For The White Christ

How is it that in America the image of Jesus Christ has been used both to justify the atrocities of white supremacy and to inspire the righteousness of civil rights crusades? In The Color of Christ, Edward J. Blum and Paul Harvey weave a tapestry of American dreams and visions--from witch hunts to web pages, Harlem to Hollywood, slave cabins to South Park, Mormon revelations to Indian reservations--to show how Americans remade the Son of God visually time and again into a sacred symbol of their greatest aspirations, deepest terrors, and mightiest strivings for racial power and justice. The Color of Christ uncovers how, in a country founded by Puritans who destroyed depictions of Jesus, Americans came to believe in the whiteness of Christ. Some envisioned a white Christ who would sanctify the exploitation of Native Americans and African Americans and bless imperial expansion. Many others gazed at a messiah, not necessarily white, who was willing and able to confront white supremacy. The color of Christ still symbolizes America's most combustible divisions, revealing the power and malleability of race and religion from colonial times to the presidency of Barack Obama.

In White Jesus: The Architecture of Racism in Religion and Education, White Jesus is conceived as a socially constructed apparatus--a mythology that animates the architecture of salvation--that operates stealthily as a veneer for patriarchal White supremacist, capitalist, and imperialist sociopolitical, cultural, and economic agendas. White Jesus was constructed by combining empire, colorism, racism, education, and religion; the by-product is a distortion that reproduces violence in epistemic and physical ways. The authors distinguish White Jesus from Jesus of the Gospels, the one whose life, death, and resurrection demands sacrificial love as a response--a love ethic. White Jesus is a fraudulent scheme that many devotees of Jesus of Bethlehem naively fell for. This book is about naming the lies, reclaiming the person of Jesus, and reasserting a vision of power that locates Jesus of the Gospels in solidarity with the easily disposed. The catalytic, animating, and life-altering power of the cross of Jesus is enough to subdue White Jesus and his patronage. White Jesus can be used in a variety of academic disciplines, including education, religion, sociology, and cultural studies. Furthermore, the book will be useful for Christian institutions working to evaluate the images and ideologies of Jesus that shape their biblical ethics, as well as churches in the U.S. that are invested in breaking the mold of homogeneity, civil religion, and uncoupling commitments to patriotism from loyalty to one Kingdom. Educational institutions and religious organizations that are committed to combining justice and diversity efforts with a Jesus ethic will find White Jesus to be a compelling primer.

The Light of Christ provides an accessible presentation of Catholicism that is grounded in traditional theology, but engaged with a host of contemporary questions or objections. Inspired by the theologies of Iranaeus, Thomas Aquinas and John Henry Newman, and rooted in a post-Vatican II context, Fr. Thomas Joseph White presents major doctrines of the Christian religion in a way that is comprehensible for non-specialists: knowledge of God, the mystery of the Trinity, the Incarnation and the atonement, the sacraments and the moral life, eschatology and prayer. At the same time, The Light of Christ also addresses topics such as evolution, the modern historical study of Jesus and the Bible, and objections to Catholic moral teaching. Touching on the concerns of contemporary readers, Fr. White examines questions such as whether Christianity is compatible with the findings of the modern sciences, do historical Jesus studies disrupt or confirm the teaching of the faith, and does history confirm the antiquity of Catholic claims. This book serves as an excellent introduction for young professionals with no specialized background in theology who are interested in learning more about Catholicism, or as an introduction to Catholic theology. It will also serve as a helpful text for theology courses in a university context. As Fr. White states in the book’s introduction: “This is a book that offers itself as a companion. I do not presume to argue the reader into the truths of the Catholic faith, though I will make arguments. My goal is to make explicit in a few broad strokes the shape of Catholicism. I hope to outline its inherent intelligibility or form as a mystery that is at once visible and invisible, ancient and contemporary, mystical and reasonable.”

"For the White Christ" by Robert Ames Bennet is a historical novel that reveals the story of the days of Charlemagne. It's the story of a half-breed Norse/Arab man, who comes to serve Charlemagne, and how he wins his bride- the god-daughter of the Holy Roman Emperor. Excerpt: "Two winters ago there came to Chelles a maiden who knew many tales of the Saxon and Lombard wars,--Fastrada--" Roland's cheeks flushed, and he stooped forward eagerly. "Fastrada!" he exclaimed. "You knew her?" "For a winter's time—"

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER The “paradigm-influencing” book (Christianity Today) that is fundamentally transforming our understanding of white evangelicalism in America. Jesus and John Wayne is a sweeping, revisionist history of the last seventy-five years of white evangelicalism, revealing how evangelicals have worked to replace the Jesus of the Gospels with an idol of rugged masculinity and Christian nationalism—or in the words of one modern chaplain, with “a spiritual badass.” As acclaimed scholar Kristin Du Mez explains, the key to understanding this transformation is to recognize the centrality of popular culture in contemporary American evangelicalism. Many of today’s evangelicals might not be theologically astute, but they know their VeggieTales, they’ve read John Eldredge’s Wild at Heart, and they learned about purity before they learned about sex—and they have a silver ring to prove it. Evangelical books, films, music, clothing, and merchandise shape the beliefs of millions. And evangelical culture is teeming with muscular heroes—mythical warriors and rugged soldiers, men like Oliver North, Ronald Reagan, Mel Gibson, and the Duck Dynasty clan, who assert white masculine power in defense of “Christian America.” Chief among these evangelical legends is John Wayne, an icon of a lost time when men were uncowed by political correctness, unafraid to tell it like it was, and did what needed to be done. Challenging the commonly held assumption that the “moral majority” backed Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 for purely pragmatic reasons, Du Mez reveals that Trump in fact represented the fulfillment, rather than the betrayal, of white evangelicals’ most deeply held values: patriarchy, authoritarian rule, aggressive foreign policy, fear of Islam, ambivalence toward #MeToo, and opposition to Black Lives Matter and the LGBTQ community. A much-needed reexamination of perhaps the most influential subculture in this country, Jesus and John Wayne shows that, far from adhering to biblical principles, modern white evangelicals have remade their faith, with enduring consequences for all Americans.

“If reconciliation is the takeaway point for the civil rights story we usually tell, then the takeaway point for the more complex, more truthful civil rights story contained in Dear White Christians is reparations.” — from the preface to the second edition With the troubling and painful events of the last several years—from the killing of numerous unarmed Black men and women at the hands of police to the rallying of white supremacists in Charlottesville—it is clearer than ever that the reconciliation paradigm, long favored by white Christians, has failed to heal the deep racial wounds in the church and American society. In this provocative book, originally published in 2014, Jennifer Harvey argues for a radical shift away from the well-meaning but feeble longing for reconciliation toward a robustly biblical call for reparations. Now in its second edition—with a new preface addressing the explosive changes in American culture and politics since 2014, as well as an appendix that explores what a reparations paradigm can actually look like—Dear White Christians calls justice-committed Christians to do the gospel-inspired work of opposing racist social structures around them. Harvey’s message is historically and scripturally rooted, making it ideal for facilitating the difficult but important discussions about race that are so desperately needed in churches and faith-centered classrooms across the country.

Heritage Edition—Over 100 illustrations of a century ago. Unabridged, original text consisting of inspiring and profound lessons from the stories and parables which Jesus told. Christ the Great Teacher gave much of His instruction as He walked with His disciples through the hills and valleys of Palestine or rested by the lake or river. In His parable teaching He linked divine truth with common things and incidents, as may be found in the experiences of the shepherd, the builder, the tiller of the soil, the traveler, and the homemaker. Familiar objects were associated with thoughts true and beautiful—thoughts of God’s loving interest in us, of the grateful homage that is His due, and of the care we should have one for another. Thus lessons of divine wisdom and practical truth were made forcible and impressive. The Scripture says, “All these things spake Jesus unto the multitude in parables; . . . that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet, saying, I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world.” Matt. 13:34, 35. Natural things were the medium for the spiritual; the things of nature and the life-experience of His hearers were connected with the truths of the written word. Leading thus from the natural to the spiritual kingdom, Christ’s parables are links in the chain of truth that unites man with God, and earth with heaven. In this volume the parables are grouped according to their subjects, and their lessons are developed and illustrated. The book is full of gems of truth, and to many readers it will give a richer meaning to the common surroundings of everyday life.

L. Michael White, one of the world’s foremost scholars on the origins of Christianity, provides the complete, astonishing story of how Christianity grew from the personal vision of a humble Jewish peasant living in a remote province of the Roman Empire into the largest organized religion in the world. Rather than reading the New Testament straight through in its traditional, or “canonical” order, From Jesus to Christianity takes a historical approach. Looking at the individual books chronologically, in the sequence in which they were actually written, readers can see what they divulge about the disagreements, shared values, and unifying mission of the earliest Christian communities. White digs through layers of archaeological excavations, sifts through buried fragments of largely unknown texts, and examines historical sources to discover what we can know of Jesus.

"During her 70-year ministry the author spoke, through her pen, to young people, to church members, and to the world in the The Youth's Instructor, the Review and Herald, and The Signs of the Times. Selections for this book have been drawn from these three periodicals as well as from her books and previously unpublished manuscripts and letters"--Foreword.