As I read books, I provide myself with a short book summary and relevant book notes for future reference. Others have asked about me sharing those notes in the past. So....here you go.
Here's my book summary of Plantation Jesus by Skot Welch and Rick Wilson.
Book Summary of Plantation Jesus
Book in a Sentence
This book is a scathing critique of the form of Christianity that makes excuses or ignores the history of slavery in the U.S.
Key Insights
1. Those who serve a plantation Jesus, serve a god who is comfortable with pain and suffering without doing a thing about it.
2. Slavery was a foundational reality in our country that cannot be dismissed as a past event without present impact.
3. Jesus never stood with systems of oppression, he stood in direct opposition to them.
My Rating:
8/10
Book Notes
Chapter 1: Where We Start: Introducing Plantation Jesus
Telling people to get over it:
Telling people to get over slavery is like telling your grandfather to keep World War II to himself.
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 15.
Who is Plantation Jesus:
“…Plantation Jesus: a god who is comfortable with pain and suffering, an idol who can only exist in oppression and codified bigotry. Plantation Jesus provides a faith-based justification for racism. Plantation Jesus is a false god who lives within systemic and institutional racism, who continuously distorts an authentic Christian message, and who is complicit with unequal treatment for financial gain.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 15-16.
Sitting high on the porch:
“[Plantation Jesus] is a god who sits high on the porch of his plantation in heaven and proclaims that the problems of the people in the field, his workers, are not problems he has any role in creating or solving.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 17.
“One [plantation owning] wife asked her husband about life without slavery: ‘If the slaves are free,” she wrote, “does God exist’?”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 29.
Chapter 2: Why Can’t We Talk? Ten Roadblocks to Real Conversations
“Our society sees whiteness as the norm, and thus those of us who are white can operate as if race and ethnicity—and the challenges America faces around these issues—are not our problems.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 33.
Roadblock #1: “Race has nothing to do with me.
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 35.
“As America increasingly becomes more black and brown, and as the definition of what it means to be American changes, European Americans often experience deeply rooted distress that something is being lost, something that must be found again.
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 36.
“Statements which suggest that the United States needs to return to its roots of greatness imply that the greatness of America resides within white, wealthy men, because they are the only Americans who have consistently been treated well in our nation.
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 36.
Roadblock #2: “I never owned a slave.”[9]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 37.
“Slavery was not an unfortunate, brief, tragic, left turn in American history. Slave systems were foundational to the United States morally, spiritually, sociologically, culturally, and economically.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 37.
“Saying ‘I never owned a slave’ is a disingenuous and ineffective attempt at dodging responsibility for the suffering around us. We have to own ways we’ve benefited from its legacy. Only then can we deconstruct what our ancestors constructed.”[11]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 38.
Roadblock #3: “Slavery is in the Bible.”[12]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 38.
Kidnapping is never justified in Scripture: ‘Whoever kidnaps a person, whether that person has been sold or is still held in possession, shall be put to death’ (Exodus 21:16).”[13]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 39.
“American Slavery was unique in its cruelty. It was a giant crime against humanity.”[14]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 41.
Roadblock #4: “Some people were nice to their slaves.”[15]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 41.
“[The magnolia myth] maintains that ‘slavery was a social structure of harmony and grace that did no real harm to anyone, white or black.”[16]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 41.
Roadblock #5: “I don’t see color, only people.”[17]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 43.
“How…have we come to lift up ‘colorblindness’ with regard to race as an asset and not a liability? As something to strive for rather than a disability?”[18]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 43.
“By the time black men reach the age of twenty-three, 49 percent of them have been arrested.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 44.
According to the Urban Institute, ‘For every $6 white people have in wealth, black people have $1.”[20]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 45.
Roadblock #6: “We’re all Americans.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 45.
“[Peggy McIntosh] contends, white people can choose to be in the company of their own race most of the time. In contrast, black and brown Americans are forced to interact in a dominant culture that has little contact with or understanding of them.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 46.
Roadblock #7: “We just need to take back our country.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 47.
“When presidential candidate Donald Trump selected his 2016 campaign slogan, ‘Make America Great Again,’ he was speaking into a narrative of reconquest, on harking back to the way that European Americans came to territories then inhabited by Native people.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 47.
“The further you go back for communities of color, the worse it gets.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 48.
Roadblock #8: “We need to restore our Christian foundations.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 48.
“…the founders of our nation were slave-owning plantation patriarchs who did not practice orthodox Christianity.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 48.
Roadblock #9: This conversation makes me uncomfortable.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 49.
“…if you want change you have to be willing to be uncomfortable…and…the feelings of white people do not always need to be placated.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 50.
Roadblock #10: “It’s not a skin problem; it’s a sin problem.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 51.
Speaking Christianese:
“[These statements] are the Christianese version of ‘get over it.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 51
“…we are called to be salt and light, and salt and light can only heal when they are placed on the wounded places themselves.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 51
Chapter 3: How to Know What You Don’t Know: The Face of Plantation Jesus
“In deeply rooted ignorance and denial, many white Christians take an untenable position when they focus on American racial history. They walk into walls because they lack language, historical context, and cultural sensitivity.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 56.
“A white baby Jesus reinforces the Eurocentric idea that whiteness is better.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 59.
"White Jesus is the default position, the ‘factory setting’ of Eurocentric Christianity.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 61.
“When Jesus is white, we communicate to people of color that they are welcome…as long as they allow themselves to be shaped into a white image.”[35]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 67.
Chapter 4: What to Believe: Reading the Bible on the Plantation
“When we interpret the Bible without acknowledging our biases, we see Scripture rising to meet and agree with the grid through which we see our faith and the world.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 74.
“Christianity was not presented to black people in America to enlighten and empower them,” historian Rik Stevenson said…rather, Christianity was presented to slaves ‘to subjugate and oppress them.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 76
“Slavery is in the Bible, but Scripture does not support chattel slavery (ownership of humans) by race or for any other reason.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 77
“White Christians often collude with racist theologies in the conspiracy of their silence…”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 82
Chapter 5: Who’s Got the Power? White Supremacy Doesn’t Just Wear Hoods
“White people do not ask to benefit from white privilege or white supremacy, and we may not even want these benefits. But they are ours nonetheless.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 86.
“White privilege…is a set of advantages enjoyed by white people that are unavailable to nonwhite people in the same social, political, and economic space.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 87.
“White supremacy…is the system behind the privilege: the system that operates on the foundational belief that white people are superior to people of all other racial groups and ethnicities.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 88.
Baseball analogy for inequity:
“Imagine a baseball game between two very competitive teams: Team A and Team B. Team B rolled up a huge score, 20-0, when it’s discovered that they’ve been cheating. ‘Okay,’ Team B says, “we’ll start playing by the rules now. But the score is still 20-0.” Imagine how frustrating it would be to compete in a game you love, only to face insurmountable deficits based on the inequity you can’t remedy.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 89.
“Followers of Jesus are called to operate out of covenant privilege, not white privilege.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 90.
“If we look honestly at Jefferson’s life, we begin to see that his language in the Declaration of Independence is merely rhetoric, not something built on an idea of true equality at all.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 91.
“…as people in communities of color have often said, ‘Some boots don’t have straps.’”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 97.
While some Christian leaders in the United States talk in platitudes about being ‘multiracial, multiethnic, and antiracial,’ churches remain ten times more segregated than the neighborhoods in which they are located, says sociologist Michael Emerson.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 100.
Chapter 6: Who We Worship: The Myth of America as a Christian Nation
“Plantation Jesus has effectively created the ‘values package’: faith, family, ancestry, country. All these pieces are touted as elements of being a good American Christian.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 107.
“Trump is not a man who is devoted to God; Trump is devoted to America.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 108.
“Using Christian as a descriptor of anything but people who follow Jesus has allowed the term, and Christ himself, to be appropriated for people’s own purposes.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 110.
“Plantation Jesus has focused the idea of ‘faith and family’ on a particular kind of family: the white family.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 110.
“The work of genealogy for black people is far more complicated and full of silence than it is for most white people.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 116.
“…ten of the first twelve presidents owned slaves while in office.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 117.
Chapter 7: Where is the Money? Plantation Economics Today
“Plantation Jesus has made white Americans secure in the myth of a real meritocracy, where everyone gets what they earn.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 122.
“As historian John Henrik Clarke wrote, ‘It is too often forgotten that when the Europeans gained enough maritime skills and gunpowder to conquer most of the world, they not only colonized the bulk of the world’s people but they colonized the interpretation of history itself.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 122.
“Two of the most popular revenue-generating sports in the United States were played by teams where over a third of the players were black people: black people who were not paid for their labor.”[56]
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 130.
“The auction blocks have been replaced by basketball courts, football fields, and baseball diamonds. A disproportionately black and brown labor force continues to participate in well-worn economic patterns of exploitation.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 132.
Chapter 8: Where Do We Go From Here? Following the Real Jesus
Standing in opposition:
“The real Jesus did not participate in systems of oppression; he stood in direct opposition to them, even when it cost him his life.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 138.
The real Jesus abides:
“The real Jesus abides with the suffering of his people but will not suffer the existence of systems the perpetuate it.”
Skot Welch and Rick Wilson, Plantation Jesus: Race, Faith, and a New Way Forward (Harrisonburg, VA: Herald Press, 2018), 151.