- What Christian teachings might be used in a discussion about racism?
The main theme that runs through Christianity is that everybody should be treated equally. This is shown when Jesus said
"Love one another, as I have loved you, so you must love one another," 3 : 13
This means that you should like everybody as Jesus did and so coloured people should not be hated or treated disrespectfully. To any Christian this shows that everyone should get on with one another as Jesus did, we are no different in physical form, so whether we are black or any other colour, in the eyes of God we should all be loved.
We should not be racist to people of a different race because we are all the same race really. We are all from the same family, because Adam and Eve created us
'From one human being he created all races´ 17:26.
This means that we are all the children of God. This is explained in
'We are all God’s children; we are all from the same family.3:26-28
God was perfect thus if he didn’t show racist values then neither should a Christian according to the teachings of the bible. Consider the fact that God made 'man´. He did not make 'white man´ and then 'black man´, but he created all men together, at the same time. If God is not racist we should not be either, because we were all created in the image of God.
A key point towards the Christian views to racism is written in 2:8-9 where it states one should love people for what they are not for what they look like. So a Coloured person may have a good personality, which you should like that person for, but you should not hate that person because of his or her appearance.
4 Another point is that it is natural if somebody hits you for you to hit him or her back. Jesus in this passage is trying to say ignore those who harm you
"If anyone slaps you on your left cheek let him slap you on your right cheek."
This is a statement for the oppressed i.e. like coloured people were. It is an ideal ethic and Christians believe we should aim for it, but in this modern day world it is extremely difficult to achieve. Gandhi used this greatly to his advantage in India, which was occupied by the British, and it worked.
If we show love to our neighbours we are showing our love to God too. It should not matter whether the love and respect is returned, because in the Bible it also says that you should
'Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you´ 4
Throughout these passages in the bible it is proven what Christian views should be towards other races:
There are various teachings that can be used when discussing racism. One important one is:
'Love thy neighbour´.5
Everyone is our neighbour and we should show love towards him or her. On one occasion an expert in law stood up to test Jesus.
“Teacher”
He asked,
“What must I do to inherit eternal life?”
“What is written in the law?”
He replied.
“ How do you read it?”
He answered
“Love the lord your god with all your heart with all your souls and with all your strength and with all your mind.” And “ love thy neighbour as yourself.”
“You have answered correctly,”
Jesus replied.
“ Do this and you will live” 7
But he wanted to justify himself so he asked Jesus.
“ And who is my neighbour?”8
In reply Jesus said. “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side, so too a Levite when he came to the place he also simply passed by. But a Samaritan, when he came to where the man was and he saw him, he went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring oil and wine on his wounds. He then took the man to an inn on his donkey, there he took care of him and when he left the inn he gave 2 silver coins to the innkeeper and said that he would reimburse any other extra costs.
“Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” 9
The expert in law replied,
“The one who had mercy on him.” 10
Jesus told him,
“Go do likewise.”
This parable therefore could be used to illustrate Christian teachings about racism, because this story tells us that we should help those in need, like this Samaritan, we should be concerned with the colour of a person’s skin or where he was born, we should just help those in need.
In the Old Testament, it expressed how not to take advantage of anyone
“Whether he is a brother Israelite or an alien living in one of your towns. Pay him his wages each day before sunset”11
This can be related to racism in the sense that whether someone is of a different colour or origin you should treat him or her and reward them whoever they are equally. A Christian when debating about racism and unfair working conditions and pay could use this teaching to prove that the bible clearly indicates that everyone should be treated equally. This is shown in Acts
12 “…It is true that God treats everyone on the same basis…. no matter what race they belong to”.
Jesus taught that God’s kingdom was open to everybody, it did not matter what race or religion they were. What mattered was how you responded to Jesus´ invitation to God’s kingdom. God loved every human being and the Earth as a whole so much that he put his only son on it,
'God loved the world that he gave his only son that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life´ 13.
Also he would make sure that everyone who believed in him would live for eternity. God loved everyone and you should return this love to God by following his teachings in the Bible. This is shown in
14: 'What you do unto the least of my people you do unto me´.
This tells people that if they do something to hurt their neighbour, then they are also hurting God. In the issue of racism there are many teachings, which must be followed by all Christians.
Paul, the great early Christian missionary, also believed that there should be no distinction between Jew and gentile. Christians today would say that there is no distinction between Jews and Gentiles, slaves and free men and woman; there is no distinction either between black and white.
“So there is no difference between Jews and Gentiles, between slaves and free men, between men and women, you are all one in union with Christ Jesus” 15
Therefore when Paul wrote this letter to the Galatians he was saying that we are all equal and there is no difference between us.
Church teachings can be used when discussing racism, each church has strong views against racism. The World Council of Churches pronounces that
“Every human…is a person for whom Christ died. Racism… is an assault on Christ’s values, and a rejection of his sacrifice.”16 This is saying that if anyone is racist then they are going against Christ and Christ came onto this planet and sacrificed himself for us, consequently they are going against God’s intentions and God’s love for all living beings.
The Methodist church states that
“We affirm that racism is a direct contradiction of the gospel of Jesus… we welcome the multi-racial nature of society.”
We learn from this quote that the Methodist church cherish the thought of a mixture of races in the community, they also deem racism against the gospel of Jesus thus an offensive on Christ’s principles.
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in the USA exclaims that
“Racism is a sin, a violation of God’s intention for humanity.”
The Evangelical Lutheran Church at this juncture makes it apparent that they believe that racism is entirely intolerable by saying that it is a sin against God by being racist hence being racist would be in contradiction of God’s desire.
(b) Explain how Christians might put their beliefs about racism into action?
Christians may put their beliefs into action by joining charities and supporting groups that are against racism. However there are small groups of people that claim, against the churches will, that they are Christians; these small groups of people encourage racism. The most famous group are the Ku Klux Klan. They cause a lot of grief and show their prejudices in very violent ways. They do this simply because they think that this is right. The church has therefore made a statement that they are indeed not any part of the Christian church.
Some Christian teachings can be interpreted in a way that can be viewed as an encouragement to be racist. I have taken the following quote off the National Front web site. The National Front is another racist organisation that seeks to empower people so that they can make decisions for themselves. These decisions can then be translated into actions within people's own communities. This quote shows how the bibles meanings can be misinterpreted.
“It is down to us to carry on the torch of Bible-believing Christianity and be hated by both Church and Government. But for all those Christians who feel like me, here is a passage from Christ's own lips. "And ye shall be hated of all nations for my names sake... but he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved" (Matthew 24: 9-13).”
Another example of Christians appearing guilty of prejudice and discrimination was in South Africa when the Dutch Reformed Church supported apartheid, the system that meant that black people were separated from white people and treated as inferior. When Europeans were colonising other countries around the world they often killed the native people there and treated them as slaves.
A positive Christian response to racism would be to join or subscribe to an organisation or magazine, which helps combat racism. An example of this is Searchlight whose aim is to combat racism, neo-nazism, fascism and all forms of prejudice. Searchlight is a non-sectarian organisation in political, ethnic and religious terms. It believes in achieving the broadest possible unity in the fight against racism, neo-nazism, fascism and prejudice. Searchlight has existed for more than 30 years. In summer 1962, in response to a resurgence of open and violent neo-nazi activities, a group of people from a wide variety of political and religious backgrounds met in London to set up the Searchlight Association. Searchlight has appeared as a monthly magazine since 1975. It is now read all over the world. Simon Wiesenthal, the greatest of the post-war nazi-hunters, described Searchlight as the best English language publication of its kind anywhere in the world.
There are no divisions in the argument about racism for the churches. All the churches now agree that to discriminate against people on the grounds of their racial origin is wrong, and contrary to the law of God. Many people have fought against racial discrimination in both the church and society, Martin Luther King (USA black rights), Archbishop Desmond Tutu & Trevor Huddleston (South Africa apartheid). Many blacks did not have the right to vote and certain public places were said to be for "whites only" Martin Luther King was a Christian who campaigned endlessly for equal treatments of blacks and whites. He refused to support the idea that white people were all evil, as some black radicals believed. Instead, he taught that Christian love was the way forward. "Love," he said, is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. Marin Luther King a Christian put his beliefs into action and fought through non-violence what he believed to be “just.” One of the most famous speeches Martin Luther King said was:
" I have a dream that one day God’s children, blacks, whites, Jews, Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the black people’s old song "Free at last, free at last, Thank God Almighty, we are free at last.”
Another example of Christians putting their beliefs into actions is CAFOD - the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development - a major British charity that has been fighting third world poverty since 1962. I e-mailed the organisation in order to conduct some research, and asked what their intentions, purposes and beliefs are. They replied that.
“We believe that all human beings have a right to dignity and respect and that the world's resources are a gift to be shared by all men and women, whatever their race, nationality or religion.”
From the Holocaust and other people there are also lessons to be learnt, from Gandhi comes the idea of non-violent protest To be Christian one should not just be non-racist but anti-racist.
"The cause of anti-racism is not just the cause of the black minorities in our own country it is the cause of the millions in Africa, Asia and Latin America still suffering from the legacy of the exploitation that produced our wealth as well as our racism. It is up to us"1
(C) ‘Violence is an appropriate response to racism.’
There are mainly two different ways that Christians respond negatively to racism, violent and non-violent. There are a number of well-known Christian pacifists, such as Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu and Trevor Huddleston. 'A pacifist is a person who believes that all forms of violence are wrong´. They believe that anything that causes physical pain and suffering is bad, and that there are always other ways of solving the problem.
By Apportioning blame to other races, racist groups often try and build support for their racist ideas, while politicians aim to divert public anger onto someone else.
Fascist groups today are small and their support is very limited. However, their ideas are precarious and they can motivate a large amount of racial violence for such a small number of people. Racists and fascist groups have no answers to the social and economic problems we are facing. Hitler blamed unemployment on Jewish bosses and claimed he could get rid of it. In fact in Nazi Germany unemployed people were forced to work almost as slave labour building roads and producing goods for the Nazi war effort, and their names were taken off the unemployment figures. If they refused or resisted, they were arrested and sent to the concentration camps.
Martin Luther King, the American Baptist Minister, is very famous for his work opposing racism. In the Southern states of America in the 1950´s and 1960´s discrimination and prejudice against black people was very common indeed. In general, martin Luther king believed in passive resistance- the act of opposing and challenging the government, by using non-violent methods. By using this routine of non-violence, he made sure he didn’t “sink” to their level of just fighting back. . Jesus was Martin’s inspiration; King supported non-violent protests and said that it was the way forward. He famously spoke about non-violence:
" If he does not beat you-good! If he beats you…you develop the inner conviction of accepting the blows without retaliating"
Desmond Tutu is another example of someone who responded to racism using pacifism. He is an Anglican Archbishop in South Africa, and a Civil Rights Leader. He denounced apartheid as 'one of the most vicious systems since Nazism´. He said that the day that he was proved wrong on this would be the day that he would burn his Bible. In South Africa apartheid was condemned by the World Council Of Churches and the South African Council Of Churches declared it as 'a false teaching which perverts Christian truth´.
When Tutu accepted his Nobel Peace Prize in 1984 he did so on behalf of all those who sought to end apartheid, and when he was enthroned as Archbishop in 1986 he praised God:
'I pray that Our Lord would open our eyes so that we would all see the real, the true identity of each one of us; that this is not a so-called "coloured" or white or black or Indian, but a brother, a sister-and treat each other as such´.
Desmond Tutu’s beliefs came from his Christian faith. Prayer and worship were essential to him. I think that non-violence is more successful and as we have seen that with these two famous leaders non-violence has worked in their favour. Thus I think that violence is not an appropriate response to racism.
My view towards whether violence is an appropriate response to racism is, no because I feel that racism is against my beliefs and violence is never the answer. I consider racism, after carefully studying all the factors, as an act against the will of the church, God and Jesus; therefore I deem violence towards racism as immoral. However some minorities of groups such as the Ku Klux Klan use violence to get across a strong point about their beliefs, this however is an effective way of spreading their thinking but is morally unacceptable.
Violence breeds violence, causes suffering to innocent people and is not a Christian response. It is against the teachings of God and often leads to death.
“Thou shall not murder”18
A clear commandment from God.
In conclusion with the back up of the Christian teachings I strongly believe that violence is not acceptable in any sort of response to racism. Violence is never a solution to anything, and is definitely not an appropriate response to racism.
Picture of the KKK ( Ku Klux Klan)
A picture of Desmond Tutu
A picture of Martin Luther King
Bibliography
Jenkins, J ‘Contemporary Moral Issues,’ Chapter 35 Heinemann, London 1986
Chris Brazier ‘Contemporary Moral Issues,’ Chapter 36 Heinemann, London 1986
The Bible
Programs
Microsoft Word
Internet
2 ‘Contemporary Moral issues’, chapter 35 Joe Jenkins
1 Government 01/02 figures
15 Paul’s letter to the Galatians 3:28
16 The World Councils of Churches
