Anthea Butler’s book isn’t for those who don’t like being challenged, but her account leaves out important nuance.
The last several years have witnessed no small uptick in accessible academic books about evangelicals. Some of the most striking works have explored the political and racial history of the movement. This is evident in books like Jemar Tisby’s The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, John Fea’s Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, and Thomas Kidd’s Who is an Evangelical?: The History of a Movement in Crisis.
Into this rich body of work steps Anthea Butler’s White Evangelical Racism: The Politics of Morality in America, an analysis of American evangelicalism’s last 50 years that also includes a larger backstory. In some ways it is a cross between the spirit of The Color of Compromise and the style of Believe Me. Butler argues that the persistence of racism among evangelicals (not fear, as Fea argues) explains their support for Donald Trump and conservative politics since the 1970s.
Butler, a professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, provides a strong historical overview of the depth and breadth of racism in American evangelical culture since the early 19th century. A strong work of synthesis designed for a popular audience, White Evangelical Racism deftly weaves together cutting-edge scholarship on evangelicalism from the last 20 years. Citing such important scholars as Daniel K. Williams, Joseph Crespino, Kelly J. Baker, Darren Dochuk, and Randall Balmer, among others, Butler challenges evangelicals to reject their racism and lust for political power and to work cooperatively with their fellow Americans to build a better society.
Serious soul-searching
While prominent scholars of evangelicalism such as Mark Noll, …