The Atkins Center for Ethics at Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, hosted an event titled “Rejecting White Christianity” on March 3. A guest speaker at the event, Miguel De La Torre, called for White Christians to “crucify” their “whiteness.”
“Eurochristian nationalism has been used to justify white supremacy. Many within communities of color, with colonized minds, seek to assimilate to a Euroamerican version of Christianity which is detrimental to their being,” reads an event description. “This presentation will explore what it means to see through the eyes of the dominant culture, how one rejects the Christianity of the dominant culture, and how one begins to create a different cultural foundation upon which to base one’s faith.”
The discussion was also billed as an “indigenous Latinx” lens through which one can conduct “ethical analysis” of Christianity. During his speech, De La Torre, a professor of “Latinx studies” at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, said white Christians should “crucify” their “whiteness”, according to The College Fix.
“Those of us who are colored, some of us can also be white,” De La Torre went on to say. “But the good news is there is salvation […] We [minorities of color] have to crucify our colonized minds, and for our white brothers and sisters, they need to crucify their whiteness.”
De La Torre later rejected the concept of hope as a “white concept” that makes racial minorities complacent. At one point, De La Torre called the idea “a middle-class excuse” to do nothing. “We embrace Euro-centric concepts like hope because it helps to pacify the oppressed during their oppression,” the professor told attendees. “It leads to spiritual liberation, and ignores physical liberation.”
“When eight out of ten white evangelicals voted for a person who is completely against everything Christianity stands for, I don’t know what Christianity they are practicing,” he continued. “But I want nothing to do with that Christianity.”
Carlow University is a private Catholic university founded by the Sisters of Mercy.
