Brad speaks to Dr. Miguel de la Torre about his new book, Resisting American Apartheid. They talk about how "Euro-Christianity" distorts faith. They talk about how becoming "un-American" might be the best way to save democracy. With unflinching analysis, De La Torre takes on authors revered in Christian theology, including Paul, Augustine, and heroes of the Reformation, aiming to uproot the ideological foundations of racism in Christianity. Following these through lines of oppression, he warns of a decline in democracy and rise in political violence—but equips us with the nonviolent ethical framework to resist this bleak future.
Thanks to Emma Hulbert for research assistance with this episode.
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Axis Mundi You're listening to an irreverent podcast.
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Welcome to Straight White American Jesus.
My name is Brad Onishi, faculty at the University of San Francisco, and I have a guest today who is a first-time guest on the show, but is somebody that many of you will remember from our live Denver event back in November of 2022, and that is Dr. Miguel de la Torre.
So, Dr. de la Torre, Miguel, thank you for joining me.
I'm glad to be here.
We're going to talk about a book of yours that came out just a bit ago, but I want to tell folks about you before we do that.
So you are a professor at the Iliff School of Theology, Professor of Social Ethics and Latinx Studies.
You, in 2020, were the American Academy of Religion Excellence in Teaching Award recipient.
In 2021, The American Academy of Religion's Martin E. Marty Public Understanding of Religion Award.
Folks, if you aren't familiar with those awards, those are two huge awards in our guild in the study of religion, and so to take back-to-back is pretty incredible.
Dr. De La Torre is the author of many books.
One of the ones that some of you might be familiar with is Doing Christian Ethics, which is at least in its third edition now.
Just a couple of weeks ago, his first novel was published, Miguelito's Confession, which is amazing.
And if you know me, I'm resisting the temptation to ask a million questions about it because we're here to talk about another book.
Dr. De La Torre has edited many books on climate, on environmentalism, and on José Martí's liberative political theology, and so on and so on.
However, today we want to talk about a book that is part of, in essence, a triptych or a trilogy.
Dr. De La Torre published a book called Bearing White Privilege, which is about white Christians' complicity in a kind of racist hierarchy in the United States.
He published a book called Decolonizing Christianity, which is a call to decolonize the tradition and return to its revolutionary roots.
And today we will talk about resisting apartheid, excuse me, resisting apartheid America, living the badass gospel.
So just a huge body of work and way too much to fit into one interview.
But let's focus in on resisting apartheid America.
As usual with your work, you pull no punches and you are incredibly forthright about what you see and what you think is needed.
One of the kinds of central themes in this book is Euro-Christianity.
And it's something that I think you see as that which needs to not only be resisted, but which needs to, in essence, die if not only Christianity in the United States, but the United States as a democracy is going to somehow thrive and live on.
I'm wondering, as we get going, can you tell us what is a working definition of Euro-Christianity in your mind?
That's good.
We should begin with a couple of definitions.
So, Euro-Christianity It has nothing to do with Jesus Christ, has nothing to do with the gospel, has nothing to do with what we call religion or faith.
Instead, your Christianity is an ideology that supports and reinforces white supremacy.
And one does not have to be white to belong to your Christianity.
You have many people of color.
Who also support and maintain and sustain white supremacy.
Nor does one need to be a Christian.
You could have humanist Yule Christians.
You could have Jewish Yule Christians.
So, when I say Yule Christianity, I am talking about an ideology that anyone from any race or ethnicity could be part of, and anyone from any faith tradition or no faith tradition at all could be part of.
And if I could just throw one more definition, and that is the word white, because I use it a lot in the work.
And by white, I'm not talking about skin pigmentation.
I am again talking about the embracement of white supremacy.
So when I say white, I could be speaking about black people or brown people or Asian people or whatever.
One of the things that caught my eye, you say on, I'm going to read just a bit here from page 44, staying on these same themes, you say that Euro-Christianity has nothing to do with a set of beliefs or dogmas.
It has to do with spiritually justifying white supremacy's colonizing tendencies.
And I guess a two part question, a lot of people are going to be thinking about, okay, we have this idea of Euro Christianity as a kind of buttressing of white supremacy.
If it's not about belief or dogma, what is it about?
You know, I think a lot of people still associate religion with belief.
And then I think second, I think the idea of spiritually justifying white supremacy's colonizing tendencies really caught me because it sounds as if there's something about Euro-Christianity that is a little bit more sly, a little bit more cunning than simply white nationalism.
You know, if somebody shows up and says, Hey, I'm a white nationalist.
Here's what I have to offer.
A lot of folks will turn off, even if maybe they internally sympathize, they're going to sort of say, well, I can't be associated with that.
But if I have Euro Christianity, this kind of white supremacist Christian tradition, then maybe it's a little more able to seep into the cracks of American culture.
So anyway, two part question about what is your Christianity, if not belief, and then how does how does it spiritually justify white supremacy?
Well, to the first question, it's not about belief, it's about power.
Pure and simple, raw power.
How do I normalize and legitimize a way of being?
That is designed to privilege me as a white Christian.
So how do I, and this goes to the second question, how do I then spiritualize it?
Because I don't want to look in the mirror and say, oh wow, I'm advancing racism.
Instead, it makes more sense to look in the mirror and say, oh, I'm advancing Christianity and civilization.
Those are good things to advance.
So it becomes a symbol that really signifies the white supremacy that is just barely under the surface.
So again, nothing to do with Darkman, it has to do with power, and it has to do with being able to look in the mirror and not call out what I actually see in the reflection.
Is it possible to adopt Euro-Christianity as you're talking about it without being somebody who necessarily is a member of a church or attends church regularly or reads the Bible?
I mean, is it possible that one could kind of adopt a Christian identity in service of white supremacy that is, as you're saying, it's not only divorced from dogma, But it's almost even divorced from kind of institutionalized Christianity.
And it's really just a kind of a set of symbols for power as I'm hearing you talk.
That's a question I had as I was reading.
Oh, absolutely.
Absolutely.
And I think in the book, I give the example of a politician in Ohio who's running for the Senate.
I forgot his name right now.
And he makes this very, I think he's referring to Flynn when Flynn says we need a Christian Christian nation and we need to have a Christian nation.
And the person totally agrees, even though he's Jewish.
So here is a Jewish Euro-Christian.
I'm sure he does not go to church, I'm sure he does not read the New Testament, I'm sure he rejects Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, as Jews should definitely do, but still he embraces the Euro-Christian That's an example of not needing to be Christian, not needing to be white.
And I apologize that I don't recall his name right off the top of my head, but that's an example of not needing to be Christian, not needing to be white.
I mean, you know, when I say not needing to be white, I can't think of any person who has advanced the cause of white supremacy than Supreme Court Justice Thomas.
So again, it has nothing to do with skin pigmentation or faith tradition.
This also reminds me of Herschel Walker running for Senate in Georgia, right?
A lot of people, you know, when that was happening, a lot of people were asking me, how can, how do you explain Herschel Walker?
And I, you know, I tried to in ways similar to what you're saying now.
And I think that, yeah, anyway, one of the connections you make in several parts of the book, especially in some of the opening pages, is the connection between Euro-Christianity and violence.
That this idea of a Euro-Christianity that is all about power, and the symbols of power has a natural relationship to violence.
And I'm wondering if you can help us maybe understand that, especially as we witness some of it in the Trump presidency.
When we think of Eurocentric Christianity, I cannot think of any other ideology that has shed more blood in the history of humanity.
I mean, if you start counting everything from the Crusades to the Inquisition, to the religious wars of Europe, to the whole colonial venture, to slavery, which was supported by Christian tenants, there was something different. which was supported by Christian tenants, there was something different.
Deeply violent about this ideology.
And I think part of the problem is, theologically, we have this idea of the substitution theology, that I'm such a horrible person that Jesus had to die and shed his blood so that I could be saved.
The flip side of that is that if I reject Jesus' sacrificial suffering for me, then obviously I deserve to be punished for all those sins.
So built into this view of Christianity is this idea that either you become a Christian or I shall be the instrument of God's wrath and genocide you.
And there's a problem with that theology.
And I got into a little bit of trouble a few weeks ago because I wrote a little op-ed about it.
You know, the bottom line is that, um...
First of all, this whole theology by Anselm is the one that really sets us off.
He wrote this in 1100.
This is a fairly new theology.
It's only a thousand years old.
It's not something that has been there since the beginning of Christianity.
It's just an interpretation.
The problem with that interpretation is that it glorifies violence.
You know, God's love is connected with killing God's child, which is a weird way of defining love.
Women as scholars have taught me That rather than looking at atonement, the crucifixion is best understood as solidarity.
In other words, Jesus picks up his cross and in solidarity with all the people who are being crucified, walks with them, accompanies them.
Everyone who's being crucified today on the crosses of racism and classism and sexism and homophobia, Jesus also is in solidarity with that.
And I think that's a much healthier way of dealing with crucifixion than this blood price that's paid.
I mean, I was just teaching in my class two weeks ago about James Cone's The Cross and the Lynching Tree, and explaining to students that Cone introduces the idea that those who are lynched are those who are suffering in the ways that Christ suffered.
And it's right there in front of American eyes, but the white supremacist and the Euro-Christian, as you would put it, can't see that.
They can't see Jesus on the lynching tree, or much less on the, as you say, the crucifixes of racism, classism, homophobia, and so on.
This leads you to a conclusion where you really are quite honest here.
You say Euro-Christianity is beyond salvation, page 45.
Euro-Christianity must die so that in its place, a new creature can be born again, page 48.
Rejecting Euro-Christianity is not a rhetorical slogan.
It is a call to action with eyes wide open as to how this faith tradition, practiced by Euro-Americans, is detrimental to communities of color.
Two, two part question.
A lot of people are going to read those words and they're going to say, you know, you're a Christianity is beyond salvation.
So, and here's what they're going to take away.
And I know it's not what you mean, but does that mean that churches with white people need to go away?
Does that mean that denominations, you know, we're, we're in the Midwest and here we are with the Lutherans and we got 86% white folks at this church.
Are you saying my church needs to go away?
Is, is, is Fox news going to have us on front and center tonight after this interview?
saying that we hate God and Christianity and white people need to just quit going to church.
That's one.
And then two, the call to action.
Why?
What does the call to action mean?
Like, why must it end?
What will happen if Euro Christianity does die and something else comes into place?
Yeah.
Well, first of all, I have been accused of hating white people, hating Christians, hating, So those accusations are going to come anyway, unfortunately, because they do not nuance what's actually being said.
We have to remember that this Christianity, this Euro-Christianity that's been embraced, is the same Christianity that has said nothing about the genocide of the indigenous population that justifies slavery.
You mentioned James Cone, and as James Cone once said, any Christianity that has nothing to say about slavery, or Jim and Jane Crow, is satanic.
And he's absolutely right.
To that I would add, any Christianity that has nothing to do with separating children from their parents on the border, or the fact that every two days three brown bodies die on our borders, is also satanic.
So when I say we need to reject your Christianity, I am saying we need to reject this satanic misrepresentation of the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Now, how do we do that?
Well, first of all, let the dead bury the dead.
Christianity died, and so be it.
And I also say it's beyond reform, because we're talking about, in this country, almost 500 years of bloodshed in the name of this Euro-Christianity.
It is beyond reform, because it is so corrupted.
Its hands are so full of blood.
That it just cannot be cleaned.
So how then do we move forward?
And I think we go back to the gospel message.
And that is, you know, we need to crucify our sins to that cross.
And in this particular case, that sin is your Christianity.
So that if we crucify the sin of your Christianity, something new may occur.
So how do we do this crucifying of the sin of your Christianity?
It means that if I am homophobic, I need to learn to bow my knees to the queer Jesus.
If I am racist, I need to bow my knees to the black Jesus.
If I keep saying, build that wall, I need to bow my knees to the Jesus who was the undocumented living in Egypt.
In other words, I need to learn how to worship the God of the oppressed.
And through worshiping the God of the oppressed, I could find my salvation.
And there have been white churches who have done this, you know, so it's not an issue of, you know, and I'm talking now white skin pigmentation churches who have done this, so it's not something that cannot be done.
I think the question that many people listening will have, and I know this is a question you get often, is, okay, so we think of a long history of bloodshed.
I, in my classes, teach about the religious wars of Europe following the Protestant Reformation, and my students are a little bit taken aback.
They cannot believe how bloody those wars got.
You talked about, even before that, the The idea of substitutionary atonement and, you know, the killing of a child is the way to salvation.
And we think about the last couple hundred years in this country, we think about the institution of slavery, Jim Crow, Jane Crow.
I'm teaching this week in my class about Chinese exclusion.
We're talking about anti-Asian hate during the pandemic, so on and so forth.
The question I think that you probably get a lot, and there's people listening wondering is, okay, so why Why stay in the tradition?
There's so much history and so many interpretations that have led to such violence and bloodshed.
How do you go on as a theologian and as a Christian to recover what you call Christianity from those things and what keeps you moving in the tradition despite just the travesty after travesty that you name in the book and you've already talked about today?
Yeah, and sometimes I literally remain in this tradition by the skin of my teeth.
I mean, it's just, I'm hanging by my fingernails.
And it's only because I believe the message of the gospel.
I believe the message of liberation.
Salvation translated as liberation.
I believe that indeed there is good news for the poor.
So, it is these things that still hold me as difficult as it is to stay in a tradition that has so much blood on its hands.
But then there's others.
I'm thinking of my dear friend and colleague, Ting Tingka, of the Osage people, who says, for my salvation, I need to say no thank you to Jesus.
And I can't blame him.
If I was an indigenous person, I probably would do the same thing.
So, you know, that's on me, not on him.
That's on my tradition that we have done so much damage that for many groups of people, embracing Christianity would be a repudiation of their ancestors and what was done to their ancestors.
So it's not my job to say, to try to prove, think that I'm different, that my way of understanding the gospel is better than all these other ways that it was done, but rather to live my faith in such a way That I could try to show that, yeah, there is a difference here.
I want to shift our conversation a little bit from Christianity, its histories, its iterations to the United States, and a couple of questions here for you.
The book is called Resisting Apartheid America, but it seems, as you suggest throughout the book, that we are already in a situation where there is a sense of separation, even if it is not As pronounced as say, things were in South Africa a generation or two ago, even if it is not understood that way by the general public and in general American consciousness.
I get asked all the time, are we going to have another civil war?
And I think we're addressing some of the same sort of Issues here.
So I'm wondering how it is you see in your eyes a United States in 2023 that in many ways is already separated along various lines and according to various classes.
I am very fearful of the future.
You have a large group of people who have stockpiled AK-47s and guns and all forms of weapons of mass destruction.
In preparation for a civil war, assuming that that civil war is going to be brought by communities of colors, are going to somehow gang together and attack white people, and they're just ready for that.
I find it interesting that the people who are afraid of the civil war are the ones that have the vast majority of the weapons.
So this scares me.
It scares you.
Just the powder keg that we're sitting on really is scary for a person like myself.
We have always been separated.
We have always been apart.
But now when we think that we were moving towards more equitably, you know, when we, you know, we elect the first black man as president and the backlash or the white lash, is electing probably the most racist person since probably Woodrow Wilson.
That says something.
It says that we prefer to keep the White House white and what follows this is by people who are calling for liberty and freedom are pushing to suppress the votes of people of color, are pushing for banning books in libraries and in our school systems, are pushing for preventing women from choosing what to do with their bodies.
a pushing for preventing who a person can or cannot love or how they wish to self-identify.
So this call for freedom and liberty is only a call for freedom and liberty for those who think exactly like me that maintain and sustain this white Eurocentric Christianity.
So, the future is bleak, in my opinion.
I think that the storming of the Capitol was just the birthing pains of what may to come.
You you mentioned one other thing that I think is is just we have to talk about and I again I'm sure has been misinterpreted time and time again I'm sure you get the emails about this and I'm sure you get the the kind of you know bad faith engagements on social media and so on but you talk about Not wanting to be a real American and you have even a call to become un-American.
Now, this is all in the context, if you're listening, that probably jarred you out of your, you know, you were driving, maybe you faded out there for a second or you were washing the dishes.
This is all in the context of the idea that to be a real American is to be someone who takes part in a history of colonization, genocide, enslavement, the kinds of histories that we've been talking.
And so I'd love to just get, you know, your take.
What is the call to resist being the real American in that sense and to become un-American mean for you?
Well, I mean, not just the history, we could also look at what's going on currently.
When you have those who stormed the Capitol, literally the cathedral of democracy, even though it was built by the hands of slaves, and they smeared their feces on the walls of the sanctuary of freedom and liberty.
And then you have both the former president and congressional leaders calling these individuals true patriots.
I don't want to be that patriot.
I want nothing to do with being defined as these true patriot Americans because I see them as being very, as rejecting the rhetoric That we call for in liberty and freedom.
So to become an American is to embrace the rhetoric that we have always been saying, but never living up to.
So I want nothing to do with the historical America that justified, legally justified, not only genocide and enslavement and invading other countries to steal their raw material and cheap labor.
That's not the America I want to be part of or be associated with.
Hence, I need to be un-American.
I mean, there's a parallel, to me, emphasis for you on not being a Christian if Christian means Euro-Christianity, and not being an American if American means participating in the past and present that you've discussed here in terms of violence, marginalization, and so on.
Well, this leads to a kind of big question that I think is focused on the current book, but it also just is really about your position as a scholar.
There's a passage near the end of the book where you are talking about how someone once called you a prophet, and you said, you know, look, I'm not a prophet.
I'm a scholar, okay?
I do analysis.
You say, I am neither a fortune teller nor a soothsayer.
But you can read signs because you do history, you interpret symbols, you interpret, you know, current events.
And one of the things that you go on to argue is that scholarship from, quote unquote, discarded communities is often distinct from scholarship that comes from other communities, mainstream or dominant or hegemonic communities, because there's mainstream or dominant or hegemonic communities, because there's always a sense that for the marginalized scholar, knowledge should lead to transformation.
And And sometimes that's looked on as less than, or as reactive, or as activist in a way that demeans the scholarship.
The scholarship should be about thinking and concepts in a way that doesn't get kind of down in the trenches.
And I'm just wondering if you would talk about that a little bit, not only in this book, but just as your whole career as somebody who has As you know, within the Academy, there is this division of those who do true scholarship.
That is, in their ivory tower, they think great thoughts.
And then those who do their scholarship in a way to change society, to move us towards something better.
And this has become a very clear dichotomy.
But I really believe that even those in their ivory tower thinking great thoughts are also activists.
Because what they're doing is thinking thoughts that reinforces the status quo.
So they are also being very activist in their scholarship, even while denying that they're not activists, they're just thinkers and that they're just scholars.
And they are activists because what they are reinforcing, what they are maintaining as a status quo, is this Euro-Christian nationalist thinking.
And therefore, They could sell their scholarship as being pure and objective.
But there's no such thing as objectivity.
Everything is subjective.
Only they have the power to make their subjectivity objective for everyone else.
So, what I do is I make it very clear that my scholarship coming from my community has a responsibility to that community.
To do it and not recognize what I owe my ancestors is a travesty.
So when I do my work, it is quickly dismissed as being activism or I'm just being a prophet.
And I find that highly insulting, because if you read my works, there is a level of scholarship that grounds this conversation.
It just lifts up the perspectives from marginalized communities.
And that doesn't make it less than, it just makes it radically different.
So in that last chapter, I was going back to this particular conference, I was on a panel, and I was quickly dismissed in my biblical interpretations because I'm a prophet.
And it was meant as a form of dismissing my scholarship.
And that's where I was going there.
But just because I'm not a prophet doesn't mean our scholarship cannot be prophetic.
In other words, if we look at what's going on now, You know, it doesn't take a PhD to realize where we're probably heading towards.
And I totally hope I am wrong.
But it needs to be said, as a way of avoiding it, if I'm not.
When you were talking about the scholar in the ivory tower who claims that they are just thinking great thoughts, I think of those scholars as the libertarian scholars.
They claim that they're just going to stay out of the swaying of the market.
They don't want government to tip the hand, and yet they don't acknowledge that the government already tipped the hand.
Right.
And has historically, they just don't want the government to tip the hand the other way now.
And it's the same in the academy, right?
They don't want the academy to somehow upset the systems that have been set up.
And so they claim that they're out of the fray.
They're not in that messy business of activism and being responsible to a community, as you just talked about.
And so that makes a lot of sense to me.
I also think about a time, I was at a conference recently where a black scholar gave a talk.
And afterwards, another scholar told them, oh, you really preached a good word today.
And the insinuation there was that their scholarship was more like a sermon, meaning it was less scholarship and more call to action or more prophecy rather than actual, you know, great thoughts of the academic genius.
And so this is so common.
And it's such a way to dismiss the work of scholars of color and other marginalized scholars, scholars who have identities that are marginalized.
Well, we're just about out of time.
And so I want to, first of all, just thank you for being here and thank you for, as always, just a body of work that is unflinching in its analysis.
And one that, as you say, you have a perhaps bleak outlook of the future.
You hope you're wrong, but you've given us all the pieces to understand what may be coming.
I have one more last question, it's really important.
I met you in Denver and have not seen a pair of boots more impressive than the ones you were wearing in Denver since then.
Do you feel like of any scholar in the game now, your boot collection is pretty much, you know, you feel pretty good about your chances against anyone else in that regard?
I think I could out-boot somebody under the table.
Well, Dr. Miguel De La Torre, what is the best way for folks to connect with you, uh, if they'd like to follow up or just kind of see what you're up to next?
Well, um, I do have a website and that usually has my upcoming speaking engagements and it has my latest writings and my latest books.
It's, uh, drmigueldelatorre.com.
Perfect.
And that's probably the best way to, also that's a way to get ahold of me if need be.
Yeah, perfect.
As always, friends, you can find us at Straight White J.C.
and me at Bradley Onishi.
I want to make sure you know that the Straight White American Jesus Seminar is still up, and there's a few signups left if you'd like to go to our website and look at that.
This coming week, I will be at the Summit for Religious Freedom in Washington, D.C., and I will be recording live on Sunday, so I'll have all the details out in our substack and on our social media.
And our new merch is available, so some of you need to go check that out.
Other than that, we just want to say thanks for being here.
Thanks for listening.
We'll be back Wednesday with It's in the Code and Friday with the Weekly Roundup.
