Just like many other freedoms, the promise of religious freedom did not extend to Black and Indigenous people at America’s founding. Racism has deep roots in religion. White evangelicalism’s intersection with racism is often traced back to the early 19th century when the split between abolitionist evangelicals and conservative evangelicals emerged. From the conservative evangelical movement (what we now call white Christian Nationalism) grew Jim Crow laws and the systemic racism we are fighting today.
“To put it more broadly, [Christian Nationalism/evangelicalism] is an Americanized Christianity born in the context of white Christian slaveholders. It sanctified and justified segregation, violence, and racial proscription. Slavery and racism permeate evangelicalism, and as much as evangelicals like to protest that they are color-blind, their theologies, cultures, and beliefs are anything but.”–Anthea Butler
Today, white Christian nationalists continue to use religion to justify their personal and political positions on systemic racism, critical race theory, misogyny, abortion, homophobia and transphobia. And herein lies the connection. When laws align with one religious belief system, these laws breach the separation of church and state. Without the separation of church and state, such laws advance systemic racism and unduly harm people of color.
According to a recent survey by PRRI/Brookings Institute, Americans who are supportive of Christian nationalism generally hold less favorable views of immigrants, racial and ethnic minorities, and are less likely to believe that racism remains a problem in American society.
A high majority of white Christian Nationalists also believe in the “Great Replacement Theory,” a paranoid, acist, antisemitic assertion that elitist forces are working to “replace” white people of European descent with immigrants and people of color.
In addition to outright discrimination practiced by some private schools, voucher programs have a sordid past rooted in racism. Vouchers were first created after Brown v. Board of Education to help fund segregation academies designed to keep Black and white students apart.
"White supremacy, from the beginning, was sanctified and affirmed by certain expressions of religion."
