On this page you will find:
Racism
Martin Luther King
Trevor Huddleston
Sexism
Racism
Although Christians do not have a very good record in the history of racism, the Bible is quite clear that it is wrong for one person to treat another as inferior.
In the Old Testament, for example, the laws given to the people include rules about proper treatment of foreigners:
When an alien lives with you in your land, do not ill-treat him. The alien living with you must be treated as one of your native-born. Love him as yourself, for you were aliens in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.
Leviticus 19:33-34
The people are told that they must treat immigrants in exactly the same way as they would treat someone who was native to their country. They should think about how they and their ancestors felt when they were the foreigners. They should give the foreigner the same love that they have for themselves, as a person of equal value.
In the New Testament, probably the best-known teaching that might be useful in a discussion about racism is the parable of 'The Good Samaritan', from Luke's Gospel. Luke was particularly interested in showing that Jesus was concerned about vulnerable people as well as those with confidence and power.
In the time of Jesus, Samaritans were considered to be an inferior ethnic group. Their ancestors had married non-Jews and so the Samaritans were looked down upon as being mixed race.
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. "Teacher," he asked, "what must I do to inherit eternal life?" "What is written in the Law?" he replied. "How do you read it?" He answered: " 'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind'[c]; and, 'Love your neighbor as yourself.'[d]" "You have answered correctly," Jesus replied. "Do this and you will live." But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" 
"Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?"
The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him."
Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."
Dr. Martin Luther King Jnr
From the 16th century until the 19th, black people were stolen from their homes and taken to America to work as slaves for white people. Slavery was abolished in 1869 by Abraham Lincoln, but the black people who were freed found life in America very difficult. Most white people still thought that blacks were inferior, and black people lived in poverty. White people did not want to mix with black people; they did not want to employ them as equals, or be employed by them, or s end their children to the same schools, or eat in the same restaurants, or allow them to vote, or pay them the same as white people for the same work.
By the time Martin Luther King was born in 1929, this inequality and racism was still a normal part of life. He grew up as the son of a Christian minister in the state of Georgia. At home and at church he was taught that God created everyone in his own image, and he heard stories from the Bible about the care Jesus showed for all people. When he went out, however, he saw how his family and other black people were treated as though they were inferior. Although this made him very angry, he was convinced that the right way to deal with the problem was not to use violence, but to organise peaceful protests. He would not sink to the level of people such as the Ku Klux Klan, who attacked blacks, but tried to put into practice the message of the Gospels:
"You have heard that it was said, 'Eye for eye, tooth for tooth'. But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheeck, turn to him the other also."
Matthew 5:38-9
When he grew up, Martin Luther King became a Baptist minister in Montgomery, Alabama. In Montgomery, it was the rule that black people could only sit at the back of buses, not the front, and if a white person wanted a seat, the black person had to get up, even if they were old or ill or pregnant. In 1955, a black dressmaker name Rosa Parkes sat on the bus on her way home from a tiring day at work, and when a white man told her to get up so he couild sit down, she refused. The driver would not move on, the police were called and Rosa was taken away to jail to await trial. But she had many black friends who, like her, believed it was time for this sort of discrimination to stop. The next day fifty leaders of the black community held a meeting at the Baptist church to decide what should be done about segregation on the buses; Martin Luther King, as the minister, was there. He decided to act against the bus rule by organising a bus boycott. Black people refused to use the buses at all until the rule was changed, which happened in 1956 because without the fares of all the black people, the bus companies lost more than half their income, as white people often travelled by car. This marked the beginning of what became known as the American Civil Right movement, and from 1960, Martin Luther King was its leader.
King was convinced that the battle against racism could only be won by non-violence. Even though people bombed his house and threatened to kill his family, he stuck to his Christian beliefs that hatred must be confronted with love. He organised campaigns, boycotts, marches and demonstrations, and gave speeches to huge crowds. His most famous speech was delivered on the steps of the memorial to Abraham Lincoln, in Washington, in August 1963:
Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Not is the time to open the doors of oppurtunity to all of God's children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.
We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.
I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: 'We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.'
I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood...
I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judge by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.
I have a dream today.
In 1968, when he was only 39, Martin Luther King was shot dead in Memphis, Tennessee, by a white man names James Earl Ray. The Civil Rights Movement went on.
Trevor Huddleston
Trevor Huddleston was a white man, born in 1913 in a comfortable middle-class family in London. When he was a child, he did not have much contact with racial prejudice, although he did remember one story:
I can remember a strange little incident, which I suppose is revealing. When I was about 12 or 13 and my father was home and we had our house in Hamsptead Garden Suburb or just near it, one evening around Christmas - the night was quite cold and dark - the bell rang and I went to the door and I saw an old Indian looking in through the pane of glass. I opened the door and my father then came out and said - not roughly, because he wasn't that kind of person - 'No, there're nothing here for you'. I remember that incident to this day. It seemed to me a terrible thing, not only because he was black but also because he was poor, and I couldn't believe that at Christmas time you could turn anybody away. And the fact that this incident has stayed in my memory so long shows that it must have meant something important to me, I suppose.
As he grew up, he became more aware of the problems of poor people in the UK. His school was involved in community work in Camberwell in London, which in those days was one of the poorest parts of the country, and he realised that there were many children who had to go barefoot and who were seriousley malnourished.
When he left Oxford University, in the 1930s, there was a lot of unemployment in Britain, and Trevor became a priest. He was determined that his Christian faith should be put into action, helping the underpriveliged and doing something about injustice wherever he could.
In 1943 he was sent by his Church (the Community of the Resurrection, an Anglican monastic order), to South Africa to help a community in Sophiatown, in the middle of a poor area for black people, a few miles away from Soweto. As well as being part of the Church, he had responsibility for looking after the education for the local black children. His work began with successful campaigns for more money for schools and kindergartens, and for free school meals for those who could not afford to pay. One 13-year-old boy was in hospital for two years with TB, and Huddleston used to visit him and take him books - he was Desmond Tutu and it was the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
Trevor soon realised how racism was affecting the people with whom he lived and worked. In 1948, when he had been in South Africa for five years, the apartheid system was made legal, and he was faced with trying to put Christian principles into action even though the goverment was opposed to treating black people fairly.
I believed most strongly that fighting apartheid was a moral battle against something profoundly evil. It didn't come to me through academic reading or study. It came to me through seeing apartheid in its impact on the people whom I had responsibility for as a priest.
Fr. Trevor Huddleston
Trevor became closely involved with people who were trying to fight against apartheid. He spoke out when Sophiatown was demolished, and the people made to go and live elsewhere; the government put him under surveillance, keen to catch him breaking the law so they couild arrest him.
One of the ways in which Trevor worked against Racism was to organise boycotts. He thought of he idea of persuading people in other countries to stop having anything to do with South Africa, so that the government would be forced to change its rules if it wanted to stay wealthy. One particularly effective measure was the sports boycott. Teams from all over the world refused to play against South African teams in many different sports, including football and cricket. The white South Africans hated this, because sport is a very valued part of South African life.
Bands refused to give concerts in South Africa, and families in the UK and other countries stopped buying South African products, such as apples, when they did their shopping. These sanctions were very effective in helping to isolate South Africa and bring about an end to apartheid; although the UK continued to trade with South Africa in spite of Huddleston's efforts to persuade Margaret Thatcher to join the boycotts.
Trevor was one of the leading figures in what became known as the Anti-Apartheid movement. He became a close friend of many of the people who were part of the same struggle: Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and many others.
Some people said that Trevor Huddleston shoudl keep out of politics, and concentrate on his religious duties as a priest, such as giving sermons and choosing hymns. But he believed that actions against racism and injustice is essential for being a Christian. Because of his beliefs that all people are equally valuable as part of God's creation, he worked in the struggle against apartheid and poverty until the end of his life. He lived long enoug to see Nelson Mandela walk out of prison after 26 years, and to see apartheid brought to an end. Trevor Huddleston died on 20th April, 1998.
Sexism
Follow the link below to read an article on the ordination of female Bishops and the implications of this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7494517.stm
