The Arrogance of Faith: Christianity and Race in America

Wood's case for why Christians are so racially intolerant is a very strong if not an entirely compelling one. The book ranges across a vast stretch of American history and its substance is much wider than just racial intolerance alone. He suggests that "American Christian led racist intolerance" grows out of a very much morally confused orthodoxy, and is rooted in a religious arrogance that has had four centuries of hard-core practice and evolution, and is the result of three primary sources: (1) an inherent racist predisposition on the part of white Americans that preceded slavery, a predisposition that has since been backed up by Christian theology and its accompanying racist ideology, both of which are grounded in notions of biological race superiority; (2) the worldview and institutional practices and biblical interpretations that both under-girded and grew out of slavery. And last, but most importantly; (3) the utter rigidity and "closed nature" of the Christian religious theology and its accompanying contradictory indoctrination of perverse racist religious interpretations, teachings, thinking, attitudes and practices - most of which clearly run against the grain of the true intent of a healthy Christian theology. According to the author, it is this third reason, the contradictory interpretations, teachings, attitudes, thoughts and practices that have over four centuries become the scalpel for shaping the Christian worldview. It is these contradictory interpretations, teachings, attitudes, thoughts and practices that have become part and parcel of the Christian socialization process that begin in American children even before they have the ability to think for themselves. As a result of its contradictory practices, the basic Christian cultural worldview has become a closed, and very much defensive institution, narrow and fearful of challenges to its often ad hoc and perverse interpretations and doctrines. It is this narrowness and insecurity that gets expressed as arrogance and leads Christianity into the darkest corners of intolerance of which racism is just one, but clearly not even the worst of its evils: The worst is that it also leads Christians to treat other religious doctrines and other cultural systems with the same arrogance and disdain as that expressed towards blacks, as if these too were basically hostile, untrue and inferior to Christianity. This point could not have been put better than by the often quoted Alexis de Tocqueville who in 1835 wrote: "I know of no country in which, speaking generally, there is less independence of mind and true freedom of discussion than in America. In America the majority has enclosed thought within a formidable fence. A writer is free inside that area, but woe to the man who goes beyond it. Not that he stands of auto-da-fe, but he must face all kinds of unpleasantness and everyday persecution. One finds unbelievers in America, but unbelief has, so to say, no organ." The author himself ha