In the recent time more often get the so-called white suprematism headlines. It is connected to violence. This raises the question to the background of this phenomenon.

I have read an interview that provides more insight into the background of this phenomenon. It is a shocking story that requires further investigation. The man who was interviewed, Robert P. Jones, has written a book about this. He belongs to the Southern Baptist Convention in the US. It was founded in 1845 after a split between the Northern and Southern Baptists because of the question of whether the clergy could legally held slaves and whether this was compatible with Christianity. The Northern were against and the Southern in favor of holding of slaves. The Confederates felt that holding slaves was compatible with Christianity.

In the course of his life, Robert P. Jones discovered that on the one hand he thanks a lot to his church for his development, but that he never heard anything about the dark side of his church. In the past, when slavery still existed, members of his church who were slaves, were sold to pay the costs of the maintenance of the church and the pastor.

From here I started to think further. Because there is a complex problem here. How can you justify for yourself selling members of your church because they are slaves? The Bible plays a role here. In his letter to Philemon 10-17, Paul, an im-portant leader in the beginning time of Christianity, speaks of Onesimos, who was a slave in a respectful way. This can be understood as a justification for owning slaves.

But there's more. Firstly, the following story: I once heard from an Afro-Surinamese woman told me that her mother warned her brother about his behavior. "Otherwise your soul will be just as black as your skin".

What does this mean? I see it in this way: Black stands versus white, light versus dark. We know the expression that something cannot bear the light of day. It's about doing something that's wrong. Christianss sing at Easter "Light of Christ", the founder of Christianity. This is positive.

If you confuse light - dark with black - white, then you have a problem. You do not make a distinction between who someone is (a black Surinamese) and how someone lives (in a good or bad way). That's how you end up into with racism.

Another aspect of the slavery past is that an African American is judged by his financial worth, not his human worth. African Americans are viewed as objects, not as subjects. This is injustice.

In his research, Robert P. Jones found that the church does not preach about social injustice to either the Protestants or the Catholics. African American Catholics were supposed to attend their own black church and not mingle with white Catholics. Was this a matter of free choice to feel more comfortable in a community of the same social class or was it social pressure from either inside or from the other side?

This makes it understandable to me what an American fellow Franciscan friar from the East Coast of the US once told me, namely that African American Catholics were increasingly becoming Muslims. It should be noted that when Muslims make their pilgrimage to Mecca, everyone is dressed in white: everyone is equal. But white Christianity in the US preached a worldview of white supremacy. This is a broader problem. Worldwide you come across a notion that the more white you look like, the more respect you get. In the 1960s and 1970s, the movement of black is beautiful emerged as a counter-movement.

There was a belief in a God-ordered world where whites, by God's design, were meant to be at the top of the social, political, and cultural pyramid. Robert P. Jones also found out that non-Christian Americans are less likely to see white as superior.

Here I add that Europeans who came to America largely exterminated the native population with an appeal to the Bible. I hereby refer to the fifth book of Moses, Deuteronomy 25, 17-19. A quote from this reads: “so that nothing on earth reminds of the people of Amalek. ” This is an outright call for genocide and a justification for it. In Middle Eastern culture, such a statement is not uncommon without wan-ting to implement it literally in that way. But this is different in Europe. Do what you say.

In this way the Bible can hardly be seen as a holy book.

In my view, holy books are an attempt to achieve meaning in life by describing the history of what was considered generally acceptable in terms of values and norms in society with an appeal to God as an undisputable Authority. Stories of what happened in the distant past were used for this. The Eternal works through people without sanctioning everything people do.

How people see and accept norms and values develops in the course of time. Slaves are no longer acceptable, though actually neo-liberalism makes from people slaves. Further men and women are nowadays seen as equal. More and more women got important positions in society. But still the salaries are unequal for the same work. Also for some men it is emotionally difficult to accept a woman as their boss.

It is significant that Americans feel that America has a special relationship with God: God's own country. This makes self-criticism difficult. Therefore, it is hard to stop white suprematism.