Race and Theology

Week 1: Race and the Bible  

The Biblical narrative starts with the story of humanity’s common ancestor: Adam. The book of Genesis describes the peopling of God’s creation with different peoples. The story of the Tower of Babel explains the existence of diverse cultural and linguistic groups, while the descendants of Noah are seemingly described as the progenitors of different ethnic groups. At the same time, the Hebrew Bible tells the story of a ‘chosen people’: Israel. In the New Testament, meanwhile, this concept is exploded, with a new focus on the claim that there is ‘neither Jew nor Greek… for all are one in Christ Jesus.’ This section of the course explores the theme of race as it appears in the sacred texts of Christianity, asking whether there are any aspects of the text which could reasonably be described as racist, or – alternatively – whether the text has been the subject of abuse by racist readers.    

Week 2: Anti-Semitism and Medieval Church

Anti-Semitism is sometimes referred to as the oldest form of racism. Prejudice against Jewish people is rooted in a medieval ideology, which was itself intertwined with Christian ideas regarding the relationship between Christians and Jewish people. Anti-Jewish bias during the medieval period drew upon Biblical texts and particularly upon the claim that Jewish people were accursed. This ideology provided the basis for the segregation of Jewish people, for their persecution and – periodically – for their murder. This section of the course explores the ways in which Christian theology was manipulated over many centuries in order to facilitate the phenomenon of Christian anti-Semitism.

Week 3: Christianity and early European Colonialism

The age of discovery, which arose in the fifteenth century, was also the dawn of European colonialism. For the next four-hundred years, European settlers colonised and exploited vast swathes of territory in Africa, Asia and the Americas. Often this enterprise was defended in the name of Christianity and evangelisation. Cultures and human lives were destroyed in order that the Church could expand its reach across the known world. At the same time, voices from within Christianity – like Bartolomé de las Casas and Matteo Ricci –celebrated and defended the dignity of the cultures which they encountered during this period. They applied the principles of the Gospel to these endeavours. This section of the course explores the history of those who sought to destroy non-European cultures and of those who saw the beauty of God in their encounter with the Other during the early-modern period.    

Week 4: Christianity and Slavery

The eighteenth century saw the emergence of industrial slavery on a scale never before seen. Millions human beings were captured from the African continent and were tortured, transported and dehumanised by slave traders. The debate over the abolition of slavery led – in part – to Civil War in the United States, a conflict which itself claimed the lives of over 600,000 people. Those who argued that slavery was justified, looked to the Bible for this justification. Meanwhile the effort to abolish slavery was spearheaded by Christians, themselves inspired by the message of the Gospels. This section of the course examines the role played by Christian thought in the rise and fall of the Atlantic slave trade.

Week 5: Race and Theology in the Twentieth Century

The pseudo-science of racial difference became influential in the nineteenth century and reached an horrific crescendo with the catastrophe of the Holocaust. Across the European continent and in America, pseudo-science and warped Christian theology was used during this period to mask the evils of segregation and genocidal violence. At precisely the same time, new voices, from previously marginalised communities, were emerging within the Church. They brought a new message, inspired by the Gospels, which called for the destruction of racist ideology and the guarantee of dignity to all people. These voices – among them Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Martin Luther King, James Cone, Desmond Tutu, Thea Bowman and many others – sought to use the power of the Gospel to destroy racism for good. This section of the course navigates the use of Christian sources by racist and anti-racist groups alike during the twentieth and twenty-first century.

common ancestor