On Ethnocentrism And Of Being A Good Christian

The message of Jesus was universal and most likely opposed to racism and ethnocentrism. Yet a recent large study conducted by the University of Southern California found that religious people tend to be more racist. It observed that "members of religious congregations tend to harbor prejudiced views of other races." There are a lot of anecdotal evidence that support that assertion in the Bible belt of the Deep South.

A quote attributed to Mahatma Gandhi goes like this: "I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. They are so unlike your Christ.” Sadly, it certainly describes the disparity between Christ's teachings and many of his proclaimed followers. 

Of course, this tendency is not limited to "Christians." The report concludes that “all religions offer a moral group identity, and so across world religions — including Buddhism, Hinduism, Muslim, Judaism and Christianity — the religious in-group is valued over out-groups.” This human tendency is often the driving force in tribalism and nationalism. In social psychology, an in-group is a social group to which a person psychologically identifies as being a member. By contrast, an out-group is a social group to which an individual does not identify. Ethnocentrism is defined as "the view of things in which one's own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it" often leading to pride, vanity, beliefs of one's own group's superiority, and contempt of outsiders. 

Ideally, when one becomes a Christian, he is supposed to become free from the shackles of many societal constructs, among them racism and ethnocentrism. "The truth shall set you free." St Paul was one of the early Christians who "got" it early on. In the famous "incident at Antioch", due to St. Peter's reluctance to share a meal with Gentile Christians in Antioch because they did not strictly adhere to Jewish customs, St Paul publicly rebuked St Peter: "When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas [Peter] in front of them all, “You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?" [Galatians 2:14]

There are biological and evolutionary underpinnings behind this human tendency to ethnocentrism. Scientists call them "kin selection" and "kin altruism." But as we strive to become better Christians, or simply better persons, it is our duty to become aware of this tendency and transcend above it.