Church & State 250: How Theology Preserved White Supremacy

How did white Southern evangelicals use the Bible to defend segregation after slavery ended?

J. Russell “Rusty” Hawkins, Dean of the John Wesley Honors College and Professor of Honors Humanities and History at Indiana Wesleyan University, joins Will Wright and Pastor Josh Burtram to explain the theological arguments behind Jim Crow Christianity. Hawkins, author of The Bible Told Them So, shows how white evangelicals read stories like Babel, Levitical separation laws, Acts 17, and Revelation as evidence that God intended racial separation.

The conversation moves through the Civil War as a theological crisis, Brown v. Board of Education, Christian colleges, Bob Jones University, local church resistance, and the rise of “colorblindness” as a religious argument against integration. This episode matters because it shows that segregation was not defended only through politics or culture. For many Christians, it was defended as biblical truth, which should make today’s believers more humble about certainty.

Guest Bio

J. Russell “Rusty” Hawkins is Dean of the John Wesley Honors College and Professor of Honors Humanities and History at Indiana Wesleyan University. He is the author of The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy, published by Oxford University Press in 2021, and co-editor of Christians and the Color Line: Race and Religion after Divided by Faith. His work focuses on religion, race, white evangelicalism, segregation, and the civil rights era, making him a strong guide for understanding how theology shaped resistance to racial equality in American life.

Book Mentioned

The Bible Told Them So: How Southern Evangelicals Fought to Preserve White Supremacy by J. Russell Hawkins

Bookshop.org

Relevant Links & Resources

J. Russell “Rusty” Hawkins Faculty Profile