Growing up in a majority Mexican city in California, I’ve encountered several white pastors who marketed their church to Mexicans as a form of outreach. They held church events to celebrate Mexican holidays, they released content in Spanish, they promoted their Spanish church services, and they preached sermons about the Christian duty of being hospitable to the local Hispanic community.
I respect ministers’ efforts to embrace cultural diversity, but these churches never addressed one crucial problem: that the particular stream of historic Christian teaching that informed their sermons has roots in a colonial interpretation of Christianity. This reinterpretation of the Christian faith was led by European colonizers to justify the exploitation of colonized lands and its inhabitants.
This colonial Christianity is responsible for the development of white supremacy as we know it today. The whiteness that oversaturates the demographics of many Christian congregations may be addressed, but the whiteness that oversaturates the history of Western Christian teaching is often never addressed.
I am now a part of a more Progressive Christian church that actively seeks to address these issues but even within this church a colonial interpretation of Christianity has dominated the denomination’s history, and it can be felt to this day.
Religion justifies inequality, and religion also empowers us to resist inequality. To understand how this tension has shaped our world, we need to talk about the history of racism and anti-racism. It is important to talk about how the powerful in society have unevenly categorized humans throughout history and how the powerless have resisted categorization because contained within this dynamic are some of the best examples of Christianity being used to justify injustice and to empower resistance.
I know most people don’t like to talk about this history, but if we want to change our current situation we have to talk about what got us here. In order to solve issues of racism, we have to be aware that racism did not appear out of nowhere. If racism was simply a pesky intrusive thought, then the solution would be to stop thinking about racism to make it disappear. That doesn’t work. Racism runs deeper than that.
Racism is experienced through discriminatory actions that reflect the ideology of white supremacy. White sup-remacy is the justifying ideology of settler colonialism.
It is a result of settler colonialism that I am sitting here in central California writing this book in English on unceded land that historically belongs to the Chumash people. A long history of violence transpired to create this situation.
Settler colonialism is the ongoing imperialist project of expanding the power of a nation by settling in a new land to exploit it for profit. The original inhabitants of the land are either killed or turned into second-class citizens as the new settlers exploit their land and their labor. This exploitation is justified through ideologies that paint second-class citizens as deserving of their exploitation.
White supremacy isn’t what creates racial divisions, but it is the ideology that justifies racial divisions. White supremacy makes inequality appear justified. White supremacy keeps people from challenging systemic inequality because we have been indoctrinated over the centuries to believe there is something natural about rich, white, cisgender, heterosexual men having easier access to power and wealth than everyone else.
White supremacy must also be understood as a later development of ideologies that justified settler colonialism. The classification of those with black skin as subservient to those with white skin developed after settler colonies had already been established in Africa and the Americas. The classification of whiteness and blackness evolved from a different form of classification that justified the colonialist mission.
So what was the ideology that justified European expansion before white supremacy, and before the concept of “whiteness” even existed? Christianity.
White supremacy is a secularization of the way that Christianity was initially used as a justifying ideology for settler colonialism. The classification of diverse European cultural groups into “white” and diverse non-European cultural groups into “black” is rooted in the initial colonial classification of “Christians” and “pagans,” or “heathens,” or “infidels.” In Europe, non-Christians did not receive the same rights as Christians, so the land of non-Christians could be legally stolen, and non-Christians could be legally enslaved. The classification of all humans into “Christians” and “pagans” is what initially gave legitimacy to the mission of European expansion and colonialism.1
Christianity was already used to justify colonialism within Europe as Spain and Portugal stole land from Muslim inhabitants, or as European Christians called them, “Saracens.” This justifying force can be seen directly in papal bulls written by Pope Nicholas V to King Alfonso V of Portugal, beginning with Dum Diversas, a holy decree blessing the king’s efforts in the Atlantic slave trade in Africa. Issued on June 18, 1452, the pope granted the king the power
to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit.2
While this papal bull was written specifically for Portugal’s mission of expansion, it had an effect on all European colonization. On October 11, 1492, Christopher Columbus observed the Indigenous inhabitants during his first voyage to the Americas and wrote in his diary: “They should be good servants and intelligent, for I observed that they quickly took in what was said to them, and I believe that they would easily be made Christians, as it appeared to me that they had no religion.”3
Another papal bull, entitled Inter Caetera, was issued on May 4, 1493, from Pope Alexander VI to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain, in which the pope personally praises Christopher Columbus and his men for having “discovered certain very remote islands and even mainlands that hitherto had not been discovered by others; wherein dwell very many peoples living in peace.”4
Let’s take a moment to acknowledge the absurdity of what we’re reading here. Columbus is praised for discovering these islands, “wherein dwell very many peoples living in peace.” These decrees created the foundation for what would later be called the Doctrine of Discovery. They gave God-ordained justification for European expansion by creating a narrative of superiority and painting the Indigenous inhabitants as deserving of their exploitation because of their lack of Christian faith.
Pope Alexander VI continues in Inter Caetera:
Moreover, as your aforesaid envoys are of opinion, these very peoples living in the said islands and countries believe in one God, the Creator in heaven, and seem sufficiently disposed to embrace the Catholic faith and be trained in good morals. And it is hoped that, were they instructed, the name of the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, would easily be introduced into the said countries and islands.5
Let’s be clear here. The mission was not to convert foreign people to Christianity. The mission was always to exploit the land and its inhabitants for profit. Offering Christian salvation to the inhabitants of stolen lands was the justifying narrative that allowed colonizers to get support and funding from European Christian monarchs. This narrative also justified genocide and enslavement as holy acts part of a larger mission of Christian evangelism.
Christianity created the initial justification to “capture, vanquish, and subdue” so-called pagans, but as their victims converted to Christianity en masse, a new justification was necessary. The racial categories of “whiteness” and “blackness” developed out of the logical necessity to create new justifications to continue exploiting the land and its inhabitants for European profit.
British, Dutch, French, and Spanish colonizers sold out their old and diverse cultural identities and exchanged them for the broad label of “white” in a move designed to unite all Western European colonizers by giving them cultural superiority over their “black” enemies.
When we critique “whiteness,” we are not claiming that people with lighter skin are evil, or anything like that. We are simply pointing out that the initial purpose of using “whiteness” as a racial category is to justify one culturally diverse group’s exploitation of several culturally diverse groups by erasing the cultural identities of both “white” people and “nonwhite” people. The ongoing American assimilation of various cultural groups into the category of “white” after formerly being considered nonwhite (such as Irish, Germans, Jews, and Eastern Europeans) is an example of the ongoing cultural erasure on which white supremacy thrives.
The violent categorization and classification of diverse cultural groups into “white” and “black” was the same method of categorization and classification of diverse cultural groups into “Christians” and “pagans.” The labels were switched out of a logical necessity to continue justifying the destruction and exploitation of non-Christians and their land.
It’s important to understand that the other-ization of foreign people groups throughout history is never the initial reason for cross-cultural conflict. Rather, the mission of endless expansion and exploitation of foreign peoples’ lands is the initial reason for conflict, and then myths and stereotypes that otherize their enemies are developed to reinterpret conquest and exploitation as morally justifiable.
This otherizing tactic is more ancient than Christianity. Ancient civilizations used this tactic of otherizing foreign people groups and described them as wild and savage. They described them as having nonhuman, creature-like qualities, like giant size and extra appendages. Some told stories about foreign peoples being descendants of humans breeding with animals, or angels, or demons.
Framing foreign peoples from foreign lands as dangerous savages gave people the ability to look past the humanity of their enemies, so they might have the strength and courage to destroy them during conflict. Killing your fellow humans becomes a lot less difficult when you believe that if you don’t defeat these dangerous savages, then they will surely give in to their barbaric and violent ways and destroy you and your people.
Ancient nations did not choose to attack because they believed the other nation was filled with dangerous savages. The reverse is true. Nations developed myths about other nations filled with dangerous savages to justify war and expansion.
We even see this in the Hebrew Bible. Giants are first mentioned as descendants of fallen angels. Giants appear again when the Israelites scout out the land of Canaan before they seize it. The Israelites claimed that God had promised them the land and was displacing its inhabitants because of their “wickedness.” Israelite spies reported that Canaan was filled with giants that would devour them. The giants are occasionally referenced later during Israel’s battles with Canaanites and Philistines, which leads to the famous story of David facing off against the Philistine giant Goliath from Gath. Gath was mentioned in the book of Joshua as a land where some giants remained after the Israelites wiped out the Canaanites and destroyed their towns. The final mention of giants is during King David’s final battles with the Philistines in which David and his servants defeat the final giant who had “taunted Israel” and had “six fingers on each hand, and six toes on each foot, twenty-four in number.”6
When we recognize this tactic of justifying conquest throughout history by otherizing foreign peoples, it is difficult to ignore. This tactic is not just in the Bible, but in many other ancient texts and art as well. We also see it at the birth of Western civilization in Greek mythology, art, and literature. From Herakles to Odysseus, the Greeks told stories of warrior heroes battling savage creatures in foreign lands filled with unused resources.7
Before defeating the one-eyed monster called a Cyclops, Odysseus makes note of the “unsown and untilled” fertile island of the Cyclopes. These stories didn’t make people think that peoples of distant lands were savage creatures. These stories were projections of what people already believed about people living on distant lands and provided convenient descriptors of foreign peoples that justified conquest. Greek geographer Strabo described the Albanians as “living a Cyclopean life” when explaining their inability to use their land and sea “to the full extent of its value.”8
This tactic of justifying conquest goes back much further than Christianity, but the particular type of otherizing we find ourselves in is a result of Christianity being used as a justifying ideology, and Christians must be honest about that today. The ideological mission of saving the souls of savages runs deeper than we realize, even among those who imagine themselves free from any sort of Christian worldview. We all still classify others based on the paradigm of “civilizing immoral and primitive savages through Christian salvation,” but with different language and categories.
We can see it in modern descriptions of religion, ranging from more progressive forms of spirituality to modern atheism. The way we talk about religion in general is still often rooted in the way Christian colonizers described Indigenous religions: as simply a form of irrational superstitious fetishism.
The word “fetishism” was used in the anthropology of religion centuries before it was used to describe sexual fetishes. The word is a translation of the Portuguese word feitico, which comes from the Latin factitius, meaning “artificial.” The Portuguese colonizers of the fifteenth century used the word to refer to the use of sacred objects by subjected West Africans during their rituals of worship. The colonizers viewed the “fetishization” of these objects as a sign of an inferior and primitive religion, centered around an irrational belief that material objects contained supernatural power.9
So the colonial descriptions and classifications of Indigenous spirituality were trusted throughout Europe and used by anthropologists with little pushback until centuries later.
I imagine fifteenth-century West Africans would have described their use of sacred objects quite differently than their colonizers did, especially because this interpretation of African spirituality as irrational fetishism was intentionally developed to justify the exploitation of African people.
In the eighteenth century, many Enlightenment philosophers adopted this view of Indigenous religions, and in the spirit of progress and modernity they developed the idea that the irrational superstitions of Indigenous religions represented a primitive form of religion, while Christianity represented a more evolved form of religion. One of the earliest versions of this theory was published in 1760 by writer Charles de Brosses, who used the concept of fetishism in African religions to explain ancient Greek polytheism. His theory was that all religions begin in this primitive stage that Africans still happen to be in.
The concept of maturing and evolving stages of faith and spirituality is a popular one, used in many different contexts today with various descriptions of what these stages of growth should look like. Many popular spiritual teachers speak of religion this way and depict a more open-minded faith with limited doctrines and definitions as the latest and most desirable stage of an evolving spirituality. While this concept of evolving stages within spirituality has helped many people escape toxic and abusive religious environments, we must also recognize its roots when we observe that the first “level” or “stage” is often represented by Indigenous religions participating in a “primitive” form of religion. The origin of that classification is Christian colonizers reductively redefining the rituals of Indigenous cultures to justify the destruction of their cultures.
Modern atheists took this Enlightenment explanation of religion and determined that all forms of religion should be classified as primitive supernatural fetishism, including Christianity. Instead of challenging Christians’ reductive description of Indigenous religions, they decided it was an accurate description and claimed that Christianity fit that reductive description as well, along with every other religion. This reductive theory of religion is clearly seen in the work of the New Atheist movement, which gained popularity after the increase in Islamophobia after the September 11 attacks, but we also see it in the work of old influential atheists such as Ludwig Feuerbach, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud. They adopted a European colonial interpretation of religion without fully comprehending the source of it.
Christian colonizers defined Indigenous religions as backward, irrational, and superstitious as part of their larger tactic of justifying the enslavement and genocide of Indigenous peoples. Atheists who adopt this theory of religion run the risk of perpetuating the dehumanization of others who do not meet their expectations of “rational thinking.” You are not free from this destructive ideology just because you add Christianity to the list of primitive religions.
The European Christian colonial classification of humans is the ideology we are all swimming in. It is so pervasive that it will adapt to any group identity, even among the atheists who may have thought they were safe by being characteristically anti-Christian. No one is safe. This is the worldview we are all born into if your country was colonized by Christians. The labels and the categories may change, but it is still the same old story of the civilized saving the world from the savages.
Progressivism is one of the latest developments of this justifying ideology for settler colonialism. Originating in the early twentieth century with causes such as modernizing towns by destroying Indigenous landmarks, displacing people of color from their cities through gentrification, popularizing eugenics before Nazi Germany, and violently intervening in foreign affairs, Progressives were committed to making the world more civilized and rational by removing anything that made society look uncivilized and irrational.
The “progress” in the name “Progressive” was a reference to progressing away from the “barbarism” of “uncivilized” peoples. Although the values and policy positions of early twenty-first-century Progressives are obviously very different from those of Progressives one hundred years earlier, both twentieth- and twenty-first-century Progressives often share a similar motivation. After all, twenty-first-century Progressives often assert that injustices such as racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia, environmental harm, and wealth inequality are all unfavorable because they are representative of the values of a more primitive and irrational society, and that these injustices must be overcome in order to achieve a more civilized and enlightened society.
During Donald Trump’s presidency, the common insults that many Progressives had for Trump’s supporters usually included an overwhelming amount of ableism and classism. The only explanation many could come up with for someone supporting Trump was that they must be uncivilized and irrational. For four years they found every way imaginable to call Trump supporters “dumb” and “poor,” revealing a disdain for the “uncivilized.” Hillary Clinton calling Trump’s supporters “deplorables” is an easy example of this tendency.
Progressive Christians in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have tended to follow suit. Many Progressives and Progressive Christians truly do care about liberation and decolonization, but they have a duty to dissect and exorcise the ways Christian colonialism has infected the foundation of their worldview.
Dig deep into the foundational ideologies that support the nations that have settled North and South America. You will discover that it is nothing but white Christianity all the way down. And what has grown out of those foundations is every form of social division that we are actively fighting today.
It should come as no surprise that many people who have been historically abused in the name of Christianity now want nothing to do with Christianity.
Some of us want to reclaim the radical elements at the root of the Christian faith and use them as tools to empower our resistance of institutions that maintain injustice. That’s a major part of what this book is about. However, others have been so abused by the Christian church that they have no desire to reclaim it. In these cases, it seems like the path to liberation for these individuals requires an absolute rejection of the entire Christian faith. Throughout Christian history we see examples of people who needed to reject Christianity to find liberation, especially when we look at the lives of those who have been victims of Christian violence.
In his essay “Voices from a Living Hell,” Javier Villa-Flores talks about a common pattern of a special kind of blasphemy from enslaved people in Spanish-controlled Latin America in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.10 Some enslaved people realized they could take advantage of the Spanish Inquisition’s court system, which required slaveholders to bring them to trial if they were caught blaspheming God. Some enslaved people took this opportunity, while they were being brutally beaten, to renounce God and the saints to stop the beating. This worked especially if there were public witnesses.
This put the slaveholder at a disadvantage. In order to take their enslaved worker to court, the owner had to pay for travel, pay for the potentially lengthy stay in prison, and lose the enslaved worker’s labor power during the duration of this process. The slaveholder also risked being ordered to sell their enslaved worker for a decreased market value, since unruly slaves who had been tried by the Holy Office were difficult to resell.
In court, the enslaved person placed the blame on their enslavers for forcing them to blaspheme and thus “lose their soul,” by creating excessively cruel working conditions through brutal abuse and chastisement. Sometimes this strategy was successful and the enslaved person was transferred to a new enslaver.
Sometimes blasphemy can be used as a tool to expose the Christian authorities that have made your life a living hell.
After all, which is more blasphemous to the God who frees enslaved people in the Bible: the enslaver who beats an enslaved person in the name of God, or the enslaved person who verbally blasphemes God to stop the beating?
Throughout history, victims of Christian violence have blasphemed God for more honest reasons than tricking the court of the Inquisition. And they had every reason to do so.
Direct blasphemy by the exploited exposes the indirect blasphemy of their exploiters. When people look back at these moments in history, it is clear that the blasphemy of the exploited is justified because of their suffering.
When we read stories like this, it is easy to admit that specific individuals are justified in rejecting the Christian faith, but we must also admit that the path to liberation required them to reject the Christian faith when the only Christian faith available was one that exploited and abused them. Much of the violence committed over the last two thousand years has been in the name of Christianity, and so naturally many people have rejected the Christian faith as a way of gaining freedom from some of the Christian violence that is still committed to this day.
A significant example of ongoing Christian violence is the violence committed against transgender people today, fueled by anti-trans Christian rhetoric. I have trans friends who I know have rejected Christianity and can never return because of the traumatic memories of spiritual, psychological, and physical abuse they faced from their family and church. I also have trans friends who have reclaimed their Christian faith through liberative trans-affirming expressions of Christianity, but we shouldn’t expect everyone to do that work, especially while Christianity is still actively used to justify violence against them.
It’s important that Christians be honest about this history, not so that we may be overcome with sorrow and shame, but so that we can understand the healing and reparation that we are called to take part in. A knowledge of historic Christian violence does not have to be debilitating for Christians. It can be liberating.
The good news is that Christian violence does not live in our hearts. If it did, then it would be difficult to determine a tangible solution. Rather, Christian violence lives in our institutions that perpetuate our exploitation. And it is by confronting the origin of these institutions that we can envision their end.
Christian colonizers do not have the final word on our destiny. By unveiling the significant points in history when colonizers reinterpreted the Christian faith, we can affirm that what has been constructed can be deconstructed. What has been established can be dismantled. What has been institutionalized can be abolished. What has been colonized can be decolonized.
Christians must choose between a faith that continues to justify colonization and a faith that empowers decolonization. Colonization has shaped our history. Decolonization will shape our future.