Race, Christians and Christ

Extract

The central Christian tradition has always carried the teaching that men are, before God, equal: that the differences due to social rank, class or race are only of accidental importance compared with the fundamental truth that each human being, as made in the image of God, may not, without sin, be deprived of his dignity or proper freedom. Though this is a statement about what is most real in man, a statement about his meaning as a being created by God, it none the less wears a very abstract character. Each generation of Christians must find for it its historical verification, and the pious mind, being prone to dwell in the world of aspiration and ideal, is only too often content, in the name of subjective peace, to refuse to come to grips with concrete circumstances. The result is that the cynic often seems to have justice on his side when he says that it is a nice bit of rationalisation that is never allowed to influence the structure of society, or our social motivation. Excessive stress on the ‘before God’ leads either to the view that what happens in history is irrelevant to salvation, which is a heresy, or to the attitude that after all it is a personal matter between the individual and God. This implies a very naive view of the influence of environment and society on the individual.