A leading white evangelical pastor is calling on Christians to regognise white supremacy across America and for the Church to denounce it.
Greg Boyd is a leading Anabaptist theologian, speaker and broadcaster who has been a pastor at Woodland Hills Church In St Paul, Minnesota, since the early '90s.
'They've been emboldened,' he said of white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville last weekend. Speaking on his regular podcast Boyd continued: 'White supremacy is still a part of the fabric of America. While the white supremacists who gather and sometimes engage in violence get the headlines, it's what most don't notice that's more erosive, more destructive... America was founded as a white supremacist nation, sorry, it was Manifest Destiny – it was obvious to these folks that whites are supposed to rule... it's been that way ever since. Getting people to wake up to that is much harder because it's the water we swim in.'
Boyd, the author of a number of books including The Myth Of A Christian Nation and Cross Vision, said it's now incumbent on white Christians to speak out. 'The Church has to denounce it,' he said. 'It should seem obvious but unfortunately, it's not.'
Boyd, an adjunct professor at Bethel University, an evangelical college, also said the President's slow response was shocking. 'Sadly, initially, it didn't seem like the White House thought it was that big of a deal,' he said. 'It took two days before Trump really explicitly said it and that was clearly under pressure. That is concerning to me, that this is becoming so normative that it doesn't even register as an obvious wrong that needs to be denounced, even when there's an act of terrorism involved.'
You can hear the full podcast here.
