Christianity - the root of racism?

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Mark Twain said what we all already know: that "even the Devil can cite scripture for his purposes".

Any creed can be twisted to any end. There are those few lines of scripture (that stuff about the Mark of Ham) that American White racists use to justify racism.

But so can secular beliefs. Darwin's theories have certainly got twisted to serve racism as well.

Intertribal strife in Darfur in the Sahara is between tribal groups who all happened to be Muslim. The Muslim tribes who happened to be ethnic Arab considered themselves superior to the tribes of local African descent, and justify that notion because "we are Arabs, and thus closer to the Prophet and the Koran". So Islam can be twisted that way too.


In fact a modern Muslim thinker who inspired Ben Laden actually came out and disowned his own philosophy because, among other things, it gets used to justify racism.

Jesus was obviously not the blue eyed auburn haired dude we see in American paintings of him. He was, what today would be called, an "Oriental Jew"(the only kind of Jew that existed in his time), or even "an Arab Jew". He was probably olive skinned, had brown eyes, and looked like a modern Arab, or like most Jews in Arab countries look today (which is much like their Arab neighbors).

Christianity spread westward from Judea in Roman times, and reached the horn of Africa long before it reached any part of Europe north of the Alps. So there were Black African Christians before there were any British Christians.

Then in the Seventh Century a heretical sect of nontrinitarian Christianity spread to the far southern parts of the Arabian Peninsula and morphed into Islam. Then Islam spread via the Arab invasions north into the Byzantine controlled Iraq and Syria, and them west to Egypt and North Africa, and it wrested that big expanse of land awary from Christianity to Islam. This lose of territory by Christemdom caused the black Christians of Ethiopia to get cut off from both centers of Christianity (Byzantium and Rome) and caused Europe to become the center of Christianity instead of the Middle East homeland of Christianity. So it was that historic accident that caused Christianity to become centered north of the Mediterranean in places inhabited by light skinned folks.

In America both Slave owners, AND abolitionists would cite scripture in their respective causes (just like both would cite the secular philosophy of Thomas Jefferson). And in the Twentieth Century both Segregationists and Civil Rights leaders would cite scripture. And the Civil Rights movement was led by ministers like MLK Jr..

Wasn't one of the Popes part of the Hitler youth? I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

Honestly - probably should have locked this straight away, although I think the responses make this a victory for free speech.

Lots of good contributions here but the thread's foundation is an unjustified attack on a religious group, including saying that all Christians are far-right extremists. This is a clear breach of WrongPlanet rules.