Wondering what knowledgeable members think of the conclusions drawn here. Thanks. 1MT
https://www.facebook.com/notes/catholic-answers/protestantism-and-racism-the-elephant-in-the-room/426024714947351/Protestantism and Racism – The Elephant in the Room
CATHOLIC CULTURAL FUND - FONDO CULTURAL CATOLICO·THURSDAY, JUNE 11, 2020·
By Dr. Carlos Diaz Lujan
HISTORICALLY, the Judaic concepts of "Chosen People" and "Racial Superiority" are what have bred racism in the West. Wherever the chosen people / racial superiority ideology has been embraced and sanctioned by the State, racism invariably has germinated and exploded. Being that Protestantism is, theologically, the Judaization of Christianity, meaning the re-casting of Christianity into the Rabbinical Jєωιѕн mold, racism, racial segregation, and racial animosity have always been experienced more acutely in Protestant societies than in Catholic ones.
Racism, segregation, and racial hate are essentially and historically a Protestant social and political phenomenon. Racial hate and animosity have never been experienced or suffered in Catholic societies the way they have been experienced and suffered in Protestant ones. Being doctrinally founded, as they are, on the concept of the universality of God's family on earth, Catholic societies have always frowned upon racism, racial animosity, hostility, and segregation.
American historian Katharine Gerbner contends that Protestantism was fundamental to the development of both slavery and racism in the Protestant Atlantic world. Protestant slave owners pushed public policies and legal codes based on an ideology of "Protestant Supremacy," which excluded the majority of enslaved men and women from non-Protestant communities.
Gerbner points out that for Protestant slaveholders, Christianity was a symbol of freedom, and most believed that slaves were ineligible for conversion. Consequently, when missionaries arrived in the plantation colonies in the 1670s seeking the conversion of enslaved Africans to Protestantism, they were chased off by slave owners who rejected the prospect of slave conversion.
Slaveholders regularly attacked missionaries, both verbally and physically, and blamed the evangelizing newcomers for slave rebellions. In response, Quaker, Anglican, and Moravian missionaries began articulating a vision of a so-called "Christian Slavery," that marketed Protestantism as the formula that would make slaves docile, hardworking and loyal to their masters.
Over time, Protestant missionaries used the language of race to support their arguments that Protestantism would make better slaves out of blacks. Black slaves, meanwhile, were inculcated an alternate vision of Protestantism that linked their religious conversion to literacy and, eventually, their freedom. American history reveals that the contentions between slave owners, slaves, and Protestant missionaries transformed the practice of Protestantism and the language of race in early modern American society.
DOES PROTESTANTISM BEGET RACISM?
Having been founded by Protestants and nourished on Protestant religious beliefs and customs, American society and public life have been stained by racism from the beginning. Although there were a few token Catholics in the original 13 colonies, the United States was by and large a Protestant endeavor and America continues to be deeply rooted in Protestant socio-political, religious beliefs and ideology.
Today, many ignore the fact that Protestantism, with its emphasis on the “one book explains all” concept, as opposed to the Catholic “one universal family headed by a universal shepherd” concept, gave new life to some of the worst aspects and practices of rabbinic Judaism as it existed over 2,000 years ago, including beliefs about race superiority, racial purity, and racial segregation. (Remember the vehement Jєωιѕн тαℓмυdic condemnations against “the Chosen” fraternizing, socially intermingling, engaging in inter-marriage, and otherwise mixing with non-Jєωs?)
Protestantism gave us the concept of Biblical inerrancy. It taught us that rabbinic Jєωs, not Christians, were still the “Chosen People.” This created confusion among Christians wanting to understand their relationship to Judaism and their place before God. This confusion caused many Protestants, such as the renegade Catholic monk Martin Luther, to hate the Jєωs instead of desiring their salvation. Calvinists resurrected the rabbinic, racist, “Chosen People” dogma in a new guise called Predestination or “predetermined salvation.”
ISN’T LUTHER THE FATHER OF GERMAN ANTISEMITISM?
Ironically, Lutheranism, which Judaized Christian theology and liturgical worship in numerous ways, is steeped in anti-Semitism. Luther denounced the Jєωιѕн people. In his writings he urged for their harsh persecution. For his virulently anti-Jєωιѕн statements and writings, Luther is aptly known as the father of German antisemitism.
It should be noted that Scientific Racism didn't exist in Europe prior to the advent of Protestantism in the 1500's. It was only after the Protestant Revolution that racism began to be taken seriously, as a social and political proposition to be advocated and defended, instead of being merely a visceral form of hatred or animosity.
So, the question is: Have Protestant theological beliefs played a major role in shaping the racial ideas that informed and sustained slavery, continue to define and support racism, and produce so-called “White Guilt” today? Have Protestant theology and social thought spawned racial hate, segregation, discrimination? Haven’t they allowed lynchings to happen? Let’s see.
WHITE SUPREMACY AND PROTESTANTISM
The White Supremacy movement is a rabidly Protestant movement. The KKK is a rabidly Protestant group. All the major leaders of the so-called “Christian Identity” movement, also known as Anglo-Isrealism, are rabidly Protestant. The Know Nothing party, formally known as the Native American Party and the American Party from 1855 onwards, was a rabidly Protestant, anti-Catholic, nativist movement whose socially pathological effects are still felt today.
At its height in the 1850s, the Know Nothing party, originally called the American Party, included more than 100 elected congressmen, eight governors, a controlling share of half-a-dozen state legislatures from Massachusetts to California, and thousands of local politicians. The party supported deportation of foreign beggars and criminals; a 21-year naturalization period for immigrants; mandatory Protestant Bible reading in schools; and the elimination of all Catholics from public office. The party’s goal was to restore a Protestant vision of what America should look like with Protestantism as America’s unofficial religion.
Know Nothing posters around Boston proclaimed, “All Catholics and all persons who favor the Catholic Church are vile imposters, liars, villains, and cowardly cutthroats.” Convents were said to hold young women against their will. An “exposé” was published by someone named “Maria Monk,” who claimed to have gone undercover in one such convent, accused priests of raping nuns and then strangling the babies that resulted.
It didn’t matter that Monk was subsequently unmasked as a fraud. The book she supposedly wrote sold hundreds of thousands of copies. The hate and hysteria were so virulent that Catholic churches and schools were burned. Priests and nuns were terrorized and historians report that Know Nothing gangs spread from New York and Boston to Philadelphia, Baltimore, Louisville, Cincinnati, New Orleans, St. Louis and San Francisco.
WHY NOT CONFRONT THE UNCOMFORTABLE FACTS?
So, why not connect the dots? Why not admit the facts? Why not analyze the role of Protestantism in the development of America’s nativist and racist beliefs? How do Protestant religious beliefs, and Protestantism’s Judaizing religious influence, promote racism in American society? Why and how does Protestantism encourage this kind of “exclusivism”, this “racially chosen” mindset? These are all uncomfortable, but unavoidable questions.
Since Catholics, from day one, are taught to believe in a universal, one flock, one shepherd concept, no Catholic country has ever suffered from Apartheid or racial segregation. Mixed-marriages, accepted throughout the Catholic world, were socially condemned, and even statutorily outlawed, in Protestant America.
When will America own up to the fact that Protestantism is at the very core of the racial animosity, hate and discrimination it continues to suffer?
All Catholics, regardless of their race, nationality or ethnic origin, are taught to consider themselves equally as brothers. Is it any wonder, then, that racially-motivated mass killings do not occur in racially-mixed, supposedly “intolerant,” predominantly Catholic Ibero-America?
Who can deny that Protestant religious propaganda and prejudices are critical elements to understanding race relations in the United States? Who can deny that these religious-based prejudices affect Anglo-Protestant relations with Blacks, Hispanics and all other racial groups? Then, why is Protestantism’s role in this cultural, social, political, and racial disjuncture so scrupulously avoided and never discussed in America today?
The phrase “the elephant in the room” is generally defined as “a major problem or controversial issue that is obviously present but avoided as a subject for discussion because it is more comfortable to do so.” When will America own up to the fact that Protestantism is at the very core of the racial animosity, hate and discrimination it continues to suffer?
June 24, 2015