Damned Whiteness: How White Christian Allies Failed the Black Freedom Movement and How We Can Do Better

The phrase “damned whiteness” comes from a 1961 poem by white Christian missionary Ralph Templin, who recognized his own whiteness as a “frightening disease” that kept him from showing up in true solidarity with Black freedom fighters. In a new book that takes Templin’s phrase as its title, historian David F. Evans explores how white Christian allies failed the Black Freedom Movement. Evans focuses his study on Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement; Clarence Jordan, founder of Koinonia Farm; and Ralph Templin, co-founder of the Harlem Ashram and director of the nonviolent School for Living,  identifying some common ways that their locations, perspectives, and interests as white people got in the way of their solidarity.

Day, Jordan, and Templin are all three in the streams of discipleship that inform ours at Kirkridge, and so it feels important that we take in these critiques and discern how we may need to course-correct. 

We could not be more delighted that Dr. Evans will join us for this retreat open to all and especially targeted toward white Christians committed to solidarity with Black people in the United States. We’ll have opportunities to hear him present his findings, to digest them in racial caucus spaces, and to explore how to commit ourselves to a path of true solidarity with Black liberation struggles today.

Come be in community as we learn together.

Damned Whiteness: How White Christian Allies Failed the Black Freedom Movement is available for purchase via the online Book Nest.