Twelve Lies, by Jonathan Walton

 According to Jonathan Walton, what is White American Folk Religion [WAFR]? 

“By white I mean the system created to claim that those of darker skin color are inherently inferior.  Over time, white included components of family, national background, or class.  At its core, whiteness was created solely to subjugate one group of people and elevate the other.  In Europe and the Americas, it is the subjugation of indigenous people, those descended from Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as women, the materially poor, and social outcasts.  America is the context where this ideology reigns most strongly.  And folk religion is the common set of popular beliefs and practices under the guise of true religion but outside of the faith’s official doctrines and practices.  WAFR claims to be biblical Christianity.”

I agree 100 percent with the quotation from Jonathan Walton’s book, Twelve Lies. 

Martin Luther King called White American Folk Religion the American triplet composed of racism, capitalism, and militarism; in the 1980’s, I coined a similar trinity, which stood in start contrast with the Christian trinity, which I call individualism, materialism, and racism.  Where King and I both erred is that neither one of us included sexism or male supremacy in our understanding of social evil.

I would add these additional comments to Walton’s fine description of White American Folk Religion.  America’s two leading founding fathers were George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.  They, along with the other founding fathers, were rich white males.  In addition, they owned hundreds of slaves.  It’s hard to imagine anything more evil than a rich, white, male, Anglo-Saxon, slave owner in 1776.  They epitomized the social evils that Jesus severely criticized—economic oppression and religious ethnocentrism.

Neither Washington nor Jefferson deserved a monument or memorial in their name.  If we do leave the two monuments standing, we should use them as a teaching technique.  At the bottom of each monument a plaque should mention that Washington was a rich, white male who together with his wife, Martha, owned around 300 slaves, that Jefferson was a rich white male who owned 260 slaves.  They both should have  freed their slaves when they took the oath of presidency.  Neither one did. 

The same should be done with the St. Louis Arch in St. Louis, which is celebrated as the site of the expansion of American civilization.  The plaque should also mention that St. Louis is the site of unparalleled white American ethnocentrism and oppression against Native Americans.  

For approximately the past six years I have posted over 500 blogs on similar items.  This includes an in-depth look at the 555 Old Testament references to oppression, which are almost totally ignored by all white American theologians. 

Another book I would recommend reading along with Twelve Lies, is a book written by professional Christian historians titled The Wars of America: Christian Views.  Each chapter in the book is on specific a war and written by a Christian historian who was an expert in that war.  Most of our wars do not even come close to meeting the standard of a just war.  They would fall into the category of an unjust religious crusade. 

For example, George Marsden, who analyzed the American Revolution, concluded that, contrary to popular opinion, the British violence was not bad enough to justify a violent revolution.  The Mexican War, written by Ronald Wells, is described as an unjust land grab of half of Mexico’s land. 

If there should be a wall built on our border with Mexico, it should be built on the north border of Texas, the north border of Arizona, and the north border of California to keep American armies from ever invading Mexico again.

Another quotation from Walton’s Twelve Lies:

“Jefferson’s reservation was to be the country west of the Mississippi; and he issued instructions to those controlling Indian matters to get the Indians there, and let the Great River be the line between them and the whites.  Any method of securing removal—persuasion, purchase, or force—was authorized.  Jefferson’s plan became the permanent policy.  The removals have generally been accomplished by purchase, and the evils of this are greater than those of all the others combined.”

The Social Evils of Ethnocentrism and Oppression

When Jesus began his ministry in the Gospel of Luke, he highlighted two social evils, not personal sins.  Jesus did not call attention to the Ten Commandments and the list of sins highlighted there.  Why did he instead emphasize economic oppression and religious ethnocentrism?

Among the Jews in NT Times, there was not much legal slavery.  Instead a few rich were oppressing the poor masses.  Probably 80 percent of the Jewish people, at the time, would be classified poor, just a few notches above slavery.  For a vivid and powerful description of economic oppression and poverty in NT Times, read James 5:1-5.  This is the poverty and oppression that Luke 4:18-19 is talking about when Jesus called for the releasing of the oppressed.

The second social evil that Jesus stressed in Luke is found in 4:25-30.  Almost all Jews thought they were superior to all Gentiles and Samaritans.  Jesus reinterpreted the OT stories of Elijah and Elisha to tell the Nazareth Jews that God loved the Gentiles as much as the Jews.  The Nazareth Jews tried to kill Jesus on the spot.

So why did Jesus begin talking about two terrible social evils not personal sins or even the sin of idolatry? 

Both economic oppression, be it slavery, or be it the rich oppressing the poor, involves large numbers of people.  In Palestine the majority of Jews were being economically oppressed; in Palestine the majority of Gentiles and Samaritans were being treated as inferior. 

Now let’s apply the social evils of oppression and ethnocentrism to America.  The Northern Slave Trade followed by Southern Slavery, oppressed millions of black Americans throughout much of American history.  At the same time Anglo-Saxon or British colonists saw themselves as superior to blacks throughout American history, even down to 2019:

1.    First came the slave trade conducted mostly by Northern whites, New England whites – see the book Inheriting the [Slave] Trade.  This is the incredible history of the slave-trading DeWolf family.  Since Northerners tend to think they are better than Southerners because it was Southerners who owned most slaves, this will disabuse the Northerners of any sense of superiority.  In fact I happen to think people who engaged in the slave trade are even more evil than people who engaged in slavery. 

2.    There were 200+ years of legal slavery in the United States.  Technically ended by the Emancipation Proclamation. 

3.    But the Emancipation Proclamation really did not end slavery.  We just moved from slavery to neo-slavery.  See the book Slavery by Another Name, which describes in gruesome detail the 100 years after the Civil War, which were dominated by segregation, by economic sharecropping, by prison gangs and by lynching.   The evils of economic oppression and ethnocentrism continued on unabated. 

4.    The Civil Rights Movement ended some of the worst features of neo-slavery, but very quickly there was a backlash against the Civil Rights Movement.  Highlighted by the presidency of Richard Nixon, the law and order president, and the presidency of Ronald Reagan who started the War on Drugs.   Michelle Alexander describes the era of mass incarceration from the 1980’s to 2019 in detail in her book The New Jim Crow.  Some of the worst features of this backlash against the 60’s took place in the north.  The social evils of oppression and ethnocentrism continue on in modern America unabated affecting millions of people. 

5.    I retired in the state of Iowa in 1994.  I discovered that around 2008 Iowa had the worst black/white incarceration ratio in the Nation.  I dubbed this Iowa’s 2 and 24 problem; 2 percent of Iowa’s population was black, 24 percent of Iowa’s prison population was black.  That’s a 12 to 1 incarceration ratio. 

I also discovered that 6 percent of white Iowans used illegal drugs and 6 percent of black Iowans used illegal drugs and 6 percent of Hispanic Iowans used illegal drugs, so why in the world were blacks being incarcerated for illegal drug use at 12 times the rate as whites? 

Is this another sign of economic oppression and ethnocentrism?