Faith in America: Church rebukes white supremacy but can't ignore white privilege

White supremacists. White nationalists. White neo-Nazis. The hoodless alt-white.

They wore different uniforms, carried different weapons and displayed different violent and hateful pathologies when they stormed through Charlottesville, Va. But they all had one thing in common.

White Christian leaders, who once justified slavery, defended segregation, condoned lynching and ignored legal discrimination, no longer have their back.

"The so-called alt-right white-supremacist ideologies are anti-Christ and Satanic to the core," said Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Convention, which once defended slavery as biblical.

"White supremacist and neo-Nazi ideologies are abhorrent and entirely inconsistent with the Christian faith," said Bishop Bruce Ough of the United Methodist Church, which once split over slavery.

"Church members who promote or pursue a 'white culture' or white supremacy agenda are not in harmony with the teachings of the Church," said the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which once banned black members from its priesthood and sacraments.

► More:Faith groups across the nation look for solutions in the aftermath of Charlottesville violence

The church's quick, clear and unequivocal condemnation of white supremacy last week stood in sharp contrast to President Donald Trump's vacillations blaming the violence on "both sides" and "many sides."

As the theological underpinnings of white supremacy in America have all but been removed, the political ideology of white supremacy seems to grown stronger.

White supremacy's re-emergence comes as the percentage of Americans who identify as white and Christian has declined from 54 percent a decades ago to 45 percent — less than a majority — today.

"What we're seeing is the sort of third wave of white reaction and resistance to racial progress and diversity," said Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of "The End of White Christian America.".

The first wave came when Reconstruction gave way to Jim Crow segregation, the second when Brown v. Board of Education set off the modern civil rights movement.

The latest surge comes as the nation's first African-American president was succeeded by a conservative white president who continues to stoke white working-class anxiety and resentment.

Each wave is an attempt to reestablish white authority, especially in the South, symbolized by the veneration, defense and preservation of Confederate statues and monuments.

The violent clashes in Charlottesville were centered around plans to remove a statute of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee, which was commissioned in 1917. Nearly all Confederate monuments were installed from 1900-1920 and from 1954-1968.

In Memphis, the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue was installed in 1905, and the Jefferson Davis statue in 1964.

The church at large no longer condones racism or its symbols, "but it's only beginning to deal with how the legacy of racism and white supremacy has shaped their theology, churches, and world views," Jones said.

That explains why the Southern Baptist Convention didn't apologize for its racist history until 1995, and why the SBC hesitated last June to condemn white nationalism, white supremacy and the alt-right.

It also explains why 80 percent of African-Americans see Confederate flags and statues as symbols of racism, but 60-70 percent of white Christians — including President Trump — see them as historic expressions of Southern pride. 

The church at large now condemns racism and white supremacy, but it's still struggling to understand and acknowledge white privilege.

"Unlike the days of Jim Crow, today's white supremacists make no attempt to use Christian language to justify their beliefs or actions," said Joseph Reiff, religion professor at Emory & Henry College in Emory, Va., and author of "Born of Conviction."

"What they are really protesting is the loss of their white privilege, the potential loss of their favored status in America. White supremacy is the belief system and the power system that sustains white privilege."

Reiff grew up in the United Methodist Church in Mississippi. Jones grew up in the Southern Baptist church in Mississippi.

Both have seen the church work to remove its theological support for white supremacy. Both believe the church still has work to do.

"White Christians need to acknowledge and confess our privileged status and our conscious and unconscious complicity in the ongoing reality of white supremacy in the U.S.," Reiff said.

"White Christian churches still have a lot of soul-searching left to do," said Jones.