OpinionGreg Garrett, Senior Columnist | January 23, 2025
Robert G. Callahan II is a writer, attorney, theologian and law professor at Baylor University. In 2020, Callahan was named Lawyer of the Year by the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers’ Association. His recent book Fire in the Whole: Embracing Our Righteous Anger with White Christianity and Reclaiming Our Wholeness is a potent call for justice and racial healing growing out of his legal training and his faith. I’m so grateful to Robert for taking the time to respond to my questions.
Greg Garrett: You say early on in Fire in the Whole that “we know who the white church is.” I usually equate the white church with Frederick Douglass’ slaveholding church. Could you talk a little about the church that needs to change and the church you want to see?
Robert Callahan: This question really goes to the heart of what I wanted to address within the subtitle of the book: Embracing our Righteous Anger with White Christianity and Reclaiming our Wholeness.
The first obstacle I faced on my journey into healing from spiritual abuse was the difficulty of explaining it. This required vocabulary that the church, having never addressed abuse dynamics, was unhelpful with. Similarly, it was important to pinpoint the source of the pain rather than blame Christianity at large because I still loved Jesus. Therefore, much like Douglas, I knew my struggles didn’t emanate from Christianity but its perversion.
“It was important to pinpoint the source of the pain rather than blame Christianity at large because I still loved Jesus.”
In identifying the correct culprits, it was tempting to lay the blame at the feet of evangelicals as a whole. In doing so, most who are familiar with the evangelical church culture of the South would probably understand who I was referring to. But looking at the evangelical church beyond the U.S., in Africa or South America for example, evangelicalism is not marred by the same marriage of politics and theology.
Thus, it’s clear our straying from love of neighbor in America isn’t purely about a specific theological framework. Rather it has more to do with theology being misinterpreted through the lens of culture war politics. Accordingly, the problem cannot even be confined to Mainline Protestant churches, as we’ve seen survivors of spiritual abuse emerging from all types of institutions.
Robert G. Callahan II
From there, I considered naming white supremacy as the culprit — and in many ways it is. However, white supremacy is too narrow a label as it conjures imagery of neo-Nazis and burning crosses. These are depictions so extreme (although lately not considered as radical as they should be) that they belittle racism’s manifestations within Christianity. Those are far more typical and a lot more subtle. Likewise, such a narrow view would pardon multi-ethnic churches (to be distinguished from multi-cultural churches) where a façade of diversity sanitizes problematic dogma.
For similar reasons, blaming Christian nationalism is too limited in scope when most of the congregations at issue aren’t necessarily vocally endorsing a specific political ideology from the pulpit with the American flag draped in the background — although those churches do exist. Rather, the churches that should concern us would likely claim to be nonpartisan from the pulpit while clear cultural biases manifested in the ethos of the members and a failure to disciple them.
Finally, I considered creating new vocabulary — a distinct label with a derogatory connotation — to better identify the perpetrators. But manufacturing a pejorative simply to dehumanize the bad actors or help distinguish sides would employ the same tactics utilized against survivors of spiritual abuse and would not serve readers well. In fact, an injustice often suffered by victims of spiritual abuse is an abiding love that obliges us to dignify our enemies as image bearers remains even as we recognize how problematic they are. As those who take the words of Christ seriously, our conscience burdens us with an expectation to fight fair even while our adversaries do not.
“An injustice often suffered by victims of spiritual abuse is an abiding love that obliges us to dignify our enemies as image bearers.”
But we can’t identify the problem, or determine how to repair the damage, if we’re not willing to have an honest conversation about the cause.
“Racialized commercial patriarchal heteronormative Christian nationalistic bigotry” is a little unwieldy as a moniker. In naming white Christianity, my goal was to highlight those whose orthodoxy and orthopraxy are dictated by an unshakable, yet misguided, tangle of faith and right-bridled political and social conviction that are antithetical to everything Christ represents.
This is a subset of Christianity that intentionally ignores, or does not consider, the effects of racism or prejudice — in either the church or society — on the marginalized, nor cares to, having been given the resources and information to do so. This calls attention to the hubris that assumes one cultural expression of Christianity — one vision of Christ — is normative and therefore correct. In a word, whiteness.
White Christianity ignores the implications of every nation, tribe and tongue gathered around the throne worshiping God as we read in Revelation 7. If we’re willing to see it, the Bible gives us a vision of humanity that dignifies the distinctiveness of our humanity as the Artist created us. This vision is one that honors the image of God in all marginalized groups, including ethnic minorities, women, the LGBTQ and the disabled. This is a more accurate vision of the church than is provided by a colorblind theology that demands conformity with the majority culture.
GG: You do an amazing job incorporating your personal story in this book. Would you be willing to share a bit about your past trauma — I think especially of the cops who pulled you over in Idaho — and how being a Black person in a white space always has felt like you needed to justify yourself? What could white parishioners/friends do to verify your experience?
RC: I grew up in the South during the 1980s. Being Black in the South was its own challenge, but it was accentuated by living in white neighborhoods and attending predominantly white schools. This was an intentional effort by my parents, who rose from poverty to provide the best life they could for me and my siblings.
“Nothing about majority culture in our nation communicated that my humanity was beautiful or worth celebrating.”
But living as a racial minority in places where people are eager to just say what’s on their minds conveys a constant sense of otherness. Nothing about majority culture in our nation communicated that my humanity was beautiful or worth celebrating. Not unless it was about professional athletes, celebrities caricaturizing Black culture for laughs or Black History Month.
When I moved to the North, I was convinced racism wouldn’t cross the Mason-Dixon Line the way Scooby-Doo convinced me a ghost would stand powerless on the riverbank once you crossed a bridge. I was wrong about racism (I don’t know about ghosts!). And it did follow me to the North, albeit in a far more polite, indirect manner.
Whereas racism in the South took the form of animosity toward my existence, in the North there was indifference toward it. In that regard, I’ve seen what a “color blind” society looks like, and it isn’t pretty.
I attended college in Spokane, Wash., where non-Latino minorities represented less than 2% of the population. So it was hard to get my white friends to understand my lived experience as a Black man.
That changed somewhat outside the grounds of the Idaho State Fair on the night I was pulled out of a car at gunpoint by several police officers who later claimed I fit the description of someone they were looking for. Up until that point, law enforcement had just been an inconvenience. I had been pulled over without being given a citation enough times that I felt the injustice of being hassled by the police was just the cost of living in brown skin.
“This night, I was certain I was going to be killed by the police and my friends were there to watch.”
This was different. This night, I was certain I was going to be killed by the police and my friends were there to watch. While I was able to provide more detail about the experience in the book, it’s still painful to talk about it more than two decades later. But that experience changed me. And it gave the white friends that I was with their first undeniable glimpse of racism in the real world.
When Black people share our experiences, it’s important for white people — especially allies — to recognize the retelling comes with emotional cost. More than we’re usually capable of admitting. Honoring our experience means listening and believing. Sitting with the pain that comes with the veracity of the experience.
I speak Spanish somewhat proficiently and in Spanish when one apologizes, they say “Lo siento.” Literally, I feel it. There’s an entire book of the Bible titled Lamentations, but we don’t know how to lament in the church. That’s what believers should understand empathy really looks like. Not just, “I’m sorry you felt that way” or “I believe that youbelieve racism was involved.” But I see you, and I’m willing to sit inside what you’re feeling with you.
Another thing I deeply appreciate is when white people who honor the experiences of minorities are willing to stand between me and other white people to come to my defense. As a person of color, sometimes it feels like my words share my skin tone.
I’ve seen this everywhere from academia to social media, to the courtroom. A white person can present the same idea, or make the same argument, in the same inflection, using the same words, and it will be heard and accepted. But somehow, the same words coming from a Black person invites, even seems to necessitate, challenge.
“Minorities grow weary of constantly having to argue with white people about whether our experiences are valid.”
Minorities grow weary of constantly having to argue with white people about whether our experiences are valid. It means the world when an ally steps in figuratively and says, “You rest. I got this one,” then carries the load of the argument.
GG: You do an amazing job pulling in literary and pop culture references to help explain your journey and your arguments. What are some of the creative/imaginary works you rely on to make sense of where and who we are?
RC: Since Jesus used analogies that were meaningful to the audience of his time, it seemed wise for me to do the same. Besides, I’m a nerd with an overabundance of pop-culture references in my head. And with hard topics like these, a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down. While I referenced movies like The Italian Job, Star Trek, Star Wars and The Sandlot, a lot of people have found the parallels drawn to the movie Boys in the Hood to be insightful.
For those unfamiliar, there’s a scene where “Doughboy” (played by rapper Ice Cube) loses someone close to him through gang violence. As he’s mourning, he relates how frustrating it is that the local news covered events happening all over the globe but had nothing to say about his loved one’s death.
“Either they don’t know, don’t show or don’t care about what’s going on in the hood,” he observes. The apparent indifference of the church to the way white supremacy harms minorities feels very similar to me. Either they don’t know it’s happening, don’t show up for minorities or don’t care what’s happening. Ignorance, inaction or apathy. That’s the full scope of possibilities.
GG: Toward the end of the book, you talk about how to know when it’s time to leave a religious space where you’re not valued. Jemar Tisby has given the wisdom, “Leave loud.” What would you say about how to know you’re in a religious space not willing to change and how to negotiate that?
“Leaving quietly under the auspices of honoring those in authority was enabling abuse against others.”
RC: In the book, I refer to the unhealthy congregation my family worshiped and served in for more than 10 years as TFI (Toxic Fellowship Inc.). When we departed, we tried to do so respectfully. Quietly. But leaving that way had several adverse effects.
The first was that the church was so big hardly anyone noticed. People assumed we just started going to a different service time. So, few people in the church knew we were hurting and it seemed we weren’t missed. Our family had been at the church longer that most others, so our absence should have felt more significant to those we lived in community with for all that time.
Another problem was that it enabled abuse against other people who also were contemplating whether they should stay or leave at the same time. Had we made a bigger deal of leaving, it may have helped others recognize how they also had been manipulated and strung along.
Last, leaving quietly was a burden to my conscience. It required me to stomach every hypocrisy I saw play out at TFI in the privacy of my own pain, lest I seem “divisive.” Pretty soon, I realized leaving quietly under the auspices of honoring those in authority was enabling abuse against others.
Understanding that your church is unhealthy and change isn’t coming, despite all the reasons it should, shows your pain isn’t incidental but the product of intelligent design. This gives us permission to be angry about the circumstances that created our suffering. And that anger becomes a catalyst for our liberation.
Greg Garrett is an award-winning professor at Baylor University, where he is the Carole McDaniel Hanks Professor of Literature and Culture. One of America’s leading voices on religion and culture, he is the author of 30 books, most recently the novel Bastille Day and The Gospel According to James Baldwin: What America’s Great Prophet Can Teach Us about Life, Love, and Identity. He is currently administering a major research grant on racism from the Eula Mae and John Baugh Foundation and finishing a book on racist mythologies for Oxford University Press. Greg is a seminary-trained lay preacher in the Episcopal Church and Honorary Canon Theologian at the American Cathedral of the Holy Trinity in Paris. He lives in Austin with his wife, Jeanie, and their two daughters.
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Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Andrea Russell
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Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Randolph Hollerith
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Jillian Mason Shannon
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde
Politics, faith and mission: A conversation with Vann Newkirk II
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Politics, faith and mission: A BNG interview series on the 2024 election and the Church
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