There’s a peculiar thing about racism in the United States. Racism is obviously real, and there’s plenty of research that documents its effects on individuals and groups of people. At the same time, the concept of race itself isn’t real; that is to say, race does not have a biological basis. Looking more closely at the legitimate research on racism, it seems obvious that the study of racism properly belongs in the domains of political science, sociology, perhaps psychology; but not in the domains of physiology and biology. That leads me to the unsurprising conclusion that race exists as a social phenomenon which is a result of racism;– it’s not that racism emerges from biological differences between races; instead, racism is existentially prior, and the concept of race is a social or political product or result of racism.

In theology, we could make a parallel argument. Race does not exist at the level of theological anthropology; when we ask, “Who and what are persons?” we do not find that race is an essential attribute of persons. Instead, we find that all persons are of infinite value (to use an old Universalist formulation); persons are not valued differently based on alleged racial attributes. Racism, however, clearly exists as damaged or perverted relationships between persons; racism, then, should be addressed as a problem of ethics and morals. Indeed, racism is so damaging to persons and to society that it can only be classed as an evil existent within the social order. Here the insights of the social gospelers becomes useful, as we attempt to gain an adequate understanding of “the sinfulness of the social order and its share in the sins of all individuals within it”, and further as we attempt to “redeem the permanent institutions of human society from their inherited guilt of oppression and extortion.” [Theology for the Social Gospel, Walter Rauschenbusch, p. 5.]

I find making such a theological argument to be quite useful (although obviously as it stands, it needs to be refined quite a bit). By showing racism to be a species of sin or evil, we make clear that religious persons are in some sense required to put an end to racism. From the point of view of my Universalist theology, racism is a particularly egregious evil, because of the multifarious ways in which it denies the infinite worth of each person. Not that this theological understanding gives us any practical means for putting an end to racism; but it shows anti-racism work to be a strong moral imperative.