Jude 3 Project: Black Church­es Need To Exist Because of “White Chris­t­ian Ter­ror­ism”

The “Chris­t­ian” media out­let, Jude 3 Project, has released a video on Sep­tem­ber 20, 2023 blam­ing the exis­tence, and con­tin­ued exis­tence, of black church­es on “white Chris­t­ian ter­ror­ism.” The speak­er, Dr. Willie Fran­cois, then went on to say that the same big­otry that exist­ed in the past in Amer­i­ca is what is keep­ing the black church sep­a­rate from oth­er eth­nic­i­ties. Here is the full quote from Fran­cois:

Because the only rea­son why we have black church­es are because white peo­ple want to put us in the bal­cony, they did­n’t want to serve us com­mu­nion, they did­n’t want to bap­tize us in the same bap­tismal fount as their chil­dren, right? Black church­es exist as a response to white Chris­t­ian ter­ror­ism. Black church­es exist, not because black peo­ple just want­ed to wor­ship togeth­er, because we liked our own music, and we liked the way we wor­ship. No! We could not wor­ship in peace in white spaces. There­fore, we under­stood we need­ed a rela­tion­ship with God, the rela­tion­ship with Jesus. And so we built places where we could do it on our own, right? And as long as white suprema­cy is still deny­ing black folk oppor­tu­ni­ties, black folk access, a unfet­tered access to God, we need those faith spaces, those sacred spaces where we can do that kind of work, right? Until there is no greater force against racism in this coun­try that black church­es have been, right? And as long as there’s still reli­gious big­otry and pre­da­tion, as long as there’s still social dis­crim­i­na­tion and polit­i­cal dis­en­fran­chise­ment, we will need some ver­sions of the black church in order for black peo­ple to get home safe.

It may seem unfair to some pull a short clip, and mine it for all its issues, but this is not a ran­dom clip pulled from its intend­ed con­text. This clip is from Jude 3 them­selves, aka: this is pre­cise­ly what they want­ed you to hear. Fran­cois takes an incred­i­bly reduc­tion­is­tic view of Amer­i­can church his­to­ry, as there were many instances in which blacks and whites did wor­ship togeth­er in the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies, though let us accept Fran­cois’ premise for the sake of argu­ment for now. Let us assume that seg­re­ga­tion was enforced in every church in the past, it still would not jus­ti­fy accus­ing Chris­tians today of being respon­si­ble for their fore­fa­thers seg­re­gat­ing the church. In Ezekiel 18:14–20, God com­mands us to not hold present gen­er­a­tions account­able for the sins of past gen­er­a­tions, a top­ic we’ve cov­ed before. Doing so would be unjust because none of us were the ones enslav­ing black peo­ple or caus­ing them to wor­ship sep­a­rate­ly. In short, we can­not be held respon­si­ble for things we did not do accord­ing to God’s stan­dard.

Nev­er­the­less, Fran­cois goes on to claim that “white suprema­cy is still deny­ing black folk oppor­tu­ni­ties.” This heavy accu­sa­tion is unsub­stan­ti­at­ed and is rid­dled with issues. For one, Fran­cois has assumed that white suprema­cy is ubiq­ui­tous in Amer­i­ca with no evi­dence. This is a reli­gious­ly held belief of Crit­i­cal Race The­o­rists: they assume racism is every­where, and they ignore the fact that since the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964, black Amer­i­cans have been held equal under the laws of the Unit­ed States.

For race hus­tlers like Fran­cois, blacks must have equal, or poten­tial­ly supe­ri­or, wealth, resources, etc. before we can say that white suprema­cy is no longer the order of the day. This ignores the fact that dis­parate out­comes do not equate to dis­crim­i­na­tion. Equal out­comes is impos­si­ble because every­one has dif­fer­ent abil­i­ties and capac­i­ties. Dif­fer­ences in out­come can be attrib­uted to a num­ber of fac­tors, such as fam­i­ly struc­ture and his­to­ry, deci­sion mak­ing, cul­ture, and upbring­ing, among many oth­ers. To say that racism is the “cause” of unequal out­comes with­out evi­dence is to engage in cir­cu­lar rea­son­ing. The only way we can all become equal is if we live under a social­ist regime in which every­one has the mon­ey from their labor stolen from them, and every­one is equal­ly poor. Func­tion­al­ly, the only way to have equal out­come, is to take away any form of advance­ment.

Not only does Fran­cois accuse white Chris­tians of deny­ing blacks oppor­tu­ni­ties, but also of block­ing their “access to God” and their abil­i­ty to “get home safe.” Of course, he pro­vides no proof that blacks are unable to get home safe because of white suprema­cy, because there is no data to sug­gest this. What is worse, Fran­cois’ asserts that white suprema­cy some­how is keep­ing black Chris­tians from access­ing the Lord Jesus Christ. This implies that white suprema­cy is send­ing black peo­ple to hell, and it is white Chris­tians’ fault. Once again, this bold, slan­der­ous accu­sa­tion is com­plete­ly unsub­stan­ti­at­ed. As the say­ing goes, that which is stat­ed with­out evi­dence can be dis­missed with­out evi­dence.

In the end, the only seg­re­ga­tion that exists in Fran­cois world, is the skin based seg­re­ga­tion he encour­ages peo­ple to par­tic­i­pate in: “And as long as there’s still reli­gious big­otry and pre­da­tion, as long as there’s still social dis­crim­i­na­tion and polit­i­cal dis­en­fran­chise­ment, we will need some ver­sions of the black church…”

Rec­om­mend­ed Woke­pe­dia Pod­cast episode: