HOW CHRISTIAN SUPREMACY GAVE BIRTH TO WHITE SUPREMACY

HOW CHRISTIAN SUPREMACY GAVE BIRTH TO WHITE SUPREMACY
IN 1878, ON THE FLOOR of the United States Senate, Senator A. A. Sargent rolled out a plan to ban immigration to the United
States from China. This came at a time when the Chinese had already arrived in large numbers on America’s West Coast, helping to
settle the land recently under US control and connecting this new part of the nation to the old through their work on the
transcontinental railroad. Since the United States was welcoming waves of immigrants from other parts of the globe to continue to
build the nation through new industries, Sargent’s restrictive proposal required some rationale. His argument was that by their
customs, their way of life, and their religion, the Chinese could not be assimilated into a White Christian nation. His plan was that
Christian missionaries travel to China and “wash their robes and make them white in the blood of the Lamb.” Then, being fit for 1
citizenship, the Chinese might apply.
Looking back on this historical episode, we might wonder how such theological ideas, manufactured in “religious” spaces, had
the power to inform rights and legislation in the secular realm. But embedded in this particular case is the further question of how
theologians manufactured ideas about Christianity and Whiteness that bound the two so tightly together. It was not just their robes
that would be washed in the blood of the Lamb. Sargent’s speech was part of a broader conversation about the viability of a nation
and its future Whiteness, given the longstanding criteria that naturalization was reserved for free White persons. Sargent’s argument
and other immigration cases from his era demonstrate that Whiteness was a category that could be contested and that conversion to
Christianity made people appear to be “more White.” The criteria of Christianness featured favorably for a group of Syrian
immigrants in the early twentieth century, when it helped their case for citizenship. Membership in the “Christian fold” served as a
marker that they were part of the White race. In another case from the same era Bhagat Singh Thind was recognized as Aryan and 2
therefore Caucasian on the basis of linguistic and genealogical criteria, but his case for citizenship was overturned with the rationale
that his “Hindu-ness” would render him unable to assimilate to White culture. When the Chinese were categorized as 3
non-Christian and non-White, it could be argued that they would compromise the thriving of a White Christian nation. Legislation
passed in 1882 barred immigrants from China and later the Asiatic Zone. These restrictions were not fully lifted until 1965. The
immigration debates of the late nineteenth century provide evidence of how religion and race have functioned as twin imaginaries
that have indelibly shaped the American landscape.
Yet, from this somewhat narrow focus, our lens might widen to consider these episodes as part of a more longstanding
religio-racial project that has dominated in the ideology of a White Christian nation. The concept of a religio-racial project is an
adaptation of the work of sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant, who have written extensively about America’s “racial
projects.” With the concept of racial project they show us that race is not a concrete or static reality, but an imaginative construct 4
always created in particular times and places with specific material influences and impacts. Put simply, racial projects include the
construction of racial categories (what the races are), the means by which persons are categorized into races (through physiological,
biological, or phenotypical characteristics; ancestral country of origin; or other criteria that change over time), the meanings given
to those racial categories, and the material benefits assigned or withheld on the basis of those racial categories. The history of the
United States has been that of a White Christian nation in which the dominant racial project has been to create the category of
White, sort some people into it, and assign material benefits on the basis of it to the exclusion of non-White others. The concept of
racial project helps us to understand how the racial category of White has been dynamic and shifting, based on variable criteria at
different moments in time. While much work has been done to trace the variety of racial projects that were enacted in the course of
United States history (and its prehistory), only a little has been done asking the specific question of how religion functioned within
these racial projects. In expanding the concept to that of a religio-racial project, I want to draw attention to the way religion 5
functions within racial projects. For example, in seventeenth-century European encounters with First Nations people in Florida,
Native peoples were named “red” and racialized on account of the body paint worn on sacred occasions. In twenty-first-century 6
accounts of racial dynamics in the United States, the term Muslim often functions as if it were a racial category rather than a
religious one. These examples give hints of the intersections of our conceptual categories of race and religion and thus ask us to 7
consider the religio-racial project of any given moment. If Christianity functions intimately in the project of constructing
Whiteness, Christian theologians should be especially concerned.
The religio-racial project of our moment is rightly the cause for much theological, political, and social concern. Fifty years 8
after the civil rights movement, our nation remains in turmoil not only in its racial project of Black and White, but new immigration
since 1965 has created “the world’s most religiously diverse nation.” While many commentators are concerned about a peaceful 9
way forward, few have interrogated the ideology of White supremacy and its relationship to Christian supremacy that is deeply
embedded in our nation’s history and our current landscape.
As we seek a way forward we must see how Whiteness and Christianness have been twin pillars of the dominant religio-racial
project. Moreover, since the benefits assigned to those who inhabit the category of White Christian have been