TGC Podcast: The Term "Whiteness" Lets Christians Fight For Racial Justice Without Embracing LGBT+

2 years ago
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the gospel coalition jake meador whiteness willie jennings woke preacher clips

The Gospel Coalition's "Gospel Bound" podcast is mainstreaming the term "whiteness" via an interview with Mere Orthodoxy editor Jake Meador. Jake says he's using the concept, pulled from Willie James Jennings and featuring prominently in his new book, to separate the fights over "racial justice and LGBT+ causes." Meador and host Collin Hansen fail to mention Jennings is unreservedly queer-affirming.

—PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT—

JAKE MEADOR: One of the big problems we have right now rhetorically for Christians in the U.S. is that racial justice and LGBT+ causes get lumped together as being the same fight. But actually, if whiteness is this kind of centering of the self and indifference to neighbor and difference to place indifference to anything outside of your kind of inner authentic self, well, the place where that idea is being used today is to defend same-sex marriage, abortion, all of these socially progressive causes. And so I look at that and, like, the underlying logic of the colonialists that was so deeply racist seems to me extremely similar to the underlying logic of social progressives today.

COLLIN HANSEN: And you have that actual colonialism still going on today with money involved from Christian denominations to political groups when it comes to African Christians on sexual issues, right?

MEADOR: Well, there was an absolutely delightful op-ed, it was maybe 15 years ago, but I remember seeing it in college and just getting a kick out of it. I think it was a Ugandan cleric in the Anglican church was in London for a gathering of the global Anglican communion, and he wrote an editorial for a local conservative paper in London accusing all of the Church Of England and Episcopalians of colonialism because they were trying to tell all of the conservative African Anglicans what they need to believe and teach about sexuality and gender. And this, I think it was a bishop, was like, “No, we're not doing the colonialist thing again. We're over that. Stop.”

HANSEN: Yeah, yeah. That's what I mean. That's an interesting observation there.

Source video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Usoz0FzESF0

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