A far-right Christian nationalist pastor who has previously drawn controversy for his positions on social and cultural issues is stirring debate online once again after asserting that white parents must teach their children that they face more danger interacting with Black strangers than white strangers.
Joel Webbon, the senior pastor of Covenant Bible Church in Austin, Texas, delivered these remarks in the Sept. 8 episode of a podcast produced by Right Response Ministries, a Christian nationalist website that he founded.
“If you’re a Christian white parent who loves the Lord and loves your children, you need to have ‘The Talk,’” said Webbon. “‘The Talk’ that we’re referencing is the talk that takes your children, according to their maturity, at the proper time, the appropriate time, and says, there are certain parts of town that you cannot go. And there are certain people that you cannot be around.”
He continued: “If there’s someone who is Black in our church, and they’ve been in our church and we know them and they love the Lord Jesus Christ, great. We’re not talking about that person. But we’re talking about when you go into a crowd of people, if you go into a crowd of strangers, and they’re white strangers, there’s some danger. If they’re Black strangers, there is 30 times more danger. Them’s the facts.”
Webbon goes on to suggest that it’s a parental failure and a deprivation of correct, factual instruction when parents teach children that “all people and all races of people in our country are the same.”
A clip of the comments went viral after being posted by Right Wing Watch, an advocacy group that monitors and exposes the activities of radical far-right political organizations.
Webbon’s remarks, like many of his previous comments on race relations, drew intense reactions on social media from many people who contended that Webbon’s stances are antithetical to Christian ideology.
“It’s a major failure of one’s parental duty to teach one’s children to be bigots. And this guy is supposed to be a Christian?” one X user wrote. “I’m no expert on religion but pretty sure Jesus wouldn’t have endorsed racism–even if you someone was willing to overlook someone’s race if that someone attended one’s church.”
“This is just fear wrapped in parenting advice,” another person wrote.
“‘Them’s the facts’ meanwhile it’s just his bigotry,” another comment read.
In the podcast episode, Webbon also suggests that Black parents should teach their children that many Black children and teens are “reprobates and misbehaved and rebellious toward authority, including police.”
Webbon is no stranger to making divisive remarks.
Last year, he drew backlash for maintaining that he’d prefer to have a white doctor rather than a Black one because, after being given the choice between a young Black and a young white doctor, he said it was more likely that the young Black professional was less qualified and “got a free pass” to start practicing medicine.
In a 2023 podcast, he also suggested that women shouldn’t have the right to vote when he was asked to visualize a “Christian nation.”
As a Christian nationalist, Webbon subscribes to an ideology that believes the United States was founded as a distinctively Christian country and that Christian values should guide public policy as well as the nation’s cultural norms.
The ideology, which typically carries an undercurrent of racial exclusion and xenophobia, has grown influential in the last decade as President Donald Trump has courted and garnered the support of many of its proponents.
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