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The Christian Criteria for Assimilation: Racially Reading Christianity, Civility, and Social Belonging in the Modern Western World

Abstract Recent surges of immigration in Western countries have produced statements about what successful assimilation requires. While it is commonly believed that proper assimilation in the West is rooted in shared democratic values, this article argues that beneath such values lies a Christian image of humanity, which, due to the colonial endeavor, is mostly clearly manifest by the white body. As a result of the link between whiteness, Christianity, and civility that develops within the western colonial context and persists into early twentieth-century U.S. immigration, one’s spiritual state as well as one’s fitness for social inclusion are judged along racial lines. By identifying this relationship, the present essay demonstrates the role that Christianity has played in the relentless, racially rooted visual distinction of those who are judged to fit within civilized society and those who are seen as a threat to the established social order.