Thank God I am black. White people will have a lot to
answer for at the last judgement
Desmond Tutu (1931- ), Archbishop of Capetown, South Africa
The idea that racial or ethnic groups should be persecuted
is very popular in the bible. God himself was keen on the extirpation
of whole peoples, such as the Amalekites (I 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 ancester,
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 eclesiastical authorities
refused licences for mixed mariages. Every candidate for the
priesthood had to show purity of blood going back four generations.
The last limpieza de sangre laws were repealed on 16th May 1865.
The prevailing Christian view by the end of the Middle Ages
was that non-Europeans were inferior creatures. The 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.
Indians in the Americas were a particular problem because they
clearly had a high culture of their own, and the Catholic Church
debated with itself for a long time over the nature and quality
of these peoples. When a debate held in 1550 at Valladolid in
Spain lead to the conclusion that American Indians were indeed
fully human, it became difficult to justify keeping them in
slavery. The short term solution was a system which was not
called slavery, but which amounted to slavery (econmienda).
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
was 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 the 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, & I must
see them there?" . It was generally believed that Heaven
was reserved for European Christians. If for the occasional
non-white were to qualify for Heaven, it was obvious to all
that their sooty countenances would have to be transformed.
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 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, in Australasia, and elsewhere
around the world 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 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
help stock these new lands. The children of single mothers in
Britain for example were often entrusted to Church charities
who told the children that 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 teaming 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 free thinkers.
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 churchmen. 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, and was
enormously popular. The Rev. Thomas Dixon's novel The Clansman,
for example was made into an influential film in 1915: D. W.
Griffith's famous The Birth of a Nation, which explicitly glorifies
the Klan. (The film is now rarely shown, and then only with
heavy cuts).
Apartheid ("Segregation") remained longest where
Christian belief was strongest. Black people were denied education,
denied the vote, and denied civil rights. Segregation was the
norm in health care, in church, on public transport, in places
of entertainment, housing - almost every aspect of life. Inter-racial
marriage was illegal in many states of the USA until the 1960's.
The iniquity of such laws was brought to public attention by
various black rights groups and white liberals. 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 nineteen states until as late as 1967 .
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 - Catholics, Protestants,
Baptists and other non-conformists 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 church presidentannounced a divine
revelation which 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 practise 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 1980's the Dutch
Reformed Church 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 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 are,
they say, conducting a Christian Crusade. This crusade has involved
dozens of bombings and arson attacks on black churches, up to
the 1990's. 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 .
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 discrete
word, sometimes with a less discrete word. This practice is
very largely responsible for the growth of separate black Churches.
So it is that all 14 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 . Black Catholics
in the USA want a distinctive black American rite, and periodically
threatened to set one up, with or without backing from the Vatican
.
Effects of traditional Christian teachings still continue
today, not only in organisations like the Ku Klux Klan, but
among the mass of Christian believers. Traditional Christian
attitudes cannot be obliterated in a single generation. 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
.
