Anna asked:

How might a Christian respond to someone who has racist opinions?

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I take it that this 'someone' might also be a Christian? Racism is a pernicious, destructive [philosophy
that contributes nothing to the development of the human project. Indeed, it subverts it. It places its
primary importance on the external determinants of race or colour and on the basis of that it seeks to
make a statement about the human person. Colour is important, because it is constitutive of the
person who is that colour, but it is important as a genetic indicator of race but not of one's humanity
— only human is the indicator of one's humanity.

Racism sets itself up as a valid way of looking at the world, the world environment and the people in it
through a method of interpreting place and role in world and society based on cultural or
pigmentational factors. It is destructive since it says nothing, or conveys nothing positive about the
human people it speaks of since it speaks of those human people in negative terms to the extent that
they cease to be human in the eyes of racism and racists. They are 'black'; 'Asian'; 'Irish' or whatever,
they are not a 'human person whose country and culture of origin is ....' Racism, therefore, contributes
nothing to the on going development of the human project. It is a scourge on the soul of humanity and
feeds like a destructive virus or parasite on peoples' fears, ignorance and prejudices (though, having
said that, the analogy with the virus or parasite is not fair, even the most destructive parasite or virus
is what it is as a thing in itself, one does not condemn a virus for being what it is in itself, but one
condemns a racist for being other than what he/she may become in their terms of capability and
potential as a human person since they limit the potential; for their own human growth).

The Christian response (bearing in mind that some Christians and Christian groups have been racist,
are presently racist, and will be racist) must be based on the fundamental conviction that all men and
women are equal before God. But equality does not mean sameness, that is why we have different
skin colours, languages, cultures, literature, music and so on. These variations of the creativity of the
Divine are testament to the splendour and glory of creation; they are the 'dappled things' that Gerard
Manley Hopkins speaks off which give praise and glory to the Creator.

The Christian response, therefore, must be the response of the one in whom Christianity has its
provenance, and in whom it makes the confession of belief to be the one, true, and only saviour or
the whole of the cosmos, Jesus of Nazareth, which Christianity believes to be God incarnate. His
treatment of the Centurion (a Roman, whose servants he heals); the woman at the well in the gospel
of John ( a Samaritan woman whose 'race' was utterly despised by Jesus' own race) — it must be
one of acceptance, respect and liberation. The Sermon on the Mount is a universal annunciation;
Love God and your neighbour is a universal annunciation; love your enemies is a universal
annunciation. While Jesus is born in a specific history, at a specific time, in a specific culture, he is
nevertheless, the fundamental unifying principle of all humanity (I am speaking from my own credal
confession). Thus, the simple fact of the matter is: one cannot be a Christian and be a racist. It is
diametrically opposed to every principle and value that Jesus of Nazareth held to be the determinant
of his own life. The Christian response to racism, thus, is one of challenge and confrontation since
what demeans the human person is unacceptable in the eyes of the Divine and it undermines and
makes a mockery of everything Jesus of Nazareth became, is, and ever will be. It is to be rejected
outright as destructive, pernicious, insidious and an infection in the soul of the human spirit.

Fr. Seamus Mulholland OFM

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