For some of you reading this- Christians and non-Christians- the title of this piece is at best problematic, at worst untenable. Please bear with me. There is a cause, which I hope we will unpack shortly.
The Christian faith has had a long, chequered history. Christianity began in the first century as a counterculture, with the early adherents described as radical disruptors who “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6), not with violence or aggression but what the key leaders described as “the Gospel of Peace” (Ephesians 6:15) and the “Ministry of Reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18). Against the severe odds of brutal persecution and a relentless, murderous campaign unleashed by the powerful establishment of the day, the radical movement triumphed, not by the force of arms, but by the sheer power of unwavering faith and the unyielding fearlessness of radical love they displayed- not only among themselves but also to the “outside” world of non-adherents, including their persecutors. What started as a fringe movement spread like wildfire, engulfing the entire Roman Empire in a short space of time.
A few hundred years later, in 312 AD, the counter-culture movement became the establishment, de facto, when the Emperor Constantine reportedly saw a vision of Christ on the eve of the Battle of the Milvian Bridge. The vision of a cross of light was reportedly accompanied with the words “In this sign conquer”. While Constantine did not immediately make Christianity the state religion, he did issue the Edict of Milan in 313 AD, legalising Christianity and ending centuries of persecution. He also granted Christianity imperial favour, and became increasingly involved in the affairs of the Church, culminating in his convening of the Council of Nicea in 325 AD. I am not embarking on detailed account of early church history here, but this context matters because from thereon the profile of Christianity changed in a fundamental way- from what it was in the first century. The corruption and atrophy that set in, as the Church effectively traded the power of the Spirit with the machineries and artifices of the State, precipitated, among others, the Dark Age (c904 to 1046AD), during which one pope ran the papal palace like a brothel. That was followed by the Gregorian reforms, and new cycles of atrophy and reforms throughout the medieval papacy (590AD to 1517AD)- a long period that ended with the protestant reformation (1517-1648).
The reason why I am drawing attention to this historical context is that the chequered history of Christianity is, in one sense, a long and recurring cycle of corruption and reform. The corruption turn can be summed up as follows: opportunistic politicians and ambitious power seekers see in the church a ready platform and tool they can harness and co-opt to achieve their ambitions for power. The Church, so co-opted and used, is deprived of its vitality. When the Church reaches the lower end in the phase of corruption, reformers emerged, guided by the original principles and doctrines of the faith. They succeed, usually incrementally, before the next phase of corruption crept in. And on it goes. This is where I take off this conversation, to wit: the normalisation of racism in Christianity, with the heavy involvement of institutional in North America and Europe, amounted to a phase of corruption. My purpose here therefore is to go back to the original precepts of the Christian Faith as outlined in the Scriptures, understood in the light of Christ, seeing as the Lord himself says “these are they which testifies of me” (John 5:39).
Every nation “from one blood”
One of the fundamental teachings that run throughout the Bible is the notion that human race all came from one man, Adam. In Genesis, we read that God said ‘Let Us make man in our image”, and that Eve became “the mother of ALL living” (Genesis 3:20, emphasis mine). In time, languages and language groups emerged (Genesis 11:1-19), but it is clear that the idea of multiple races of humans is alien to the Scriptures. There is the one human race, and that is it. It is to this theme that the Apostle Paul turned when he was engaging the group of philosophers and scholars at Athens, around 50AD, when he told them that God “has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings” (Acts 17:26).
The singleness of the human race does not detract from the evolution of different languages or the variety of physical appearances. The story of the first biblical twin is instructive in this regard. Esau was reddish or earthy appearance, and hairy- both in contrast to his twin brother Jacob (Genesis 25:25). In Judges 12, we also read the story of the conflict between the Gileadites and the Ephraimites, two Isreali sub-groups. The Gileadites used a linguistic test to identify the fleeing Ephraimites, who they asked to pronounce “Shibboleth”. There are other biblical accounts of differences in physical features and languages between, say, Jews and Samaritans, Egyptians and Hebrews, and so on. In the Song of Songs, the Shulammite woman was described as “dark and lovely (Song of Songs 1:5). In Genesis 10:5, we had a list of nations by languages, and we get the sense here that the evolution of languages is also associated, at least in part, to geography and climate: “the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each with its own language”.
If it is indeed the case, as we have seen, that physical and linguistic differences do not negate the overarching truth of the singleness of the human race, how and why did the differences become weaponised for discrimination and violence? Also, what about the curses reportedly placed on entire groups, such as Noah’s curse on the children of Ham/Canaan (Genesis 9:20-27), and Moses’ curse on Amalek (Deuteronomy 25:17-19)? It is true that these examples have been used by apologists of racist discrimination and genocidal violence, and to this we shall now turn our attention in the next instalment of this series- next week.