When God Became White: Dismantling Whiteness for a More Just Christianity

By Grace Ji-Sun Kim. IVP, 2024. 200 pages. $18/paperback; $17.99/eBook.

Like many Friends, I wrestle with how to most faithfully live out our testimonies in today’s world. Even as messages of radical equality and continuing revelation inspire and challenge me, I am aware that the beliefs and practices of early Friends arose in a particular time and place. Our faith is wrapped up in that history. I wonder: What racial, moral, and colonial assumptions are we carrying forward? How can we disentangle human tradition from divine leading? What new expressions of faith does this learning call us toward?

Grace Ji-Sun Kim, a Presbyterian minister and professor of theology at Earlham School of Religion, tackles these questions at an even more fundamental level. She asks why God is so often portrayed as a White man and how a White Jesus came to dominate the Christian imagination. She discusses the damage caused by these portrayals and offers us a more liberated understanding of God, free of worldly hierarchy. Drawing on her own background as a child who emigrated from Korea, she shares how she has experienced the pervasiveness of White missionary-influenced Christianity as well as the pain and possibility of pursuing another path.

This blend of history, personal story, and theology is intriguing and thought-provoking. I had never considered so directly how a European-looking Jesus, clothed in power and majesty, has both created and reinforced the power structure of Christianity. The author relates how these images affected her sense of self when she was young: 

The white, male Jesus I learned about at church and saw in the painting my mother hung in a prominent place in our childhood apartment was engrained in my body and my mind. It was instilled into my faith system that repeatedly affirmed the goodness of being white people. God is white, Jesus is white and, therefore, white people are the closest to God.

These messages, she shares, have been difficult to unlearn.

Kim does not limit herself to unpacking history, however. She also lifts up how hierarchies of race and value have burrowed into our language and our sacred texts. She strongly critiques how dualism (either/or thinking) appears in the Bible: for example, in the contrast of light (good) and darkness (bad); in interpretations that emphasize logos (the Word) over Sophia (wisdom, connected to a more feminine aspect of the Divine). She invites us to reimagine our words, images, liturgies, and faith communities with the power of an infinite God at the center. As she writes, “We cannot confine God to our little minds, as God is beyond ourselves.”

The writing is declarative and direct. The author seems less concerned with persuading than she is with telling us what is true and what needs to change. While the book’s early chapters discuss at length the problems of Whiteness, this analysis covers a lot of ground quickly and assumes an existing sympathy with critiques of White supremacy as a culture and power structure. Statements such as “Whiteness has ruined North America and will continue to destroy it if it is not named and checked” are unlikely to reach those skeptical of this framework. For me, the author’s personal stories make a more compelling case for dismantling Whiteness than the generalities she offers.

The book challenged my assumptions about theological writing. The simplicity of language and sentence structure presented the perspectives as self-evident in the moment, with the radical and profound nature of Kim’s words only becoming apparent after I put the book down. As a White Quaker, I have been particularly turning over her reflections about pacifism’s relationship to White supremacy. While not advocating violence, she points out the hypocrisy of White Christian pacifists who admonish People of Color to work for change nonviolently, while failing to recognize how their own power is intertwined with institutional violence against those same bodies of Color. These words have led me to consider my own tendencies to judge what others should do, while neglecting to ask them what genuine solidarity would look like.

Kim begins by defining problems, but her ultimate message is one of hope and possibility. Her analysis of how deeply Whiteness and beliefs about White supremacy are entwined in the Christian church leads to a call for the fundamental rethinking of an entire tradition. We are invited to rediscover what the author calls “Spirit God,” who is “nongendered, nonracialized, nonwhite, and nonbinary,” and to reconstruct our faith on new understandings and ways of worship, being, and relating to each other. We are shown a new perspective from which to examine the beliefs, practices, and assumptions of our tradition. Rather than simply building our faith on the foundations of history, we are invited by the author to build from the center of an infinite, unrestricted God, who loves and seeks justice and liberation for us all.


Alicia McBride is a member of Sandy Spring (Md.) Meeting, and lives in Takoma Park, Md. Along with her colleague Lauren Brownlee at Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), she coauthored “Quaker Process at FCNL” (FJ June-July 2023), which discussed how Quaker testimonies can counteract White supremacy culture.

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