Jeff Brumley, Baptist News Global
Christians deviate from their own faith and Scripture whenever they espouse beliefs that immigrants of color are a threat to American culture, society and security, a Southern Baptist minister and author said during a recent podcast about the Great Replacement theory.
“Anytime you see Christians begin to be coopted into this type of thinking on any level, it’s a distortion of the faith,” Alan Cross said during a December episode of the “Only in America” podcast hosted by Ali Noorani, president and CEO of the National Immigration Forum.
“If you really read the Bible, there isn’t room for this type of thinking, for racism, xenophobia, fear of the other or ranking people according to race,” said Cross, lead pastor of Petaluma Valley Baptist Church in Petaluma, Calif., and author of When Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus.
Also known simply as Replacement Theory, the conspiracy dating to the 1800s holds that white populations, whether in Europe or the United States, are being “replaced” by brown-skinned immigrants from Africa, South and Central America and other non-white nations.
Noorani noted in the podcast that white nationalists chanted, “You will not replace us” during the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Va., and others have observed that many of the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, were motivated by a fear and hatred of immigrants.
“It’s an ideology over 100 years old rooted in racism and fear and it continues to permeate our media, our culture and our politics,” Noorani said.