Given the wide-spread reverence for Martin Luther King Jr. and the universal shame about slavery expressed in literature, films, etc., it is clear most Americans agree the opposition to the Civil Rights Movement and the opposition to the abolition of slavery were morally wrong. Many would say those who enslaved and those who fought civil rights were on the wrong side of history. The same could be said for the genocide, suppression and segregation of Native Americans.

I think the Christians who oppose gay rights today hold the same religious ideals that inspired the Christians to oppose the Civil Rights Movement, abolition, freedoms for Native Americans, etc. Just as Christians were wrong to oppose abolition in the 1800s, just as Christians were wrong to oppose civil rights in the 1950s and ’60s, Christians are wrong to oppose gay rights today.

A book called “Mississippi Praying: Southern White Evangelicals and the Civil Rights Movement, 1945-1975” by Carolyn Dupont shows how white Christian churches in the South, especially in Mississippi, were hubs for racist, discriminatory and, to use Christian terminology, evil and murderous designs. The book is held in Mississippi State University’s Mitchell Memorial Library; I encourage you to read it.

What is alarming to me is the similarity between the racist arguments of the Southern white evangelicals then to the bigoted arguments of Southern white evangelicals today. I have heard from many Southern white evangelicals that “homosexuals need to know their place in society,” or “homosexuals aren’t equal to us so they shouldn’t have the same rights as us,” or “homosexuals haven’t had our rights in the past, so they shouldn’t have them now,” or “homosexuals are immoral and against the Bible and so they shouldn’t have political equality,” or “treating homosexuals as equals violates my religious belief,” etc. If you replace “homosexuals” with “blacks” you have many of the same arguments made by Southern white evangelicals in the 19th and 20th centuries.

As a person who studies and teaches religion as a fundamental component of the human experience throughout history, I think religious belief can be a force for growth and a force for degradation. Too often Southern white evangelicals are a destructive influence on society as a whole, but it doesn’t follow that all religion is degenerative. A step forward might be for Southerners to explore theologies and philosophies that embrace all aspects of humanity in ways that promote compassion, freedom and wisdom rather than fear, control and ignorance.