Theology prof: 'Dear God, please help me to hate White people'

A seminary professor wrote a prayer in which she asks God to help her “hate White people.”

Chanequa Walker-Barnes is an associate professor of practical theology at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, which claims a Baptist identity. Her oration was published in A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal.

“Dear God, Please help me to hate White people,” opens the prayer. “Or at least to want to hate them. At least, I want to stop caring about them, individually and collectively.”

“I want to stop caring about their misguided, racist souls, to stop believing that they can be better, that they can stop being racist,” she continues.

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“I am not talking about the White antiracist allies who have taken up this struggle against racism with their whole lives,” Walker-Barnes clarifies for the Creator of the universe. “No, those aren’t the people I want to hate.”

Walker-Barnes says that she has no interest in hating “strident segregationists who mow down nonviolent antiracist protesters, who open fire on Black churchgoers, or who plot acts of racism terrorism hoping to start a race war,” as such people are “already in hell.” Instead, she desires the strength of God to hate “the nice ones” — specifically, the “Fox News-loving, Trump-supporting voters who ‘don’t see color’ but who make thinly veiled racist comments about ‘those people.’”

She adds that such White people “welcome Black people in their churches and small groups but brand us as heretics if we suggest that Christianity is concerned with the poor and the oppressed” and “politely tell us that we can leave when we call out the racial microaggressions we experience in their ministries.”

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Walker-Barnes admits that “I don’t have many relationships with people like that,” meaning that “they are not a good use of hatred either.” So, she asks the Lord for the “permission and desire to hate” the White people who claim “the progressive label but who are really wolves in sheep’s clothing.”

“Lord, if you can’t make me hate them, at least spare me from their perennial gaslighting, whitemansplaining, and White woman tears,” she prays. “Lord, if it be your will, harden my heart. Stop me from striving to see the best in people. Stop me from being hopeful that White people can do and be better. Let me imagine them instead as white-hooded robes standing in front of burning crosses.”

“Let me be like Jonah, unwilling for my enemies to change, or like Lot, able to walk away from them and their sinfulness without trying to call them to repentance,” continues Walker-Barnes, entirely missing the point of both narratives. “Free me from this burden of calling them to confession and repentance.”

She concludes by evoking the spirits of “Fannie and Ida and Pauli and Ella and Septima and Coretta.”

On Wednesday morning, Walker-Barnes addressed criticisms of her words on Instagram, writing, “the folks critiquing have clearly never read Psalms.” She then recalled an incident during which she was called a racial slur after which she did not seek vengeance but “took my rage to God in fear.” She says her experiences have “given me millions of reasons to hate White people,” that the “hatred would be justified,” and that “I could even find biblical precedent for it.” She laments that God has “given me a different spirit, one that insists on looking for goodness and possibility.” 

”This thread isn’t for the critics,” she adds. “They’re so wrapped in white supremacist Christianity that only God and maybe some cult deprogramming can help them.” 

Campus Reform reached out to Walker-Barnes and Mercer University for comment; this article will be updated accordingly.

Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @BenZeisloft