(Joshua Paladino, Headline USA) During a speech at a Catholic university in Pittsburgh, Rev. Miguel De La Torre told students to “crucify” their “whiteness” and to reject “white” Christianity.
De La Torre, who teaches Social Ethics and Latinx Studies at the Iliff School of Theology, delivered a lecture titled “Rejecting White University” at Carlow University, a Catholic institution, on March 3, according to National File.
He warned that whiteness can affect non-white people, but that an anti-white Christianity offers salvation.
“Those of us who are colored, some of us can also be white,” said De La Torre, a white-skinned man. “But the good news is there is salvation…We [minorities of color] have to crucify our colonized minds, and for our white brothers and sisters, they need to crucify their whiteness.”
De La Torre said that the “white concept” of hope—a central Christian virtue, alongside faith and charity—keeps racial minorities content in their economic and social position.
Hope acts as “a middle-class excuse” to remain in one’s place.
“We embrace Euro-centric concepts like hope because it helps to pacify the oppressed during their oppression,” he said. “It leads to spiritual liberation, and ignores physical liberation.”
The university’s Atkins Center for Ethics hosted the event, which was advertised with this description:
“Eurochristian nationalism has been used to justify white supremacy. Many within communities of color, with colonized minds, seek to assimilate to a Euroamerican version of Christianity which is detrimental to their being. This presentation will explore what it means to see through the eyes of the dominant culture, how one rejects the Christianity of the dominant culture, and how one begins to create a different cultural foundation upon which to base one’s faith.”
De La Torre rejected the dominant Christian culture in the United States because its adherents voted for former President Donald Trump.
“When eight out of ten white evangelicals voted for a person who is completely against everything Christianity stands for, I don’t know what Christianity they are practicing,” he said. “But I want nothing to do with that Christianity.”
