After I read an article about Chanequa Walker Barnes, Ph.D. and her prayer, Please God, Help me to hate white people, and then watched her TheoEd talk on Pathological Whiteness, I was ready to give up on all of the human race. What’s the point of dealing with humans when this whole thing is a shite show of hatred. I calmed down when I walked MacDuff through my multi-culti neighborhood and waved and smiled at all the neighbors who had come out after the rain. Now, I am capable of telling you about this heinous woman without throwing my device across the room.

Chanequa Walker Barnes, Ph.D. was educated at Emory University, Miami University and Duke University. She is currently a professor of practical theology at Mercer University. Her “hate white people” prayer was included in a book titled “A Rhythm of Prayer: A Collection of Meditations for Renewal”. The description of the book says: “For the weary, the angry, the anxious, and the hopeful, this collection of moving, tender prayers offers rest, joyful resistance, and a call to act, written by Barbara Brown Taylor, Amena Brown, Nadia Bolz-Weber, and other artists and thinkers, curated by the author Glennon Doyle calls “my favorite faith writer.” “Moving, tender prayers” is not what I got when I read Walker Barnes’ prayer which is titled “Prayer of a Weary Black Woman”.

From the Daily Hellas, here are portions of her “prayer”:

“Dear God, Please help me to hate White people,” opens the prayer. “Or at least to want to hate them. At least, I want to stop caring about them, individually and collectively.”

“I want to stop caring about their misguided, racist souls, to stop believing that they can be better, that they can stop being racist,” she continues.

“I am not talking about the White antiracist allies who have taken up this struggle against racism with their whole lives,” Walker-Barnes clarifies for the Creator of the universe. “No, those aren’t the people I want to hate.”

Walker Barnes is very clear about whom she doesn’t want to waste her hate and who she REALLY wants to hate:

Walker-Barnes says that she has no interest in hating “strident segregationists who mow down nonviolent antiracist protesters, who open fire on Black churchgoers, or who plot acts of racism terrorism hoping to start a race war,” as such people are “already in hell.” Instead, she desires the strength of God to hate “the nice ones” — specifically, the “Fox News-loving, Trump-supporting voters who ‘don’t see color’ but who make thinly veiled racist comments about ‘those people.’”

That’s generally not how I pray. You can’t criticize Dr. Chanequa (her Twitter handle) because she is a Theologian:

Apparently a screenshot of my prayer from “A Rhythm of Prayer” is floating on the socials. The folks critiquing have clearly never read Psalms (other than 23 & 100). Cause then they’d recognize what it’s modeled after.

— Dr. Chanequa (@drchanequa) April 5, 2021

I have read Psalms. There are many Psalms Dr. Chanequa may have had in mind when she wrote her “weary, black woman” prayer. Psalm 9 has some pretty righteous phrases:

15 The nations have fallen into the pit they have dug; their feet are caught in the net they have hidden. 16 The LORD is known by his acts of justice; the wicked are ensnared by the work of their hands. 17 The wicked go down to the realm of the dead, all the nations that forget God. 18 But God will never forget the needy; the hope of the afflicted will never perish. 19 Arise, LORD, do not let mortals triumph; let the nations be judged in your presence. 20 Strike them with terror, LORD; let the nations know they are only mortal.

For the most part the Psalms look out, Dr. Chanequa’s prayer looks inward in the key of “me”. I am going to post this video of her TheoEd talk, but I don’t recommend you watch it, unless you live in a multi-culti neighborhood and have an awesome terrier in your life. It’s your only hope.

I am going to assume that you didn’t watch the video. Dr. Chanequa is probably the most racist person I have ever heard of outside of David Duke and Louis Farrakhan. Per Walker Barnes, America has a problem and it’s name is “whiteness”. And, she praises Robin DiAngelo, the author of White Fragility. If you don’t know about the book White Fragility, our Darleen took one for the team and read and reviewed the book for Victory Girls. There are not enough terriers in the world to get me through that piece of trash. Robin DiAngelo is what Chanequa Walker Barnes would call a “white, anti-racist ally”. I might call her a plagiarist and fraud, but your mileage may very.

You cannot criticize Dr. Chanequa:

This thread isn’t for the critics. They’re so wrapped in White supremacist Christianity that only God and maybe some cult deprogramming can help them. #shakethedustoff pic.twitter.com/WJ5g33b4E6

— Dr. Chanequa (@drchanequa) April 7, 2021

Oh, my sister in Christ, we are all going to be dust one day very soon. That’s a fact. In the meantime, I’ma pray for you.

Featured Image: Luke Addison/Flickr.com/Cropped/Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic (CC BY-SA 2.0)