Reckoning with racism: Churches in Metro Chicago region confront legacy of white supremacy with help from ABHMS
VALLEY FORGE, PA (03/03/2025)—White supremacy has always been at the center of American nation-building, and with the advent of the new administration we are reminded that progress toward racial equity is not linear. It is, however, important to remember that white churches have not only been instrumental in perpetuating white supremacy; they have been its architects and beneficiaries.
From Columbus’ first landing in the Caribbean, European powers, including Pope Alexander VI, justified the colonization and slavery of Native American and African populations with the argument that it is necessary to spread Christianity among the peoples they saw as lesser. White supremacist ideology has been promoted in churches throughout American history, from Harvard-educated Protestant preachers like James Henley Thornwell, who justified slavery from his pulpit in Columbia, South Carolina, in the antebellum period, to Southern Baptist pastors like Henry Lyon Jr., who claimed in 1961 from his pulpit in Montgomery, Alabama, that separation of races was “God-given.”
This list does not stop with conservative Christians or Jim Crow America, however. “It is a mistake to see [racism] as merely a Southern or an evangelical problem,” wrote Robert P. Jones, author of “White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity” and creator of the “Racism Index,” a measure of 15 questions that measure attitudes to structural manifestations of racism. According to his survey, mainline Protestants, who scored 0.69 on the index, were behind only two other groups, evangelicals (0.78) and Catholics (0.72). In comparison, the median scores of the general population (0.57), white religiously unaffiliated Americans (0.42), and Black Protestants (0.24) were notably lower. The sin of white supremacy is present today in mainline white Protestant churches, including those that may think of themselves as progressive.
These modern-day statistics illuminate the fact that “white Christian theology and institutions have declared the blessings of God on the enslavement of millions of African Americans, the construction of a brutal system of racial segregation enforced by law and lynchings, the resistance to the civil rights movement and the mass incarceration of millions of African Americans,” commented Jones.
Recognizing the duty of white churches to address the problem of white supremacy in their midst, the American Baptist Churches of Metro Chicago region, supported generously by an American Baptist Home Mission Societies (ABHMS) grant, launched a program titled “Addressing Whiteness and White Supremacy in Congregational Life” that has brought together pastors and engaged lay leaders of white and multicultural churches in the region to wrestle with manifestations of racism in their congregations.
The program has been led by co-associate regional ministers for white and multicultural churches in the Metro Chicago region, the Rev. Drs. Anna Piela and Michael Woolf. Beginning in November 2023, it has been meeting monthly in fall, winter, and spring to engage in discussions of white supremacy facilitated by invited speakers: authors, ministry professionals, and academics. Topics have included challenging racism in contexts such as ministry with children and youth, sacred music, preaching, congregational histories, and local communities. One of the sessions was incorporated into the program of the annual gathering of the Metro Chicago region in May 2024.
Over the 15 months the program has been running, the participants (approximately 30 clergypersons and lay leaders) learned more about how white supremacy functions in religious spaces, including their own, through theological, historical, and sociological inquiry. They then applied this learning to their own context, seeking to better understand how their congregations participate in, perpetuate, or benefit from white supremacy in progressive religious spaces. The task before them is to now implement this new knowledge in their congregations through preaching, music, ministry with children and youth as well as with seniors, outreach work, and social justice work.
“One of the pastors who attends the sessions regularly also provides quite extensive feedback,” said Woolf. In response to a session led by the Rev. Dr. Brian Kaylor, author of “Baptizing America: How Mainline Protestants Helped Build Christian Nationalism,” that regular attendee wrote: “Rev. Dr. Kaylor’s observations were sobering in light of the fact that the rise of Christian nationalism coincides with my own maturation within the church. When I uttered the phrase ‘under God’ while saying the pledge, I had no idea that I was among the earliest students to say those words in school. I sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic with gusto in church. As a five-year-old I never doubted that God only loved people who looked like me – that is, who are white.”
Right now, the racial justice gains made after the murder of George Floyd are being rapidly eroded, and this makes it even more vital that white churches begin to address and challenge white supremacy that they have been upholding. Now it is the time to behold 1 Corinthians 12:13: “For we were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
Woolf concluded: “The church’s role in confronting white supremacy has never been more important. In challenging whiteness in our churches and society, we can grow closer to Jesus’ vision of the Kingdom of God. We hope to continue this work for many years to come, a seed that has been planted by the generous support of ABHMS.”
Programs such as “Addressing Whiteness and White Supremacy in Congregational Life” are made possible by the generous support of readers like you. You can support our programs through our website, abhms.org.
By Rev. Dr. Anna Piela, ABHMS senior writer and associate editor of The Christian Citizen
