When Ken researched his Bible School classmate, Melvin Warren, he stumbled across Dr. Curtis’ book. It referenced a familiar, legendary press conference. In 1970, at the famed Arch entrance at the Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, Melvin made a speech as the cameras rolled and journalists scribbled notes. He claimed that the school’s racism so marred his experience as a student that he tore up his diploma and tossed it into the trash. He made national news.
That incident not only drove Ken into a years-long quest to understand the dynamic of racism in his white evangelical church but it also played significantly into the doctoral dissertation of another Moody grad, Dr. Jesse Curtis. Dr. Curtis is now an assistant professor at Valparaiso University. Ken and Jesse compare notes on that momentous event. It prompted Ken’s Beached White Male journey. It also contributed to Dr. Curtis’ doctoral focus - now a book considered a “must-read” by both Jemar Tisby and Kristin Kobes du Mez. Ken and Jese discuss The Myth of Colorblind Christians: Evangelicals and White Supremacy in the Civil Rights Era.
Dr. Curtis covers the history of racism in the white evangelical church going back to the Billy Graham era when Howard Jones became the first African American evangelist on “The Team.” Jesse believes that the Church Growth Movement founded by Donald McGavran contributed to the segregation that was a feature in the explosive growth the church at the turn of the century - including “ethnic” congregations and mega-churches. McGavran’s protege, C. Peter Wagner, added fuel that dynamic. In their wide-ranging discussion, they talk about evangelical super-stars like Rick Warren and Bill Hybels as well as champions like Bill Pannel, Tom Skinner and John Perkins. Curtis argues that the notion of “colorblind Christians” is a myth.
While he wrote some five years ago, the case is as relevant as ever. Just this week, in his inaugural address, the 47th President stated, “We will forge a society that is colorblind…” His supporters stood in enthusiastic applause. Ken and Jesse agree: this is not progress. SHOW NOTES
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B.A. Moody Bible Institute
M.A. Kent State University
Ph.D. Temple University
Dr. Curtis received his Ph.D. in 2019 and joined the Valparaiso History department in 2021. He is a historian of the twentieth-century United States. His areas of teaching interest include the history of race in modern America, African American history, the history of Christianity, and global settler colonialism. Dr. Curtis is interested in helping students explore how changes in ideology and culture worked their way out in the daily lives of ordinary people. Classes taught include:
The American Experience in the Modern World
The Age of Anxiety
Black Politics and Black Power
Race and War in the Twentieth Century
Much of Dr. Curtis’ early research focused on resistance to the civil rights movement and how the movement has been remembered over time. His new book broadens that focus to explore how white evangelical institutions changed during the civil rights era. It argues that white evangelicals turned to a new theology of race that defended their investments in an evangelical form of white identity.
“This book shows how platitudes about equality and not seeing racial differences actually perpetuated the segregated and unequal status quo in many white evangelical churches, colleges, and institutions. It is vital reading for understanding just how salient race remains in some Christian circles. This is the book on the history of white evangelicalism I have been waiting for.”
— Jemar Tisby, New York Times-bestselling author of The Color of Compromise and How to Fight Racism
“Religious history at its best. An immensely clarifying book, it should be required reading for all who seek to understand white evangelicals’ fraught engagement with race over the past half century.”
— Kristin Kobes Du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation
The Myth of Colorblind Christians reveals the little-known story of black and white evangelical encounters that brought us to our age of divisive politics and splintering churches. Amid the upheavals of the civil rights movement, black evangelicals insisted there must be no color line in the body of Christ. In an effort to preserve the credibility of their movement, white evangelicals discarded theologies of white supremacy and embraced a new theology of Christian colorblindness. But instead of using this colorblind theology for anti-racist purposes, white evangelicals spent decades investing in whiteness in the name of spreading the gospel.
White evangelicals’ turn to a theology of colorblindness enabled them to create an evangelical brand of whiteness that claimed the center of evangelicalism and shaped the politics of race throughout American life. Christian colorblindness became a key marker of evangelical identity and infused the politics of colorblindness with sacred fervor. Historically nuanced and as urgent as today’s headlines, The Myth of Colorblind Christians is a book that will change what you thought you knew about evangelicals and race.
More Pending
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