In Memory of the Charleston Nine
On June 17, 2015, Dylan Roof, a white supremacist, walked into the African American Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, North Carolina and killed nine people while they held a bible study. On August 5, 2012 a white supremacist, Michael Page walked into a Sikh Temple (Gurdwara) and killed six people and wounded others.
The news of these mass shootings have become part of the American fabric in these last few years, and the renewed rise of white nationalism in America has been at the heart of this violence in many cases. The troubling upsurge in racism, xenophobia, and bias against religious and cultural minorities in our nation is an opportunity to ponder not only what is really going on, but how we can be a source of healing in the great divide.
The Christian Identity Movement
David Walsh wrote an important article for The Tablet Magazine called The Bloody History of America’s Christian Identity Movement. The attacks mentioned above, like so much more violence, is inspired by a ‘Christian Identity” movement that fuses white nationalism and medieval anti-Semitism. The centrality of the Christian Identity Movement to anti-Semitism is largely unknown to the general public.
Christian identity grows out of a mystical form of Protestantism with roots in British religious movements of the 19th century. It reemerged in its American form in the mid-twentieth century by pole like the California preacher and former Ku Lux Klan organizer Wesley Swift, who held hat white Caucasians, not Asiatic Jews, were in fact the true descendants of the 12 tribes of Israel.
Since its emergence in America, Christian Identity theology has been tied to dozens of white nationalist terrorist attacks over the past 50 years, including the 1968 bombing of a synagogue in Meridian, Mississippi, and the murder of Jewish radio personality Alan Berg in 1984. Most recently it shaped the plans for the killing of 11 congregants at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, as well as its inspiration of a 19-year-old gunman to go to a Chabad in Poway, California, six months after the Pittsburgh shootings. The Poway shooter, John Earnest, was a churchgoer who articulation of Christian theology was unnerving.
The Catholic Response
In the growing news cycles over clergy sexual abuse, one of the important works of the Bishops have been largely overlooked. The issue of racism for Catholics is not new of course. The anti-Catholic sentiment of the 19th and early 20th century in the United States, led by the Ku Klux Klan, among others, is part of the Catholic legacy of America, and one we should take heed.
In 2016, Archbishop Wilton Gregory, who is now the new Bishop of the Archdiocese of Washington, headed the work of the bishops. He said: “We find ourselves at a critically important moment for our individual communities and our nation as a whole. The Church has a tremendous opportunity and, we believe, an equally tremendous responsibility to bring people together in prayer and dialogue, to begin anew the vital work of fostering healing and lasting peace.
As the Racism Task Force notes in our findings, the effort needed to root out racism and create healthy dynamics in our neighborhoods, dynamics based on encounter and deeper understanding, is a long-term project. Even so, we must not be intimidated or afraid of the hard work before us. The Church is at her absolute best when she is a bold and prophetic voice for the power of the love upon which our faith is based, the love of Jesus Christ.”
The document Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love – A Pastoral Letter Against Racism was developed by the Committee on Cultural Diversity in the Church of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and approved by the full body of bishops November 2018. It looks at what racism is and how Catholics respond to the cancer of racism that rises in many forms in our country, implicitly and explicitly. Through scripture, church teaching and life experiences. It goes to say:
“Although our nation has moved forward in a number of ways against racial discrimination, we have lost ground in others. Despite significant progress in civil law with regard to racism, societal realities indicate a need for further catechesis to facilitate conversion of hearts. Too many good and faithful Catholics remain unaware of the connection between institutional racism and the continued erosion of the sanctity of life. We are not finished with the work.
The evil of racism festers in part because, as a nation, there has been very limited formal acknowledgement of the harm done to so many, no moment of atonement, no national process of reconciliation and, all too often a neglect of our history. Many of our institutions still harbor, and too many of our laws still sanction, practices that deny justice and equal access to certain groups of people. God demands more from us. We cannot, therefore, look upon the progress against racism in recent decades and conclude that our current situation meets the standard of justice. In fact, God demands what is right and just.” p 10
It looks at the Native American experience, the African American experience, and the Hispanic experience, and outlines a spirituality that acknowledges the sin of racism, being open to encounter new experiences, resolving to work for justice, educating ourselves, and working through our faith communities. Dismantling the structures of racism. This ongoing task, since the time of slavery, through the heroes of the civil rights struggle can only be accomplished with ecumenical and interfaith collaboration, along with civil society.
Resources
Here are some resources of the bishops you may want to take advantage of.
Open Wide Our Hearts: The Enduring Call to Love – A Pastoral Letter Against Racism, 2018 | Abramos nuestros corazones: El incesante llamado al amor – Carta pastoral contra el racismo, 2018
Brothers and Sisters to Us – U.S. Catholic Bishops Pastoral Letter on Racism, 1979 | Selected quotes
Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself: U.S. Catholic Bishops Speak Against Racism – In 2001, several bishops brought together a series of essays on the perspective of the different cultural families and on racism in general. Their insight remains relevant today and still relevant excerpts, collated in 2013, are available.
What We’ve Seen and Heard: A
Pastoral Letter on Evangelization | En Español | Selected quotes
From the Black Bishops of the United States
September 9, 1984
