Abstract
This paper interrogates the relationship between Christianity, race and politics in the US through what I call ‘defensive racism’ — a multi-modal form of anti-Black racism that displaces racism, denies its existence toward Black Americans, and deflects racism away from white people. Drawing on ethnographic data, including qualitative interviews and participant observation data, collected in the US with white conservative Evangelicals from October 2020 to November 2022, I show how white evangelicals reproduce a racial, moral order through expressions of defensive racism. By focusing on the meanings and enactment of righteousness, this paper also deepens and refines the concept of Christian nationalism, which seeks to uphold the idea of a righteous Christian nation. By situating conservative white Evangelicals' anti-Black racism in relation to Trump's presidency, the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the rise of racial consciousness around anti-Blackness in the US, I examine how white evangelicals reposition themselves racially and religiously in response to socio-political changes.
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