The Bible was consistently utilized to lend divine authority to slave-holding culture, centered in the supposedly munificent intent of the “Christian master.” Tisby observes, “Under paternalistic Christianity, the slave plantation was seen as a household, with the male enslaver as the benevolent patriarch of both his family and his ‘pseudofamily’ of enslaved black people.” Chattel slavery was thus an early form of biblical “complementarity,” in which slaves and Christian (male) owners were assigned roles in the divine “order of creation.”.

In this way, Tisby notes, “a corrupt message that saw no contradiction between the brutalities of bondage and the good news of salvation became the norm.” Even revivalists like George Whitefield and Jonathan Edwards advocated evangelization of slaves but with a gospel that “did not extend to advocating for physical emancipation.”

White colonials “compromised the message of Christianity to accommodate slavery,” evangelizing slaves to fulfill Jesus’ mandate “to make disciples of all nations,” freeing their souls for heaven, but withholding liberation on earth.

Tisby’s research details disturbing facts like these: Reading the book was a painful literary and personal experience, since it documents the ways in which white Christians and ecclesiastical institutions inside and outside the South manifested, acquiesced to and facilitated racist responses to people of color in general and African Americans in particular. My formal review of Tisby’s book will be published later this year in the American Baptist Quarterly. “Tisby’s conclusions offer important insights for confronting American racism past and present.”

Tisby’s study surveys the history of racial discrimination and injustice in America from the colonial era to the present, particularly the “complicity” of Christian people and churches in supporting slavery, Lost Cause mythology, Jim Crow segregation and white supremacy, as well as in contemporary voter suppression and racial inequities in education, housing and economics. By seeing the roots of racism in this country may the church be moved to immediate and resolute antiracist action. It pulls back the curtain on the ways American Christians have collaborated with racism for centuries.

In his 2019 book, The Color of Compromise: The Truth about the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, University of Mississippi doctoral candidate Jemar Tisby describes his purpose:

Book the color of compromise