Neither Gentile Nor Jew: How Theology Spawned Our Racial Hierarchy
How History's Shadows Fuel Today's Racial Tensions
Many Americans are tired of discussing our divisions, particularly our racial differences. However, it's crucial to understand that these discussions are not just about our past but also our present and future. The wounds caused by our history of slavery are still significant, and we need to address them.
Some may believe that the civil rights legislation of the 1960s already healed those wounds. As a friend of mine once said, "Yes, Americans enslaved Africans, but we fought a Civil War over 160 years ago that ended that, and the Civil Rights Act made everyone equal. And my generation is not responsible for any of it. The only racists are those who keep talking about it."
But the truth is that the spiritual, economic, and political impacts of racial divisions are ongoing. It's a mistake to think that we made things right when we outlawed Jim Crow practices and naive to think oppression's wounds no longer hobble us. In this article, I want to stress the importance of understanding how our enslavement practices transformed both the enslaved and the enslaver in ways that persist in the American soul, like genetic cancer passed from generation to generation. We cannot truly "achieve our country" until we conquer this cancer. (Cite Baldwin)
To explain what I mean, let's talk about some history that most people don't know.
The English and French nobility were embroiled in the Hundred Years' War at the dawn of Europe's Early Modern era. At the same time, the Holy Roman Empire faced threats from Muslim military successes—the Turks on its eastern flank and the Moors on its western flank. During the 15th century, the decisions made by the popes in response to these forces profoundly shaped 21st-century life.
We often mistake these decisions as part of the natural order. They initiated a significant shift in Christian theology that created contradictory hierarchies of human value within our contemporary peoplehood narratives. This shift, which was a departure from the teachings of Christ and the early Christian church, is often invisible to us until we reflect on the destruction it has caused.
When the modern nation-state emerged, this transformation in Christian theology was poised to spread across continents. The first carriers were papal bulls transported to African shores on Portuguese caravels, where sailors loaded seized Black and Brown lives—lives whose suffering and sacrifice were sanctioned by these bulls in the name of God.
Many scholars have highlighted that the papal bulls Dum Diversas (1452), Romanus Pontifex (1455), and Inter Caetera (1493) granted Portugal and Spain exclusive rights to trade in Africa and the New World. These documents also permitted the seizure and enslavement of the inhabitants of the lands they invaded in the name of Christ.
The wealth—especially gold and silver—gained by the Portuguese and Spanish attracted the attention of English, French, and Dutch nobles. These nations quickly found ways to finance nation-state building through colonization and capitalism.
While other scholars focus on the Age of Discovery that followed, a period marked by European exploration and expansion, an old professor of mine, Willie Jennings, urges us to reflect on the transformation in our Christian understanding that these papal bulls caused and how they influenced the actions and justifications of the colonizing powers.1
Jennings describes the sacramental actions of Prince Henry of Portugal on August 8, 1444, during the liturgical debarkation and auction of 235 enslaved Africans at Lagos. A religious ceremony was deemed fitting because the Portuguese present believed, as Pope Nicholas IV had stated, that their actions of enslavement were part of God's work. In gratitude for this affirmation of Portugal's mission to save the souls of the so-called heathens through kidnapping and enslavement, Prince Henry offered a tithe to God. He donated one enslaved boy to the Church at Lagos and another to the local Franciscan convent.2
Jennings highlights the crucial question of Prince Henry's chronicler: "How should I understand the suffering of these Africans?" This question loomed over every future colonizer's interpretation of the doctrine of Providence.3 Colonizing powers responded to this dilemma by constructing justifying narratives: "African captivity leads to African salvation, and to black bodies that exemplify the disciplining power of the faith.”4
This negligence of the 15th-century popes is striking, and numerous theological errors are present. Jennings points out the irony in the fact that the Portuguese liturgical rituals concerning the debarkation of enslaved people resemble a passion narrative, placing the pope and the prince in the culpable roles of the Jewish oligarchs and Pilate. He also highlights the profound error of a pope who translates Jesus' kingship over the world into the authority of a bishop to divide the world into zones of exploitation for his allies.
Additionally, Jennings critiques the pope's heretical assertion that enslavers act as the providential hand of God, claiming they save the enslaved through the seizure of their lives in Jesus' name. However, Jennings does not dwell on this for long. He encourages us to move forward to examine the devastating shift in the Christian imagination that such sanctioned seizure has produced. This shift is the primary thing I invite my readers to ponder.
From that moment on, Christianity accepted the practice of displacing enslaved individuals from their place-centered identities, allowing enslavers to sell them in the market as part of a supposed divine order. This 'divine order' was a theological concept that justified the enslavement and displacement of individuals as part of God's plan.
This belief was both heretical and blasphemous.5 However, enslavement itself was not a new phenomenon on that day. What was new was the identification of Europeans as God's agents of salvific displacement, positioned providentially between the enslaved and their homeland, serving as both deliverers and teachers.
This pivot in European self-identity continues to have profound downstream effects on us. There is much to unpack. In my next letter, I will turn to those effects on the American soul.
1 Jennings, Willie James. The Christian Imagination: Theology and the Origins of Race. Yale University Press, 2010.
2 Jennings,15-16.
3 Jennings, 17.
4 Jennings, 19.
5 Jennings, 22.