The Religion of Whiteness with Michael Emerson & Glenn Bracey

In this episode of Faithful Politics, Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram sit down with sociologists Michael Emerson and Glenn Bracey to unpack the core ideas behind their book The Religion of Whiteness.

The conversation explores a challenging but important question: how cultural identity—specifically whiteness—can operate as a system of belief that competes with or even overrides Christian teaching. Emerson and Bracey define the “religion of whiteness” as a set of beliefs, practices, and symbols that elevate white identity as sacred while marginalizing what falls outside of it.

They walk through the data behind their research, including survey findings showing how white Christians often respond differently to biblical teachings when those teachings challenge racial hierarchies. The discussion also examines how symbols like a white Jesus, the merging of the cross and the American flag, and even attitudes toward political violence can reinforce this framework.

The episode doesn’t stay abstract. It connects these ideas to real-world dynamics inside churches—why conversations about race are often resisted, how “stay out of politics” can function as a boundary, and why awareness itself can feel threatening.

This is a direct, data-driven conversation about faith, identity, and the tension between cultural loyalty and religious conviction.

Guest Bio
Michael Emerson is a sociologist specializing in race, religion, and inequality in the United States. He is currently a professor at Rice University and is widely known for his research on how religious communities shape racial attitudes and structures. He is the co-author of Divided by Faith and The Religion of Whiteness. 

Glenn E. Bracey II is a sociologist at Villanova University whose work focuses on race, religion, and social inequality. His research examines how systems of belief and power interact within American institutions, particularly in the context of race and Christianity. He is the co-author of The Religion of Whiteness.

Relevant Links

• The Religion of Whiteness by Michael Emerson and Glenn Bracey: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780197746288
• Divided by Faith by Michael Emerson and Christian Smith: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780195147070

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:16

We put together a series of questions that pit white racial interest against biblical teaching. We pit those two things together and we found that two-thirds of white practicing Christians will put their racial interest above their uh biblical interest. In other words, they are worshipping and they two-thirds. Yes, two-thirds, 60 67%, let's call it. Will put their racial interest before their Christian interest. And in that way, when they're forced to choose which one is the sacred for them, they demonstrate that whiteness is the sacred over God Himself.

SPEAKER_01 0:56

Hey, welcome back, Fifth Politics listeners and watchers. I'm your political host, Will Wright, and I'm joined by your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram. What's going on, Josh?

SPEAKER_03 1:04

Doing well. How's it going, Will?

SPEAKER_01 1:07

And today, joining us, we have two authors. One is Michael Emerson, who is a returned guest to us and is a sociologist and leading scholar on race, religion, and inequality in the United States. He's currently a professor at the University of Illinois, Chicago, and has spent decades studying how religious communities shape racial attitudes and structures. He's joined by co-author Glenny Bracey, the second, a sociologist at Villanova University, whose research focuses on race, religion, and social inequalities. And both of them wrote a book last year called The Religion of Whiteness. And we are just so excited to speak with both of them. So welcome to the show, both you guys.

SPEAKER_02 1:45

Yeah, glad to be here. I just want to update that I'm no longer at the University of No, I'm not Rice University.

SPEAKER_01 1:51

Oh, gotcha. All right. So correction, Rice, Rice University? Yeah. Awesome. And and w what are you teaching at Rice University?

SPEAKER_02 1:59

Religion, public policy, sociology.

SPEAKER_01 2:02

Very nice. And and Glenn, so you are at at Are You Still at Villanova?

SPEAKER_00 2:06

I am at Villanova. I'm an associate at Villanova and enjoying it. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Well, I I I have to ask. So so this book, Religion of Whiteness, it's going to be a very controversial topic, I'm sure. But what's what's the nexus of the of or the origin story of the book? Like why why was the book written when it was written? And you know, maybe just from a 30,000-foot view, like what's the book about? So whoever wants to get that. I'm going to let Glenn start.

SPEAKER_00 2:37

Oh, really? Yeah. There you go.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

He's the brains behind the alpha. You're on, Glenn. Jump in the deep end, brother. What's going on? Yeah, man. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

I I'm I'm sitting back here. Like, Michael's going to take that. It'll be candy. So, you know, 25 years ago, Michael and Christian Smith, Michael Emerson and Christian Smith wrote Divided by Faith. And it was a challenge to the church about why black and white Christians have viewpoints that are more different from one another than black and white people who are outside the church have. And Michael identified a cultural toolkit that evangelicals have that prevents them from seeing racism and dealing with racism in line with what their siblings of color are endorsing. So we set out to see, you know, after 25 years of people reading Michael's book and engaging in efforts at multicultural Christianity, at, you know, combining their congregations, doing all kinds of things to try to heal this difference. Where are we? Where are we 25 years later? And what we found was a bit disturbing. We found is that things are as bad as they were, and that the what we call the religion of whiteness has seeped through much of white Christianity, encouraging people to worship whiteness as a cultural phenomenon over their commitments to the scripture itself. So Michael, is that a good start for you?

SPEAKER_02 4:18

That's a beautiful start, and a lot better than I could have done. So let's, you know, if a book is called The Religion of Whiteness, we kind of want to know well, what is the religion of whiteness? So let's feel free to get. I'm going to give you this. I hate these formal definitions because they don't really resonate, but I've got to start there. So the religion of whiteness is defined as a unified system of beliefs and practices. So religions are always about beliefs and practices, also symbols, and we'll talk about that in a bit. But a system of beliefs and practices that does what? Well, it venerates and it sacrilizes whiteness rather than the biblical God. And it declares profane anything that's not associated with whiteness. So it's of less use, it is of less meaning it is to be avoided, or it it it it is not special, like whiteness itself. What is whiteness? That's always a question. You know, our most simple definition is that it's just white people, along with supporters of other backgrounds, have to be white, and the dominance that white folks enjoy. I think it makes a lot of sense though. Whiteness is this distorted view, he says, in which white people see themselves as co-creators with God, deciding on their terms what's right, what's wrong, who belongs, who doesn't belong. That's kind of the essence of whiteness. And it's that power that gets worshipped itself. And uh we can get more into that, but that's the basics of it.

SPEAKER_03 6:00

Yeah, I mean, that is very compelling. And yes, this is a very, very, very controversial topic, right? So I go to my friends, I go to not just my friends, my family, and I say, Have you guys heard of the religion of whiteness? And they will look at me very strangely, and they might get offended. They probably will get offended, even whether they say it or not. Some of them might not, but but I know certain people, and I know they would get offended by that. Just even the idea that whiteness and that it becomes something negative that's now negative one. Me, because I'm white, right? All the things that happen, the things that black people and people of color experience quite frequently still do, right? And have experienced, and minorities have experienced all over the world, right? That sense of like feeling bad about what this part of who they really are, this essential part that they can't change. Right. And so, but I wanted to dig into this a little bit more because when you're talking about a religion, of course, you're talking about, like you said, a system of beliefs and practices. So there's certain things that compose, I would say, I guess, an orthodoxy, the things that you have to believe to belong. And then there's another thing that what it would be the orthopraxy, you have to do this, or if you maybe it's like, you know, those things that you are allowed to do, and there's things you're disallowed to do. And essentially, all this is coming around this idea of whiteness, and that whiteness is essentially like it's becoming a god that's worshipped. I just want to make sure I'm hearing this right. And so am I hearing that right? That is it, is it whiteness? Is what how is I guess how is whiteness the god? And I'm asking this. I was researching into your work, and so I have an idea where you're gonna go with this. But I was asking for our audience, right? And they're sitting there and they might have all the hairs in the back of their necks stood up when they heard that, and they want to skip right now. They're right there, their fingers right around they're ready to get out of this. Make the case. What's going on here? Is it why is it how is whiteness a god that's being worshiped?

SPEAKER_02 8:14

Yeah, again, we'll let have Glenn start. Remember now, they're about to exit, so you gotta keep them here.

SPEAKER_00 8:23

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, all right. Big, big task in front of me. This is difficult because it gets into some some theory that we put in the book, and I don't want to like bore your your listeners with with too much deep theory. But long stories. They don't mind too much theory. They don't mind too much theory? Okay, all right, all right. So I'll I'll still keep this long story short if it's okay. There was a sociologist named Neil Durkheim who was writing in the early 20th century, and he made it clear that, well, he studied what he called primitive religions, and he noticed that they were totemic, meaning they used animals and other natural representations of the group in order to organize themselves. And what he found and theorized was that when people come together under that symbol, that symbol becomes sacred, and they begin to feel a feeling that he called collective effervescence. And I refer to collective effervescence as the difference between being at home, you know, dancing, you and your partner, just whatever, and being in a club when the beat drops and everybody's like, hey, and everybody feels that uplift, right? Or being at a game when your team scores is different from being at home when your team scores, right? There's a there's an energy, there's a feeling that goes along with it. And people mistakenly attribute that feeling to the symbol and begin to deify the symbol and sacralize everything associated with the symbol and call profane everything not associated with the symbol. Okay. So what's important about that is that Durkheim allowed us to see that people could worship society and think that they are worshiping a God. Right. And so for us, the task became seeing, okay, well, when are people worshiping society, namely the their white group, versus when are they worshiping God? And so we put together a series of questions that pit white racial interest against biblical teaching. And we can talk more about the specifics of that in a little bit, but we put those two things together and we found that two-thirds of white practicing Christians will put their racial interest above their biblical interest. In other words, they are worshiping and two-thirds. Yes, two-thirds, 60 67%, let's call it, will put their racial interest before their Christian interest. And in that way, when they're forced to choose which one is the sacred for them, they demonstrate that whiteness is the sacred over God Himself.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Yeah. And so I want to follow up then, Josh, when you say, you know, you mentioned this, just the mention of it will make the hairs on many white folks' necks stand up. That's because part of what whiteness is, is that it's to be unseen, unmentioned. It's to it is understood to be the universal, and everything else is the ethical.

SPEAKER_03 11:53

And the background.

SPEAKER_02 11:54

So that you the mere mention of it will bring up that kind of reaction. Like, what is going on here? This is liberal goo, gobbledygoop, because it has so profoundly been accepted as universal.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

Yes, and just real quick, and uh I would love to illustrate that. Could you bring in, I think, did you guys do a an experiment about base or oh no, this example of like in the grocery store where there's a certain place labeled like ethnic? Yeah, yeah. So could you kind of like maybe use that and kind of help people see because that was very enlightening for me. Is that's why I'm asking. Yeah, putting it in.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

Yeah. Uh it's like going into the grocery store or you know, like what have you, and the Hispanic foods are labeled, you know, ethnic foods, or the Asian foods are labeled ethnic foods, but the other foods that are traditional for white people are not labeled white food, right? They're not labeled, you know, European ethnic food necessarily. They're understood as normal food. And you can do the same thing with theology, right? Where you know, theology sits as theology, and if it's white theology, it's just theology. It may be conservative, maybe liberal, whatever, but it's theology. But then, right, when we get into right, black theology, Asian theology, womanist theology, all these other sorts of of derivatives, not derivatives, uh, these these other these other traditions are seen as derivative or partial or just peculiar. Like maybe you can take an interest in them on your side time, but they are not core to the faith, right? And the way that the ethnic food aisle is not core to the to the grocery store.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, but that that's that's super fascinating. And I'm I'm curious on like whether or not you think is whiteness just like a you know, just a pillar on some Christians, like moral foundations that, you know, essentially, you know, gets people drawn in because it's like a, you know, it's sort of like the unspoken handshake that that, you know, like black people do the nod thing, right? You know, like everybody knows the nod. So like is is this just sort of like just this cultural thing that people kind of coalesce around? And the the reason I'm asking is because you you use an example in your book, and hopefully I'm I'm I'm putting it in the proper context, but it it it revolved around a gentleman who was trying to get out of the way of a car that was like getting ready to hit him. And you you made a comment, and apologies if I paraphrase it wrong, but it's like, you know, and I'm I'm using Jonathan Heid's phrasing here, like your intuition comes first and your reasoning comes second. So it's like, I'm I'm gonna react, you know, before I I analyze kind of what the situation. Like it's is is whiteness similar to to that, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 14:49

Yeah. So we the feeling part of our brain works faster than the cognitive part. So the the trouble with any of us in a society trying to make sense of anything or get along is by the time we get around to thinking about it. Unknowingly, we already have a feeling about it. So we're already predisposed one way or another, and that is based on you know our past history and all of that. That's what makes it very difficult. So that example, yeah, is if somebody sees a car racing at them and is able to jump out of the way and save themselves. When you ask them what was going through their mind, they're gonna tell you the cognitive part. They saw it coming, they realized I gotta get out of the way, and I jumped. Or sometimes they'll just say, I don't know, I just reacted, right? And that's actually the more that's the correct answer. They did not have time to think about it. The thinking part would have never done it in time and they would have been run over. They simply felt the presence, boom, and the a reaction came from it. That's what this is part of what happens with whiteness itself.

SPEAKER_03 15:57

Yeah, you know, oh, go ahead, go ahead, Glenn, if you had more to add there. No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 16:01

I was listening. Go ahead. I was waiting for you.

SPEAKER_03 16:03

Okay, yeah. So I'm I I'm I'm really curious. I I want to keep digging in on this definition because I think until people understand this definition, they won't listen to any other part of it. I'm just speaking until, like, from my experience as a very conservative person who's become less so, like in the way that that's defined today, and become much less, especially about racial issues, right? Those that was the one issue to me. It's like, I don't understand why we're going crazy on woke stuff, like it, like you know, using that term in such a derogatory way and all that. Like, I that never quite made sense to me. It felt like that was like a losing battle. It was not a good idea to be going in that way. As like conservatives, I didn't get it. It it felt like it militated against a lot of the principles I understood with conservatism. But, you know, I was like, all right, well, I mean, whatever, I guess I'm still on here, but I've I've definitely changed. But this definition, though, is so important because unless people are understanding, because as soon as you say the religion of whiteness, you are getting, as soon as you say whiteness, right, as a category, which probably just reinforces the very thing you're saying, right? As soon as you hear whiteness as a category, everyone's like, what? Which is reinforcing the fact that whiteness is dominant, right, as this category, and no one wants it to be, you know, pressed against it. So you're making a brilliant point, and that's kind of what I want to bring out. And and and even digging in on this, like when you say it venerates white dominance, right? And then the other part of that is kind of declaring non-white as profane. Okay, those are very religious words. So almost like clean versus profane. Whiteness is clean as a category, color is profane as a category. Help me if I misunderstand that please help correct that. But a better word than clean might be holy, even. Holy. Okay, yeah, I guess I'm thinking old testament terms, but yes, holy, sacred versus profane, holy versus profane. So help me help us understand how what's the mechanism of whiteness being venerated? How is it venerated in churches in this religious way? And then how is the opposite profane? How is it how is non-whiteness declared profane?

SPEAKER_02 18:20

Let me start with just an example. So I hear that we heard this a lot when we interview, I still hear it a lot. So a priest or a pastor will be speaking on during the sermon or the homily, we'll be talking from the biblical context and teaching about the wrongness of racial injustice and that we as Christians are called to address it. Okay? What happens almost always is at least some parishioners will come up afterwards and tell that pastor or that priest stay out of politics, stick to the gospel. So what's going on? They're not talking about Christianity at that point. They're talking about what you have violated is the religion of whiteness. You are not allowed to talk about that. That is part of what is sacred about it. You don't talk about it. You have profaned it when you bring up those topics. That's why, you know, when the woke thing was so huge, as you say, it seems odd because actual Christian teaching, Jesus says, wake up, see people. And we're telling them don't do it. That's because that's not Christianity. That's the religion of whiteness. That's its teaching.

SPEAKER_00 19:30

Yeah, and a big part of the religion of whiteness is what we call epistemological ignorance. It's a refusal to know things that could trouble that base understanding of whiteness, right? So when your pastor comes out and says, you know, we there is racial injustice and we have an obligation to deal with it, that is offensive to the religion of whiteness. It's, it's, it's, it offends and makes it more difficult to not know about racial injustice in the world in the first place. Because the easiest way to go, of course, is I don't know, I don't know about it, therefore I have no obligation to fix it. You, as the pastor, have just messed that up. You've made me aware of it, you've told me I have an obligation to fix it, and now I have this tear in my Christianity. Well, I have this tear in my faith between the religion of whiteness and my Christianity.

SPEAKER_02 20:21

Yeah. If I could just follow up on that, but Will, if you want to ask a follow-up first, that's fine.

SPEAKER_01 20:26

Go, no, go, go, go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 20:28

So we we we we haven't talked yet about the symbols. So all religions will have symbols. And so what we say in the religion of whiteness is there's three main symbols. One is a very important, I'll come back to it in a second, but that Jesus is white. So when we like I've shown pictures of representations of Jesus who is not white, and white folks in particular will either laugh because they find it so ridiculous and silly, or they get very angry. Like this is hypocrisy, this is a sacrilege that you would even ever make a representation of a Christ who doesn't look white. Okay, so that's one. The second symbol is that a merging of the cross and the flag, whether that's the American flag or for the Southerners, right? Maybe the Southern flag, whatever. But that those things become almost one and the same. And then third, growing one is firearms. I just read an article today that just came out that says there's a growing relationship between Christian nationalism and firearms, and the willingness to use violence represented by firearms to protect this religion. Okay, so I just want to say this last thing then. One of the beliefs in the religion of whiteness that we outline is that whiteness is universal, as we've kind of talked about before. But here's why it's so important. So whiteness itself is seen as, as we said, normative, it's unseen. And here's how you get to that. Jesus is universal, Jesus for everybody. But in the religion of whiteness, we've already established Jesus is white. So if you've ever taken logic class of just a simple substitution, get you to this. If Jesus is universal and Jesus is white, then the universal is white, and white is the universal. Story over. Everything else is a sideshow. And that's the essence of this religion.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Yeah, that that's that's really, really heavy and and true at the same time. And it's it's funny. Uh this is a little sort of anecdote that I probably shouldn't say, but I just think it's funny. Like I I listened to your book. And generally my my listening habits are at nighttime. So and this isn't an attack on you, but like I did fall asleep at the part in the book where where you started using the word row. And and and this is the reason why you should always have have a physical copy. Because like I had to go back. I'm like, why are what are they talking about? The row. I was like, I thought we were talking about the religion of whiteness here. And just like me and my, I don't know, like I'm whatever. It did it didn't click. So I I went and bought the book. So you have my money from the audio and the actual like like hard copy. So there you go. You just split it, you know. But my my my my question about the row is like how how do we know? Like, like you guys use a lot of really cool data surveys and stuff like that. I'm I'm a bit of a data nerd, so like I'd love just for you to you know really, really make it real. You know, like we're not just talking about some concept or philosophy or something like that. You know, it's like for me, like I I I just wrote a substack about Christian nationalism and it took me two months because I don't do this full time. And I just was just pouring over like PRI data, you know, the whitehead, the parries, like all the books, right? To actually come up with a definition. So, like, how do we know the religious whiteness is the religion of whiteness? Glenn?

SPEAKER_00 24:05

So was that your your So your your question is how do we know the religion of whiteness is the religion of whiteness? With the data. Um Okay. So I I think I think what you might be getting at, and what a lot of people find an interesting part of the book, is when we do that work of pitting Christian teaching against white domination or an interest in white domination. So and Michael, help me here remember the questions.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

Yeah, I'll just say them quickly. There's there's four of them. What we just took Bible verses and literally put the Bible verse there and then restated it and asked if they agreed with it. So you can see, you'll see how we selected these. But I just want to say, first of all, we only asked this of people who said that they should you should always use the Bible to determine what's right and wrong. So if they didn't, you know, think much of the Bible, then they're not asked these questions. So the questions were in the system of laws that God gave the Israelites to follow, there were laws that protected foreigners from being treated unjustly. And then, like I said, it's Deuteronomy 24, 14. So then we would just restate it. Therefore, it's good to have laws that protect foreigners from being treated unjustly. And we're asking people to strongly agree to strongly disagree. That was one question. The second one was in the Bible, the prophet Nehemiah confessed sins committed by himself, his nation, and his ancestors. Therefore, it's good to do that. The first Christian to listen to complaints of an ethnic minority group that was being treated unjustly and empowered those leaders, leaders within that minority, to correct the injustice. Therefore, it was it's good to listen to the complaints of ethnic minority groups and empower leaders within those groups to correct the injustice. All those questions, those three, have something to do with other groups or thinking of my own group as a group that has sinned. Okay, so we needed a control question that didn't have anything to do with that, something about personal piety. So the last one was just in the Bible, the Apostle Paul taught that people should not use unwholesome words, comes out of Ephesians 4. Therefore, it's bad to use unwholesome words. And I'll just summarize real quick. What we did then is we wanted to look at the responses by racial group among Christians. And what we found, as you would hope, is that the majority of all racial groups for all those questions strongly agree that's what the Bible is saying. Except for one. And that is white Christians. The majority of them agree you shouldn't use unwholesome words, but when it had something to do with the other groups, only a third strongly agreed that's what the Bible said. Two-thirds. There's that two-thirds number again. Had some other interpretation of what that biblical text was actually teaching. So that that was one of the ways that we looked at this.

SPEAKER_00 27:09

And often they were quite emotionally exercised about it. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

Even as they told us don't use unwholesome words, when we let them speak, they would sometimes use unwholesome words because they were so angry about it.

SPEAKER_03 27:23

Yeah. So w one of the things that you guys explore, which I appreciate, and it's it's very obviously very relevant right now, is the mixture of the symbolism of the flag and the cross. And you talked about that as the symbols, right? The three symbols were white Jesus, flag. Right? The flag and the cross, and then what's the mixture? Oh, firearms. Yes. The firearms. Which then you kind of suggested would imply well, not that you just suggested, but it's coming out of the sociological data that they're that that the Christian nationalists or people that might fit into a white Christian nationalist category are more okay with violence, political violence.

SPEAKER_01 28:11

I I think the data was like it was nine percent of the people had said that violence would be okay to you know carry.

SPEAKER_03 28:19

There's like one was really extreme, it was the smallest, right? Was on the far, you know, the most extreme answer. Then there's a larger portion that in some circumstances or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

Yeah, yeah. But the thing that's shocking is how much that's changed in just the last few years. So it started out at 9%. Now it's about 40%.

SPEAKER_03 28:36

Here there's a few things that are so fascinating to me. So this merged of like the merging of the cross of the flag, I'd love to hear like what that means. But even like just even thinking about like one of the things that you you that came out was that that idea that when I was when I was looking into this, that basically after 2020, the amount of people that thought that the amount of white people that thought America had a race problem decreased by something like 11%. And then the other it went the other way in with black Christians, all controlled for belief and all the same values, right? Essentially, as much as you could do that in those groups, that that they that they were all those they were controlled for that, and then there's this massive spike in both directions after George, Floyd, and Brianna. And I I just like Brianna Taylor, sorry, I blank there for a minute, but I really would love to hear like I don't know, I know you've asked you two questions because that's so fascinating to me. But it's like, I guess if you can mix those together, one of you can answer one or or just do whatever you want. But I'd love to hear, like, what do you make of that data? And then what's up with the mixture of the flag and the cross? Why is that significant? I guess. Why should we care about that as a symbol? Why does that matter? Why is that significant?

SPEAKER_00 30:03

The flag and the cross, if I can take that one, Michael. Yes. And you know, I encourage you to read. I think the book is actually called The Flag and the Cross by Whitehead and Perry, if I'm not mistaken.

SPEAKER_02 30:13

I think it's Gorry and Gorsky. Yeah, Gorsky.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

Yeah, yeah, Gorsky and Perry, my fault. But one of the points that they make, and and I'll extrapolate a little bit on, is the there was this notion early on in the colonies that that the colonies were a new Jerusalem. That they were that God had given this land to Christians. And one of the points that I'll I'll borrow from Andrea Smith here and and some independent work I've done you can watch in the colonial law how people how the colonists start out referring to themselves as Christians, and to Native Americans as barbarians, and and Africans as as just blacks. And then over the course of that century turn from Christian and barbarian to white and black and Native American. And you can and in other words, the tie between Christian to be Christian and to be white was one and the same for the colonists early on. And so the the development of American Christianity, as it were, at least in white churches, has started from that foundation of white and Christian are one and the same. And from there, the blessings that, you know, the well the the political the hoarding, really of what I would call it, the theft of Native American land, the hoarding of of goods from African labor, the stealing of Africans themselves, all those things come down as blessings that God is giving to the good people, the the Christians, and get held up as good and proper, and and and the hierarchy of white, Native American, black gets held up as appropriate and God ordained. And so there's this so the from the earliest foundations, we've been connecting whiteness and Christianity and power all at the same time. And it's that that conflation that constitutes much of the religion of whiteness and has to be disentangled in order for people to get free of the religion of whiteness.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

Yeah, and then you have the the opposite side of that coin, too. So as they're in the early colonies and as it become uh the early U.S., they're trying to figure out, well, if we're not going to have a king, how are we going to make this work? And so they've got to define who is a good citizen. A good citizen is moral, a good citizen is a follower of God. Who's a bad citizen? A bad citizen are people ruled by their emotions. And who are those folks? Those are the African slaves, those are Native Americans, those are people you do not want to be like. So you can see we're making those groups profane from the start. So, yeah, not only are we conflating them, but we're dividing the people. So that's happening and it continues to happen. That's why the merging of the cross and the flag, why we use those symbols, because that whole process, that's what it is. It is so hard. That's why you can see in so many churches uh you'll have the Christian flag, you'll have the American flag, because supporting one is supporting the other. They're just seen as one and the same. And by the way, we see increasing numbers of, especially white Christians, now defining a good American as somebody who is a Christian. Like that's part of what you must be, again, even that had leg for a while, but that's coming back pretty strongly. And then the the second question that goes back to that epistemology of ignorance. So again, how could it be that especially we had such a natural experiment? We had done a survey in 2019, asked people, do you think there's a race problem? And of course there's a big gap between white and black Christians, white and Hispanic Christians, and so on. But then we had 2020 and we had racial upheaval not only in our nation, but it went around the world. And we said, hey, let's go back into the field and ask the same question again. And what do we find? Just as Josh described, for all the groups, except for one, more people said we have a race problem. But for white Christians, not whites in general, white Christians in particular. It went down. And the reason is the epistemology of ignorance, this idea that we're not going to talk about it and it doesn't exist, the more it's out there, the more it's in our face, the more we have to deny it's in our face and that it's out there.

SPEAKER_03 34:45

I just wanted to make sure, sorry, that I just wanted to make sure, Michael, and then Glenn, I'd love to hear, and Will has has a question too, but I Glenn, I'd love to hear anything you have to say with that as well. But like that it was Christians, white Christians, where it went down, not just white people, right? Right. I just wanted to be very you know clear on that. White evangelical Christians or Christians, or do we know that? Do we know that?

SPEAKER_02 35:10

Yeah, no, it's Christians in general, Catholic, whether it key is that they're white Catholic mainline conservative.

SPEAKER_03 35:17

So white is the significant factor there.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

So white and white and church attending, yes.

SPEAKER_03 35:22

And church attending. I'm man, that's sad. All right. I just want to make sure that we had that right so people could hear.

SPEAKER_02 35:29

Yeah. I had a dialogue with a high school friend, a white high school friend, uh, shared a few of these we had some slides it could show, and conservative white Christian. And he it didn't matter what I had to say. He disagreed with me violently, angrily. I said, Hey, we've known each other all our lives. You know who I am. We're in Bible study together, my friend. Every week we are. Why do you get so why can you not believe these numbers? And he would just say, it's not my experience. It doesn't match what I know, it doesn't match the people I know. And so I think we get stuck there. That what we are doing is we're using the most advanced scientific methods to collect this data and analyze this data with the most advanced statistical procedures. And this is what we find. So if my own personal experience doesn't match it, then I maybe I live in a bubble or I live in a special I have a special network. But we're telling you what's happening at the national level.

SPEAKER_01 36:33

Yeah, you know, I'm I'm I'm wondering. Well, actually, quick quick quick comment just on the um the cross and the flag, because actually the or the flag on the cross. I think it's the cross on the flag was actually a uh a newsletter that used to be published by a gentleman named Gerald, I want to say K LK Smith. Smith is the last name I know for a fact. But anyways, he was the founder of the Christian Nationalist Party. So like there there is like significance in the imagery and just even like the words or or what have you. But but but to the issue about like the religion of whiteness. What what separates it from just flat out racism? Or is it racism? Like are like are these synonymous or are these different? Because I know just listening to this, like if I were to go talk to my wife who's white, and I would say, you know, there's like a two-thirds chance that you're gonna react really negatively when I tell you this next thing, you know. Like uh and then we'll we'll have a good laugh about it, you know, and anyways, but but it's like is the religion of whiteness racism? I guess is the question. Glenn, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Yes. The religion of whiteness is racism, but that's not a total in encapsulation. I I think a lot of people struggle with understanding how deep racism is, so that when most people hear that question, I think they would hear, okay, is the is the religion of whiteness what they understand to be racism and what they understand to be racism is negative thoughts and beliefs about another group. And that's the the end of it. It's just like prejudices. But if we think about racism institutionally, in in the form of churches or housing or you know, schools or what whatever you want to look at, and we look at the the work that white folks do to hoard those resources and deny those resources to others, and we think of that as a big part of racism as well, then the religion of whiteness is kind of the spiritual undergirding of that practice of hoarding. If I can make if that makes sense to Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:48

Yeah. We say that race has become religionized. So the fact is, you know, as sociologists, I mean we we both live in the academy, and in the academy, fairly secular, right? And so racism is the secular thing, understood to be some of the categories that Glencid, but it's it's material. It's like, well, groups want the stuff, and so they have racism, so they make sure they get the stuff. What we're saying is it's far, far deeper than that because it's become transcendent. The religion of whiteness puts a blessing upon it, like it's just not you want stuff. You God wants you to have stuff. One of the major tenets of the religion of whiteness is that God is on the side of the dominant. No, God wants the winners, and you know you're a winner when God blesses you with lots of things. So, yes, that's what's it's it's the undergirding of racism itself in many ways.

SPEAKER_03 39:47

So, I mean, there are so many directions I want to go, and I'm trying to kind of figure out which direction to go, right? Because it's 40 minutes in. We know we got like 20 minutes left, and I just like am so fascinated. So I'm like, I'm looking at I did kind of a mind map of this whole thing or how one made, and I'm looking at it and I'm looking at the social impact, like things like opportunity hoarding, which you were talking about, Glenn, which is like I've never even heard that concept before now, and now it's like something that's out there. And I'm wondering, like, our our listeners, like they hear that, like, well, what is opportunity hoarding? Even looking at the weaponization of forgiveness, like, what in the world is going there? But but here's this one that I keep coming back to, though, as I'm looking at. I was like, I want to think about these groups, right? Because you talk about two groups, you talk about a white veil and a white mite. And I would love for you to explain what those are because I I think the distinction is important because I think a lot of people might say, I am not racist, I don't say racist things, I don't try to do racist stuff, but they might find themselves described in this group of the of the white veil, and I would just love, or they probably will find themselves, right, if we're honest, I think. And so, especially if we're Christian white churchgoers, which is me in my whole life, and that makes me really uncomfortable. So I want to know like what's going on with the white veil and the white mite. What what are those two things? How do you know that those groups exist? And what characterizes them?

SPEAKER_02 41:34

Yeah, I'll start this one. So the thing that amazes us is we're looking at the data, there's ways to use statistics to see if are there's subgroups within this category called the religion of whiteness. And no matter how we tested it, it came back very clearly there are two subgroups. So one we call the white veil, and that's 75%. So it's three-quarters of the people that are practicing the religion of whiteness. The people that the reason we call it the white veil is that these folks will say there is no racism, there is no racial inequality, there isn't even race. We're just humans, and that's it. And they'll repeat that over and over. And when there's trouble racially, when somebody's trying to say there's a racial problem, they're gonna come with gentleness sometimes, but with but with clarity that they're gonna try to remind everybody there's no racial inequality, there's no race problem, there's just humans. Okay, that works most of the time. But in times like 2020, when it's risen far above the threshold of quietness, that's when the other 25 percent, you see them very clearly. The other 25 percent we call the white mite, the foot soldiers, defending this religion when needed. And these folks see race everywhere, they're so different than the other ones. How do they see they see racial inequality everywhere, but they always see it as white people under attack? And so when we ask them questions like, do they feel the need to defend their race? Do they see themselves as white? They're just off the charts as saying yes. I feel part of my job as a Christian is to defend the white race, and they will. And this is where the firearms come to be. Like if it go has to go to that level, they'll do it. What shocked me maybe it shouldn't have, but the white might group is on average 10 years younger than the white veil. So these are young folks that are willing to defend this religion.

SPEAKER_01 43:45

I'm curious what um a lot of the stuff that you're talking about and kind of their the the behavior of the group that we're talking about seems to mirror a lot of the behavior of like white Christian nationalists. You know, there's a sense of persecution, there's a sense of, you know, we're we're losing kind of our political, racial power or or whatnot. So I I'm I'm I'm curious, like like like what similarities are there and like what what difference? Are there because when you're when you're saying, you know, just bringing up the topic of whiteness, people, you know, hairs on the back of their necks are to stand up. I see the same thing when I talk to folks that are like totally Christian nationalists. They just may not know it yet. And it's like the same thing. They get really defensive, you know, and I'm not a great nationalist, you know, like like, but we should definitely most certainly have Ten Commandments in every classroom in America, and I'm willing to fight for it, you know. Like, so so I'd love for you just to kind of talk through the similarities and differences.

SPEAKER_00 44:48

Well, white Christian nationalism is part of the religion of whiteness, but it's not the whole thing. So, you know, these these notions of I I took notes on it, that's why I keep looking to my right, and I can't find the notes, so I'm just gonna go off the noggin. White Christian nationalism, like I said, is is part of the religion of whiteness, but it's not the whole thing. And there are five other practices that that people subscribe to. I've got to find these practices. I can't.

SPEAKER_02 45:20

And just while you're looking, please. And you actually came up with this, and I didn't know if you would remember it, but Christian nationalism is the political arm of the religion of whiteness. That's what it is. That's the way to think about it most conveniently.

SPEAKER_03 45:33

Interesting. So I'm looking at these primary practices. Well, let me like so I'm looking at these primary practices, selective use of scripture, epistemology of ignorance, veneration of sacred symbols, active resistance to racial change, and opposing non-subscriber Christians. I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that's kind of within the thing.

SPEAKER_02 45:55

And then the within their beliefs, we have white Christian nationalism, where you believe in this fusion of Christianity with American civic life, and that you must institute that through politics in the legislation and such.

SPEAKER_03 46:09

It's not just Christian, it's this particular brand of white.

unknown 46:13

Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

That's the thing, right? It gets called Christian. It's not even a yes, very much a particular brand, and it tends to be a more conservative view of white Christianity.

SPEAKER_03 46:27

Oh, go ahead, Glenn. You were still you were going. No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

Go go go ahead. I'll I'll follow you, Josh.

SPEAKER_03 46:33

Yeah, no worries. I it, you know, I'm just thinking thinking about this, and I want to get into these practices more that you're talking about, so maybe this can segue into that. But it's just like thinking about, you know, the average person going to church. They went there Easter yesterday, and they go, they have a nice, you know, big celebration, you know, music's great, all this smoke is going, you know, lights are great, like they're having an emotional experience, great sermon gets delivered to them, right? They are there. Hey, there's a black guy on stage. He's singing. There's probably an Asian person on stage, maybe someone from Latin America, potentially. They're going and uh, but they went there and and I'm I'm being a little bit tongue-in-cheek, but but seriously, those is probably the experience of a lot of people, right? They're going there and and they're just hearing a sermon about Jesus that's telling them about how Jesus saved them and telling them about how much that and they just feel good and they go and they have dinner, and and now they're hearing it's it's uh well, this won't come out for later after Easter, but let's just say they're hearing faithful politics and they're hearing that what they went to was the religion of whiteness yesterday that they were celebrating.

SPEAKER_02 47:50

Yep. Yeah, it is.

SPEAKER_03 47:58

I'm looking at the data. But when people they're sitting there and just like, what I mean, dude, I'm just trying to live my life and I'm not racist.

SPEAKER_02 48:05

Yeah, and as long as you don't mention things like race or support immigration or things like that, it's all gonna go well. But try to do that and you'll see. There's this wonderful book by a professor named Lydia Bean, and what she did, I thought was a wonderful construction of how to test this. She studied churches in Buffalo, New York, and churches in Hamilton, Canada. So they're just across the border from each other, and she made sure to match them. So I got a Baptist church here, Baptist church there, and about the same size and all that. And then she looked at how do these white Christian churches think about diversity, pluralism, things like that, and as well as their beliefs on uh homosexuality, abortion, all that. And she finds that they don't differ much on those issues, abortion, homosexuality, but where they differ dramatically is in how they think about diversity or pluralism and so the Canadian churches, they easily and regularly talk, and these are the white ones now, easily talk about that the construction of God's kingdom and even who a Canadian is, is a multicultural, multi-ethnic version. That God's family is plural, it's it's diverse. That's you can't understand God or God's family without that. She found none of that in the white churches. She the only thing she could find where diversity was okay is if it was one-on-one. Like I know a somebody of a different race, or we get along. But when you talk about how immigration should happen, what the identity of an American is, it always was singular. It's it's who a white Christian is and what they believe. The people who most dramatically oppose immigration, illegal or legal, are white Christians. It's stunning. Like yeah. So just a different story in the U.S.

SPEAKER_00 50:01

Totally different. Totally different. I uh yeah, I uh that's a great example. I was gonna just go back to something you said earlier, Josh, where people go to Easter Sunday and then they, you know, hopefully hear the gospel, go home, have Easter dinner, and everything is great. I don't think that Easter Sunday is probably the best Sunday to judge. July 4th Sunday will tell a lot of stories about who is connected to white Christian nationalism. MLK Day Especially this July 4th.

SPEAKER_02 50:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:33

The 250th anniversary. Yes.

SPEAKER_03 50:35

This will be very instructive.

SPEAKER_00 50:38

Yes. A lot of churches will organize their Sunday services around the the flag and and will be demonstrating their commitment to white Christian nationalism in that moment. I was gonna also point out that the Sundays, the Sunday closest to MLK holiday is often rerouted away from MLK and racial justice and toward the pro-life efforts as a way of doing this epistemological ignorance, of staying staying away from race conversation and having, you know, a pro having staying away from race conversation and having what appears to be universal non-racial conversation.

SPEAKER_01 51:20

You know, Michael, earlier you you you brought up a conversation that you had with your friend and he just wasn't hearing it. And which which is which is really sad because I'm like, you're Michael Emerson, you know, like if if if I were to have any like if if if your research was about you know the religion of blackness, I'd be like, I want to hear Michael Emerson and Glenn tell me everything I need to hear, you know, you did the data of the research, right? But but like most people, and I think Josh has alluded to this for most of this conversation, like are gonna are gonna put up the walls, right? No amount of data is going to convince them whatsoever, because again, like intuition will come first and your you know rational brain will will analyze later. So so like how do you communicate information that is extremely difficult? And it's like, but it's like the United States needs an inoculation of of this to at least like just be aware of you know what's actually happening. So I I'd love for for either one of you guys to uh give us some ideas.

SPEAKER_02 52:29

Well, I'll start when I give get invited to give talks on this. I almost always will start the talk by saying this is not about any one of you individually. So you can just rest easy and I just ask that you just take in the information, process it. If you feel emotion with it, make a note of that and let's have a discussion after. Like why did you feel a certain way when you saw some data? And I said, you don't have to agree with me. Just but I when we get to the end and we have a discussion, think about the points of why you disagree, and let's have that discussion together. That sometimes can work. Yeah. Glenn.

SPEAKER_00 53:13

Uh yeah, no, I I you were talking, Michael, and and I I don't remember the exact framework of the question, but I'll I'll say, you know, in this in the quantitative data, something like one in one in seven, between one in seven and one in five, white practicing Christians will simply reject the idea that inequality exists at all in the first place. So, you know, you may be having a much more basic conversation than you think you're having around what's real and what's not. You know, do are people of color just making things up, right? You know, those sorts of things you have to get into. And then if you if you if you find yourself with people willing to learn, and and and that's not always the case, then one thing that Michael and I suggest at the end of the book is for is centering the stories of people of color, Christians of color, who stories that are, you know, are our theologies, our our analyses, you know, all those sorts of things, so that you can see the peculiarity of whiteness. So that you can see that whiteness is just one of many and not and not the universal total of all. But I'll say, you know, in in my conversations with people, and I've given talks on this, very seldom does anybody come out and say, I'm a rower. Most often people will say, I'm the remnant, right? Which and we haven't defined the remnant yet. So let me say, like those, there's that two-thirds of practicing Christians, of white practicing Christians who subscribe to the religion of whiteness, and then there's one third of white practicing Christians whose responses look like all the rest of Christianity. So they, you know, they they follow the scripture always, and those uh four questions that we were asking. They they respond to our inequality questions in ways that are in line with what people of color are thinking. So they they that one third exists. And we need to do more research on that third, to be completely honest, on how they came to be. But one thing is just recognizing the realities of racial inequality in the first place. I think that that's the maybe that might be the very first difference between the groups.

SPEAKER_03 55:35

Well, I definitely think I'm part of that third that you're mentioning, right? And so you can ask me questions, not yeah, we don't have time today, but at some point about how I got there. But I I had racism was in my family, without a doubt. Pretty deeply embedded. Not am I growing up so much, at least not explicitly, and or or or with any awareness, I guess. But before that, my grandparents, great grandparents. I mean, it's it's it's it's um yeah, it's inevitable that you're gonna hit that. So I I understand. So I'm part of that third. And I just I appreciate you guys. And I would love what what's giving you hope, maybe in this in this time. Maybe it is the third. I don't know. And then I think Will might have something to close us out.

SPEAKER_02 56:30

I get hope from you know, we know in the end God wins. So, you know, the story of the church has always been trying to take us off the path and in and forming these cults, you know, Gnostics and all these things, just trying to subtly change what it means to be a Christian. This is another form of it. It's a deep one in our country. But in the end, God's gonna get it straightened out. So I take hope in that. And I do take hope in that one-third. That's pretty sizable when you think about all the things going against these folks. One of the favorite chapters for me when I was when we were writing this was where we're looking at examples of that one-third. They paid they pay immense costs when they don't subscribe to the tribe. And those costs meant losing jobs, losing friends, having to move to another state to try to start over. And yet they did. They were so committed to Christ that they're willing to pay that cost. That's incredibly encouraging to me. And that there can be people Christians of color that are still full of grace and hope and love for white Christians. Are you kidding me? After everything that's had to be endured and continues, that is mind-blowing. That's just testimony of Christ.

SPEAKER_00 57:49

Amen to that. Amen to that. You know, I I believe that we as Christians of color and the remnant can can join together and do some amazing things in terms of giving people a different vision for what Christianity is. I think that a lot of people mistake the religion of whiteness for the whole of Christianity and all that Christianity could be. And it falls to us to lift up the flag of pardon the the metaphor, but to to promote Christianity as a more authentic form of Christianity. I'll just say it like that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 58:35

It's really, really good. Well, I appreciate it, guys. Thank you so much for coming on. How can people connect with you, your work? How can they get involved? Where would you send them their next steps?

SPEAKER_00 58:48

Go ahead, the rrjp.org is a good summary of the work that we did. Where else would you send them, Michael?

SPEAKER_02 58:59

Yeah, I think so. Or you go to our websites, just search our names, and that will take you to our websites. Yeah. You can find publications there and some guidance as well.

SPEAKER_03 59:08

Well, that's great. Well, guys, thank you so much. And we'll put links for that stuff into the show notes and really appreciate you spending some time with us today.

SPEAKER_02 59:15

Thank you so much. Great to be here. Absolute pleasure. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_03 59:19

You're welcome. And to our viewers and our listeners, guys, thanks for joining us for another episode of the Faithful Politics Podcast. Make sure you're sending this to people who need to hear it, and that we can keep spreading the word because we want to bring good things to you guys. Also, you can check out other work on Patreon. We have a sub stack. We'll put those links. And guys, till next time, keep the conversation outright left.