Religious Equality in America and White Christian Privilege

Khyati Joshi in her new book, “White Christian Privilege: The Illusion of Religious Equality in America,” documents how in diverse ways whiteness and Christianity is favored in the US. She argues that Americans believe that there is religious equality in the US because of the First Amendment. They think that the constitution and courts have been successful in making the US a land of religious freedom. Dr. Joshi contends that this belief is not true and links whiteness privileges to Christian privileges. In an article in Religious News Service by Simran Jeet Singh, Dr. Joshi explains using three key concepts: Christian privilege, Christian normativity, and Christian hegemony. Christian privilege is associated with the everyday advantages that Christians have in the United States. Christian normativity "refers to how Christian ideas, beliefs, and practices have become so entrenched in American society that they have become the national standard." Christian hegemony is linked with the state or government. It demonstrates the myriad ways in which the American state endorses Christianity. 

In Khyati Joshi’s new book, “White Christian Privilege,” Joshi brings religion into the conversation about privilege, arguing that our perception of whiteness suffers from an “optical illusion”: that religion is one place where there is equality in America.

Because it is enshrined in the First Amendment of the Constitution, we presume that religious equality is manifest in our society as well. Yet any analysis that neglects white Christianity’s role in creating and upholding whiteness, Joshi argues, fails to capture the full picture. 

Source: Religious News Service

Joshi upends our usual approach to these questions by focusing not on marginalized communities’ experiences, but the other side of the equation: how the dominant group has created, sustained and framed its distinct advantages. In helping us to see “the rules of society that have been constructed to benefit Christians,” Joshi connects the dots of just how this privilege functions.

The relationship between whiteness and Christianity becomes clearer as Joshi follows multiple threads through American history that inextricably intertwined one’s faith and the color of one’s skin. In the 1790s, the U.S. Congress passed a naturalization act that declared one must be a free white man of good moral character to become a citizen. Explicit about race and gender (white, man) but implicit about religion (good moral character), the legislation deftly linked whiteness and morality, itself an indicator of being a Christian in good standing.

Nearly a century later, when African Americans were granted citizenship through the 14th Amendment (1868) and the Naturalization Act of 1870, it seemed on its face a sign of racial progress. But non-Christian communities — East Asians, South Asians and Native Americans — were still denied citizenship, ensuring that who counted as an American had as much to do with religion as it did with race.

Joshi organizes the rules of Christian society using three key concepts. The first is Christian privilege, which pertains to everyday advantages that folks who identify as Christian or grew up as Christian have in the United States. She gives an example from her childhood in the American South in which a Hindu American named Suha is barred from starting on his high school soccer team because he refused to recite the Lord’s Prayer with his coach and teammates prior to their matches.

Suha’s story transported me back to my high school soccer days in Texas. My team, too, would recite the Lord’s Prayer before each game. I would kneel alongside my teammates and bow my head out of respect – it never occurred to me until much later that I could have requested we say a Sikh prayer as well. Christian prayer was the default, and that this seemed normal to all of us.

Joshi’s second concept, Christian normativity, is related: It refers to how Christian ideas, beliefs and practices have become so entrenched in American society that they have become the national standard. Christian — and particularly Protestant — ways of doing things come to be so normal that non-Christian approaches are perceived as deviant, even threatening. It doesn’t take much of a leap from there to understand why maintaining Christian normativity is at odds with achieving religious pluralism and religious equality.

The third bucket is Christian hegemony. Here the state is the power that endorses Christianity, inserting the words “under God” into the Pledge of Allegiance and the inscription of “In God We Trust” on our currency. These and other examples, Joshi argues convincingly, point to how deeply Christianity has been established as our official religion.

The first half of the book, which recounts how these constructs have worked their way through American history, is fascinating and illuminating: fascinating because it helps us see the subtle and overt ways in which religion has partnered with race to produce American racism; powerful because Joshi sheds light on an aspect of white supremacy that is so often left under the hood.

In the latter chapters, rather than historicizing and teaching, she shifts slowly into practical matters, which comes as little surprise to those who know her social justice training. It’s also refreshing in an academic text, a genre that more often than not wallows in problematizing and stops short of solutions.

An entire chapter, “Making Meaning and Making Change,” offers helpful advice on how to move forward, as well as a vision for what it would take to establish religious equality and religious pluralism in America.

Two ideas of hers stuck out to me in particular, both of which I am yearning to see realized. One is changing our assumptions. Once we can see clearly past the optical illusion of Christian privilege, we will become conscious of how damaging our assumptions of Christian normativity can be for religious minorities. Seeing its harmful impact can and should move us to challenge and change our assumptions of what is normal and acceptable.

Second is Joshi’s suggestion of changing our paradigms. Living within a structure built on white supremacist and Christo-centric norms makes it difficult for those who are not white and not Christian to establish equal footing. Bending the structure, opening the door for other faiths to exercise privilege of their own, won’t work, as we will ultimately end up with the same results. A meaningful interrogation calls on us to replace it with a new paradigm, one that does not privilege any groups over any others.

These interventions are as powerful as they are compelling: It is clear that without these steps, we have no path to realizing religious equality and pluralism.

We need Christian Nationalism in the US

In The Federalist, Matthew Cockran defends Christian nationalism and its place in the US.  In his article, We Need Christian Nationalism Because Religious Neutrality Has Failed, he rejects religious neutrality and equality and claims that "our religious liberty never proceeded from attempts at religious neutrality. It came precisely from the privileged position that Christianity has historically held in America and in the West."

He defines Christian nationalism, not as the conflation of American and Christian identities or a call for theocracy or white supremacy, but in a much simpler way:

A rejection of the religious neutrality of the late 20th century in favor of 1) a recognition that Christianity has had a unique and privileged influence on our American heritage that overshadows the influences of other faith traditions, 2) a conviction that a Christian understanding of the world should predominate over other worldviews in American civic life, and 3) an understanding that a nation that successfully excised or sufficiently diluted this influence could no longer be called “American” in the same sense as before. Although more general than what the statement condemns, this understanding would actually encompass many Americans, whether they accept the label or not.

Cockran argues that all religions are not the same and religious freedom is specifically linked to Christianity: 

Different gods make different demands. One of the reasons theological liberals are so blind on this issue is their ignorant presumption that, at their root, all religions are basically the same—that they all worship the same God, proclaim the same general values and ideals, and merely have different cultural trappings or modes of expression. In such a fantasy, a neutral pluralism is conceivable, but reality is a different matter. 

Although there is only one God, there are many gods (i.e., idols) in this world. The extent to which a person will support or even accept things like secular democracy and religious pluralism depends on that person’s god... 

What then does that mean for American democracy and religious freedom? It means neither can ever be religiously neutral. Some gods demand such things; some gods merely tolerate them; and other gods abhor them. To embrace these things as worthy of our support and protection and prioritize them over other concerns is to favor some gods and therefore some religions above others.

Rather than submitting to a fantasy of religious neutrality, Christian nationalism accepts and adapts to this reality. After all, the Christian faith is the root from which our form of religious freedom grew, and the American nation is the heritage in which it is enfleshed. The positive forms of secularism and religious liberty that had been enjoyed in America grew out of the specifics of Christianity. 

Christians, for example, have always held that there is a fundamental distinction between worldly government and the kingdom of heaven. Even the statement acknowledges this. You can see it in the teachings of Jesus—that his kingdom was not of this world, and that we should render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the things that are God’s. 

You can see it in St. Augustine, when he wrote of the City of Man and the City of God. You can see it in Martin Luther’s Two Kingdoms theology. You can see it in the Church of Rome’s doctrine of the Two Swords. Different Christian traditions have certainly differed as to how these two realms relate to one another, and some have separated them far more than others. Nevertheless, the distinction has always been there. Civil government can be disentangled from the church precisely because of that Christian distinction... 

So in the end, even the simple idea that church and state have distinct authorities and responsibilities is by no means religious neutral. It blatantly gives Christianity a seat of privilege in the way government is organized, and it does so at the expense of some other religions. 

The same can be said of American religious freedom. Americans have deliberately refrained from establishing a state church, and we allow extremely broad freedoms for the exercise of religion and the expression of religious ideas. This was a natural outgrowth of Christian ideas, since in Christianity, salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ—a faith that cannot be compelled by force. Accordingly, from the Christian perspective, there is very little point in using the state to enforce religious adherence... 

In America, the weight of those past decisions have always been rooted in the values of the Christians who founded and cultivated this nation. Their substance is indelibly colored by Christianity. Our Declaration of Independence hinges the entire matter of independence on the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God” and ascribes our rights to endowment by the Creator. 

These are by no means religiously neutral statements. They are not sectarian, grounded as they are in the language of natural law, but they are nevertheless grounded in a Christian understanding of that natural law. Not every religion sees the matter the same way. Not every religion even has a natural law tradition.

Rejecting common objections to Christian nationalism, he contends:

Some would object to this line of thought, claiming that our nation really founded as much by deists rather than Christians. There were certainly a few prominent ones in the mix, but it doesn’t weaken my case in the slightest. Deism itself was always an attempt to possess a Christian heritage without possessing a Christian faith... 

Others would claim that our religious liberty is no longer Christian because many non-Christian nations have also provided measures of religious freedom. This is true, and I’m quite pleased that they’ve culturally appropriated religious liberty from the Christian West. I believe my heritage to be of value, so I think it’s great when others learn from it.

Billy Graham's lying in honor and America's civil religion

What is America's civil religion and is the decision to allow Reverend Billy Graham's body to “lie in honor” in the nation’s Capitol in line with constitutional separation of church and state? The Rev. Graham died on Feb. 21 at age 99. He is the first religious figure that had the distinction to “lie in honor” at the Rotunda of the Capitol. The tradition of lying in state (for those who have served the American government in some capacity) and lying in honor is old. It started in 1852 when Henry Clay (Secretary of State, Senator and Speaker of the House) was laid in state in 1852. 

An article in Washington Post debates the issue of honoring a Christian pastor in the Capitol of a secular state:

Barbara Perry, director of presidential studies at the Miller Center for presidential and political history at the University of Virginia, said she thinks honoring someone whose primary service was the conversion of people to a certain faith with a Rotunda ceremony violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Although Graham was an adviser to presidents, Perry noted, tapes came out later revealing Graham and President Richard M. Nixon sharing anti-Semitic views, and civil rights historians have noted that Graham urged the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and others not to press hard on the cause of racial equality. 

“Not that he shouldn’t be lauded, but does he deserve to lie in honor in the U.S. Capitol? And once you open that door, where do you stop?” Perry said. “Lying in honor should be someone who served their country. Well, how did he do that?”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation, a nonprofit organization that pushes for the separation of church and state, wrote a formal complaint letter to Ryan and McConnell. “The fact is that Graham lived his life in service to his evangelical Christian religion, and the Bible that he believed was an infallible reference manual. He placed the Bible far above the Constitution,” the advocacy group wrote. 

The advocacy group Americans United for the Separation of Church and State on Wednesday released a statement saying Graham should not have been a Rotunda honoree.

“We don’t say this to criticize a man who has died, but because the question of who should receive this rare honor warrants public discussion. … Such a high government honor for someone solely for their work spreading an interpretation of one faith offends the spirit of our First Amendment’s guarantee that government will not take actions that endorse or promote religion,” the statement read. 

The office of the historian of the House of Representatives declined to give more information about the criteria used to select Graham, or other past honorees. The Office of the Architect of the Capitol, which hosted the service, said only that such services are prompted by congressional resolution or by congressional leaders. 

At the private service Wednesday, Ryan, McConnell and Trump gave deeply religious tributes. 

“Today we give thanks for this extraordinary life. And it is very fitting that we do so in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol, where the memory of the American people is enshrined. Here in this room we are reminded that America is a nation sustained by prayer,” Trump told the crowd. “Today we honor him as only three other previous private citizens have been. Like the faithful of Charlotte once did, we say a prayer that all across the land, the Lord will raise up men and women like Billy Graham to spread a message of love and hope to every precious child of God.”

According to Pew Research data, about a half of Americans say they pray daily, while a quarter say they seldom or never pray. Trump’s own belief about God and his prayer life are not clear, though he does not attend church regularly and has said he does not ask God for forgiveness — two basic tenets of traditional Christian practice. About one-fifth of Americans say they have no religious affiliation. 

Source:  Richard Nixon appeared at one of Graham’s revivals in Tennessee in 1970, the first president to give a speech from an evangelist’s platform

Historians and Graham experts said his life spanned a period when there was more of a shared concept of American “civil religion” — in other words, that being a pious person in and of itself had merit. 

Graham’s other high honors, said William Martin, senior fellow in religion at Rice University and author of the upcoming “A Prophet With Honor: The Billy Graham Story,” came in part because “of just the fact that he was calling people to be Christian. To live lives as good citizens and of service.” These were decades when the connection between those things seemed obvious to Americans — even if they unofficially agreed not to speak of things like racial segregation and gender inequality. 

However, Martin said Graham was responsible for more than winning souls. He served as a kind of unofficial diplomat between the United States and foreign leaders, comforted soldiers in Korea and Vietnam, and “did more to enlarge the scope of religious freedom in Eastern Europe than perhaps any else.” 

The Wednesday service, Martin said, “to a significant extent shows the difference between then and now.” 

Historians also said while Graham typically delivered public prayers explicitly in the name of Jesus Christ, he became increasingly in his life more sensitive to the diversifying America. In contrast to his son, evangelist Franklin Graham, Billy Graham said decades ago that Muslims and Christians worshipped the same God, Martin said. Franklin Graham has called Islam “a very wicked and evil religion.” 

Wednesday shows how America includes radically different religious bubbles. While some considered the service shocking for such a diverse nation, the country’s three most prominent political leaders chose to focus not on Graham’s secular accomplishments but on his faith, known as a sincere and humble one. 

“But remember the current leadership hasn’t been remarkably hospitable to the changes” in America, Martin said.

Grant Wacker, author of “America’s Pastor: Billy Graham and the Shaping of a Nation,” said that although the lawmakers in the Rotunda on Wednesday focused on Graham’s religious faith, the late evangelist would have expanded on how that faith must lead people to confront societal problems. 

Ryan praised Graham as “challenging us to look at the right questions.” 

“Although Ryan does not say so, part of Graham’s lifelong mission was pressing people to look around at the crises on the international and national scenes and look within at the crises in their own lives, and ask what is wrong? In all cases what is ultimately wrong is sin, resulting in greed, cruelty, etc.,” Wacker wrote to the Post. 

Historians, clergy of all kinds and everyday Americans have been memorializing Graham in the days since he died, sharing stories about how his multimedia, racially integrated and nonpartisan crusades changed the face of American religion. Many have shared simple stories of how his humility and clear faith converted them. Others have debated what impact he could have had on issues such as racism and economic equality if he had made them his causes. Some say he would have bemoaned how partisan U.S. evangelicalism has become, while others argue that he planted the seeds. (see Billy Graham is the first religious leader to lie in honor at the U.S. Capitol. Some say he should be the last)

 Kimberly Winston discusses the issue with respect to American civil religion. She explains what is American civil religion and how honoring Graham is linked to American civil religion?

American civil religion is the idea that, even though the United States has no official religion and is made of up of adherents of every religion and no religion at all, there is a set of common symbols, rites, rituals and traditions that serve Americans the same way religions do for adherents. Think of the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance, the singing of the national anthem or “God Bless America,” a military gun salute, the honoring of veterans on Memorial Day, etc. These rituals are valued, expected on certain occasions or holidays, and they unite Americans of different backgrounds in their observance...

We have separation of church and state, so why should a preacher lie in honor in the nation’s Capitol? 

That’s a thornier question. There are certainly arguments to be made for and against. Putting those aside, the tradition of publicly mourning notable Americans can buttress aspects of civil religion that bond Americans of all faiths and no faith. 

“Funerals are powerful rites of reconciliation that may dispel controversy and promote a sense of public accord,” Emma Brodzinski writes of state funerals and lying in state in the Encyclopedia of Death and Human Experience. Referring to Lincoln’s lying in state — the first by an American president in the Capitol — she continues that the “grandeur” of such a setting and such a ritual can become “a restatement of American values.” 

In other words, whether you think honoring Graham in the Capitol Rotunda is pandering to President Trump’s evangelical base or you think it is recognition due a man many beyond evangelicals considered great, his lying in honor is part of the American civil religion that can unite us all. (see Billy Graham, lying in honor and American Civil Religion)