Christianity is the white man’s religion. People who hold this view usually put it plainly. Masters brought the faith to enslaved Africans as a way to keep them down. Its Savior is painted with a white face. Its history is told as a European story from start to finish. The view treats whiteness as part of what Christianity has always been, making the faith’s racial character a property of the faith itself.
This piece treats that as a claim to be tested, and the records gathered here point to a different answer. The tie between Christian and white was built in stages by people who had something to protect. One of the clearest stages survives in the law books of colonial Barbados. In 1697, as free Black Christians began to qualify for the vote, lawmakers kept Christianon the list of requirements and added white beside it.
The two accounts predict different evidence, so they can be tested against each other: