Carter Heyward - The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism: A Call to Action

Series Editors:

Kwok Pui-lan, Candler School of Theology, Emory University

Joerg Rieger, Vanderbilt University

This series explores how various religious traditions wrestle with the dynamic and changing role of religion in the modern world and examines how past changes reflect on todays critical issues. Accessibly and engagingly written, books in this series will look at secularization, global society, gender, race, class, sexuality and their relation to religious life and religious movements.

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Not Gods People: Insiders and Outsiders in the Biblical World by Lawrence M. Wills

The Food and Feasts of Jesus: The Original Mediterranean Diet, with Menus and Recipes by Douglas E. Neel and Joel A. Pugh

Occupy Religion: Theology of the Multitude by Joerg Rieger and Kwok Pui-lan

The Politics of Jess: A Hispanic Political Theology by Miguel A. De La Torre

Modern Muslim Theology: Engaging God and the World with Faith and Imagination by Martin Nguyen

Race, Religion, and Politics: Toward Human Rights in the United States by Stephanie Y. Mitchem

The Hong Kong Protests and Political Theology edited by Kwok Pui-lan and Francis Ching-wah Yip

The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism: A Call to Action by Carter Heyward

A Call to Action

Carter Heyward

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on File

Names: Heyward, Carter, author. Title: The seven deadly sins of white Christian nationalism : a call to action / Carter Heyward. Description: Lanham : Rowman & Littlefield, [2022] | Series: Religion in the modern world | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022011754 (print) | LCCN 2022011755 (ebook) | ISBN 9781538167892 (cloth) | ISBN 9781538167908 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Christians, White--United States. | White nationalism--United States. | Christian conservatism--Political aspects--United States. | Religious right--United States. | Christianity and politics--United States. Classification: LCC BR517 .H49 2022 (print) | LCC BR517 (ebook) | DDC 261.7--dc23/eng/20220711 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022011754 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022011755

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Dedicated to
Rob, Isabel, Kate, Cooper, Ramsey, Katie,
nephews, nieces, goddess children one and all

You are a light. You are the light. Never let anyoneany person or any forcedampen, dim, or diminish your light.

Release the need to hate, to harbor division, and the enticement of revenge. Release all bitterness.
Hold only love, only peace in your heart, knowing that the battle of good to overcome evil is already won.

John Lewis, Across That Bridge: Life Lessons and a Vision for Change

New York: Hachette Books, 2017 (2012).

Three friends worked with me on this project from its beginnings: Darlene ODell, Susan Lefler, and Anne B. Gilson, each a gifted professional writer and teacher herself. When I called them up and said, hey, we need to say something about what happened at the Capitol on January 6, they responded, yes, we do. We four white Christian women, three of us from the South, were troubled in our souls by the reticence of our liberal Protestant churches to get overly involved in politics lest too many good Christians be offended. After the Trump presidency, culminating in the shocking events at the Capitol, we decided it was time to risk offending. We set out to design a project considerably larger than this one book. Our project has been energizing and exciting, but it was too much for one book. We decided I should finish writing my part on the seven deadly sins. I did, and this book has found its way to your hands.

I owe many thanks to friends and colleagues over the years who have helped raise my consciousness about power dynamics in the world near and far. There are way too many to name and, besides, I would doubtlessly leave some of the most important folks out. But you know who you were, and are. You were my teachers, all along the way, beginning at home and in high school and continuing right up through seminary. You were, and are, Bev. You were my coauthors of Gods Fierce Whimsy (1985), a book that explored racial, ethnic, and sexual diversity in Christian theological education. You were my coauthors of Revolutionary Forgiveness: Feminist Reflections on Nicaragua (1986). You were my colleagues at the Episcopal Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. You were my sister priests, beginning with the other ten ordinands in the proudly infamous Philadelphia Ordination of 1974. You were, and are, my consciousness-raising group at Union Seminaryand, yes, we still meet over Zoom every month more than fifty years later.

You called yourselves my spiritual parents, Dorothee Soelle and Bob DeWitt, and you surely taught me so much about the church and world. You were Reinhild Traitler-Espiritu of the Boldern Evangelical Institute outside Zurich. You were Angela Solling and your Clare community in Stroud, New South Wales, Australia; Angela Moloney, OP, and your Sophia community in Adelaide, Australia; Susan Adams and John Salmon in Auckland, New Zealand; Denise Ackermann in Cape Town, South Africa; David Conolly in Melbourne, Australia, and Jim Lewis in Charleston, West Virginiathe whole lot of you, white women and men doing your best to empower people of color, racial-ethnic minority and majority groups, as well as women and LGBTQ folks from one continent to another. And you certainly were countless queer siblings in America and around the world who named our truths.

Most recently you have been my colleagues in the NAACP of Transylvania County, North Carolina, coconspirators in the work of justice. Your collective spirit has coauthored this book with me. There are many of you, and I can name only a few, mainly those I recall often standing, sitting, or kneeling in front of the courthouse on Moral Monday, as well as brothers and sisters on the Religious Affairs Committee: Sheila Mooney, Rosalynd Storer, Tommy Kilgore, Robert Kilgore, the late Curtis Cash, the late Michael Wainwright, Marty Wainwright, Kathleen Barnes, Joe Castro, Larry Goodwin, Linda Goodwin, Desmond Duncker, Maureen Copelof, Sylvan Copelof, Sue Sasser, Nancy Richards, Sam Edney, Deda Edney, Kathy Voltz, Lisa Rodke, Nora Johnson, Jeb Buffinton, Susan Lefler, Charles Lefler, Ian Cowie, Vanessa Cowie, Yang Li, Spencer Jones, Sue Barrett, Eleanor Mockridge, Peter Mockridge, the late Susan Sunflower, Nona Walker, Sue Null, Norene Carter, Doug Denton, Elly Andujar, Judy Nebrig, John Hobbs, Anne Gilson, Ellen Dozier, Diane Livingston, Bill Livingston, Jackie Jenkins, Rob Field, Mark Burrows, and Suzanne Comer-Barrett.