Dr. Michael Waters is a speaker for the Jude 3 Project, an organization that is closely aligned with New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and who hosts an annual apologetics conference at the Southern Baptist seminary. We have covered the founder of Jude 3 Project, Lisa Fields, multiple times as she once stated that Christians should embrace homosexual musicians because they write good gospel music.

Fields has also compared American Slavery to the fall of Adam, calling it White America’s original sin and then using that to create the narrative that all white people are guilty of this sin by virtue of being white and born in America. This is where the oft-repeated notion of white people needing to make “atonement” for their sins by supporting antiracist and reparations movements comes from.

It’s absurd, to say the least. But now, Waters continues in the same line of reasoning by arguing that “White Evangelicalism” in America is just like the KKK lynchings because “white worshipers” go out to enact harm on black people in the legislature and through mass incarceration.

In the clip below, he says, “Most public lynchings happened on Sunday. So white worshipers left worship to kill black people.”

“Matter of fact there’s a film called The Same, came out in 2019, and they ask a gentlemen in that film if he knows of any of his white neighbors who still have the body parts of lynching victims preserved in their homes. This is in 2019, and he refuses to answer the question as to not incriminate his neighbors. That’s the history of oppression.”

“When you move beyond the history of oppression, to the whitewashing of Jesus, we have to talk about an aspect of our history which is understudied, which is the Naturalization Act of 1790, where America literally says that whiteness is a prerequisite for citizenship. So when people say this is a white person’s country, historically, they’re not wrong. It’s not until 1868 with the 14th amendment that black people are brought into the conversation…”

Here’s where Waters’s lecture gets wild and he makes the connection between the old KKK lynchings and modern Evangelicalism. He calls it “white Evangelicalism,” as though there really is such a thing. There isn’t.

“But the reason that’s important is that up until that time, the Puritan understanding of depictions of the divine permeated America, meaning that you don’t have any artistic depictions of Christ. But around the time of this Naturalization Act, you all of a sudden see the emergence of the white Jesus.”

This “white Jesus” that these people continue to ascribe to white Evangelicals has absolutely nothing to do with Evangelicalism. This image is, in fact, has become a mainstay in the Roman Catholic Church and some even argue that the famous fair-skinned image of Jesus often referred to as “white Jesus” is actually a portrait of Cesare Borgia, the son of Pope Alexander VI (Rodrigo de Borja). Cesare Borgia was a Renaissance nobleman, military leader, and politician who was born in 1475 and died in 1507. At any rate, it is absolutely not an invention of American Evangelicalism or Protestantism and certainly wasn’t born out of the Puritan movement.

“The White Jesus,” he continues, “is basically to give endorsement to citizenship, basically creating God in your own image and determining who can be welcomed to the American enterprise.”

“And finally,” he concludes, “I don’t know that there is any more racist organization in the world than white, Christian Evangelicalism…because the people who worship there then go out to enact harms in the legislatures, in the mass incarcerations in our country, and in so many other spaces. So if you’re looking for any image of Christ that is welcoming to all, but that is the image that you see, then ultimately you see a white supremacist Jesus.”