Listening to the 'Least of These': Miguel De La Torre

Echoing James Cone’s 1970 assertion that white Christianity is a satanic heresy, Miguel De La Torre argues that whiteness has desecrated the message of Jesus. In a scathing indictment, he describes how white American Christians have aligned themselves with the oppressors who subjugate the “least of these”—those who have been systemically marginalized because of their race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic status.

We discuss his recent book, Decolonizing Christianity. 

With this follow-up to his earlier Burying White Privilege, De La Torre prophetically outlines how we need to decolonize Christianity and reclaim its revolutionary, badass message. Timid white liberalism is not the answer for De La Torre—only another form of complicity. Working from the parable of the sheep and the goats in the Gospel of Matthew, he calls for unapologetic solidarity with the sheep and an unequivocal rejection of the false, idolatrous Christianity of whiteness.

Miguel A. De La Torre is professor of social ethics and Latinx studies at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver. He has published over thirty-five books, including Burying White Privilege: Resurrecting a Badass Christianity and Reading the Bible from the Margins.