The data indicate that "white Christians overall are more likely than white religiously unaffiliated Americans to register higher scores on the Racism Index, and the differences between white Christian subgroups (white evangelical Protestants, white mainline Protestants, and white Catholics) are largely differences in degree rather than kind."
The most disturbing results arising out of the sophisticated statistical analysis applied by Dr. Jones are: (1) "the more racist attitudes a person holds, the more likely he or she is to identify as a white Christian," (2) "A move from least racist to most racist on the Racism Index makes frequent church attenders 34 percentage points more likely to identify as white evangelical Protestants compared with an increase of only 9 percent among infrequent church attendees," (3) "Most notably, the region in which white Christianity receives its highest boost in affiliation due to racist attitudes is not the South, but the Northeast" (because it contains both racist mainline Protestants and racist Catholics), and (4) being affiliated with each white Christian identity is independently associated with a nearly 10 percent increase in racist attitudes, compared with those who do not identify as white Christians.
The data compel Dr. Jones to reach two stark conclusions: (1) "an increase in racist attitudes independently predicts an increase in the likelihood of identifying as a white Christian," and (2) "Identifying as a white Christian is independently associated with an increased probability of holding racist attitudes."
Given that so many white Christians have been and continue to be racists unwilling to repent of the horrors that their white supremacy inflicted on untold numbers of African-Americans, it is no surprise that they lend their overwhelming political support to an evil racist, "birther," and white supremacist, Donald Trump. Trump's "Make America Great Again" is just a repackaging of the South's equally bogus and pernicious "Lost Cause."
Like Trump, these moral reprobates believe that "killings of African American men by police are isolated incidents. Like Trump, they have stood opposed to Black Lives Matter, even in the immediate aftermath of George Floyd's brutal murder by police. Prior to the murder of George Floyd, 72 percent of white Christians believed that professional athletes should be required to stand for the national anthem - a belief encouraged by Trump. (As reported by Politico, in November, 2017, a working-class woman living in the socially and economically distressed backwater town of Johnstown, PA , expressed her disgust about football players "taking a knee," by asserting the initials for the National Football League, "NFL," actually meant "Niggers for life." Only smug white trash talks like this.).
White Christians strongly supported Trump's Muslim travel ban and they also support his restrictions on illegal immigration. Majorities of white Christians support building a wall on the southern border. Worse, at a time when America desperately needs an influx of immigrants, if only to dilute the influence of these immoral people, white Christians also support stricter limits on legal immigration.
In her book titled, Learning From the Germans: Race and the Memory of Evil, Susan Neiman notes how Germany's post-World War II leaders have compelled a reluctant citizenry to accept blame and atone for their country's evil Holocaust and shameful Nazi past by practicing Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung - or "working-off- the-past." She notes, "In 1985 President Richard von Weizsacker became the first major West German politician to call the day that the Nazis were defeated a day of "liberation." She notes that, as part of Germany's atonement for its Nazi past, Angela Markel did a remarkable thing in 2015 by accepting one million refugees.
She contrasts Germany's noble, if halting, atonement efforts against the abysmal failure of the United States to atone for its evil past. In fact, she asserts, "The achievements of Obama's presidency, especially impressive in the face of massive opposition to every move he made, undermined the last rationalizations for white supremacy - which is just what provoked the massive backlash that led to the election of the least qualified man ever to approach the White House."
Thanks to that backlash, rather than atone for past evil, morally depraved white Christians actually would double down and vote for a man who not only said he could, with impunity, grab women "by the p*ssy," but, with hatred, also support a rabidly anti-immigrant policy that would lead to Trump's evil separation of children from their parents at the Mexican border. ,
Obviously, there are many white Christians who are not white supremacists and who condemn white supremacy. Nevertheless, as Robert P. Jones's book makes clear, white supremacy continues to saturate many of America's white Christian churches. As Isabel Wilkerson has warned, "Whatever is lurking will fester, whether you choose to look or not" (Caste, p; 15).
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