by Angela N. Parker
A nation’s religion is its life, and as such white Christianity is a miserable failure. ~W.E.B. Dubois
“Jesus did not come to ‘Make Israel Great Again!’” These words often get a rise out of my students when I am teaching Luke 4:14-30. As I read this text with students, I note that Luke’s Jesus thinks ethnoracially when he highlights that the widow of Zarephath or Naaman the Syrian received blessings from Elijah and Elisha. Thereafter, when Jesus’s Nazareth neighbors realize what Jesus is actually saying, they immediately want to throw Jesus over a cliff. How dare Jesus insinuate that he has come for the foreigner or the stranger and not the hard-working Israelite! Doesn’t Jesus know who the Israelites are and to whom God has given the land?
As a biblical scholar, I see the Nazareth people as examples of White Christian nationalism today. Instead of serving as witnesses to Jesus’s life and ministry, White Christian nationalists hold onto their constructed Jesus who invokes certain political ideologies that are antithetical to the actual gospel. The question then becomes, for me, as follows: What are some tools and tactics that more progressive leaning Jesus followers can engage which combat the beliefs of White Christian nationalism? Pondering this question, I propose Womanist witnessing which is an oppositional type of witnessing against current injustices occurring in society and politics today. White Christian nationalism is one such injustice.
Defining White Christian Nationalism
Similar to Jesus’ neighbors in Nazareth, White Christian nationalists have an understanding of election and divine giftings by God which defines their “deep story.”
White Christian nationalism’s “deep story” goes something like this: America was founded as a Christian nation by (white) men who were “traditional” Christians, who based the nation’s founding documents on “Christian principles.” The United States is blessed by God, which is why it has been so successful, and the nation has a special role to play in God’s plan for humanity. But these blessings are threatened by cultural degradation from “un-American” influences both inside and outside our borders.
The political worldview of White Christian nationalism dictates the embrace of “proper” stances on marriage and family, Israel, religious liberty, abortion and immigration. This also means that a connection to a faith that is related to the life, ministry and death of Jesus Christ becomes usurped by a faith in a Whiteness that emerges from a White Christian nationalist identity. Some have even argued that Jesus is too woke! The goal of White Christian nationalism is to make the United States a theocratic nation that re-inscribes patriarchy and heteronormativity. Therefore, as a Womanist New Testament scholar, I must return, again and again, to the Scriptures in order to find Womanist ways of witnessing so I may combat White Christian nationalism. Thus, in this brief reflection, I offer two ways that I hope White Christians join me in the ways that I provide an oppositional witness to White Christian nationalism in today’s society and politics.
Womanist Witness to (White) Men’s Mediocrity
Many people may grow up with an inflated sense of ego. Now, I am not put on this earth to judge one’s ego or put down a person’s ego or sense of self. However, I do feel that as a thinking person on God’s green earth, I can rightly critique fallacy in thought when I witness such fallacy. I believe many witnessed such a fallacy within systems of hierarchy especially in politics when Black women overwhelmingly voted for Kamala Harris instead of Donald Trump. We recognized the overqualification of Kamala Harris, but still the mediocrity of Trump won the day.
With such an observation as noted above, society should not be shocked when one Trump administrator, Darren Beattie, states that the world needs to be run by competent White men. His idea is to preserve the uniformity of White male leadership which is extremely problematic to my Womanist sensibilities. However, it is even more problematic when such leadership constantly proves their incompetence.
What sociologists find when an entire group of people (i.e. White men) are conditioned to believe that they are entitled to a path of prosperity is that they do not have to work hard. However, the groups that are not those men are conditioned to live on fewer resources, but end up working harder and becoming more resilient and creative as a result. Therefore, the groups with less actually begin to thrive. For example, many hear the statistic that Black women are the most educated constituency in the United States of America, demonstrating that thriving occurs even though we make less money and have fewer resources.
The privileged group (White men) witness groups developing thriving muscles; but rather than saying “let’s do better,” they dig into wells of anger and grievance and decide to take opportunities away instead of building muscles of resilience so they can compete better. It must hurt to actually have to compete with all people!
I know that these words are tough, but we are living in times where the lack of clear speech and capitulation to the little foothold of White Christian nationalism has allowed so many people to suffer. Gone is the opportunity for easy, breezy words. Hell on earth has arrived and we must fight it with every inch of our being. Thus, everyone must be an oppositional witness to the lies that mediocre (White) men should run society.
Being an Oppositional Witness Is Not Safe!
Safety is not guaranteed. Proximity to Whiteness does not save. Unfortunately, our Latinx friends are finding that out in the midst of mass deportations. Indeed, Luke has already confirmed Jesus as the holy one in the early parts of his Gospel. However, we have to note that even holy Jesus is not safe from being hurled over a cliff in Luke 4. The idea of lack of safety reminds me of John Lewis’ concept of “good trouble.”
Good trouble is Lewis’ shorthand reference to creative disruption undertaken to promote social justice. This phrase became Lewis’s signature motto to “find a way to get in the way.” As Christians who read the Gospels and attempt to witness to the life and ministry of Jesus, I believe that finding “a way to get in the way” is part of our witness in society and politics. As Lewis writes:
. . . we must accept one central truth and responsibility as participants in a democracy: Freedom is not a state; it is an act. It is not some enchanted garden perched high on a distant plateau where we can finally sit down and rest. Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even more fair, more just society. The work of love, peace, and justice will always be necessary, until their realism and their imperative take hold of our imagination, crowds out any dream of hatred or revenge, and fills up our existence with their power.
Being an oppositional witness against White Christian nationalism toward a multi-ethnic democratic society, particularly for White Christians, means the “good trouble” that you all have to engage runs along the lines of being called “race traitors.” Jesus does not act “color-blind” in Luke 4. Jesus actually speaks about different ethnicities as he reads Isaiah and then expounds upon the reading with the people of Nazareth. Just as our Christianity is not “color-blind,” your “good trouble” is recognizing that the United States was founded on a racial hierarchy. Rather than honor the words of the Constitution, White Christian nationalism would burn the country down before allowing everyone full democratic participation. Therefore, my question to my White Christian friends who have family members espousing White Christian nationalism would be: “What kind of good trouble will you get into?”
Conclusion
I began these reflections with the sentiment that Jesus did not come to “Make Israel Great Again!” As I read Luke 4, for the Israelites, the religion of the nation of Israel was of utmost importance, rather than engaging with the healing of nations other than Israel. Such an idea is similar to the epigraph which begins this essay. W.E.B. DuBois, the first African American to graduate with a Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University, stated that a “nation’s religion is its life, and as such white Christianity is a miserable failure.” DuBois could not have envisioned that the White Christianity that he saw in 1920, which began lynching African Americans and squashing their civil liberties, would morph into the White Christian nationalism that we witness today. DuBois wrote this line in 1920, more than 100 years ago.
Dubois wrote his works as a witness against White Christianity. Similarly, African-American scholars continue to witness against White Christian nationalism today. However, as my reflections show, we need more than witness. Part of my reflections invite White Christians who do not espouse White Christian nationalism to join in Womanist oppositional witness against White Christian nationalism in more concrete ways. Do White Christians have the tenacity and fortitude to witness against White men’s mediocrity when necessary? Do White Christians have the strength to “get in the way” even when their safety is not guaranteed? Only time will tell.
Angela N. Parker is associate professor of New Testament & Greek at Mercer University’s McAfee School of Theology. She is an ordained Baptist minister and the author of If God Still Breathes, Why Can’t I? Black Lives Matter and Biblical Authority. She is also the author of the upcoming book entitled Faith Un-Lynched: Jesus-Faith as Paul’s Both/And Out of Christian Nationalism (Spring, 2027). Both books are published by Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Notes
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W.E.B. Du Bois, The W.E.B. Du Bois Collection (Blackmore Dennett), Kindle edition.
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Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (Orlando: Harcourt Books, 1983), xi–xii.
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Philip S. Gorski and Samuel L. Perry, The Flag and the Cross: White Christian Nationalism and the Threat to American Democracy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), 4, Kindle edition. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-flag-and-the-cross-9780197618684
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Angela N. Parker, Faith Un-Lynched: Jesus-Faith as Paul’s Both/And Out of Christian Nationalism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, forthcoming 2027). https://www.eerdmans.com
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Angela N. Parker, self-reflective note on the use of “White” in parentheses to acknowledge that men of other racial identities may also seek the social and political advantages historically afforded to White men.
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Exit polling data on Black women voters in the 2024 U.S. presidential election who supported Vice President Kamala Harris, indicating their motivation as “saving democracy.”
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Juan Williams, “Trump’s idea of ‘competence’ — only white men need apply,” The Hill, February 7, 2025.
https://thehill.com/opinion/columnists/5146284-trump-dei-attacks-racism/ -
Raymond Arsenault, John Lewis: In Search of the Beloved Community (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024).
https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300234245/john-lewis -
John Lewis, Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change (New York: Hachette Books), Kindle edition.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/john-lewis/across-that-bridge/9780310497298
