White Christian institutions actively resisted integration even as national leaders endorsed it.

Evidence

We could easily continue to pile up examples, but a pattern is clear: white Christians and their institutions, especially at the local level, were not just passively complicit with but also broadly and actively resistant to black Americans’ claims of equality. This massive religious resistance was happening even as white Protestant mainline denominational offices and the American Catholic bishops, at the national level, were issuing statements calling for their constituents to support aspects of the civil rights movement. — Robert P. Jones, White Too Long, 202

Categorization

• XREF: A stark local-versus-national contrast — echoes the pattern in the reader’s moral-panic and class-signaling work where elite rhetoric diverges from grassroots action. — connects to: Whites accept racial equality in principle but reject the measures that would achieve it.; Whites support racial equality in principle but resist the policies implementing it — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3332

Broader Connections

• Whites accept racial equality in principle but reject the measures that would achieve it. #expands (0.78)
• Whites support racial equality in principle but resist the policies implementing it #expands (0.78) — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 3332