In October of 2023, Critical Race Theorist and Christian author Jemar Tisby wrote a shockingly slanderous article that portrays a third of Christians as white nationalists who hold the same ideology as the Ku Klux Klan. Tisby bases this absurd claim on a recent Soros-funded study by the Brookings Institute used to smear Christians as white nationalists. The study was based on five statements participants were asked to agree or disagree with, such as “US laws should be based on Christian values” and “Being Christian is an important part of being truly American.” The survey asked some relatively basic questions that a plurality of Christians would agree with, then spun the results to try to slander Christians as promoting white supremacy with no data regarding the participants’ beliefs on race. This is because the woke believe that Christianity is racist, as scripture rejects Marxist ideologies such as Critical Race Theory. None of the five questions used the word “white” or even “Christian nationalism”, but this does not stop Tisby from smearing Christians as “white Christian nationalists” (WCN).
In the opening of the article, Tisby sounds the alarm about the results of the Brookings survey when he writes, “Those words individually—white, and Christian, and nationalist— and together convey critical elements of what has become the greatest threat to democracy and the witness of the church.” In Tisby’s mind, WCN is an existential threat. Such a serious claim requires a high threshold of evidence to prove. Let’s see how Tisby attempts to substantiate it.
Firstly, Tisby looks at the results of the Brookings survey to see how many people the survey labels “Christian nationalists” based on the answers to the questions, even though many who would be labeled sympathizers would reject the label. The following graph shows the results of that survey:
Based on the results of this highly flawed study, Tisby concludes that, “In today’s terms, moderate believers in white Christian nationalism would be identified as ‘sympathizers’ and together with the ‘adherents’ make up nearly 30 percent of the total population.” Based on the results of five benign questions that have nothing to do with being white, Tisby nevertheless surmises that a third of Christians are sympathetic with WCN.
Although this idea is insane on its face, Tisby spins the Ku Klux Klan’s historical beliefs to try to make them fit in with the Brookings survey, making it appear that a third of Christians are clandestinely hiding their white hoods: “In its effort to impose a strict racial, gender, and political hierarchy in the name of Christianity, the modern white Christian nationalist movement is an ideological descendant of the Ku Klux Klan.” To back up this claim, Tisby quotes a New York Times article which references a New York World article from 1922. In this article, it states that the KKK “[admits] to membership none but ‘native born, white, Gentile, Protestant Americans, whose statement of principles was a restoration of the fundamental principles of American democracy as embodied in the Constitution of the United States, an organization whose code of conduct was Christianity’” Commenting on this article, Tisby asserts, “These quotes reveal how connected the beliefs of white Christian nationalists today are with the Ku Klux Klan of 100 years ago.” As Tisby’s argument goes, because the KKK believed in the Constitution and laws based on Christianity, and because 30% of those surveyed in the Brookings study also believed in those things, therefore the KKK and modern patriotic Christians believe in the same ideology.
There are many reasons why Tisby’s rhetoric is nothing more than a wild-eyed racist conspiracy theory masquerading as scholarship, but we will focus on three of the main ones. Firstly, as we’ve seen, nothing in the study asks the participants to comment on whether they believe the white race is superior. Nor does it ask whether being “gentile” is superior to being Jewish. In reality, most Christians today are much more tolerant and accepting of all races as inherently equal image-bearers of God.
Secondly, just because the KKK claimed to believe in biblical laws does not mean that it held biblical views. Obviously, its attempts to subjugate nonwhites is unbiblical, as most Christians today would agree that the Bible condemns all forms of racism and partiality. Additionally, an honestly read Constitution does not allow for racial oppression, as all citizens are guaranteed equal protection under the law in the 5th and 14th amendments. Therefore, Tisby is attempting to use broad and vague statements the KKK used in 1922 to justify claiming that patriotic American Christians today are racist. These dishonest and underhanded tactics are par for the course with Tisby.
Furthermore, the survey’s participants themselves aren’t all white. In fact, Tisby admits this in the article when he cites the graph below:
As we can see, 38% of black protestants and 43% of Hispanic protestants are white Christian nationalists. If this sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is. Here is how Tisby tries to make this case: “Nowadays, the racial and national boundaries have become slightly more porous. And plenty of Catholics hold WCN beliefs. People of color may also gain entry into white Christian nationalist circles, but only if they unfailingly adhere to their principles and the movement’s most prominent leaders remain white…Even if one is not an ardent adherent of white Christian nationalism, those who are sympathizers enable the most egregious acts of political authoritarianism and religious hypocrisy.” For Tisby, these nonwhite members of the WCN crowd are allowed to be part of the movement, as long as they allow for white people to remain in leadership positions. This claim is unflinchingly made without any data or studies to verify its claims. That which is stated without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
In the end, Tisby betrays the woke church’s disdain for ordinary patriotic Christians who love their country. They would like to see Christians abandon the gospel and the Constitution in favor of a Maoist revolutionary ideology where whites are subjugated and the Constitution is disregarded. Do not fall for their deceitful schemes.
