A dark-skinned Jewish Rabbi named Yeshua—“God saves”—was handed over by religious authorities and executed by Rome. Two millennia later, the faith bearing His name has been weaponized to legitimize Western supremacy, imperial dominance, and the very structures that crucified Him.

This is not speculation. It is history with a paper trail.

Christianity was born in Africa and Asia, not Europe.

Even at the crucifixion, Africa was present: Simon of Cyrene—a North African—carried Yeshua’s cross. In the early church at Antioch, one of the prophets and teachers was Simeon called Niger (literally “the Black”). The first Gentile convert wasn’t European—he was Ethiopian. The greatest center of early Christianity was Alexandria—an Afro-Asiatic city that produced towering theologians like Athanasius, Tertullian, and Augustine. Almost all were African. For its first three centuries, Christianity was primarily an African and Asian religion.

The Bible itself unfolds in Afro-Asiatic space: Hebrews, Egyptians, Cushites, Syro-Phoenicians. The patriarchs, prophets, and apostles moved through a world that looked nothing like a European cathedral. Yet somehow, Sunday school flannel boards and stained glass windows told a different story—one where everyone looked like they belonged in a Renaissance painting.

This erasure wasn’t accidental. It was ideological.

By the time European colonizers brought Christianity to enslaved Africans, Western culture had co-opted the faith entirely. What emerged was a theology designed to pacify and subjugate—a religion that condoned African enslavement as God’s will.

But the ideological architecture didn’t end with slavery’s abolition. It evolved.

Enter the Pioneer Fund, founded in 1937 by Wickliffe Draper. Its mission was explicit: promote eugenics, fund “race and intelligence” research, and advance the reproduction of those “descended predominantly from white persons.” The Fund distributed Nazi propaganda films in American churches and schools. It bankrolled works like The Bell Curve and supported white supremacist publications.

After WWII, when overt scientific racism lost respectability, the rhetoric shifted. Pioneer-affiliated researchers adopted “pseudo-academic” language, repackaging racial hierarchy as concerns about “Western civilization,” immigration policy, and “cultural homogeneity.” The ideology didn’t disappear—it got a makeover.

This lineage traces directly to institutions like the Claremont Institute, a conservative think tank that has become the nerve center of religious nationalism. Claremont’s leaders sacralize 18th-century American ideals, portray social justice movements as heretical, and frame demographic change as an existential threat.

Michael Anton, a senior Claremont fellow, argues that “diversity is not our strength; it’s a source of weakness.” He has called for ending birthright citizenship and warned of being “overrun” by non-European immigrants. Internal documents reveal Claremont leadership organizing toward an “authoritarian religious autocracy”—one where “a particular kind of Christianity should dominate permanently.”

This is not Christianity. This is the empire’s gospel—baptized in racist ideology, dressed in theological language.

Claremont’s influence is not theoretical. Its scholars helped lead Trump’s 1776 Commission, which produced a report the American Historical Association called “marred by ahistorical claims.” The report lumped civil rights activists with communists and fascists as threats to the nation, warned against “identity politics,” and stressed that religious faith is central to governance.

The message is clear: America’s founding was sacred, systemic racism is a myth, and movements like Black Lives Matter are un-American.

This framework has real policy implications:

Each policy echoes strategies designed to preserve white power—the same intellectual lineage that runs from Pioneer Fund research to Claremont Institute talking points.

Here’s the tragedy: significant numbers of Black and Brown evangelicals have embraced this framework.

A 2024 PRRI study found that 34% of Black Americans and over 55% of Hispanic Protestants qualify as Christian nationalist sympathizers or adherents. Many have adopted the narrative that America is fundamentally Christian and just, that racial inequities are overstated, and that social justice movements threaten God’s order.

This is spiritual colonization.

When Black and Brown Christians accept a theology crafted by institutions rooted in white supremacist ideology, they:

Delegitimize their own heritage. They forget that people who looked like them were central to God’s story from the beginning—not as footnotes, but as founders of the faith.

Undermine their identity. They internalize the lie that virtue, reason, and divine favor are tied to whiteness, that success means distancing themselves from their own cultures.

Blunt their prophetic witness. The Black church historically served as America’s conscience, championing justice grounded in Scripture. But under Claremont-style ideology, believers of color become apathetic or hostile toward addressing racism, viewing it as “divisive” rather than biblical.

Align with their own oppression. They lend moral weight to political movements that have roots in the very ideologies designed to subjugate people like themselves—supporting policies that restrict voting rights, target immigrants, and dismantle protections their ancestors fought to secure.

Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King Jr. invoked a “Christian America” prophetically—calling the nation to become what it claimed to be. Today’s Christian nationalism does the opposite: it sanctifies what was and resists what must change.

The corrective is historical truth.

Christianity is not a white man’s religion and never was. It emerged from Afro-Asiatic soil, shaped by African and Asian voices before it ever reached Europe. The exodus story—of an oppressed people liberated by God—is central to Scripture, not peripheral. The prophets condemned injustice and called for jubilee. Jesus proclaimed good news to the poor and release to the captive.

Black and Brown evangelicals can reclaim this heritage. They can reject the false anthropology that elevates whiteness as theological norm and instead celebrate the mosaic of cultures woven into the biblical drama. They can hold their nation accountable without confusing patriotism for piety.

The question is one of allegiance: Will we pledge ourselves to a Christianity rooted in empire and exclusion, or to the faith of Yeshua—the dark-skinned Rabbi who stood with the oppressed, confronted power, and was killed for it?

The empire’s gospel offers comfort to the powerful.

The gospel of Jesus offers freedom to the captive.

Choose wisely. The inheritance of your ancestors—and the future of your children—depends on it.