Invisible Grace

Abstract

This chapter examines the implications of white evangelicals’ dynamic relationship to the United States, characterized by the four roles they play: founders, exiles, victims, and saviors. Christian tourists move easily among these roles during their time in D.C., just as white evangelicals move among them in a broader context. When they want to play an insider role, they appeal to the prominent place of white Christians at key moments in American history. When they want to play an outsider role, they identify potential threats to American Christianity to position themselves on the margins. The Museum of the Bible offers a new example of this phenomenon. This chapter also considers how white evangelicals’ narrow definition of Christianity, which includes only white conservative Protestants, support white supremacy and obscure other important forms of Christianity in American history, including Black Christianity. Black Christians such as Martin Luther King Jr., Sojourner Truth, and Rosa Parks are also commemorated in D.C., and they offer far different ways of thinking about marginality, sacrifice, and the nation. Understanding white evangelicals’ lived history is essential to understanding their politics, but so is understanding what that history omits.