How one evangelical leader uses the Bible to expose the ‘False White Gospel’

Jim Wallis, an evangelical leader, says White Christian nationalism has existed in the US since its founding. He calls it the “False White Gospel,” and a form of heresy.

Jim Wallis was a long-haired student activist in the early 1970s who read Marx, marched against the Vietnam War and had little use for evangelical Christianity. But one day he conducted an unusual theological experiment that would change his life. Wallis and several friends wanted to know how many scriptures in the Bible dealt with issues such as poverty, oppression and justice. So they took a pair of scissors and cut out every biblical verse mentioning the poor. “When we were done, all of those verses had fallen to the floor — about two thousand verses in total,” Wallis recalled. “We were left with a Bible full of holes.” Wallis would devote his life to championing those discarded scriptures. He is now one of the most eloquent defenders of a brand of evangelical Christianity that insists that faith is not entirely a private matter — that the church should address racism and public policy issues that affect the poor. That belief has caused some critics to question Wallis’ evangelical credentials. Some evangelicals see him as a renegade because they are suspicious of his emphasis on social justice and his past work as a spiritual advisor to former President Obama. Wallis conducts another provocative theological experiment in his latest book, “The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.” In the book he compares six iconic Biblical texts to White Christian nationalist beliefs. His conclusion: White Christian nationalists also follow a Bible that’s full of holes.