A Catholic institution recently hosted a discussion titled “Rejecting White Christianity,” which included a speaker who told the audience that white people should “crucify their whiteness” and encouraged others to “ethically lie” to make up for historic wrongs.
Dr. Miguel De La Torre, a “Latinx studies” professor at Iliff School of Theology, spoke at Carlow University as part of the symposium. According to the Fix, which looked at the video of De La Torre’s speech, the speaker “began his talk by going for evangelicals who voted for Trump.”
“Eight out of ten American white evangelicals cast their ballot for someone who is diametrically opposed to everything that Christianity stands for, I have no idea what kind of Christianity they follow,” De La Torre said. “But I have nothing to do with that version of Christianity.”
Then de la Torre specified that “white theology and ethics” are distinct from “Latinx ethics,” according to the Fix, while adding that “white” does not refer to skin color but rather to a “ontological concept.”
De La Torre said during his sermon. “Salvation entails crucifying our colonized minds and slaying our whiteness for our white brothers and sisters, who must crucify their whiteness in order to be saved.’”
He also dismissed “hope,” stating that it was a white concept, according to the Fix.
“We embrace Eurocentric ideas like hope because it soothes the oppressed during the oppression we experience,” he stated. “It gives you spiritual liberation while ignoring physical freedom.”
“I’m defining the word hope through my personal Latino heritage in Spanish. Hope is derived from the Spanish word esperar, which is the Spanish word for wait. And we are not sure exactly what we are waiting for or how long we’ll have to wait for it—and whether it will ever arrive. In Spanish, this hope isn’t the same as its English counterpart,” he said.
“Hope is the middle-class’s excuse to do nothing,” he claimed.
Later on, De La Torre added that he uses a “trickster mentality” to change society to his vision. This, as he says, entails “ethically lying to find out what is real… and ethically stealing to nourish the hungry… and disrupting the institutions that have taught us to oppress ourselves and take responsibility for our own discipline.”
“This empire was created on cheap labor and stolen resources,” he said. “So hospitality is not the right word. What we require is restitution…By putting this issue from a certain perspective, we are able to arrive at a very different viewpoint regarding what the Christian reply should be.”
