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Thank God I am black. White people
will have a lot to answer for at the last judgement.
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Desmond Tutu (1931- ), Archbishop
of Cape Town, South Africa
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The idea that racial or ethnic groups should be persecuted
is popular in the Bible. God himself was keen on exterminating
whole peoples, such as the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3).
Believing that they had replaced the Jews as God's chosen
people, Christians deduced that they were free to persecute
and extirpate non-Christian peoples, and even that they were
under a moral obligation to do so. When the Jews and Moors were
expelled from Spain towards the end of the fifteenth century,
racial legislation was passed to "purify" the blood
of the upper classes. Anyone with Jewish or Moorish blood was
suspect and penalised. Under statutes of limpieza de sangre,
the descendants of Jews and Moors, even though they were Christians,
were debarred from universities, religious orders, military
orders and public office. In theory anyone who had any Jewish
or Moorish ancestor, however remote, was of "impure blood"
and suffered accordingly. Such people were second class citizens.
Moreover they were second class citizens for racial, not religious,
reasons. There was no question about it: according to the rules
even the most devout Christian should be punished for having
even a single distant ancestor of the wrong race. In some places
these second class citizens were obliged to intermarry well
into the nineteenth century because the ecclesiastical authorities
refused licences for mixed marriages. Every candidate for the
priesthood had to show purity of blood going back four generations.
The last limpieza de sangre laws were repealed on 16
th May 1865.
The prevailing Christian view by the end of the Middle Ages
was that non-Europeans were inferior creatures. The Roman Catholic
Church debated for a long time whether newly discovered peoples
around the world were even human. The problem was that there
was no way of establishing whether or not they possessed souls.
The indigenous peoples of the Americas were a particular problem
because they clearly had a high culture of their own, and the
Roman Catholic Church debated with itself for a long time over
their exact nature. When a debate held in 1550 at Valladolid
in Spain led to the conclusion that they were indeed fully human,
it became difficult to justify keeping them in slavery. The
short-term solution was a system that was not called slavery
but still amounted to slavery. The long-term solution was to
import slaves bought in Africa. No one in Christendom seems
to have worried about the morality of enslaving Africans.
The Anglican Church was concerned about mental capacity, and
wary of trying to bring Christianity to people who might not
be able to understand it. The most common view amongst Christians
had been made explicit by the Barbados Assembly in 1681, when
it stated of black slaves that "Savage Brutishness renders
them wholly uncapable" of being converted*.
Most Christian slave owners had no doubt that the Assembly was
right. There was however a lively debate, mainly among senior
Anglicans, about the theological justification for converting
slaves. It was commonly held that any drive towards conversion
should be tailored towards their greatly inferior mental capacities.
Fed an appropriate diet of quiescent theology, blacks could,
it was claimed, become perfect slaves: compliant, accommodating
and socially calm. But this view was not universal amongst the
slave masters, and few slaves were converted*.
One problem with converting slaves was the danger that some
of them might win a place among the elect. As one slave owner
asked "Is it possible that any of my slaves could go to
Heaven, and must I see them there?"*.
One reason why Christianity found it so difficult to make voluntary
converts around the world was that it was so difficult for locals
to become priests. They were usually denied the right to learn
Latin or read the Bible, and therefore could not hope for a
career in the Church. The few who did could not hope to become
bishops, largely because European priests were not prepared
to serve under them. Such racism limited the spread of Christianity
in many places, but most notably in India. In Africa the Churches
changed their approaches in the twentieth century. East Africa
saw its first black Roman Catholic bishop in 1939, and its first
black Anglican bishop in 1947.
The belief of European Christians that other races were inferior
led to colonisation and large-scale abuse. The extirpation of
native peoples in the Americas, Australasia, and elsewhere was
of little consequence since these peoples were only pagans and
might not even possess souls. They were slaves by nature. God
had made them like that. Christian scholars and pseudo-scientists
concurred. Sample non-Christians were kept in Western zoos in
the nineteenth century. There was an Australian aborigine in
London Zoo. A Congolese pygmy named Ota Benga shared a cage
with an orang-utan in the Bronx Zoo as late as 1906*.
Colonisation by European powers was seen as a God-given opportunity
for spreading the gospel to the heathen. It was a Christian
duty, even when it led to the deaths of millions. God encouraged
colonisation. He showed the way. He spoke to churchmen. He cleared
the path for colonialists. His Churches were keen to convert
or replace native heathen populations. Both Roman Catholic and
Protestant Churches encouraged colonialism. Typically, in Africa,
missionaries would advance into new territories. Sooner or later
they would sow discord, encouraging rebellion against unsympathetic
local rulers. When bloodshed followed, the Churches would appeal
to European governments to intervene, and another territory
would be annexed. This process seems to have accounted for more
than half of the European colonies in Africa.
Churches were often guilty of complicity in massacres and atrocities
resulting from colonial policy. For example King Leopold was
granted control of the Congo in 1885 explicitly to bring Christianity
to the benighted heathen. The atrocities perpetrated by his
government in the Belgian Congo — the extensive use of
slave labour and assorted murderous practices — were first
concealed then minimised by the Roman Church. The truth was
published and international opinion mobilised by nineteenth
century freethinkers. Indeed, almost the only criticism of colonisation
and its evils came from freethinkers. The most notable critics
were Thomas Paine in the eighteenth century and George Holyoake
in the nineteenth, but their views were generally regarded as
wicked, sinful and contrary to God's will. Colonisation
was regarded by almost all Christians as wholly good, divinely
sanctioned and necessary, well into the twentieth century. European
children were removed from their mothers and sent out to the
colonies to help stock these new lands. The children of single
mothers in Britain, for example, were often entrusted to Church
charities that informed the children they were orphans and sent
them to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and other colonies. As
the Archbishop of Perth pointed out in 1938 "If we do not
supply from our own stock, we are leaving ourselves all the
more exposed to the menace of the teeming millions of our neighbouring
Asian races"*.
Long after public opinion had forced Christians to abandon
the practice of slavery, the prevailing orthodoxy was that non-whites
were inferior spiritually, morally, and mentally. Once again
the Bible was cited as proof. A favourite prooftext was "Let
them live; but let them be hewers of wood and drawers of water....
" (Joshua 9:21). All Churches maintained systems of racial
discrimination and sustained them well into the twentieth century,
including segregated churches and church schools. Racial segregation
was opposed largely by atheist intellectuals and other freethinkers.
It was not bishops or clergymen but unbelievers like Bertrand
Russell who spread the idea that all should be treated equally.
   In
the USA where Christian values were strongest, millions of whites
belonged to the Ku Klux Klan, an organisation extolled by all
manner of Protestant churchmen. The Klan was then, and still
is now, a powerful advocate for Christianity. The Christian
cross features heavily in its activities and it has consistently
campaigned for the compulsory teaching of Christianity in public
schools. The Klan was so well accepted as a desirable part of
Christian American life that it commonly featured in the media
— both factual and fictional. The Rev. Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman, for example was made into an influential
film in 1915: Also known as The Birth of a Nation it
is W. Griffith's famous work, which explicitly glorifies
the Klan. (The film is now rarely shown, and then only with
heavy cuts). In the early 1920s the Klan boasted over 4,000,000
members, every one of them a practicing Christian. Woodrow Wilson,
in his History of the American People referred to the
film as "great" and described it as"terribly
true".
Segregation remained longest in the USA where Christian belief
was strongest. Black people were denied education, the vote
and civil rights. Segregation was the norm in health care, in
church, on public transport, in places of entertainment, housing
— almost every aspect of life. Various black rights groups
and white liberals brought the iniquity to public attention.
In the course of a few years public opinion shifted to such
an extent that discrimination was made illegal. Once again the
most strongly Christian states, like Alabama, fought a rearguard
action in the name of God, and inter-racial marriage remained
illegal in 19 heavily Christian states until as late as 1967*.
In the case that finally overturned mix-race marriage laws
the supreme Court cited the trial judge in the original case
as follows: “Almighty God created the races white, black,
yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents.
And but for the interference with his arrangement there would
be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the
races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix”.*
This was entirely in line with traditional Christian teaching
— it had been upheld for decades by Christian judges without
a second thought - but contrary to the minority secular humanist
position.
It had become clear by the mid-1960s that world opinion was
moving away from the traditional Christian acceptance of discrimination.
In the future racist views were going to be politically and
socially unacceptable. If the Churches continued to hold to
traditional views they were likely to be left out on a limb.
Suddenly most world Churches became aware of a new duty in the
field of race relations. Now that the tide of battle had turned,
they declared their opposition to all kinds of racism. To prove
how deeply they held their new beliefs they joined in the badgering
of those who stayed constant to the beliefs that they themselves
had just abandoned. Ten years earlier many had shared with Mormons
the view that black people were descended from Cain. He and
his descendants had been cursed by the Lord with a black skin
and prohibited from the priesthood*.
This sort of belief had been commonplace among white Christians
— Roman Catholics, Protestants, Baptists and other nonconformists
alike. Now it was no longer acceptable to say such things openly.
Mormons were pressed to fall into line with the new orthodoxy.
They held out for as long as they could. Then God stepped in
(as he had previously done over polygamy) to announce a politically
astute change of policy. In June 1978 the President of the Mormon
Church announced a divine revelation that reversed the Church's position. Black people could now become full members of the
Church.
Attention next turned to the last bastion of Christian racism,
South Africa. Through the 1960s the Dutch Reformed Church claimed
biblical authority for the practice of apartheid, and no other
Church had seriously opposed it. As Dr Verwoerd, the Prime Minister
of South Africa had said "We did what God wanted us to
do"*. In
the 1970s this line was no longer tenable. All other world Churches
had performed a volte-face and were now aligned against
their erstwhile ally. For a while the Dutch Reformed Church
held out on its own against its fellow Christian denominations,
still advocating the traditional Christian line. But the pressure
became stronger as the chorus against it became louder. Eventually
the Church gave way. By the 1980s it was assuring us that God
did not approve of apartheid after all: in fact he disapproved
of it. Within a generation the Church went from supporting apartheid
to condemning it as "the antichrist", just as other
Churches had done a few years earlier. Anglican and Roman Catholic
Churches even withdrew their full-time chaplains from the South
African armed forces*.
By the end of the 1960's the only remaining avowed white
supremacists in the world were Christians. The hard-core of
white supremacists in South Africa are still strong Christians
, as are those in other countries. In America, Christians with
traditional views keep alive the Ku Klux Klan. The well-known
cowls and robes worn by members are the traditional garb of
Christian penitents and pilgrims. The Christian cross still
plays an important rôle in their activities. They proudly
wear the emblem on their robes, and use burning crosses to encourage
a fear of God. They raise money for churches. They donate bibles
to schools. They are, they say, conducting a Christian Crusade.
This crusade has involved lynchings and bombings, and arson
attacks on black churches. The Macedonia Baptist Church of South
Carolina sued the Christian Knights of the Ku Klux Klan
in 1996 after members had been arrested in connection with such
arson attacks*. As the
Ku Klux Klan website still says in its homepage they are “bringing
a message of hope and deliverance for white Christian America!”*.
In the twenty first century, Christian Klan members are still
engaging in activities such as arson attacks on non-white homes,
and participating in anti-immigration marches.
In many places throughout the world whites still go to one
church, and blacks to a different one on the other side of town.
Christians of one colour who try to attend Christian churches
of another are sent on their way, sometimes with a discreet
word, sometimes with a less discreet word. This practice is
largely responsible for the growth of separate white and black
Churches. So it is that almost all of the 16 million members
of the Southern Baptist Convention in the USA happen to be white,
although there are roughly as many black Baptists in the country*.
Black churchgoers usually belong to all-black denominations*,
such as the National Baptist Convention in the USA. Black Roman
Catholics in the USA want a distinctive black American rite
and have periodically threatened to set one up, with or without
backing from the Vatican*.
Anti-Semitism was also characteristically Christian. Hatred
of the Jews had been fostered by the Church for centuries, and
was opposed by freethinkers. As we will also see (page 399)
traditional Christian teachings have been anti-Semitic. Jews
were persecuted for centuries by the mainstream Churches using
exactly the same arguments, and drawing exactly the same conclusions,
as the Nazis did later. Many anti-Semitic racist groups still
seem to flourish on a diet of Christianity*.
Effects of traditional Christian attitudes to racial matters
still continue today: they cannot be obliterated in a single
generation. When Ugandan born Dr John Sentanu was enthroned
as Archbshop of York in 2005 he received a hail of insulting
racist letters some of them smeared with excrement*.
They presumably came from Anglicans, possibly other Chistians,
as non-Christians would not have reason to care. Sociological
studies in Britain and the USA have demonstrated that Christians
still tend to be more racially prejudiced than non-Christians.
In a book comparing the results of studies concerning prejudice,
the authors state that "The basic finding that church members
are more prejudiced than non-members has been widely confirmed
in American studies"*.
According to these studies Roman Catholics were the most prejudiced
major denomination in the US. Similar studies showed that Anglicans
were the most prejudiced in Britain*.
In another study, religious orthodoxy was found to be positively
correlated with belief in racial segregation*.
More social issues:
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