Racism has 'distorted' Christianity since the time of Jesus, theologian says
White supremacy remains prevalent in Christianity today because it took root in the early church, theologian Anthony Reddie said at a Baylor University conference this month.
Reddy, a professor of black theology at the University of Oxford in England, said in a Feb. 15 speech that white supremacy has been “distorting” Christianity since the time of Jesus Christ. Baptist News Global.
Hosted by Baylor's Truett Seminary, the conference focused on racism in the global church.
“The most serious issue we have to grapple with is the normalization of white supremacy,” Reddie said.
He said Christianity was “founded as a movement for marginalized and oppressed people,” but white leaders quickly began using the religion as a weapon to seize land and oppress other cultures.
According to the report, Reddy traced the source of the distortion to early Christians who accused Jews, not Roman leader Pontius Pilate, of killing Jesus.
“Pilate represents white supremacy, and now white supremacy has been normalized and has become, in effect, the religion of Jesus, the religion of God,” the professor said.
Over time, Reddie said, more and more people began to believe that Jesus was a white European like them.
Baptist News Global report:
That's why few white Christians cringe at the claim that Jesus called Christians in Europe and America to oppress brown and black skin. He explained that planters in the American South could see this through Christianity, which was steeped in white supremacy. There is no contradiction between their beliefs and owning another human being. “They saw other people as inferior and thought it was okay to kill or enslave them for their own gain.”
These attitudes clearly continue to exist and Trumpism is clearly on the rise in the United States, the British academic said.
He said white supremacy's long association with Christianity has “distorted the very structure of what we call Christianity and the essence of the church.”
The Baylor conference is part of a “three-year-long program to confront racism in the white church and pursue God’s justice,” according to the event website. More than 12 people including pastors, theologians, and Christian leaders attended. Baylor is a private Protestant university in Texas.
Earlier this year, a Catholic university professor also linked white supremacy to the early Christian church in a new book, “Christian Supremacy.” Author Professor Magda Teter of Fordham University said: jewish telegraph office The ideology of white supremacists is “rooted in Christian ideas about social and religious hierarchy.”
Read more: Professor blames St Paul's and 'Christian supremacy' for modern-day racism
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