The marriage between Christianity and white supremacy in the United States has birthed an image, deity, and religio-racial power structure: white Jesus. The figure of a white Jesus has manifested frequently in the history of white evangelicalism, and this phenomenon materializes rather poignantly at the provocative site of Christian higher education. Christian colleges and universities are overwhelmingly white and evangelical. White evangelicals are defined here as white Protestant Christians who are politically conservative and seek to uphold white Christian hegemony in the United States. A consequential amount of this evangelical cultural development takes place at Christian colleges and universities. Therefore, this research asks, what is the function of Christian colleges and universities within white evangelicalism? And further, what role does white Jesus play in the social reproduction of white evangelicals at Christian higher education institutions? This research concludes that predominantly white Christian colleges and universities reproduce white evangelical racism and white Christian nationalism through the platforming of white Jesus as a visual construction and a representative idea.
Evana Upshaw (Fri,) studied this question.