Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and the Problem of Race in America

[Lady Julian]

I've been reading this book lately: It's a thorough analysis of the evangelical response to racism and explanation of why this response doesn't work.

According to the authors (Michael Emerson and Christian Smith), a "cultural toolbox" determines people's response to social problems such as race. In other words, people draw on their theological values, on their morals and on their heritage as "tools" in order to make sense of the world around them; people from different theologies or different heritages will naturally use different tools.

Evangelicals, the authors point out, stress individual accountability and free will in their theology, and so they stress individual accountability and free will in their sociology as well. What this "tool" of individual free will does is limit evangelicals' ability to recognize that social problems are often not caused by a sheer lack of willpower. For instance, evangelicals have difficulty appreciating that the structure of society is biased against nonwhite people, and they have trouble seeing how Affirmative Action is not in fact reverse racism. The author goes on to explain that, although evangelicals alter their views when they live or go to church with large numbers of nonwhite people, diverse groups have much more difficulty in staying healthy and mutually supportive than racially homogenous groups (for several different reasons, which I won't go into here).

I'm not quite finished yet, but it's been an interesting read - a good, clear explanation of why evangelicals persist in believing that colorblindness is the only true solution to racism (which it isn't) and that government solutions are wholly flawed. I believed implicitly in colorblindness when I was growing up but I have since discarded that view (Yes, grad school made me liberal!), so the book has been a good reminder of why I no longer believe that colorblindness is a good solution, and why I teach my students about racial tension.

Its biggest problem is that it's a sociological book and includes interview excerpt after interview excerpt after interview excerpt; a little judicious skimming will get you past the authors' academic description of how they went about these interviews and back to the meat.