaped by—America’s color line.

Transcript

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Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. If you're watching on a YouTube channel, we're so glad to have you. I am your political host, Will Wright, and joined by my trusty sidekick, Pastor Josh Bertram. How's it going, Josh? And joining us this week is Rusty Hawkins. He is a historian of American religion and race, and also a professor at Indiana Wesleyan University. He's a co-editor of the powerful and timely book, The Bible Told Them So. Wait. I got the so wrong. The Bible told them so, colon, Southern evangelicals fought to preserve white supremacy, which is probably one of the best books I've read about this topic um in this period, in this state. mean, it's just so, I'm going to give you more acolytes here in a second, but welcome to the show, Rusty. Thanks Will and thanks Josh, for having me. I appreciate the invitation. Yeah. And I want to just kind of give you a bit of the origins of how I came about your book. Because most people that we talk to on the show about their books, their publishers will reach out to us. uh And for the most part, we really do try to read every single book that comes across our desk that gets into us. Sometimes we don't get a chance to read them as indefinitely or as indefinitely as in depth as we would like. But we do open them up and we flip through the pages. That said, ah the past couple of weeks, I've been on this kick of rereading books I didn't get a chance to read very often. So I was reading Anthea Butler's book, White Evangelical Racism, we had her on the show. uh Robbie Jones book, ah The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy, I think is what it's called. ah And there was a period where I didn't have another book to read. And I'm like, why not? I'm going to read. I'm just going to find a book. So I went on like Apple Books, was looking for books kind of in the genre, and I came across your book. And I'm like, OK. Knew nothing about you. Knew nothing about the book. Read it. And I swear, anyone that's been listening to our show knows I've been recommending it to every single person that has been on. Like, have you read Rusty Hawkins book? So I just I'm just so thankful that you decided to come on the show because now I can actually talk to you because I've read your book from cover to cover So tell me why did you write this book? Well, thanks for that. mean, that was a thanks for the glowing recommendation. Thanks for telling people. um And I got to say that that's kind of I'm glad to hear that because that's really the reason I wrote that the book was for folks like you um and for folks like Josh and kind of the folks at your church. um Like a lot of. Historians of uh American history. I wrote this book in large part to try to make sense of my own autobiographical background, so uh I Grew up evangelical. I still identify as an evangelical Christian with a lot of caveats because I don't I mean the term has become so um politicized recently that that while I still identify as an evangelical Christian I was like, but let me tell you what that doesn't mean but so um evangelical is like the new thunderbolts with the asterisk, right? That's right. But for me that just meant I grew up um in an environment with, know, like James Dobson was on the radio and Salty the Singing Songbook was part of my repertoire growing up. And I mean, I just kind of grew up in that subculture. um And I was coming of age at a time when uh race was increasingly on my radar because I was uh growing up around the time that Rodney King was beaten by members of the LAPD um and the uprising or protests or riots, depending on where you fall in the political spectrum uh that resulted from that. And that was followed quickly by O.J. Simpson's uh trial. that was when I was a senior in high school. So race was on my radar a lot at that critical time when you're coming of age and later high school. And it was around that same time that I also, for the first time, heard a racist joke in church. And I should get a little bit more about my background. I grew up in Kansas City, Kansas, which is a part of the metropolitan area that in the 1970s when I was born a lot of white families were moving out of. My family, my parents chose to move into Kansas City, Kansas not for any idealistic reasons or ideological reasons or really even any um reasons other than the fact they wanted to be close to their church. And uh they attended a free Methodist church. was born and raised free Methodist and the one free Methodist church in Kansas City was in a part of the city that was experiencing some white flight as a result of busing in the 1970s. uh But as a result of their decision, I grew up in a part of the city that was racially diverse. up in a neighborhood that was racially diverse. My sisters and I went to the public schools in Kansas City, which are racially diverse and had this racial diversity be very much part of my experience except for on Sunday morning and Wednesday nights and Sunday nights at Aldersgate for Methodist Church. I was in one world in which racial diversity was uh talked about, was celebrated, was something that we said we, in school, we embraced. And then on Sunday morning, to hear a racist joke in the sanctuary of Aldersgate for Methodist Church created this huge disconnect in my brain. And I went off to college, I went to Wheaton College outside Chicago, an evangelical school, and uh kind of had these same kind of weird conversations about race even at Wheaton with folks and people who just had different perspectives about racial diversity and people who really kind of approached the issue of race uh as something to be avoided and something that if we just stop talking about it, if we just let it go away, if we just stop scratching at that scar, uh that's the only way we're going to get past this. And for uh people to keep bringing it up was causing a problem. And so I kind of had all this kind of working in my my the back of my mind and then ended up going to to Rice University in Houston, Texas for graduate school in history and Just providentially showed up at Rice University at the same time. There's a sociologist there named Michael Emerson who had just recently written a book called divided by faith uh which I read it before I knew who Michael Emerson was, before I showed up at Rice, and that book just sociologically just explained all these experiences that I was having uh at Wheaton, at Aldersgate Free Methodist Church, in ways that made me want to ask, what is the historical background to this sociology that Michael Emerson's writing about? um And so I wanted to write a book that would explain how my people, how white evangelicals kind of got to this point in the late 20th and then early 21st century where color blindness was seen as the avenue forward and what we should be trying to achieve and these the idea that race is being something to be avoided I knew that if that was the problem as I was seeing it in my people then I needed to find a time in history where they weren't going to be quiet about race and I figured that if I studied the civil rights movement and started looking at what white Christians are saying about race during the civil rights movement I probably find a time when people are on the record saying things. So that's what kind of drove me to study the civil rights period as my uh focus in graduate school and that's ultimately what produced this book, The Bible Told Them So. So I would love to hear the uh basically kind of an overview of what did the white uh church say about race and maybe that's way too broad of a generalization. Maybe it's not. However specific you need to get about it, but what was said on the record about race when in your studies on the civil rights movement. Yeah, so I started looking at this and I started around 1954 in my book. And 1954 is a pivotal year in American history because that is when the Supreme Court hands down the Brown versus Board of Education decision. And so 1954 kind of becomes this marker in the historical timeline of when white Southerners in particular start getting really anxious about these changes that they see coming for their society. It's important for me to say too that in the 1950s when you're talking about southerners in particular, the social scientific survey data we have from that period means that when we're talking about white southerners, we're talking about people who, nine out of 10 of them in 1954, identify as Christians. So they are folks that are deeply embedded in the Bible Belt, deeply identify as Christians themselves. And so 1954 is where I start. surveying what they're saying, start reading their letters, start reading the petitions, start reading the memos, start reading the different votes they're taking in their congregations. And what I'm finding out in 1954 is that these white Christians are saying that this Supreme Court decision that's handed down is something that goes against God's will because as they read it in the Bible, God himself was the author of racial segregation. And so this move that the Supreme Court tends to put our country on in their eyes in 1954 towards integration is a move that they ultimately see as being against God's will. And they do this as the title of my book suggests. They don't just come to these decisions willy-nilly. They come to these decisions by reading the Bible. And so they're backing up their arguments with particular biblical passages that in their mind suggest that God doesn't want them to mix. And I kind of document this in one of the chapters of the book, but I try to be as thorough as possible and pull from as different sources as I have in terms of like documenting how from Genesis to Revelation these Christians kind of like go through and make almost any passage fit their segregationist tendencies. So it starts as early as the Tower of Babel passage in Genesis and they talk about how God there the Tower of Babel separated people into different groups which they came to see as different racial groups and then pretty consistently through the rest of the Old Testament anytime that God is telling Israel to not to intermix with other people groups, not to intermarry, not to intermix. This was the same way that God then was instructing people of different races not to intermix with each other. m And it just keeps going through the New Testament. um There's one verse that carries more weight for these segregationists than anyone else. It's Acts 17 26. This is the passage when Paul is in the marketplace in Athens and he's preaching em to these people with this marker. an unknown God and he's talking about who this God was and said that God has made from all, from the blood of one man, all of mankind and has set the bounds of their habitation. And this was a particular fond passage for segregationists because the first half of that verse was a verse that a lot of civil rights activists, uh people who are supportive of racial integration used and pulled from. They hey look, God created from just one man. all of us. we're all brothers in God's plan. And the segregationists loved this verse because they said, yes, but you're proof texting. You're not giving us the whole verse there. Because in the second part of that sentence, Paul said, and he set the bounds of habitation for mankind after he created them. So that is, he separated them and said, you shouldn't mix with each other. I take this all the way even through Revelation 7.9. And Revelation 7.9 today is heralded even among those uh and racial reconciliation movements as this beautiful image of what it's going to be like worshipping before the throne where it says people of every tribe and tongue will be worshipping before the throne. In the eyes of segregationists in 1950s and 60s, they said, see, even that, even that though is evidence that God is a segregationist because there's still going to be different tribes and tongues even in heaven. And so if we start mixing everyone together down here on earth, then we're violating God's will. So these are the types of things in 1950s when The civil rights movement is on the horizon still and integration is still coming that these Christian white southerners are pushing back hard against and using the Bible as their justification for doing so. Your book focuses a lot on Southern Carolina. was the purpose of that and what's so significant about South Carolina? Yeah, great question. ah South Carolina became the case study for my book simply because when I went into the project... it was going to be the South writ large. And I quickly, quickly found out that that was, that was might take the rest of my life if I didn't start narrowing it down. So South Carolina became uh the case study for me for a couple of reasons. One is because South Carolina is just like really understudied in the, in the civil rights historiography. So Alabama gets a lot of attention and Mississippi gets a lot of attention and even Georgia gets a lot of attention. These other deep state South, deep state, deep South States, uh get a lot of attention. uh South Carolina was kind of like understudied so I was the kind of drawn to that because I thought it was fertile ground for a civil rights historian to dig into. But also uh South Carolina had a really uh strong private school movement and that was part of my uh story at the end is how the Christian parent response to school integration was to support private schools, uh private Christian schools, a result of integrated schools. so South Carolina's history among a leader of private schools was a big reason for that. And I ended up focusing just on Methodists and Baptists, Southern Baptists and Southern Methodists in my study. And South Carolina had a bigger percentage of Methodists than any of these other states. So it kind of just presented a lot of... uh convenient and helpful ground zero to conduct research on a project like this. That's why South Carolina kind of rose to the floor. But I also kind of point out that South Carolina is a case study, but I also find it to be representative of these other southern states that are part of this process as well. Yeah, so your book is essentially, right, just to make sure I understand, it's demonstrating a line that moves from Jim Crow segregationist theology and its underpinnings to the kind of colorblindness that I essentially grew up hearing about. And you've kind of, yeah, I mean, you've kind of mapped that out. And I think it's so... interesting and something everyone should be thinking about because I thought about colorblindness and it's like, yeah, colorblind. Well, I was always seen as such a good thing. You know, I don't see color and I would hear people say that and I always felt a little disingenuous, you know, like, you know, really you don't see color. I mean, I don't know. Okay. But, you know, you felt like that was the thing. At least somehow I felt like that was what I needed to say or that was a good principle to kind of explain and view race. by, and yet we see that this has some roots that are more nefarious than I probably knew about. One thing I think is fascinating is that this idea that it wasn't just the leaders that were pushing this, but actually a lot of the congregation, the congregations that had the ability to fire pastors, especially in, guess, a congregationalist. background which has Baptist and maybe some other denominations in there as well. But I would love for you to talk to us a little bit about that. Like what was the pressure from congregations at the time? How was their view and how did that affect pastors that might kind of feel stuck or even trying maybe they're trying to be like speak against segregation, but they couldn't, or they were stopped. Yeah, yeah, definitely. the congregation was everything. mean, the position the congregation took kind of dictated the position the church took. And obviously this is true in a congregationalist polity like Baptist, where the congregation like sets the terms of the church and the way it functions and who their pastor is going to be. So it makes sense in that kind of context that, of course, the congregation's view is going to be represented by the pastor at the point the pastor doesn't represent those views, especially on something so volatile such as race. congregation dismisses the pastor. So I tell a couple of stories in the book of Baptist preachers. But what I found even more fascinating was that uh the Methodists have this Episcopal polity in which a bishop is the one who assigns a preacher, a pastor, to a Methodist church. But even in that context, uh pastors of the Methodist denomination who are appointed by bishops who fell out of line with their congregation on this issue found themselves even run out. And that wasn't supposed to happen. mean, you're supposed to have the security of a bishop having your back, but this issue was involved enough in the 50s and 60s that even Methodist ministers were the ones who also kind of were pushed out if they fell on the wrong side of their congregation. I will say that oftentimes, when it was this division between the congregation and the pastor, if there's a division that existed there, it's because the congregation was supportive of Jim Crow segregation, and it's the pastor who is out of step. But there were plenty of examples of the pastor and the uh congregation being in lockstep on these things, both in support of segregation. So I didn't find any churches in which the pastor supported segregation and the congregation didn't. I did find some in which the pastor supported integration and the congregation didn't, but the true story was, does, but most of the stories were the ones in which the congregation and the pastor both agreed that integration was against God's will. You know, that's so interesting because I was thinking to myself, like, did racism, this is like chicken egg, right? Like, racism proliferate more because of the pastor's message to the congregants or were the congregants like changed because they thought that being a good Christian also meant to like believe in segregation? Like, does that make sense? Yeah, I think so. I think my answer is like, yes. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how to answer that. But I think it was kind of like mutually reinforcing or self-reinforcing. yeah. um Yeah. Yeah. I mean, because pastors do have an effect, and you see a lot of that even today. You know, here we are, whatever, 70 years later, churches that are, say, very Trumpy, generally have a very Trumpy pastor. And you don't tend to see a church or a Trumpy pastor. to a bunch of libs or whatever. So it's kind of like, I I don't know. It's so weird. We could probably do a whole episode about the sociology of how congregants find churches. But I do want to go back to something earlier you did say to keep us on track. You used the word colorblindness. I think you did a really great job sort of explaining kind of the origins of colorblindness. I'd love for you to just unpack that for us. where does this term come from and basically how was it used to convince uh people that you know it's okay for us to still be racist. Yeah. Yeah, so let me pick up the story. So where I last left off, um you had all these Christians who are turning to the Bible and making these arguments and writing their congressional representatives that say, don't vote for the Civil Rights Act, don't vote for the Voting Rights Act. These are going to destroy our Christian civilization down here. But um these Civil Rights Act gets passed and the Voting Rights Act gets passed and it turns out that uh a critical mass of Americans don't support the same view and actually while Southerners by the early 1960s are overwhelmingly opposed to um integration by the end of the 1960s. They're kind of like the public opinion seems to be shifting on this. And so the question becomes then, so what happens to these arguments? Do these people just say, I guess we were wrong? And this is where I, in the second half of my book, kind of trace out then, so how do these same folks that um were fighting for about a decade against integration then kind of make their peace with it when it comes? And the argument that I make in the book is that, if you follow the read, what you'll find out is that um once the tipping point is reached and American culture starts backing integration and starts getting behind this idea that Jim Crow segregation is an affront to American democracy and we need to do away with it, uh what these segregationist Christians are left with was in a society in which more attention is being given to becoming more diverse. And so in denominations like the Methodist Church, which quick backstory, the Methodists in 1840s, Eight, don't quote me on that. Before the Civil War, they split over the issue of slavery. 1939, they come back together. But when the Methodist Church comes back together in 1939, it builds in for white southerners segregation within the denomination. And so in 1939, the Methodist Church, North and South reunites, but it does so as a Jim Crow church that has a built-in... It's called the central jurisdiction. It basically takes all black churches in the denomination nationwide and puts that in the central jurisdiction irrespective of their geography, which is not the way the Methodists work. uh But what happens by 1968, the Methodist denomination is like, I can't believe that we still have this Jim Crow feature in our church. We need to do away with this. And we need to make sure that we are integrating our church structures. We need to make sure that our church boards are representative of the racial diversity of our denomination. We need to be intentional about setting aside a certain percentage of our church structure that is going to go to black Methodists. And so there is this intentionality about being racially diverse. And this is the moment that those segregationist Christians come back with this new weapon and what they start saying is, see this is a problem. We've gone too far. And what we need to do is be more attentive or be less attentive to race. We need to stop talking about this. The more we talk about race, the more problem this is going to be. Now this is really rich coming from these Christians who for a decade before this have been talking about we can't integrate, God doesn't want us to mix, God doesn't want us to mix. But the point they lost that battle, they fashioned this new tool. of just being colorblind. ah So they don't call themselves as being colorblind, but they just say, we have paid way too much attention to race, and we're becoming obsessed with race, and we're no longer preaching the gospel. The argument that I'm making is that this was kind of like this proto color blindness. And they start this new move within these conservative circles of saying that the best way forward for race is just to ignore race. And they hand this thing down to their children and to their children. so to Josh's point and to the point I started with at beginning at Aldersgate Free Methodist Church, I was brought up with the same kind of tool of color blindness where I was told that the problem is we pay much attention to race and these race cards that are always played, these are to the detriment. We're never going to make any progress if we just keep talking about race. But fundamentally what that colorblindness did was keep us from making practical steps to improve race relations or to dismantle unjust structures that continued or perpetuated in American society because white Christians just denied they were even there because we had been kind of like conditioned with this idea of to deny that they even existed. And so that's kind of like where I end my book is this idea that I think a lot of white Christians uh who might even be of goodwill wanting to see the issue of race uh be done away with, we are the inheritors of this tool of colorblindness that was passed down to us through the generations uh which is really ineffective for addressing racial inequities and oh For our ancestors who fashioned that tool of colorblindness, they would say, you're welcome. I mean, that's what we've given you. We've helped you avoid any kind of meaningful integration or racial justice because you're using the tools that we fashioned 40 and 50 years ago. And surprise, surprise, we're not making any progress. Yeah, it's such a hard... uh uh thing to think back and see the sins of the past, you know, that feel so much closer now because you're talking about how we grew up and you're talking about my parents, right, my grandparents. Certainly my grandparents by today's standards. And I know, I don't know if my family listens to my podcast. If they do, they probably they might get upset about this. And I love my grandparents. I mean, they were some of the best people I ever knew. yet, and yet certainly by today's standards, I think they would be considered racist in many of their views. Probably most of them that had to do with race at all. And I heard them say things that were to that end. mean, my dad tells stories to me about being in a church in Washington, DC and... uh and remembering the white flight out of Washington, D.C. because he was born there and they moved to Maryland. And so he was actually part of this, his family, and they would go and they would knock on doors and their Sunday school teacher told them if they answered the door and they're black, just say, sorry, I have the wrong address. They were going and they were knocking on doors to invite people to church. And this is what his Sunday school teacher told him to do, which then on another night would have been praising Jesus, their Pentecostal, speaking in tongues, giving to those in need, blah, blah, all that kind of stuff. And yet you have this massive blind spot, it seems. I just, really my question is about how do you, how did this blind, how could they have so massive a I guess is my question to you from your research, what you think about that. But even just kind of thinking about like how they did their exegesis, how they, how did they come to something like Acts 17 26 and come up with that em out of their, you know, out of their rigorous em examination of original context, or do they just not do that at all? I'm just curious as to in your research, um how would you answer or respond to that? Yeah, it's a really good question. This doesn't come out in my research as much um as it does just kind of like my persistent conversations with students that I have in classes through the years. But I kind of feel like the way that that blind spot developed is through kind of a... a really stunted understanding of reconciliation in the Gospel as reconciliation being central to what the Gospel message is. And I think that lot of white evangelicals in particular, if they think about reconciliation at all, they think about it as reconciliation between themselves and God, and themselves as an individual between themselves and God. But the idea that reconciliation is something the Gospel promises across, you know, people groups, is something that is so foreign to many evangelicals who just see the world through this individualized uh lens of me and God and my relationship with God, that I think that's how that blind spot develops. So the idea that a church like a church in Antioch, ah where Jews and Gentiles start worshiping together and when they do then get the name Christian for the first time because they're doing something the world hadn't seen before, or a church like the one in Ephesus that like when Paul is talking about breaking down the dividing wall of hostility, he's talking about a literal wall that existed in the city of Ephesus. I think an understanding of the context of the New Testament church as being one in which God is intent about bringing about multi-ethnic worship as a testament to the reconciling power of the death, burial, resurrection in Jesus Christ is something that is just so absent in so much of our theology as white evangelicals that it develops this blind spot. So if you knock on someone's door and they don't look like you, rather than seeing that as an opportunity then to say, here's an opportunity for interracial, reconciliatory fellowship that might be possible in the church. You think about, there's who either charitably probably wouldn't be interested in our church or less charitably, we don't want coming to our church in a way that kind of those blind spots can develop. And the problem with that of course is that once those blind spots develop, they continue to perpetuate each other. So then we don't understand... uh the experiences and the way that other folks read scriptures in a way that we just then reinforce our understanding of what scripture's message is and what the gospel message is in a way that we just kind of compound the problem. And so I think that's how the blind spots develop. I think that's if they're to be addressed. And I don't remember, Josh, if this was part of your question or not. But I mean, I think the way to address those blind spots is to first of all start out with a more robust theological understanding of what reconciliation demands of us and its centrality within the gospel message. And once you can get people on board, or if you can get people on board with the idea that this isn't like this like political project we have going on the side, this is what the church is supposed to be. And if you can get like a theological buy-in, then I think the second leg of that stool then is a sociological argument. then what are the ways in which we are unreconciled to people of different groups. um And that's where I think the study of sociology really helps with that, to help illuminate the ways that there are so many inequities that continue, that persist, especially within the church. How do we address those? And then I think history is like the third leg of that, and how do we get here in the first place is really important too. This is... Can I say one other thing? Because uh Josh started your previous question about like, this was something that my parents and my grandparents um might have been part of their story. And something that I often bring up with students as well is that I think it's also... um In terms of the historical side of this, why should we pay any attention to what my grandparents did? I mean, that was so many years ago. Why don't we just like wipe the slate clean and just move on from here? One of the things that has long fascinated me for the last couple of decades is my reading of the Psalms and how often in the Psalms, Israel's history of being unfaithful to God is a part of these Psalms that are part of this worship of God. And so you read the Psalms and it's not like all we did everything great. It was like, hey, God delivered us from Egypt and then we screwed up. And then he like gave us another chance and then we screwed up again. And then he gave us. I mean, so many of the Psalms include these things that it wasn't them. It was the people behind them. And these Psalms are part of like the church's worship and then and just owning up to the ways you screwed up and not you personally. mean, obviously, that's part of it. But but how you're part of this tradition of people who have screwed up is as part of worship. so um to the question about why this history is important for that third leg of the stool, think, I mean, there's something in Scripture that demonstrates to us that this history is important. You know, Greg Boyd wrote in one of his books, um there's so many, ah that basically racial reconciliation is like basically spiritual warfare that you can see ah because it is something that we all can do. We know that, you know, racism is not great in this country, and the church had a big part to play in that. So, you know, I definitely think churches could learn from this. But to the issue of learning, like, why is this such a hard thing for the church to kind of come to terms with? I mean, just to kind of... you know, give you a little bit of an idea of how little I knew, how ignorant I was about seminary or whatever. um When Josh and I first started this podcast, I was like, oh yeah, we could do a whole episode about, you the trickiest role in segregation or whatnot. And Josh is looking at me kind of a scant, like, what are you talking about? know, not to say that he didn't think it was important, but it's just like, in my mind, I thought in seminary, I thought that every potential pastor would go through class on doctrine of discovery, about segregation, manifest. In my mind, I just thought that that would happen, but it doesn't. So how do we kind of move to the next thing to kind of help us with our racial reconciliation and the church's role in that? Because my follow-up question would be, what is the church's blind spot today? oh Maybe it's still racism and the church's role in that, but I would guess it's probably, it expands to other sort of issues and demographics and whatnot. Yeah, think, I I'll have to confess, I've not been to seminary myself, so I'm not a trained pastor by any stretch of the imagination. But I don't want to repeat what I said just a second ago, but I do think it really starts with the theology of our churches. And I think that has to be ground zero. The extent to which our theology remains individualized and the story about how your individual redemption is part of, is the purpose of the gospel and that Jesus came and died so that you can go to heaven when you die. I think as long as that is the way that the gospel is, I don't want to say preached, but as long as that's the way it to be understood, then I think that we're just of going to spin our wheels on these things and until we can begin to see the idea of the kingdom being more than about happening after you die and about salvation being about healing that begins in the hearing now and uh and can expand our theological robustness to incorporate these other ways of salvation meaning healing and reconciliation mean more than just me and God uh if we can begin to do that, think maybe we can get a purchase outside of these narrow lenses. mean, but let's also be real that we're up against a culture that doesn't talk like that. And so you can have the most compelling sermon in the world for two hours. And let's face it, you're not gonna get two hours of a sermon. You can have the most compelling worship service that will include a 25 minute sermon. 20 minutes of announcements. All of that and you're up against then six other days of the week and another half day on Sunday that is about no this whole culture is about you you you you you and about individual individual individual and that is what you're you're up against so I I don't want to say it's hopeless but but I think I think hope is as a Christian virtue is definitely have to play a big role in this because it seems insurmountable I mean, I think you're really on to something in the sense that, you know, we've gone from... So basically, as I understand your argument, you know, this idea of colorblindness was essentially, hey, we're going to make this, like the culture shifting around us, it's no longer culturally acceptable to... essentially on a broad scale to have these views. So as we shift them, what essentially we're going to, we're going to get rid of race, the argument kind of gets rid of race. And so what essentially happens is if race is just about me not seeing someone else's color. So essentially I am no longer prejudiced as an individual, which is important, which is a good thing. But what essentially that does is that kind of cordons that you offer from any systemic responsibility, any responsibility on a grand scale of law, shared history, systems that might oppress because essentially if it's just an individual issue, then it's not a corporate issue. And if it's not a corporate issue, then we're not going to worry about these laws and all that stuff unless it's so clearly racist. But we're not going to worry about that. because it's really about you as an individual and being colorblind. And the connection there between like, I have my own views of this and I'm not racist, therefore I'm good. I'm done, I can move on. And I would love for you to kind of talk about like, how that is a in your research, how is that correct? And what I'm saying, like kind of what I'm talking about there and how that even has even morphed from this colorblindness into what, what are we, what are the, uh kind of to Will's point, where are the manifestations of this today? Where can we draw that line to it today? um I would just love to hear your thoughts on this. Yeah, great. Yeah, Josh, you a great job here like like further. oh Explicating my argument in ways I kind of dropped on the earlier response to that So yeah, that is exactly right and ultimately what that move to cover blindness does is allows you to take race out of the supposed equation and talk about other things instead so uh So for instance just to follow the thread back with those segregationist Christians that were talking about who? Didn't want public schools to integrate because God didn't want the races to mix by the time the schools finally begin to integrate in 1968 and 1969 15 years after the Brown decision uh You have an exodus of all these white parents from these schools But they're not saying it's because God doesn't want us to mix instead what they're saying is well This is about quality of education and so we're actually not gonna say anything about race because race just has been taken off of the off of Out of the equation altogether and it's off the table. We're not acting as racists here, we're acting as parents who are seeking the best interest of our children and giving them a quality of education. Now these were the same people who were saying that God doesn't want us to mix, but now they're just changing the terms of the argument, they're moving the goalposts a little bit, because to say in 1969 that God doesn't want us to mix no longer fits as comfortably within the larger cultural arguments as it had back in 1954. um And so it's taking race out altogether. And then what that ultimately does is that you can say eventually, I've got no problem with people of different races. But you can say that uh once you have successfully completely cut yourself off from any meaningful interracial interaction. So you're in a new white suburb. You're in uh a new private Christian school that has no racial diversity in it. Your church is this homogenous bubble of other white people. And so you can say, I've got no problem with people of different races. I myself am not racist. And then this whole idea about racism gets reduced down to a heart issue. And so I say in the book, I mean, the problem with this is that you can have oh everyone in society who no one has a racist bone in their body anymore. ah And yet you have perpetuated racialized systems in American society which inequitably reward some people uh and penalize other people on the basis of their race. em So that's the final part of that argument. I'll also say that I think that the last... em I don't know, nine months or so have been, I feel like there are some people who are becoming more comfortable being explicitly racist again in ways that uh maybe five years ago I would have thought that well, whether or not uh white Christians agree with this argument, uh they know that they're not supposed to disagree with it publicly. And I think the last, Well, the last couple of years, but think the last nine months in particular have kind of made me rethink that I think there are more more white Christians who are quite comfortable being um explicitly racist in ways that I wouldn't have guessed. I wouldn't have guessed five years ago. um Yeah. Wow. I'm curious. So you wrote this book, 2021. So it's been four years now. I'd love for you to give us a take on how the book was received. you know, having spoken to, you know, Anthea Butler and Jamar Tisby, like when they write books kind of on this subject, like their responses are what you would probably expect they would be. So I'm curious, how did people receive your book? Yeah. That's a good question. mean, my, unlike uh Dr. Butler and Dr. Tisby's book, my book was with an academic press, it's Oxford University Press, and it was written, um I mean, my hope was that it made its way into the church, but um it's, it's not a one that found it's the same widespread readership that the color compromise or white evangelical racism got. So. um Overall, the reaction that I've gotten from the book has been positive, but I also think there's some self-selectivity. The people who read it are other historians who appreciate the historical research or folks who picked it up because they're interested in the subject and found the receipts compelling, I guess. I will say, however, that... um that my own university which is an evangelical school didn't give any attention to the book so even today at our That's interesting. Yeah, even today we have a display of faculty books on campus and my book's not in there. So it's not part of the faculty display. Yeah, I don't know what to make of that and someday maybe I'll be in a circle where can ask a question about that. But yeah, the summer that my book came out, I had a colleague who had a book. um come out on the history of women in the church and it was more of a celebratory history um and the university did a positive publication and press release on that and you know just kind of let's not talk about Hawkins's book that's that's that might that might make some people upset. Well, hopefully we can give it a little bit more, uh you know, press that it might deserve on this one. And who knows, like all the reasons behind that, you know, it's hard, you know, arguments from silence and, you know, we can all make guesses. I am sorry that that is the case, that that's a bummer. I'm sure putting all that time into it, you're like, come on, guys, what's going on here? Like, this is super important. And, you know, I would love for you to... Help me make the connection, if there is one, to the angst about CRT in the white evangelical church, Southern Baptist Convention. um You know, obviously it's not just them, you know, in my own circles that I've ran in most of my life. uh CRT was not popular or anything that looked like that. It's more uh contemporary in the sense that in its popular forms, for a wide, broad audience, it's more contemporary. I know the history of CRT goes back into the 80s and 70s even further in terms of scholarship. um I would just love to hear your thoughts in musings. if you have from research, that'd be great. But I just would love to hear your thoughts. What are the similarities? What are the differences between this strong push against CRT and white evangelical churches or evangelical churches? I'm guessing there's not a strong push in. minority evangelical churches, but I don't know. What's the similarities? What's the differences? Are we talking about something that's like a grandchild of the segregationist thinking, or is it something in a complete different line of thinking that just looks similar? Yeah, it's hard to say exactly because, I mean, even CRT, it's interesting how CRT very quickly gave way to DEI. And so we don't hear really anything about CRT anymore, but three years ago it was all CRT, and today it's all DEI. But I think, again, uh a... I think a charitable, a charitable read of people's objection to CRT could be uh some of the ways in which it's couched in terms of this idea that there is, you know, critical race theory had as part of its element the idea that there is no neutral ground, that either you are, uh if your status quo, if you're not actively anti-racist, you're perpetuating a racist system. uh And the idea that everyone is part of uh groups and so there's no one sure yeah yeah so if there so if there is objections on those grounds I mean charitably speaking I think that that might be why some people objected I think that that though that most people didn't I don't think that there's a whole lot of people who push back against CRT that ever understood it at that level. I think uh more to the point that they were told that CRT uh is bad because it has the same kind of roots and comes out of a Marxist school of thought, whatever that means, but people know Marxism is bad in their mind. um so um that's a reason. And then it goes back to the same idea too that even like the roots of critical race theory came out of this attempt in legal circles to try to say in the 1980s, it's been a decade and a half since we had the Civil Rights Act passed and yet we see disproportionate representative of people of color in... um incarcerated in this country. uh Why is that? Is it possible that our systems are racialized? That it's not just these individual actors, but it's these systems. And I think even something like that, as we've talked about already in this conversation, is just so anathema, especially to white evangelical Christians who don't see systems, they just see individual actors. And so to talk about a racist school system, or you you'll hear about kind of like lampooning the idea of like, uh how the construction of interstate highways in the 1950s were intentionally designed in ways to break up and segregate neighborhoods in this country. And then it gets translated decades later in these discussions of CRT, this racist is highway, a racist highway, how is that possible? And racism is something that individuals do at their heart. And so I think it's a somewhat of a... um of a disingenuous reaction to something that is more complicated and nuanced than people want to admit, but it's easy to kind of like hold up as a straw man and to knock down. What I find uh interesting is um the pushback against DEI and the way that that's being carried out, which very much corresponds to these ideas about doing away with any attention whatsoever to anything that has to do with race or gender, for that matter. so, um read... and the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, just to be safe, uh last week about how the Defense Department is talking about renaming or stripping uh Thurgood Marshall and Harriet Tubman and Lucy Stone um from the names of naval ships. Just being like, what is that accomplishing? seeing this as, well, that's DEI. I'm just like, don't, to me, I don't even know if if they understand what they're talking about at this point, um when I say they, I mean those who are trying to carry out the scrubbing are doing away with DEI in the nation's Defense Department. kind of just feels like it's a revenge move uh that's based on popular, based on what they think the MAGA constituency would want. This is just purely from me pulling this out of nowhere, right? Just based on my intuition, but that it's almost like a revenge move from all of those... from 2020 and 2021 and all these statues being removed and all these places being renamed and things like that for better for worse. Right. I'm not getting into that argument, but what I'm saying is almost feels like it's just a revenge move and almost feels a little petty like and then and then like this sense that I mean, it seems I don't know the I've seen the list of books, but I haven't gone through them, right, that have been removed from, you know, I forgot the library. But yeah, the Naval Academy and... oh and Robbie Jones' You're right. So, so, so you get these books being removed, which I'm never really a fan of, right, necessarily. And um especially from like the Naval Academy, like from an Academy of adults who are reading is supposed to be learning. Like I, just, I don't understand what's going on. And when I look at this, like, man, it certainly doesn't feel like it, it just seems It puts a lot of ammunition into the argument that there is racism and racially motivated animus and intentions within the powers that be right now. It seems very unwise otherwise. doesn't make sense to me. Or doing these things like removing like Thurgood Marshall, like the name or like, like, what are we doing? Like, I don't understand that that makes absolutely no sense. And it's like, how can, like, I just understand why my friends uh of color are concerned about what's happening right now, just to be really frank with that's an understatement. I just, I just understand why there's a lot of fear and concern about this. And, you know, we're just about at time, but I would love to hear your thoughts on our current state of where we are right now. And I just have some practical things next, practical questions, but what's our current state in... Do you feel hopeful? Do you feel like, what do you imagine the next few years are going to pan out to be based on your study of the past? Yeah. Well, I will say that I am hopeful just because as a Christian, don't know how else to be. mean, I think that, so I have to hold on to that. um think I am hopeful um if, where I'm most hopeful is the idea that I think we're at a moment in our nation's history in which the church has a has the possibility in ways that it hasn't, I think in the entire history of the nation, to be something that is dramatically counter-cultural to what is happening in the dominant culture. uh And so I keep saying the church, the church of the church, but one thing historically that I've always found hope in is the black church in America. And it's the black church that has always kind of like, throughout American history, been the site in which uh If you're looking for hope, that's where you look. And when I say that, I teach at an evangelical institution and primarily to white evangelical students who attend here who oftentimes can become disillusioned with the church because all they see is their tradition, their branch of the church, which is the white evangelical tradition. And I kind of have to remind them that the church is a multifaceted tree with different branches. the context of the United States, keeping in mind that the black church is not a monolith, but if you're looking for folks who have uh consistently critiqued and stood as a prophetic witness to the broader culture and yet faithful to Jesus Christ, it has been the black church in this country. And I think that this is a moment that as American culture becomes more coarsened and uh more. um devoted to the idea of power and might and displays of that, that if the church can become this site of um laying down power and serving uh rather than making people submissive, if the church can be salt and light in a way that I think Jesus calls us to, I think that this is a moment that maybe we have to live out. um that dramatic witness of the gospel that I think for so long as the church has been wedded to sites of cultural power, uh it hasn't had that opportunity. think we're quickly coming to that moment where the church can and should and is called to be a site of hope because it's so radically countercultural to what's happening in the broader society. uh Yes. And to the extent that it's looking for exemplars to do that, as I always tell my students, I think a study of the black church is a way to kind of like find that hope when things look hopeless. I think that's a really beautiful point. I really like that. What uh projects do you have coming up and how can people connect with you and what you're doing? I'm uh writing a religious biography right now of a governor of Alabama named George Wallace, who you might know, uh who's, I'm completely fascinated by this project. I'm actually heading down to Montgomery tomorrow to do some more research in the archives of this, but I think George Wallace has a lot to teach us as well about what forgiveness and, reconciliation looks like. George Wallace was the guy, the governor of Alabama, stood in the schoolhouse door, said, today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever, when he was inaugurated as governor of Alabama in 1963. He's governor when Edmund Pettus Bridge had peaceful protesters that were beaten on it. And he is amassing political power for himself when he's actually the leader of the Democratic nominees for president in 1972 when he shot and paralyzed from the waist down and Wallace goes on to uh to ask forgiveness and seek forgiveness um goes into black churches in Alabama. It you know, I was wrong about segregation um and seeks the forgiveness of black Alabamians. And so I'm doing a religious biography of Wallace because I think that he never really overcame oh that racist part of his past. mean, that's part of his story as always told in there. Actually, Franklin Graham does his eulogy service. And even Franklin Graham, when he's eulogizing, George Wallace still makes his veiled reference to the segregation speech. so like even when the guy is like being buried, he's still talking about like, yeah, he was a segregationist. mean, so he never comes away from it. But Frank. But I think that one of the things that fascinates me about George Wallace is just the fact that He so desperately wanted forgiveness, but he doesn't know how to go about and actually make amends. And so the final chapter of this, I'm kind of comparing him to Zacchaeus. And Zacchaeus had this radical encounter with Jesus. And as a result comes back and said, yeah, really screwed some things up, so I'm going to make amends. And George Wallace did all these things to screw people over. And then he has this radical encounter with Jesus. But then all he's doing is saying, hey, will you forgive me? still governor and you had all these opportunities where you could have like changed some things and you still didn't take down the Confederate flag and you still made it difficult for school busing to take place and you still supported lawsuits that made it hard to integrate the police force. Anyway, so that's a long rambling answer. George Wallace, that's what I'm working on next. you gonna call it like how not to Christian? Something like that, right? How not to see forgiveness. I'm not sure what it's going to be called. That's funny, man. Well, that's super interesting. And people, how can they get a hold of you or connect with what you're doing any way? Are you on the social webs? i'd kinda stay off of those uh... yeah yeah uh... yeah i don't i'm not real active anywhere so uh... that's right pick up the book and if you want to shoot me an email i'd be happy to correspond with people that way uh can go to where to get your email. Indiana Wesleyan, so endwest.edu, just google Rusty Hawkins, Indiana Wesleyan and I come up pretty quickly. Very good. Well, thank you so much, Rusty, for coming on the program, and it was a real pleasure and super enlightening having this conversation with you. m thanks again for the invitation, Will, and great to talk to you, Josh, and I appreciate both of you what you're doing. 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