Dear white evangelical:
I used to be one of you. I believed in your Jesus, I worshipped your God. I spoke your language and voted alongside your values. I engaged in your conversations and defined myself by your people. I went to your churches and showed up to your camps; I worked for your ministries and preached from your pulpits.
I did everything I was supposed to do, which was, in a way, exactly what your leaders wanted me to do. After all, in white evangelicalism, playing by the rules is just part of the game. It’s part of the expectation and sometimes the show; maybe even more, it gives you belonging and a place to call home.
After all, “evangelicals are people who take the Bible really seriously … (or at least some carefully selected parts of it).”1 Sometimes you’re defined by the Bebbington quadrilateral, while others say you share a commonality checking the “born-again Christian” box on an online dating profile. Certainly, since the 2016 election, you’ve been defined as the 81 percent who overwhelmingly voted Donald J. Trump into office — probably because he claimed new values around ideals you most highly esteem, namely abortion and same-sex marriage.2
But evangelicals, as historian Daniel Silliman3 taught me, are also defined by their conversations. As I write in my upcoming book, “It’s not, then, that white evangelicals even have to identify as white (or even as evangelical, for that matter) but that the conversations that characterize this particular group of people and the belief system that follows largely center, benefit, and advance those who are white. In this way, white evangelicalism becomes a matter of inclusion and exclusion; it becomes a structural story of space and tradition, of those who play a role in the greater conversation and those who do not.”
Why do I write this open letter to you now, on the cusp of the 2024 election?
Whether or not you identify as white, the kinds of talks you’re having with the kind of people you tend to surround yourself with largely center, benefit, and advance those who are white.
The conversations you’re having over iced white mocha americanos, with room, have a tendency to keep some people in and some people out.
Because in all actuality, the things you’re largely talking about have a tendency to either gather people in or kick them to the curb. Immigration. Abortion. Gay marriage. The Israel-Hamas war. Keeping American jobs for American workers, which is to say for people who look more like our founding fathers than the enslaved laborers whose very work kept them afloat.
The list goes on, as it always does, but if I can say one thing to you, it’s this:
You can think more about others than you do about yourself.4 You can vote in ways that benefit and elevate and bring justice to our Black and brown brothers and sisters.5 And you can vote in ways that are contradictory to the ways of some of your peers, because you’re allowed to vote the way you want to vote.6
You can think and research and make a decision on your own — because, again, you can think. Too often, evangelicalism prizes the heart above everything else. Your heart is the one in individual relationship with your Lord and Savior. Your heart is the one that connects to the people who speak your language, who welcome you into their living rooms. But sometimes, in this arena, all this talk of the heart too often comes at the detriment of the mind.
So when pastor tells you to think a certain way, or to believe a certain thing, or even, God forbid, to vote in a certain way, you don’t engage your brain in thinking whether or not said assertion is a good idea — either for you (and people who look like you), let alone for people who are not you.
But, friend,7 you get to vote. You get to think. And this means you get to make a difference in the next election.
I rarely veer into partisan politics here, but as a woman, as a friend of refugees and immigrants, and as someone who seeks to be an ally to the LGBTQ+ and BIPOC communities, on Election Day I will cast my ballot for Kamala Harris.
I may not be one of you anymore, but I can still speak your language. And this language, as it turns out, has the power to make a difference in our country’s next chapter.
With love, hope, and courage,
Cara
P.S. I’m not doing my regular “What I’m reading” and “What I’m growing” sections today, for there are more than enough book recommendations below.
This paragraph is a truncated version of a larger paragraph found in my next book, Church Camp. Pre-order it today!
This idea largely comes from Daniel’s book, Reading Evangelicals, but it also stems from an interview I had with him on the subject.
I think Jesus had something to say about this.
I really appreciated Chante Griffin’s thoughts on this subject in her book, Loving Your Black Neighbor as Yourself.
Pastor’s not coming to the voting polls with you, baby.
“Friend” is 100 percent the language of white evangelicalism.
This hits a lot of points I’ve been mulling over lately. My husband was in vocational ministry back in 2016 and to see the true color of white evangelicalism was a rude awakening.