Religion and Racism: Exploring the Paradox?Can You Be a Christian and a Racist?

Religion and Racism provides an extensive examination of the paradox that arises from the intersection of being a Christian and a racist. A racist believes that one racial group is superior to another. Yet, since the nation’s revolutionary birth, the United States claims a pious, devout mantle of Christianity that served as the nation’s moral compass, while engaging in horrendous acts of racial violence. How can a white Christian male, sit in a church, engage in Christian prayers, and then in cold-blooded fashion murder nine African American Christians in their own church? Christians traditionally have always designated "churches" as places of refuge and sanctuary. The binary of whiteness and Christianity emerged and came to dominate much of the world. In the United States and other parts of the world, whiteness and Christianity have served to subjugate people of color even as such people themselves also came to embrace Christ's teachings, often at the cost of the loss of their traditional forms of religion and culture. Armed with the Bible and deep-seated belief in racial superiority, European colonizers came to shape most of the world as we know it today. The result has been an unequal control of the world’s resources and vastly disparate living standards for people of color and whites, both internationally and within specific nations. People of color have been treated as highly valued commodities, while simultaneously being stripped of their humanity―with the sanction of the Christian faith.

Now retired, Dr. Theron N. Ford spent 50 years as an educator in every education setting from preschool to graduate school. Her work included teaching students with special needs as well as teaching in the Bahamas, Malawi and in Catholic universities.

Dr. Blanche Jackson Glimps, now retired, was a professor in the Department of Teaching and Learning at Tennessee State University. She has been an educator for many years with her first teaching position with Detroit Public Schools as a third-grade teacher and later as a special educator..