Greg Garrett on White Lies and the Racial Myths That Protect Power

Why do racial myths continue to shape American politics, religion, and culture long after people claim to reject racism? 

Greg Garrett, author of White Lies: Dismantling Ten Cultural Myths About Race, joins Faithful Politics to explain how false stories about race have been used to justify slavery, segregation, voting restrictions, exclusion, and white Christian nationalism. Garrett draws from film, theology, law, politics, sermons, advertising, James Baldwin, the Lost Cause, The Birth of a Nation, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture to show how myths do real public work. 

They tell people who belongs, who leads, and whose suffering can be ignored. The conversation does not treat myth as harmless folklore. It asks who these stories serve, why they are still persuasive, and what truth-telling requires from Christians, citizens, and communities that want to do better.

Book Mentioned
White Lies: Dismantling Ten Cultural Myths About Race by Greg Garrett
Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9780197652183

Relevant Links & Resources
Greg Garrett - Baylor University
URL: https://english.artsandsciences.baylor.edu/person/dr-greg-garrett

Guest Bio
Greg Garrett is the Carole McDaniel Hanks Professor of Literature and Culture at Baylor University and Canon Theologian for the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris. He has written more than thirty books, including White Lies: Dismantling Ten Cultural Myths About Race, The Gospel According to James Baldwin, and A Long, Long Way: Hollywood’s Unfinished Journey from Racism to Reconciliation. His work focuses on the intersection of faith, culture, literature, film, race, and public life, which makes him a strong guide for this conversation about the myths that sustain racial hierarchy in American religion and politics.

Support Sarah Stankorb’s work and preorder Damned If She Does: Why Women Quit Church and What It Means for the Future of Religion, Releases September 15, 2026.  Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/112456/9798889837091

Website: https://www.sarahstankorb.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

And if you're in a place of power, if there's a hierarchy, if you're building a caste system, C-A-S-T-E, then what you have to do is you have to create these myths that allow you to push people down the ladder and to justify your place at the top. And Isabel Wilkerson has written brilliantly about this. And I include this in the book and some of the other foundational texts around caste. But what America and what Western European countries basically did was they created this set of myths to justify the caste system. And in contemporary terms, what we would say is, how do you justify taking voting rights away from a piece of the populace? Or how do you justify asking people to self-deport from the United States when they came here as refugees from dangerous countries? Or honestly, how do you tell women that against all the biblical evidence, God does not want them to speak about God?

SPEAKER_03 1:01

Yeah. Hey, welcome back, faithful politics listeners and watchers. I'm your political host, your faithful host, Pastor Josh Bertram, is doing stuff. So he won't be with us today. But instead, we are joined again by one of our favorite guests. His name is Greg Garrett. He is the author of White Lies, Dismantling Ten Cultural Myths About Race. I should mention that this is not his first book. He's he's published and authored. I looked actually, this is such a tangent just just the other just this morning, actually. You have so many books, Greg. How many books do you have?

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Well, it's kind of like birthdays. It's like, you know, you know, 21 is significant, 57 is not. So I it's 30 plus.

SPEAKER_03 1:49

My goodness. That that's that's there's one that you that you wrote that I swear I think I've I've either read or or have used. It was the Matrix and the Gospel or the Gospel and the Matrix.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Yeah, 2000 two? Three, I think. Three. Yeah. And like so we I wrote that with my friend Chris C, who is pastor in Houston, Baylor alum, one of my dearest friends, godfather to my son, and you know, like a great person like thinking about culture. And so that was one of the very early books where I kind of leaned into thinking about religion and culture. And, you know, this new book, White Lies, there's a ton of stuff about religion and culture. Because, you know, how we how we understand culture is how we understand ourselves. And my friend David Dark, you know, has been writing some stuff, and you know, he talks about culture is the essential thing. And even in these dark times, he says culture eats empire for breakfast. Yeah. So, like, where do we land? Are we are we watching the World Cup? Or are we watching, you know, the UFC matches uh under the claw? And and what does that tell us about who we are?

SPEAKER_03 3:17

Yeah, definitely. No, no, no, so in your book, you you choose to focus on 10 myths, the these cultural myths. And uh we we'll we'll definitely talk about some of the specificity of some of those myths, but like I'd love to just kind of just learn like what what about these 10? Like, how did you kind of get to these 10? Is there only 10? So yeah, talk to us about sort of the formation.

SPEAKER_00 3:42

Well, 10 is the easy publication publishing thing. So for more than 10 years, I've been engaging with race and culture, and often that has been through film uh or television or pop culture. And so I've done like a a number of conversations and public programs with black pastors, black theologians, liberation theologians here and in the UK and in France.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

And there is I mean on my bookshelf behind me.

SPEAKER_00 4:22

Here we go. So the the foundational text for mythology in American film is Donald Bogle's film about racial stereo book about racial stereotypes in film. And so when I started doing this work with black pastors and priests and theologians, myth necessarily came into the conversation because there are so many, I mean, honestly, destructive and painful myths that are reflected in American culture. And it's in film, it's in television, it's in advertising, and as my book sort of sets out, it's in all the other kinds of discourse. It's in it's in legal decisions, it's in politics, it's in theology, it's in sermons that people deliver. And so what came out for me, and and and this is a sort of foundational formational thing for me, is I did a lot of work with the the great American liberation theologian Kelly Brown Douglas. And we did programs at the Washington National Cathedral, uh, which is the nation's church, and we did things together at uh Trinity Church Wall Street, which is the nation's wealthiest uh church. And whenever we showed films and talked about them with audiences, what she would say is what do we celebrate and what do we lament? And and both of those things were about racial myths. So what do we celebrate? What are what are the things that liberate and what are the things that that reinforce people in power to push down on what in Matthew 25 Jesus would call the people who are marginalized, the people who are oppressed. And so, you know, my earlier book for Oxford University Press about race and film, my book on James Baldwin, which what I've talked with you guys about, led to this really deep dive into the racist myths that allow white supremacy to flourish and allow it to say that black and brown and Asian people, gay and trans people, and honestly, women, after looking at the events of the Southern Baptist Convention in the last week or so, so this book emerged out of all of my reading of all of these multitudinous texts that are at the heart of American understandings of power. And the understandings of power are that Jefferson said, We are all a part of this democracy, and white Christian nationalism says only people who look and live and identify like me are part of this democracy. And and and so it's you know it's theological, it's cultural, it's all of these different things. But it it grew out of all of this work on film, which is a thing that I've studied forever. But it led me into these conversations with history and theology and and politics and the legal world. And and honestly, even simple things like advertising, like if you look at ads from the 30s, 40s, 50s, you're like, oh this is just it's reinforcing all of these these white racist myths about who belongs on top and who will never be fully American.

SPEAKER_03 9:03

When when you use the the term myth, like how are you how are you defining it? How are you Yeah, using it in each of these stories? Because I think that you know one one could interpret myth as just an outright lie, one could also interpret a myth as just extremely nuanced. I I think probably one one good example of this, and and it's top of mind because of our series that starts next week, um, is like, you know, the myth of a Christian nation, right? So like you know, one could argue, you know, is America a Christian nation? I would argue no, but I could understand how you would think that because you're like, okay, yeah, the colonies, you know, they all had like their own things, you know, and everything. So sure, why not? But but but like when you when you're talking about myths in your book, like how are you using the the term?

SPEAKER_00 9:54

Well, so you know, David Barton and all of these folks who look at the myth of America's Christian founding. I mean, like, I've for 20, 25 years, like I've talked to historians who are like, yeah, that's that's not a thing. You know, Benjamin Franklin is not evangelical an evangelical Christian. George Washington is not an evangelical Christian. And I mean, when you look at the early presidents, I mean, like, so many of them are Episcopalian, which, you know, the folks who look, you know, and lean into white Christian nationalism and this Christian myth of America would be like, oh, they're not even Christian, because you know, that's what I am. But it is it's an origin myth. And so when when when you it's like I'm a big superhero guy. Like I've been reading, you know, comics since I was in fifth grade.

SPEAKER_03 11:01

Wait, really? Like Marvel or DC?

SPEAKER_00 11:04

Both.

SPEAKER_03 11:05

Okay, you and I are gonna have to have a conversation about Marvel comics.

SPEAKER_00 11:08

Mostly Marvel.

SPEAKER_03 11:09

My man.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

I mean, like, when you look at this, I mean, like, Superman is a myth created by Jewish teenagers about what it feels like to be in America. And so, like, nobody knows this because like Superman is like this cosmic level superhero, but you know, like in the early comics, he he fought against slumlords. You know, it's it's it's a justice thing. And so when, you know, we talk about Superman truth, justice in the American way. Like, it was not about elevating white, straight Christian men to the, you know, to the whatever, the cage fight on on the South Lawn. And when we look at at superhero origins, it's like where do they come from? And often they come from spaces around justice and regret, remorse, you know, like leaning into so like soup Spider-Man is, you know, like maybe, you know, the we were talking about DC. Spider-Man is like the great Marvel origin story. And he becomes Spider-Man because he didn't step up and do the right thing at the right moment. And so origin myths are so important in how we understand ourselves. And what white Christian nationalists are doing right now and have been doing for a long time, but you know, under this administration, they're ascendant. You know, they're allowed to say whatever they want to say. And so, if they want to say, like all of the founders who signed the Declaration of Independence, you know, you know, pledging our lives and our fortunes and our sacred honor, if you want to imagine that they were like, you know, hovering over the baptismal, and you know, like at the end of every service, there was a, you know, like a call, you know, to to come down and and you know, kneel at the at the bench. If if you understand America as a Christian nation, a white Christian nation, then you can say things like, When we bring in black and brown people, they are diluting our blue our blood, or they are eating the cats and the dogs, or they don't understand what it means to be American. And what I I tried to lay out in the book is the tension. You know, because Thomas Jefferson says America is a place for everybody. But what I also point out is when you go into the basement of the, you know, the National Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian, there is a statue of Jefferson in front of six hundred boxes which represent the enslaved people that he owned. And and so many of the historians that I cite in the book talk about this tension. You know, so I still, and as Barack Obama did in his memoir, A Promised Land, I still believe in America. I mean, like, you know, it is harder and harder under this administration, but I still believe in an America where everybody is recognized, everybody's accepted, everybody has the same rights. I mean, and and that sort of Matthew 25 rendition of my Christianity, which is God loves everybody, and at the end of whatever there is, at the end of things, it's not going to be, did you shout, Lord, Lord, did you lay hands on President Trump and the Oval Office? But did you stand up for the poor, the marginalized, the people in prison, the immigrant, the widow, the orphan? I mean, like all of those people that white Christian nationalism pushes to the side. And so when we talk about myth, one of the things that I tried to express in this book is there are so many harmful myths, and I chose ten. There are more, but there are also these myths, and and and by that I don't mean to denigrate it, but my faith is about the myth that God loves everybody, about the story that we are all children of God. And so mythology is how we make meaning. And myths can be a transparent lie, which is like black people are not human beings, but it can also be this God loves everybody. And so myths and counter myths are the foundational way that I tried to structure this book.

SPEAKER_03 16:50

I really, I really appreciate you you you saying that because like when I was reading through it, trying to like wrestle with some of the some of the the stories that you include in there, it's like it it caused me to really kind of think about like what are these myths doing to me and what are what did the myths do to the people that heard them? And yeah, I I I think a lot about regular listeners won't be surprised. Like, so Josh and I are somewhat like Jonathan Hyde fanboys. And so so when it comes to like writer and elephants, like it at least for me, I'm always like contextualizing it sort of in in and and Jonathan Hyde term. So so it's like you know, myths are are are the writer, are the reason. Like it's it's the thing we tell people when when they say, well, why are we oppressing these black people? You know, like like insert insert myth here, you know, because if the if the default setting is white supremacy and our intuition comes first, reasoning comes second, then it's like all of our all of our myths are of course going to help support and substantiate just that the core the core beliefs, right?

SPEAKER_00 18:04

Yeah, so I I mean I mean I've been talking about this stuff for a long time. My my friend Van Newkirk, who's an editor at The Atlantic, and one of our greatest writers on race, politics, the environment. I mean, I always tell people, I think he's our James Baldwin, like for for this generation. And he said a thing which is actually very similar to something Malcolm X said. And and and what Van said is who do myths serve? And if you're in a place of power, if there's a hierarchy, if you're building a caste system, C-A-S-T-E, then what you have to do is you have to create these myths that allow you to push people down the ladder and to justify your place at the top. And Isabel Wilkerson has written brilliantly about this, and I include this in the book and and and some of the other foundational texts around caste. But what America and what Western European countries basically did was they created this set of myths to justify the caste system. And in contemporary terms, what we would say is how do you justify taking voting rights away from a a piece of the populace? Or how do you justify asking people to self-deport from the United States when they came here as refugees from dangerous countries? Or honestly, how do you tell women that against all the biblical evidence, God does not want them to speak about God? So all of these myths are presented in service of preserving a hierarchy or a caste system, whether that's in a church or a nation. But like we are in this space right now where we have an administration and a set of allies at state and local levels. I I live in Texas. And, you know, Texas schools are being told that they cannot teach history because it is offensive to white students. And, you know, people in Oklahoma, people in Tennessee, people in Florida, people in Mississippi are having these same experiences. But the myths are basically saying we don't have to think about reality. We're gonna create our own reality, which is that we have always been on top and we should always be on top. And this is gonna be painful to a bunch of our listeners, viewers. And, you know, I think probably later we're gonna talk about how do I talk to white audiences about this. A lot of white audiences do not want to hear this, and yet the truth is if you're gonna tell the truth. And so, uh, you know, at the end of the day, I always come back to James Baldwin. And we had the the joy of talking about James Baldwin a couple of a couple of years back. But the back wall of the the Museum of African American History and Culture at the Smithsonian is a quote from Baldwin. And it talks about how history is who we are.

SPEAKER_01 21:57

And

SPEAKER_00 22:01

If we don't tell the truth, if we don't tell the truth about Thomas Jefferson, you know, if you just have a Jefferson memorial off the reflecting pool and you don't have the Jefferson in front of the 600 boxes that represent the enslaved people that he owned, then how do we ever move forward? And I'm sure we'll talk more about this, but in my own work with churches and civic groups and clergy, it it echoes in many ways the work that Jamar Tisby has done about his historical research and his anti-racism research. And the first space always has to be you got to tell the truth so that people can be aware that they can recognize where we are. Because if you don't tell the truth, if you don't have that awareness, if you don't recognize, and that's an early and easy step, honestly, you know, because I did so much conversation about race in film, and that book came out right after, you know, the Black Lives Matter movement, like kind of launched itself. But all these people who say, all the white people who say, I would never have experienced what George Floyd experienced. I mean, that's it's a very it's it's clearly like a first step, but if you don't have that first step, you don't have anything. Because so many of the people, so many of my conversation partners are like, I don't want to talk about this, or I'm not racist. And, you know, I'm I'm sure we're gonna lean into some of this stuff, but it it's really essential to look at the myths that underlie our 400, 500-year history in the West of saying it's okay for us to treat a certain set of people like this. And this allows me to sleep soundly at night.

SPEAKER_03 24:14

Yeah, I want to so I want to ask you about some of these myths. So the the first one I want to ask you, and you you actually lead off your your book with this, is the the myth that folks like myself were less than fully human, animalistic even, which I mean I I always get a little bit offended when people try to like ascribe some sort of like animalistic feature to me, because I'm just like that sounds like a superpower that I do not have. So I'm like, would I love to have a prehensile tale? Yes. I remember sure.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Would like I would I love to run the 108-3? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that myth goes all the way back to the foundational myths created when European powers started taking people from Africa and deciding they were going to keep them from ever forever. So in the book, I talk about Prince Henry the Navigator, who was, you know, like in my upbringing was taught as like this sort of, you know, like, wow, cool guy. You know, he he explored Africa. Well, he he didn't explore Africa, but like he sent boats out and they they went around Africa. Did he safari or anything like that? No, he was not on safari. He was not like tramping through the wilderness. But the the thing about the early origins of this myth about the humanity of black and brown people is that at some point, when you decide you're gonna treat people as less than human, you've got to create a myth that allows you to do that. You know, so in the same way we were talking about like how do you create a myth that says that black people shouldn't be able to vote their conscience and, you know, or or live in urban spaces that vote for Democrats. And so what we see coming out of that is a set of, you know, kind of propaganda points that continues well into the 20th century and, you know, honestly comes out often in political discourse now. I mean, this whole they're eating the cats, they're eating the dogs. I mean, what you are saying, I mean, and it's it's anti-immigrant xenophobia kind of stuff, but these these are black people, and you are saying that they are eating people's household pets. And so what we're saying, whether we're talking about the 15th century or the 21st century, is we are saying these are people who do not partake of our common humanity. And the way the myths are laid out, uh, particularly when we look at the early myths in America, is we should enslave these people. Because that's the only way that we're gonna be safe and they're gonna be elevated. And, you know, I talk about a second myth, which is the sort of paternalistic vision of of slaveholding, which is like, yeah, maybe they are Homo sapiens, but they don't they don't get democracy and and they they don't get the human stuff. And and so these myths were put in place to allow people to justify slaveholding, and you know, they keep popping up in political discourse. You know, so so whether it's this stuff about immigrants but honestly, whether even whether it's stuff about voting rights, you know, what what people are saying when the Supreme Court first says, like, first there's no racism, which is another of the myths that I deal with, that after Obama, we are in a post-racial space. We are not. We are so far retrograde of where we were ten years ago. But when when you say black and brown people cannot be trusted to exercise democracy. I mean, it's it's a painful myth, it's a harmful myth, but it is a myth like that southern states jumped on immediately after the Supreme Court said, hey, y'all, go back, go back and redistrict. Because, you know, we can't trust black people to vote in the South.

SPEAKER_03 29:05

Yeah, it seems like because I I was thinking as you were talking, especially when Donald Trump uses insults hurled at like people, politicians or folks in this administration or whatever. It's like the caliber of the insult does, at least as a black person, like I recognize like certain like the language he uses against you know the minority, uh, Hakeem Jeffries, or or even like the the one in particular that I came to mind is Amarosa. So Amarosa was this reality TV person that I think worked under under Trunk in his first administration. She got fired, and I remember him calling her like a dog or something like that. And and and it's just like it it seems like that's an echo of a period where folks did actually think that like black people were were animals, but but like I mean, how does how does that like formation even start? Like, I mean, I I I I'm taking it on, you know, I don't know, I'm just assuming that they didn't have the same sort of science that we have today to prove that humans were not in fact animals. So, like, what's the rationale?

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Well, it there is a set of pseudoscience, you know, as we look at 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th century. And, you know, obviously, like, you know, they don't they don't have genetic research. You know, they they can't look at you and me and go like, we are the same person, you know, except I'm not wearing a hat. But they their stuff is anthropological for the most part. I mean, like, they're doing some of the like the caliper stuff and measuring people's heads and you know, looking at physical features. But when they do the caliper stuff and look at physical features, what they're looking at is, you know, like Nordic, Aryan humans. And they're like, all right, so if if your nose is broad, you know, if if you have a largest backside, which I actually have, I mean, there may be there may be some ancestry there I need to deal with. But like, they they they're looking at what what are the easiest signals that I can say that somebody doesn't look like me? And and so in the book, I actually talk about, I think it's a Harvard professor who goes on a trip, and for the first time he is served at table by a black waiter. And and he says, like, I I almost could not eat this food. Because when I looked at this waiter, he he doesn't look like me. And and and and that becomes the mythic way of saying he doesn't share my humanity. And you know, like I've I've been all over the world and there are some people who look like me, and there are a bunch of people who don't look like me. And at the end of the day, like we are all the same, you know, we are all children of God. But there is there is this this mythic and myth-making process where people try to use whatever forms of discourse they have, you know, whether it's theology or whether it's you know, legal cases. I mean, if you if you ever read the Dred Scott opinion, I mean it's basically like, yeah, this guy is not a human, and thus he does not have standing to address this court. So it is it is all about white supremacy at the end of the day, and it is all about that caste system that we were talking about earlier. And I think in recent years it's become much more tenditious for people on the right as we move toward becoming a majority, minority country. Where, I mean, like here in Texas, I think there are probably more people who don't look exactly like me than there are people who look like me, which the people who, you know, fought Mexico would not have been happy about because they were fighting for their slaveholding rights. But it it it is it is a thing, you know, when like when people feel under pressure, they you know, they lean hard into their rights and their privilege. And, you know, the the Trump White House and like the allies in various states and and municipalities have have given them permission to do this. And and you know, also I would just say like we live in so many different information environments now. So like Benny Johnson says things on Twitter that 20 years ago you would have been ostracized and like forced to leave the country if you had said out loud.

SPEAKER_03 34:25

Congressman Andy Ogles, too.

SPEAKER_00 34:29

Yeah. So there is this very powerful sense. I forget who said it. It was a New York Times columnist, and I was doing an event with Robert Jones from PRRI, who you guys know, and this came up in the conversation, and Robbie Jones was saying, like, was quoting this guy saying, It is a dying scorpion, but like the scorpion can sting a bunch of people before it goes. And like, I mean, please God, may that be true. May this be the dying scorpion. But like, so much is getting poisoned by all of this discourse. And like, I hope we're moving into a better space. And I and honestly, I just I hope the failures of this administration, this hateful racist administration, kind of remind people of the human decency and and of Jefferson's call. It imperfect as it was, it's like, yeah, we are we are all in this together. 250 years? We we just had Juneteenth, we just had the Obama library open. Like, I don't care what happens on July 4th. Like, I am in this hopeful American inclusion space. You know, please God.

SPEAKER_03 35:59

I I I love it. Well, I I'm gonna have to kick you off your hopeful space just for a moment because I want to ask about the myth of the lost cause. And kind of like, you know, so the Civil War had a fight, they there was a fight called the Civil War. One side, you know, wanted one outcome, the other side wanted another. So, like, so help us understand how how the Civil War created a new myth.

SPEAKER_00 36:26

Well, where I usually land on this is I think about the 1915 D.W. Griffith film The Birth of a Nation. And and you know, I I write about this in in my book on race in film, which is called A Long, Long Way. It's it's a seminal film in American history and culture. It was the most popular film in American history. The president showed it in the White House, like the first film I ever showed in the White House. And one of the things that I think is really essential for listeners to know is that the birth of a nation, that title does not refer to a new birth of liberty like Lincoln talked about. It's like the birth of a white nation after the conflict of the Civil War. And so there is this very powerful sense that, you know, first in what would it be, 1877, there is an end to Reconstruction in the South. And historians talk about this period I mean Kel Irani as redemption. And this was the place where after, you know, black senators and congressmen had served in the United States Capitol, there was a compromise between North and South where they said, okay, Reconstruction is over, and white people, you can have back all the rights that you had before. I mean, we can't do slavery again. I mean, although you can, you know, put people in jail and make them work for you. You know, so the you know, you know, the Michelle Alexander stuff. But we've we've got this redemption period where everything gets rolled backwards. And white people say, Okay, the Civil War is over, we are one nation again. And I write about this in the book at the beginning of that Lost Cause chapter, because when I ran across the Confederate monument at Arlington National Cemetery, I was like, I have seen so many horrible things in my life, and I never imagined this thing. And it was basically this compromise. So they have taken the monument down, Pete Hexeth says they're gonna put it back up. I mean, who honestly knows what's gonna happen in the next two years? But there is also this circle of Confederate dead. So people who fought against the United States of America in the middle of America's most like sacred space, Arlington National Cemetery. And so the the lost cause myth is essentially my priest preached this last weekend, last Sunday. She said it is the Ku Klux Klan elevated to the White House. So all of these, you know, racist myths, all of these hatreds, all of these white supremacy tropes that, you know, now because we're saying, yeah, maybe this whole, you know, war between the states thing was a mistake. And, you know, I I mean, obviously we can't put people back in slavery, but it wasn't that terrible. And, you know, the myths that I write about in this book are like, yeah, you know, like, you know, parental figures. We're taking care of these folks. And so, you know, birth of a nation, gone with the wind, there are all these cultural representations of the beauty and grace of the Confederacy, and also, honestly, of the the happiness of enslaved people. So there's there's a scene in Birth of a Nation. And God, I I I don't even really want to talk about this, but this is true about a lot of things in this book I don't want to talk about. There's a scene where a bunch of the enslaved people dance for the slaveholders and their visitors. And there is this thing early on in Gone with the Wind where the enslaved people say, Well, we're done for the day. We choose when we want to stop working, and we'll just go back to our happy little cottages, because that's what slavery is. And it's the it's the contemporary version of this. So it is all the people who say that America is not a racist nation, or has never been a racist nation. And it's it's the very reasons that I teach Frederick Douglass and I teach The Birth of a Nation. So, like when you see these things or you read these things, or you read Maya Angelou's autobiography, you cannot claim that white people have always been, you know, on the up and up, and that black people have never been, you know, traumatized, enslaved, uh, you know, embattled. And it's also, honestly, it's the thing about history. Because the the lost cause myth says we need to view history differently. I mean, Baldwin would say that's the absolute abdication of our responsibilities as a democracy and as human beings and as spiritual people. You can't lie about who you are. But I mean, I that's that's sort of where we stand. And we are in this moment where the loudest voices in American Christianity are these white Christian nationalists. And so, you know, I look at James Tallerico, who's you know, running for Senate here in Texas. I look at James Fugelsang, who I mentioned to you, who wrote this great book, The Separation of Church and Hate. And there, there are all of these, you know, what we would think of as progressive Christians, but I don't even know why we have to put that adjective. It's like, you know, you've got the law and the prophets in Matthew 25. It's like, what is the Bible about?

SPEAKER_01 43:44

What is Christianity about? It's not about power.

SPEAKER_03 43:50

I um I really resonate with that, especially like with the progressive Christianity thing. Because as a Christian myself, like. Like, and I consider myself a progressive. Like, I've I've I've actually stopped using the term progressive Christianity because, like, you know, sure, I'm a Christian, and you know, I'm sure like you could say Donald Trump is a Christian as as well. Or his supporters would say he's a Christian.

SPEAKER_00 44:16

His supporters would say, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:18

But but but I would say, like, let the real Christian please stand up, you know, like like if if you are going to be a Christian, like I don't want to, I don't want to redefine what progressive Christianity means. Like, I just want to solidify what I know Christian means. So at least I totally resonate with that. And I'll I'll let you speak to that if you have something to say.

SPEAKER_00 44:40

Well, I just the last year or two, particularly in this administration, where you know, there there's a set of Christians who are pursuing power. And, you know, because I do all this research, and and you're probably aware of this as well. There's, you know, there's the you know, the Project 2025, you know, let's let's seize political power. Uh but there's also this Seven Mountains mandate, which is let's let's seize every power for Jesus. You know, so let's let's let's take over entertainment. You know, so we've got CBS News, and now we got CNN. And we got rid of Stephen Colbert, and we couldn't quite get rid of Jimmy Kimmel. You know, I mean, you know, thanks be to God. But like, we're gonna take over entertainment, we're gonna take over politics, we're gonna take over education, and just like sidebar, like I teach at a private religious university in Texas, which traditionally has been so much more conservative than the public universities. And it is now the most progressive university, you know, because the University of Texas and Texas State and Texas AM and the University of North Texas and Texas Tech have been told that they can't teach history anymore. And I'm teaching James Baldwin. You know? And so we we are living in a culture where a set of really loud and sorry, obnoxious Christians who care more about hate than they do about love, who care more about exclusion than about inclusion, have been given a platform. And and to come back to your earlier things, like I don't want to call myself a progressive Christian, I think that's I mean, I think that's absolutely right. So I did an interview, I guess, about a year ago with the outgoing presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, Bishop Curry, you know, who's a black preacher, a progressive voice, but like he boils Christianity down in a very, really powerful way. He says, if it's not about love, it's not about God. And so if you look at people who are about hate and exclusion and about, I mean, greed and cruelty, I I can't, I mean, every time I talk about white Christian nationalism, now I'm I'm doing the air quotes around the Christian part, because there is no part of Christianity that I recognize from that. You know, I I recognize the culture wars, I recognize the far right sort of we're gonna roll religion into this movement, and we're gonna set up some culture wars, and we're gonna, I don't know. I I love the fact I was listening to a podcast on the bulwark this morning, and they were talking about the Senate rate race in Texas. And so some of these people who had voted for Donald Trump, you know, were saying, you know, I don't like Paxton because like clearly he's a crook, but I'm I'm really worried about the fact that Talo Rico said that God is non-binary. And I'm not sure they even know what that means. I mean, like, literally, but I mean also theologically. Because it's it's that thing, you know, about Augustine and you know, Barbara Brown Taylor saying we put God in a convenient box so that we can understand it, and then we've got to break the bounds of that box. You know, so I grew up in a he language kind of understanding of God. But I mean, it's not a radical theological thing. I mean, like, I went to seminary to say you you can't say that God is a certain thing.

SPEAKER_03 48:54

So true. Yeah. I mean, like four four years ago, we did an episode with gosh, I'm gonna say Mark Silk called uh like God's pronoun should be they them or something like that. It it it it uh you know it it got about the same level of reaction as as most of our episodes do, but like it I couldn't imagine us recording that episode today.

SPEAKER_00 49:20

Yeah. Well, yeah. And and you know what's so interesting, interesting, that's that's a word we use in my house growing up. I am guessing that a lot of these conservative Christians don't even know a trans person. You know? I know trans people and I have kids, you know, like friends who have trans kids, and I I don't understand it on a biological level. Like I am super comfortable in this male body, but I also love these people and I I love these students, and like I can't imagine they're being treated as less than which is I mean, this is part of why I wound up on the turning point USA Professor Watchlist. Professor Watchlist. Congratulations. Thank you. It's it's a daily comfort to me. But it's like if honestly, if you just step up and say God loves everybody, then there are people who say, no, actually God does not love everybody. And then I'm like, Yeah, this is our impasse. And you can call yourself Christian, but that's not it's not in the scriptures, it's not in the cheat the teachings of the church, and it's not in this Pope's teaching, which is why people are so incredibly angry at him.

unknown 50:57

I know, I know.

SPEAKER_03 50:58

Well, so so Greg, just just just my my my my last question for you about the book, and I think we we we sort of touched a little bit on it earlier, but so the title is white lies. My guess is you know, your average white evangelical or just the average white person is going to look at the title of that book and have like the hairs on the the neck, you know, has have the hairs on the back of their neck stand up because it has the word white in it, right? So, like how like how should you know a white person that picks this up and says, oh, wow, that really hurts. You know, like I'm reading this and I feel really kind of weird inside. Like, well, what's what's your what's your advice to them?

SPEAKER_00 51:42

Oh, I mean, and and honestly, that's such a hard thing because I've I've been doing these conversations for 10 years. And I walk into a bunch of white spaces and I walk into a bunch of white clergy spaces, and I mean, we've probably talked about this before, but my superpower is I look like this, you know. So if Jamar Tisby walks into that space, or if Kelly Brown Douglas walks into that space, or you know, any of the black pastors or preachers or theologians, they're gonna be received a little differently. Like a wall is gonna immediately go up. It's like you can't talk to me like that. And so one of the things that I hope this book will do is say, I have been white all the 64 years of my life. I grew up in the Deep South. I went to, you know, recently desegregated schools. I I have beloved friends who are black pastors and preachers and theologians. I have walked alongside them and learned from them. And I partake of privilege every single day. You know, I'm I'm not rich, but like there is never a morning when I get up and look in the mirror and go, people are gonna be mad at me today because I look like this. And and so what what I would encourage and and this is the hard piece, but can you step back away from that immediate reaction of guilt or revulsion or you know, I I can't accept this to say this is our history and this is our current reality. I mean, you know, one of the reasons that I love working with Robbie Jones at PRRI is he has all the stats. You know, I have the stories, he has the stats. So generational wealth for black people is a fraction of what white people have. Environmental damage to black people is a fraction of what white people endure. Lifespans for black people are less than white people. There are all these statistical measures, even when you step away from myth, even when you step away from story and anecdote, even when you step away from the cultural representations. I wrote this book because I am a deeply engaged Christian person. And it took me five years, and it's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life. And it it reminds me a lot of what Baldwin used to say about going down into the dungeon and and dealing with the most horrifying and painful things that you can deal with. But this is also a book about if we tell the truth, we can hold these things up to the light and say, we don't have to believe these myths, and we can recognize them when politicians trot them out to say that when black people demonstrate it's a mob or a riot, we can hold this up to say when people say that black people are subhuman or less human or unable to govern themselves, we can look at Raphael Warnock or John Lewis, you know, or Jasmine Crockett and go, These are substantial, smart, patriotic uh human beings. And and so what I hope people can take away from the pain from going down into the dungeon, which this book does for ten chapters, is is also this awareness that we don't have we don't have to live in this space of lies and untruths. We can actually do better. And when we talked about the Baldwin book, this probably came out, but at the end of his life, James Baldwin said, you know, I don't know much. Which is a thing for him to say, honestly.

SPEAKER_01 56:37

But he said, I do know this. We can do better.

SPEAKER_00 56:43

And and and that would be my call. I mean, that's why I wrote the book. Like, it was torture, Will. And I know that it's torture for a lot of people who will read it, black, white, and other. But what I hope is at the end is there's this recognition that as Christians or as what Dr. King used to call people of good conscience, we can do better.

SPEAKER_01 57:09

Yeah, I uh I agree.

SPEAKER_03 57:10

And and I, you know, I think that what your book provides, especially if if you are of the mindset that yeah, something's just not quite right in society, and that it does seem to favor like one ethnicity over another, then I think that your your book offers an inoculation to help people be able to recognize that. And it will it will hurt, obviously, like all inoculations do, you know. But but but like I think that the long-term benefits are are gonna be there. And uh yeah, and I wish you nothing but success for for your book. Where uh where can people get it?

SPEAKER_00 57:52

Well, you know, all the places. So, like we were talking earlier, Amazon is already selling it because they have it in the warehouse. Oxford University University Press has it. My encouragement always is if you've got a good independent bookstore in your hometown, patronize them, people who love books. Amazon will sell you anything, you know. You know, they'll sell you a screwdriver, they'll sell you a pair of socks, they don't care. But you know, your your independent bookstore is a place that loves books and curates books, and you know, so that would be my encouragement. But yeah, well, thank you.

SPEAKER_03 58:30

You're welcome. Yeah, definitely. Always a pleasure to have you, Greg. And you missed a good one, Josh. So make sure you stick around for the next time. Um, awesome. And hey, and thanks to our audience uh for stopping by as always. Um, hey, don't forget our church and state series begins next week. Um, so if you're watching this, make sure you tune in. Um, go to our website to get all the information if you need it. And as always, keep your conversations not right or left, but up. And we'll see you next time. Take care.