Is Christianity Inherently Racist?
Racial Issues and Christianity Throughout History
On my journey from a conservative Evangelical to a progressive, liberal-leaning, feminist who is concerned with social justice and racial issues, I have had to confront the question: is Christianity racist at its very core? I used to tell myself the religion itself was not racist, it had just been warped and misused by different people throughout history. However, I am no longer convinced that explanation holds up.
To begin with, there are some major historical events that are hard to explain away. The crusades, the slave trade, colonization around the globe, the destruction of indigenous cultures and decimation of entire people groups, and missionary work that had to do more with changing people’s culture and identity than in spreading love and grace. I used to think that these events were all the product of human greed and really had nothing to do with the actual Christian faith. At least that is what I told myself.
European monarchs were motivated by arrogance and greed when they led countless doomed knights on their several failed attempts to reclaim the “Holy Land.” Maybe, but have you ever heard of the Children’s Crusade? A church official got a bunch of kids so convinced they needed to take back Jerusalem for Christendom, that thousands of kids sailed off to the Middle East on a mission from God. They failed of course, and most of them were sold into slavery by the Arabs. How do we understand that level of fanaticism?
Let’s examine some other major evils committed by “Christendom.” Perhaps the most obvious is the slave trade of Europeans taking African captives and selling them throughout the British Empire. How did something so evil survive for so many decades amidst the prudish, religious British culture? Of course, not everyone was for it. William Wilberforce dedicated years of his life to stopping the slave trade. He was a man of faith. Likewise, William Penn, a convert to the Quaker faith, sought peace with the indigenous people of the colony named after him (Pennsylvania). The Quakers also strongly opposed slavery and were active participants in the Underground Railroad, helping to smuggle runaway slaves from the South to the free North, or all the way to Canada.
I looked to these heroes for hope when trying to justify my religion. Another thing I told myself was, “How could Christianity be racist at its core when it didn’t even start out as a European religion?” How can it be a “white religion” when it began in the Middle East? Jesus was not the pale, sad-faced, blonde haired, blue eyed man depicted in Renaissance art. If it wasn’t for Emperor Constantine making it the official religion of the late Roman Empire, Christianity would probably look quite different. I held onto these facts to try to comfort myself in the face of all the absurd and cruel things done in the name of the Christian religion.
But sometimes there was just too much to ignore. So much hatred. So many missionaries ripping people’s culture, language, and ethnic identity away from them. It was not a loving sharing of the gospel. It was an act of violence and hatred.
I had to understand where this thinking came from. How could the loving disciples of a pacifist carpenter, who didn’t even resist the invading Romans, be capable of this level of violence and hatred? I looked to the Bible for truth and guidance. Doesn’t the Bible say “There is now neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female; for we are all one in Christ…”?
But digging deeper was more disturbing. The Old Testament is not a book of love and pacifism. Instead I found it filled with inherent racism. The entire faith of the Old Testament rests on the idea of ethnic purity. There were strict laws against inter-marriage, and God-given mandates to perform genocide and wipe out entire people groups. After all those fun Sunday school stories about Moses and the ten plagues and the crossing of the Red Sea, it gets pretty bloody. There is a whole lot of genocide and ethnic cleansing that goes on when the Hebrew people finally reach the “Promised Land.” It’s horrifying.
According to the written record, God told them to wipe out every man, woman, and child. The old, the young, the babies; it didn’t matter. King David, the great hero of the Jewish Nation, reportedly killed thousands and led his troops into battle amid racial slurs against the “uncircumcised Philistines.” Songs and stories were written to immortalize his exploits, including mutilating the bodies of his enemies and bringing back the foreskins of the dead.
Many Christians tiptoe around the Old Testament and shrug it off as “we changed, and maybe God even changed.” Yet even in the New Testament the disciples cringed at the thought of associating with the Samaritans, a people group of mixed ethnicity. They were the descendants of Jewish people who intermarried with the native Canaanite people. They worshipped the same God as the Jewish religion, but they had to have a separate temple from the one in Jerusalem. They were still viewed as “unclean” even though they were “God-fearing.” In fact, any non-Jewish convert was still held at arms’ length no matter how pious they were. They had to remain in the “Court of the Gentiles” outside the temple. It was a little closer than the “Women’s Court,” but still not the inner court, which was reserved for Jewish men only.
Again, for years I clung to the belief that Jesus was different and really changed things. After all, he did associate with the Samaritans. However, even Jesus compares a Canaanite woman to “a dog” in Matthew chapter 15 when she comes to him asking for healing for her child. At first he ignores her, and then tells her he was sent “to the lost sheep of Israel only” and it would be wrong to give the “children’s bread to the dogs.” When she persists that “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table,” he is moved and grants her request. Even Jesus appears ethnocentric here. How do we explain this line of thought? This compassion and grace for only one people group?
The vast majority of Christians throughout the US are not of Jewish ethnic descent, and yet they have adopted the identity of the “Chosen People.” They have been influenced by the openly racist sentiments throughout the entire Bible. The European immigrants that moved Westward through the US viewed themselves as the children of God taking the “Promised Land,” just like in the good old days of Moses and Joshua and David. I believe that clearly influenced the attitude and treatment of the indigenous North American native people. Taking the land by force was justified in their thinking. If God could order complete and total genocide before, why not again?
Racism has shaped the entire founding of America, and Christianity has excused it and furthered it. The Bible has long been used to make racism “okay.” The issue of racial identity and racial exclusion runs so strong in the Bible, that it is almost impossible to extricate the two concepts. I no longer know how to separate the faith from the racist agenda to make all people “like us.” Christians have been using the “Great Commission” at the end of the book of Matthew to justify a violent form of missionary work that strips people of their culture and ethnic identity. The message is truly “turn or burn,” and there is little tolerance for anyone unwilling to change and abandon their own culture and religion.
Many Christians do not see themselves as racist because they are willing to accept people of any other race or ethnicity into their churches as long as those people adapt to Western Christianity. This conditional acceptance of anyone who is different is, in itself, racist and intolerant. Furthermore, the church in the US has failed to take a decisive stance against systemic racism in this nation. If all the stuff in the Bible is misunderstood or no longer part of the faith, why have Christians continually failed to confront racism or denounce it when they see it?
I am not really sure what my religion is now. I am not an atheist. But a religion that is so narrow and exclusive no longer makes sense to me. If “God is love,” then the intolerant small-minded religion I grew up with makes no sense. Why would the Creator make it so only a few people, and predominantly from certain regions and people groups, were able to connect to him and be loved and accepted? I can no longer identify with that mindset. And so I embark on a journey of rebirth outside of a Biblical mindset. A journey where it is okay to love and accept other people without trying to change them to please God. No strings attached, no agenda; just accept people as they are with no pressure to make them something else. That has been the most freeing step to take.
