Title

Blessing Oppression: The Role of White Churches in Housing Apartheid

Authors

Joe Pettit

Document Type

Journal Article

Publication Title

Journal of the Society of Christian Ethics

Publication Date

2020

Date Added

2022-05-16

Abstract

This paper argues that white Christian churches participated in, benefited from, and promoted housing apartheid in the United States for at least thirty years, and that these actions have been significant causes of racial inequality through to the present day. Housing apartheid is defined primarily as housing policies that promoted opportunities in whites only communities and which denied and extracted opportunities from nonwhite, predominantly black communities. Blessing oppression is defined as the means by which white churches sustained and entrenched housing apartheid through the basic practices of church life whereby the minds and hearts of white Christians were put at ease as they participated in massive oppression. The paper closes with a consideration of reparations for the role white churches played in housing apartheid as a precondition for racial reconciliation within Christian churches.

DOI

10.5840/jsce20211434

Keywords

Civil rights

Disciplines

Religion

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