The Religion of White Rage 66456_Finley.indd456_Finley.indd i 225/08/205/08/20 44:23:23 PPMM To Dr. Charles H. Long (1926–2020) Dr. Charles H. Long infl uenced how we think of and study religion more than any scholar other than those who trained us. His intellectual reach cannot be measured nor overestimated, and his imprint on this book can be clearly seen throughout its pages. We dedicate this book to his memory. 66456_Finley.indd456_Finley.indd iiii 225/08/205/08/20 44:23:23 PPMM The Religion of White Rage White Workers, Religious Fervor, and the Myth of Black Racial Progress Edited by STEPHEN C. FINLEY BIKO MANDELA GRAY LORI LATRICE MARTIN 66456_Finley.indd456_Finley.indd iiiiii 225/08/205/08/20 44:23:23 PPMM Edinburgh University Press is one of the leading university presses in the UK. We publish academic books and journals in our selected subject areas across the humanities and social sciences, combining cutting-edge scholarship with high editorial and production values to produce academic works of lasting importance. For more information visit our website: edinburghuniversitypress.com © editorial matter and organization Stephen C. Finley, Biko Mandela Gray, and Lori Latrice Martin, 2020 © the chapters their several authors, 2020 Edinburgh University Press Ltd The Tun—Holyrood Road, 12(2f) Jackson’s Entry, Edinburgh EH8 8PJ Typeset in 10/13 Giovanni by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd, and printed and bound in Great Britain. A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 4744 7370 5 (hardback) ISBN 978 1 4744 7372 9 (webready PDF) ISBN 978 1 4744 7373 6 (epub) The right of Stephen C. Finley, Biko Mandela Gray, and Lori Latrice Martin to be identifi ed as the editors of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, and the Copyright and Related Rights Regulations 2003 (SI No. 2498). 66456_Finley.indd456_Finley.indd iivv 225/08/205/08/20 44:23:23 PPMM CONTENTS Notes on the Editors and Contributors / vii Acknowledgments / xi INTRODUCTION / “The Souls of White Folk”: Race, Affect, and Religion in the Religion of White Rage / 1 Biko Mandela Gray, Stephen C. Finley, and Lori Latrice Martin PART ONE / White Religious Fervor, Civil Religion, and Contemporary American Politics ONE / “Make America Great Again”: Racial Pathology, White Consolidation, and Melancholia in Trump’s America / 29 Stephen C. Finley TWO / You Will Not Replace Us! An Exploration of Religio-Racial Identity in White Nationalism / 43 Darrius Hills THREE / “I AM that I AM”: The Religion of White Rage, Great Migration Detroit, and the Ford Motor Company / 58 Terri Laws and Kimberly R. Enard FOUR / American (Un)Civil Religion, the Defense of the White Worker, and Responses to NFL Protests / 73 Lori Latrice Martin FIVE / The Color of Belief: Black Social Christianity, White Evangelicalism, and Redbaiting the Religious Culture of the CIO in the Postwar South / 85 Elizabeth Fones-Wolf and Ken Fones-Wolf 66456_Finley.indd456_Finley.indd v 225/08/205/08/20 44:23:23 PPMM vi / The Religion of White Rage SIX / Constitutional Whiteness: Class, Narcissism, and the Source of White Rage / 108 Jason O. Jeffries PART TWO / White Religious Fervor, Religious Ideology, and White Identity SEVEN / KKK Christology: A Brief on White Class Insecurity / 125 Paul Easterling EIGHT / Black People and White Mormon Rage: Examining Race, Religion, and Politics in Zion / 135 Darron T. Smith, Brenda G. Harris, and Melissa Flores NINE / Anatomizing White Rage: “Race is My Religion!” and “White Genocide” / 149 Kate E. Temoney TEN / Exorcising Blackness: Calling the Cops as an Affective Performance of Gender / 166 Biko Mandela Gray ELEVEN / White Power Barbie and Other Figures of the Angry White Woman / 179 Danae M. Faulk TWELVE / Weaponizing Religion: A Document Analysis of the Religious Indoctrination of Slaves in Service of White Labor Elites / 192 E. Anthony Muhammad THIRTEEN / The Religions of Black Resistance and White Rage: Interpenetrative Religious Practice in the 1963 Civil Rights Struggle in Danville, Virginia / 213 Tobin Miller Shearer CONCLUSION / Race, Religion, and Labor Studies: The Way Forward / 227 Lori L. Martin, Stephen C. Finley, and Biko Mandela Gray Notes / 241 Bibliography / 286 Index / 314 66456_Finley.indd456_Finley.indd vvii 225/08/205/08/20 44:23:23 PPMM NOTES ON THE EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS Editors Stephen C. Finley, PhD is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and African & African American Studies and Director of the African & African American Studies Program at Louisiana State University. His primary areas of scholarship are African American religious cultures, theory and method in the study of religion, and the history of religions as informed by social theory, philosophy of race, and psychoanalysis. He is coeditor of Esotericism in African American Religious Experience: “There Is a Mystery”. (Brill) and author of the monograph In and Out of This World: Material and Extraterres- trial Bodies in the Nation of Islam (Duke University Press). His articles appear in Black Theology: An International Journal, the Journal of the American Acad- emy of Religion, the Western Journal of Black Studies, the Journal of Africana Religions, the International Journal of Africana Studies, the Journal of Academic Freedom, and other scholarly journals and venues. Biko Mandela Gray, PhD is Assistant Professor of Religion at Syracuse Uni- versity. Working at the intersection between philosophy of religion and African American religion, his research interests are around the relationship between subjectivity, race, and religion—especially as it relates to how this relationship plays itself out in social justice movements and larger political arenas. He is working on his fi rst monograph, tentatively called Black Life Matter, wherein he turns to those lost to state-sanctioned violence in order to theorize blackness and religion as critical sites for subject formation. Lori Latrice Martin, PhD is Professor in the Department of Sociology and African and African American Studies at Louisiana State University (LSU). Dr. Martin is also LSU Faculty Athletics Representative. Her research areas are 66456_Finley.indd456_Finley.indd vviiii 225/08/205/08/20 44:23:23 PPMM viii / The Religion of White Rage race and ethnicity, racial wealth inequality and black asset poverty, and race and sports. Dr. Martin is the author of numerous scholarly works. Her publica- tions include South Baton Rouge (Arcadia Publishing), Black Asset Poverty and the Enduring Racial Divide (First Forum Press), Color Struck (Senses/Brill), Big Box Schools: Race, Education, and the Danger of the Wal-Martization of American Public Schools (Lexington Books), and Introduction to Africana Studies: Lessons from W.E.B. Du Bois, E. Franklin Frazier, and the Atlanta School of Sociology (Brill). Contributors Paul Easterling, PhD is a graduate of the Religious Studies Department of Rice University. He has been an Adjunct Professor of African American Studies at the University of Houston and is currently an Adjunct Profes- sor of History and Government at Bowie State University. Currently, Dr. Easterling works as an independent scholar contributing to academic think- tanks and research databases centered on African American religious life and culture. Dr. Easterling’s research interests include African American reli- gious culture, the history of African American religion, twentieth-century African American Islam, and African American religion and popular culture. Kimberly R. Enard, PhD, MBA, MSHA, FACHE is an Assistant Professor of Health Management and Policy in the College for Public Health and Social Justice at Saint Louis University. Her professional background encom- passes more than fi fteen years of management and consulting experience with large integrated health systems in areas involving business develop- ment, service line management, program planning and evaluation, quality improvement, and community engagement. In partnership with health sys- tems and communities, her work is dedicated to addressing health inequi- ties by designing, implementing, and evaluating strategies to improve care coordination and quality of care for safety-net populations. Dr. Enard has authored several manuscripts about safety-net populations and presented her work at local, regional, and national meetings. Danae Faulk is a doctoral student in the Department of Religion at Syracuse University. Faulk is studying religion and the body. Melissa Flores is a doctoral candidate at University of Utah in the Depart- ment of Education, Culture, and Society. Her research interests include racial battle fatigue and critical race theory. 66456_Finley.indd456_Finley.indd vviiiiii 225/08/205/08/20 44:23:23 PPMM Notes on the Editors and Contributors / ix Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, PhD is Professor of History at West Virginia Uni- versity, where she has been the recipient of numerous awards. Her books include Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945–60 and Waves of Opposition: Labor and the Struggle for Democratic Radio. Ken Fones-Wolf, PhD holds the Stuart and Joyce Robbins Chair in History at West Virginia University. He has authored or edited seven books on labor and Appalachian history. Together in 2015, he and Elizabeth Fones-Wolf published Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South: White Evangelical Protes- tants and Operation Dixie. Brenda Harris, PhD is an independent scholar. Dr. Harris examines tran- sracial adoptions and religion, among other research