Below is an excerpt from an article in World Magazine, I think is very interesting, because it’s a topic I’ve never really heard discussed before. I found it quite shocking that in the early 1900s, more than 8000 poor white women were sterilized in an intentional government effort to wipe out a group of Americans. (below is the link to the full article)
Poor whites need Jesus and justice too
Religion | Evangelicals tend to focus on urban minorities instead of the largest percentage of Americans living under the poverty line
“If you want to hear crickets in a room full of educated, missionally minded, culture-shaping evangelicals, ask this question: “What are you doing to serve the needs of poor white people?”
A recent seminary graduate, who is white, asked me what he needed to do to prepare to plant a church in a small lower-class town that is 76 percent black and 21 percent white. He was rightly cautious after reading in Aliens in the Promised Land about Rev. Lance Lewis’ call for a moratorium on white evangelicals planting churches in black areas because of evangelicalism’s cultural obtuseness and patriarchal disposition toward ethnic minorities. Since most black communities in the South are already saturated with churches, I asked this young man why he was not interested in planting a church among the lower-class whites in his county. His response: “It had not occurred to me to plant a church among lower-class whites.”…
“Today it seems that “the least of these” includes more than 19 million poor whites who are just the wrong color for gospel ministry and mission. As educated evangelicals turn a blind eye to 41 percent of the nation’s poor, are they more driven by a white messianic narrative than by an indiscriminate love for neighbor?”
http://www.worldmag.com/2015/03/poor_whites_need_jesus_and_justice_too
Blog title comes from a book referenced in the article… “Not quite white: White trash and the boundaries of whiteness.” ~ Matt Wray
