The Weight of Black Faith in a White World
I engaged with a Black girl on Threads the other day—she was wrestling with her faith, unsure of what to hold onto and what to let go of. Our conversation left me thinking, once again, about whiteness, evangelicalism, and the effect they have on Black people.
Because the truth is, Christianity in the West has never just been about faith—it has always been about power. And that power has always been wielded against Black people.
Take the image above: a Black man holding a sign that says Jesus Saves in the middle of a white supremacist coup—not 100 yards from a noose.
Jesus saves.
Saves from what?
Saves for what?
and WHY?
Because the context in which you hold that sign—the world in which that declaration is made—tells me a lot more about the Jesus you believe in than you might realize.
Faith as a Battleground
When Black people say, “I am a child of God first,” they have a long road ahead.
I know because I’ve walked it.
For Black people in America, faith has never been neutral. It has always been:
A battleground
A site of resistance
A tool of control
The version of Christianity handed to us was meant to discipline, not liberate. It was meant to make us obedient, not whole.
And yet, within that same Christianity, we found hush harbors and coded spirituals.
We found an underground theology of freedom.
We found ways to subvert and remix the religion of our oppressors into something that could sustain us.
But that doesn’t mean the roots of white evangelicalism don’t still run deep.
Exvangelical… But Still White
This is why I find it dangerous when white ex-evangelicals position themselves as leaders of movements out of Christianity without first reckoning with the anti-Blackness that shaped them.
Exvangelical or not, white people do not escape whiteness simply because they left the church.
• The supremacy baked into their theology does not vanish just because they stopped believing in hell.
• The entitlement embedded in their worldview does not disappear just because they deconstructed purity culture.
• The instinct to center themselves in every narrative does not go away just because they now listen to podcasts about religious trauma.
If you have not done the deep, slow, painful work of excavating how white supremacy infected your imagination, then you are not equipped to lead anyone—especially not Black people—through spiritual crisis.
Christianity as a Trauma Bond
Because Christianity’s grip on Black people is not just about doctrine—it’s about survival. And that means for a lot of Black people, it is a trauma bond.
A trauma bond forms when survival is linked to harm.
It’s why people stay in abusive relationships.
Why they cling to systems that wound them.
Why they find it so hard to leave—even when they know better.
White exvangelicals often want to offer Black people an escape hatch:
“Just leave!”
“Believe something else!”
“Deconstruct with us!”
But they fail to understand that for many Black people, faith is not something we can simply step away from.
It is the structure of our history, our family, our culture, our resistance.
And when we do start asking questions, we are often left with no safe place to land.
We Have to Learn to Hold Ourselves
Because the same white people who tell us to “just leave” have not created frameworks that can hold us.
So, we have to learn to hold ourselves.
• We need new spaces that do not just dismantle, but rebuild.
• We need spiritual frameworks that honor Black history, Black culture, and Black resistance.
• We need a way to deconstruct without being left with nothing.
Because Christianity was never neutral for us.
And neither is leaving it.
So, no—we can’t just leave.
But we can build something that can hold us when we do.