Welcome back to Part 9 of A History of Incompatibility. In this series, we explore the development of Christian beliefs around human sexuality, particularly as it relates to present church schisms over LGBTQ inclusion. If you are just now joining the story, I recommend going back and starting at Part 1.
Also, if you’re enjoying the series, I was recently interviewed by Ministry Matters about A History of Incompatibility. Jump over there and read the interview at this link!
Last week, we explored the rise of new evangelicalism in the 1940’s, efforts to popularize conservative Christian ideals without the extremist rhetoric of Christian fundamentalism. Biblical literalism and evangelical conversion had become associated with the uneducated in America, mostly due to the Scopes Monkey Trial where fundamentalists sought to outlaw public schools teaching evolution. But the new evangelicalism of the 40’s intended to rebrand conservative Christian values as also intellectual, something to be taken seriously. In many ways, Billy Graham became the face and mouthpiece of new evangelicalism, moving evangelical Christianity into the American forefront in the late 40’s onward.
But the Brown V. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court in 1954 would challenge the heart of evangelical Christianity. Though Charlotte, NC native Billy Graham was outspokenly pro-integration, there were plenty of white evangelicals who insisted that their racism was ordained and blessed by biblical interpretation. Graham believed in gradualism, the belief that as souls were saved for Jesus Christ, they would slowly over time transform society to accept racial integration. He was completely willing to work with and include known segregationist politicians in his rallies simply because they claimed the name Christian, and to him, that Christian brotherhood was more important than their beliefs and policies that actively harmed black and brown people. Martin Luther King, Jr. implored Graham to not partner with known segregationists, arguing that the aesthetic only proved to segregationists that it was biblically okay to be racist. Graham disagreed with King. When King chose to challenge racism with civil disobedience, Graham publicly asked him to “put on the brakes,” saying to an Atlanta news reporter, “I do believe that we have a responsibility to obey the law…otherwise you have anarchy. And no matter what the law may be–it may be an unjust law–I believe we have a Christian responsibility to obey it.” In the same article, Graham bemoaned that forcing two races to love each other (by a Supreme Court decision) would only create deeper animosity. While MLK was making headlines getting arrested for taking direct action to liberate Black America (non-violent sit-ins and marches), Graham chastised him saying, “Some extreme Negro leaders are going too far too fast.”
I cannot articulate how important Billy Graham’s rhetoric on these issues has been on the Christian Right’s stance against Black lives, homosexuality, women’s health, gun control, and every other issue that they deem important to their religious freedom. I do believe that Graham deeply believed in the biblical call to integration. I do not believe that he harbored ill-will towards the Black community. He legitimately saw himself as a friend to MLK.
And.
And he almost single-handedly normalized the argument that Christians should obey even unjust laws. If you didn’t understand why white people are so up in arms that Kapernick took a knee during the national anthem, why Christians could be more angry about their right to have endless assault rifles than the unnecessary deaths of children in mass shootings, why Christians could possibly reject the Black Lives Matter protests, these arguments owe much to the legacy of Billy Graham. He legitimatized those arguments, and I really don’t think he meant to.
Graham longed for integration, but by and large, his rallies only attracted white people. He chose Christian unity with segregationists over real Christian unity with the marginalized. It’s really no surprise that pundits who would have despised and rejected MLK during his lifetime now quote MLK to prove they are not racist. Because Graham made this rhetoric possible.
MLK openly supported Planned Parenthood, one of his chief advisors was an openly gay Black man (Bayard Rustin), and he was outspoken against the Vietnam War. And these are the least of his “sins” compared to his demand for complete Black liberation NOW. Marches, sit-ins, protests, civil disobedience. All of the things today’s Fox News evangelical argues are incompatible with Christian teaching, these were the exact methods King used to bring actual, real change into the world.
And we all want to pretend that we would have marched with MLK. But the reality is, most Christians were nervous about his approach. Progressives and Conservatives alike. Most people were not willing to follow King and he called them out on the regular. The white Christian moderate was the enemy of Black liberation. White silence was just as effective as the vocal segregationists. And the white segregationists were AGGRESSIVE, y’all. All over the country, and especially in the South, whites were actively contorting scripture to support their bigotry, and opening “segregationist academies,” whites-only private schools in the name of Jesus to give the middle finger to the Supreme Court’s integration ruling.
Biblical segregationists believed God sent the flood during Noah’s time as a judgment that the people were mixing races. God appointed boundaries between races so segregation is God’s ultimate vision for society. God curses the society that lets races mix. We’ve always done it this way, are you saying our beloved ancestors and traditions were wrong?! Race mixing is…somehow also Communist? And when biblical integrationists argued from Galatians 3:28 (there’s no longer slave nor free, etc.), the segregationists argued that was just one little verse, and we can’t be sure it negated God’s vision for separating races.
If you haven’t figured out why I’m telling this story in the larger tale about the church and homosexuality, here’s the hook. Biblical literalism is still every bit just as married to biases and context as evangelicals want to accuse liberals of remaking the Bible in their own image. We all bring our experience to Scripture, and the reality is, global Christianity has DEEPLY been impacted by white, male, heteronormative biases.
And the reality is, present animosity between conservative Christianity and the LGBTQ community is directly related to the evangelical church’s roots in systemic and biblically-justified racism. We’ll get there in the next few weeks.
The last panel in this week’s comic introduces Jerry Falwell, the man who would take Graham’s success and galvanize evangelicals broadly around more fundamentalist ideals in order to create a political movement that would marry conservative Christians to the Republican Party, making the refusal of abortion and gay rights the key priorities of evangelicals. But we’ll get there next week. Click here for Part 10.