On 'Race' and Religion

When I was in Sydney, I knew many South Africans. Some were opponents of apartheid who’d fled imprisonment for their activism. Others were Jewish: they knew a rule basing distinctions on ‘race’ was dangerous and bad for Jews. (The Nazi conflation of religion with ‘race’ viewed religion as unchangeable, so the music of Mendelssohn, a Roman Catholic, couldn’t be played). Some were both.

            The Christian activists opposed a Christian government. Members of the Dutch Reformed Church dominated political life.[1] Many problems of European provenance devolve back to the Reformation: this is one. When Jan Van Riebeeck established it in 1652, the Dutch Reformed Church brought the doctrines of the Synod of Dordt (1618-1619), ‘an extreme version of Calvinist predestination’ that includes ‘the unconditional decree by God of election, the limiting of Christ’s atoning death for humanity to those elect to salvation, the total corruption of humankind, the irresistibility of God’s grace, and the unchallengeable perseverance in saving grace of God’s elect.’[2]

            It’s easy to see how such doctrines support a thinking of division, hierarchy, status and dismissal even upon a homogeneous population. In South Africa, the Dutch Reformed minister who encouraged apartheid was also Prime Minister; there are different grades of Christianity in South Africa to this day.[3]

            That ‘race’ is so easily tied to religion should be a warning to us now, when Muslims, especially Muslim asylum seekers, may be perceived as a ‘race’ apart. Indeed, Serbian nationalism promoted the Bosnian genocide (1992-1995) by casting Muslims as deracinated alien ‘Orientals’.[4] Are asylum seekers so different, so othered, so worthy of concentration camps, deaths, expulsions? We must see to our theology, our humanity, our very souls.

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[1] Division of Religion and Philosophy, University of Cumbria, “Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa,” University of Cumbria, http://www.philtar.ac.uk/encyclopedia/christ/cep/drcsa.html (accessed November 10, 2015).

[2] Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490-1700 (London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2004), 485; 378.

[3] University of Cumbria, “Dutch Reformed Church of South Africa.” All congregations were desegregated in 1986, however.

[4] Karen Armstrong, Fields of Blood: Religion and the History of Violence (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004), 374.