“It is appalling that the most segregated hour of Christian America is eleven o’clock on Sunday morning.” Martin Luther King Jr.
Sometime back, I wrote something on Christianity and being a follower of Christ making a distinction of the two terms which though used interchangeably have different meanings.
I wanted to make this distinction because of the evils that have been committed in the name of Christianity.
It should be noted that Christianity was used to justify apartheid, the Ku Klux Klan, colonialism and racism in general.
Just as some Muslims are using their faith to justify terrorist acts, most Christians, especially whites, have justified Christianity for evils like racial superiority and killing of gentiles.
However, the greatest embarrassment of Christianity is its long approval of slavery and racism, two evils that has scarred the history of humanity.
During the final day of hearings of the Truth Commission in South Africa, it was not only former security personnel who apologised for their role in perpetuating apartheid.
The world was shocked when the Dutch Reformed Church joined other apologists for its role in racial segregation in the country during the apartheid years.
The Church said it hoped to re-unite the Dutch Reformed white, black and mixed race sister churches which were separated decades ago.
Note that the Dutch Reformed Church was the most powerful religious institution in South Africa and most of the country’s presidents and prime ministers during the apartheid years were members.
It was only in 1992, two years after the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, that the Church acknowledged apartheid as a sin.
However, we should bear in mind that though the Dutch Reformed Church was extreme in its support of apartheid, other Christian denominations also played a tacit role in supporting the separatist racial policy.
Christians, especially early missionaries, justified racism to an extent of citing biblical verses like the infamous Joshua 9:23 which reads: ‘Now therefore, you are cursed, and some of you shall never be anything but servants, cutters of wood and drawers of water for the house of my God’.
The Bible spoke without condemnation of slavery as though it were legitimate.
Even the much lauded abolitionists like William Wilberforce and William Lloyd Garrison, while condemning slavery for its violation of basic Christian principles, opened their argument to attack since their opponents provided biblical backing for upholding the system.
A classic example of justifying racism using biblical maxim was put forth by the Southern clergyman, the Reverend Buckner Payne, who published a widely read tract “The Negro: What Is His Ethnological Status” (1867).
Quoting from the Old and New Testament, Payne used the Noah’s Ark story arguing that since blacks are present with us today, they “must have been in the ark.” (This acknowledges the impossibility of climate turning a white man black in four thousand years).
He also cited the New Testament passage 1 Peter 3:20: “God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls were saved by water.”
Payne does the math: if only eight souls were saved in the ark, and they are fully accounted for by Noah’s family, then “the negro being in the ark, was not one of those eight souls.”
If “negroes” were on the ark but were not a part of the eight that have souls, then they must have been on the ark in the same capacity as horses and cows.
He then arrived at the conclusion that “The Negro was in the ark; and God thus testifies that he has no soul.”
Coming back to Christianity and the twisting of verses, we should realise that biblical backing has been used to justify a number of causes including going to war with an ‘enemy.’
For racism, the bible provided a number of texts that were used to justify evils to do with blacks.
For example, the Bible used symbolism of colour like white and black with the former representing God and the latter the devil.
One would wonder why racists who use the Bible miss numerous verses that highlight oneness of the human race, whether Caucasians, Africans, Asians, Indians, Arabs, and Jews.
If interpreted properly, the Bible states that in God’s eyes, all human beings are equal since they are created in the image and likeness of God (Genesis 1:26-27).
The Bible further states that God loved the world so much that he sent Jesus to lay down his life for us (John 3:16) which includes all ethnic groups.
Unlike man, God does not show partiality or favouritism (Deuteronomy 10:17; Acts 10:34; Romans 2:11; Ephesians 6:9), and neither should we since James 2:4 describes those who discriminate as “judges with evil thoughts.”
We should also note that in the Old Testament, God divided humanity into two “racial” groups: Jews and Gentiles; with the intention of Jews to be a kingdom of priests, ministering to the Gentile nations.
However, for the most part, the Jews became conceited of their status and despised the Gentiles, something Jesus Christ put an end to, destroying the dividing wall of hostility (Ephesians 2:14).
How come then the Bible is a fertile source of justification for racism despite several verses stating that all forms of racism, prejudice, and discrimination are affronts to the work of Christ on the cross?
The Bible has been used to justify many causes making the famous quote by John Howard Griffin “Every fool in error can find a passage of scripture to back him up” appropriate.
