Some Common Complaints Evangelical Conservatives Have about History
No matter how well-researched the history is, conservative evangelicals often dredge up the same objections.
I aim to help untangle the beliefs and ideologies that keep people of faith mired in racism. If you find these perspectives informative, would you consider becoming a paid subscriber?
Twitter justifiably has a reputation for being one of the most contentious sites on the internet. It seems like people only log on to argue.
I’ve been part of plenty of back and forth on Twitter (that’s mostly for pedagogical reasons. You can ask me about my philosophy later.), but there’s some good that can come out of such kerfuffles.
Dealing with so much controversy online, while draining, is also instructive It reveals common objections to your work and ways to respond.
I was scrolling through Twitter and saw a tweet about how poorly some evangelicals receive hard history about their forebears and religious traditions.
As a historian who has been “evangelical-adjacent” for a long time and who wrote a book about Christianity and racism, I took the opportunity to respond.
Many critics of histories of evangelicalism almost never refute the facts themselves. Instead, they bristle at how those facts reveal the gaps in the battles lines they’ve drawn in the culture wars.1
With each era of U.S. history, conservative evangelicals levy different complaints.
Whether it is the old trope that “slavery really wasn’t that bad” or that “civil rights activists were Communists” or “there’s only one party ‘real’ Christians can vote for” the fundamental issue is these critics refuse to interrogate their beliefs in light of the historical record.
You can look at the same data and come to different conclusions, of course, but this is not what the critics of evangelical histories are doing. They are simply asserting that such work is “racist” and “divisive” without presenting a persuasive case using historical facts.
Even though such criticisms seem to be more about asserting conservative bona fides to certain communities and deliberately instigating controversy, it is helpful to name what is happening to better understand the dynamics.
Click HERE to read on Twitter or follow along below.
What else have you observed or heard? Would you add anything?
The language tends to be imprecise here. I’ve referred to these critics as conservatives, fundamentalists, the far-right, reactionaries.
Here to cheer you on, Dr. Tisby. It must take great discipline and discernment to participate in discussions like this. Keep up the kingdom work!
By the way, do you know or know of Heather Cox Richardson? She is another historian, publishes frequent letters on Facebook. She had a lengthy interview with President Biden about a month ago.
Thanks for sharing this, Jemar. It’s definitely true that a certain subgroup of white evangelicals is quick to confirmation bias an understanding of history that makes them feel better - and that a much larger population of white evangelicals lets them do it without more than a shrug or side-eye. Fits into a larger anti-intellectual mindset in American evangelicals that promotes “common sense” AKA “what feels like good sense to me right now”