White Too Long by Robert P. Jones: A Critical Book Review

Overview of Jones's Central Argument

In White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, Robert P. Jones argues that the problem of white supremacy in American Christianity centers on the fact that white churches focus mainly on their own safety and security — protecting their own spaces — within the context of a larger system of social, economic, and political inequality. In other words, white churches care more about white power and white supremacy than they do about loving their neighbor, especially their African American neighbor, who remains marginalized and oppressed in American society. As Jones states, "I think the fact that white churches produced such a strong sense of safety and security for those of us who were inside the institution is why it is so hard for white Christians to see the harm it did to those who were outside it, particularly African Americans, and the other kinds of damage it did to us, numbing our own moral sensibilities and limiting our religious development."¹

Throughout the book, Jones uses a historical research method to show how Protestant Christianity justified its use of violence and racism against Black Americans by appealing to a kind of white salvation — a cross of justice meant for whites alone. It was a religious expression that neglected to see Black Americans as brothers in Christ. Thus, the overall legacy of white supremacy in American Christianity, in Jones's view, is the perpetuation of inequities within a racist system.

Jones's Method and Perspective

Jones writes from the first-person perspective, providing historical background information to support his views while drawing the reader into his own lived experiences in the Southern Baptist church of which he was a part. His arguments are compelling and his experiences are certainly convincing. However, the idea that white supremacy exists in American Christianity is sure to be controversial among readers who are not sympathetic to the notion. As such, there are bound to be strong arguments for and against this belief — a possibility Jones somewhat anticipates, though he remains ambivalent about engaging it fully.

Those, like Jones, who argue in favor of the idea of white supremacy in American Christianity point to the long history of discrimination against minorities within the Protestant church, as well as the ways in which Christian theology has been used to justify oppression — particularly through appeals to Scripture, as Jones details throughout the book.

Treatment of Catholic and Protestant Churches

Jones does not leave the Catholic Church out of his analysis, though he admits that it has had a much more complex relationship with white supremacy in America.² He points to its history of colonialism in America and to racial divides within the Catholic Church.³ Yet for all his criticisms, he leaps over entire eras and epochs in which this same Church helped Black communities in their lands — an issue that critics of the book will undoubtedly raise. At the same time, Jones points to the fact that most Christians in America are white and that the majority of churches remain racially segregated — a structural reality that underlies his broader argument.