White Christians Must Condemn White Supremacy

The hatred exhibited by an array of white supremacists this past weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, horrified much of the nation. The frenzied scenes of livid white men (and scattered white women) wearing Nazi or Confederate regalia and wielding fiery torches on the grounds of the University of Virginia, then of militia members brandishing machine guns in and around Emancipation Park, were appalling in their overt threats of violence. The grey car speeding purposefully into pedestrians, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and wounding at least nineteen other counter-protesters in a terrorist attack, seemed to epitomize the murderous desires in the hearts of those protesting the imminent removal of the Robert E. Lee statue erected in the Jim Crow era. The chanting of “Jew will not replace us” and “Black lives don't matter!” and the mocking of Heyer in neo-Nazi media after her death were but some of the signs showing that the dream of these misogynist racists was death to persons threatening white male authoritarianism.