Atlanta megachurch pastor Louie Giglio in under fire for advocating that Americans should “get over” the negative concept of “white privilege” and recognize it as “white blessings.”
Hosting what he called “an honest conversation about race and the Church” on Sunday with Chick-fil-A CEO Dan Cathy and Christian hip-hop recording artist and music executive Lecrae, Giglio advocated for changing the term “white privilege” to make it less offensive to white Americans who “don’t want somebody telling them to check their privilege” (video below.)
Giglio suggested, “let’s get over the phrase” of “white privilege.”
“I think maybe a great thing for me is to call it ‘white blessing,'” Giglio declared. “That I’m living in the blessing of the curse that happened generationally that allowed me to grow up in Atlanta.”
“I feel like on the inside of the church we’re fighting this historical context,” Giglio told Lecrae and Cathy. “In other words, we love the blessing of the cross, but we don’t love to sit in it and realize this is what God’s asking me to do, to die to myself, and to live for him, whatever context that’s going to look like for me.”
“I want to flip that upside down because I think the other side of it is true with our nation’s history,” he continued. “We understand the curse that was slavery, white people do, and we say ‘that was bad,’ but we miss the blessing of slavery that it actually built up the framework for the world that white people live in and lived in.”
Giglio is no stranger to controversy. In 2013 he was forced to pull out of delivering President Barack Obama’s second inaugural benediction after a homophobic sermon he had delivered years earlier was discovered. In it he proclaimed that “homosexuals” will not go to heaven unless they are “cured” of homosexuality by accepting Jesus.
Lecrae responded by saying “the idea that you have the ability to dismiss” white privilege “is a privilege. You have the ability to not think about it. I cannot change my skin tone.”
On Facebook Giglio responded to the criticism.
“Not a great choice of words. I failed. Trying to help my demographic move forward. But failed.”
Meanwhile, on social media many expressed anger at Giglio, with some noting that to call white privilege “white blessings” falsely suggests that white privilege is ordained or blessed by God.