Why Christianity Cannot Fix Racism

As protests against the murder of George Floyd are spreading across the country, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick appeared on Fox News to propose his own solution for ending racism. While stating that Floyd’s death and the resulting unrest break his heart, Patrick was quick to attribute the problems facing the nation to a lack of religious devotion, along with the predictable insinuation that this absence is particularly strong with the political left. He went on to explain:

You cannot love your fellow man if you don’t love God. And we have a country where we’ve been working really hard, particularly on the left, to kick God out. We need a culture change to address this racism. You cannot change the culture of a country until you change the character of mankind. And you can’t change that unless you change the heart, and for billions of us on the planet, we believe you can’t do that unless you accept Jesus Christ or unless you accept God. God has been left out of this equation through all of this and we need tremendous healing.

Patrick’s words undoubtedly echo the sentiments of many American Evangelical Christians. Those that believe they have been born again often closely associate their salvation with a transformative life experience, and a number of those on the more conservative or evangelical side of this spectrum take this transformation to be…