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How Can We Address Racism and Sexism Through Spirituality?

How Can We Address Racism and Sexism Through Spirituality?

Last updated on: January 14, 2025 at 3:39 am by Henry Karlson

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How Can We Address Racism and Sexism Through Spirituality? 2025-01-14T03:39:52-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Picture by Henry Karlson of his own glass pyramid of St. Antony the Great from the Coptic Monastery in California

While St. Antony the Great might not have been literate, that is, he might not have been able to read Greek, that should not lead us to assume he was uneducated. From the letters which we have by him, written in Coptic (which means he could still be seen as illiterate to those who considered knowledge of Greek necessary for proper literacy), we can discern that he was quite well educated, knowing advanced elements of philosophy and Christian theology. Through them, we can discern the influence of Origen (and perhaps, Clement of Alexandria), explaining why many of his disciples ended up being connected to some form of Origenism. Antony certainly accepted the kind of anthropology which Origen and the Origenists embraced, holding the existence of an intellectual substance, a spirit, which resided in the body and which should be seen as being of higher importance as they believed it to be far more fundamentally connected to who a person is than their body. To be sure, he did not believe that the body was unimportant; rather, it was of lesser value than the spirit (which is why Antony should not be considered a Gnostic, as he did not reject the body and think it is something to be completely transcended). Thus, in his letters, he not only exhorts his audience to know themselves, following a basic principle found in classical philosophy and also in Christian spirituality of his time, he says the way to do that is to come to know our intellectual or spiritual side. While some might want to rejection such a notion for being dualistic, it is important to note that it provided the basis for an important proposition, that is, all humanity is equal, based upon the fact that their spiritual principle is one and the same for everyone:

Truly, my beloved, this is a great thing for you, that you should ask concerning the understanding of the intellectual substance, in which is neither male nor female, but it is an immortal substance, which has a beginning but no end. [1]

We could misread this and think this means Antony believed that our body itself represents nothing of who and what we are, but we must not think that; Antony was orthodox in his beliefs, and he knew and accepted the Christian valuation of the body. He knew, as many Christian spiritual writers knew, that we tend to be raised to be more in tune with our body, and our material existence, so that we end up neglecting our spiritual makeup and what that tells us about ourselves. We must, therefore, take time to come to know ourselves in relation to our spirit and discern what that tell us about ourselves. When we do this, we will begin to see that qualities which we often use to differentiate ourselves from others, qualities connected to our body, are merely accidental and not substantial, and so are not fundamental in determining who we are at our core. Sexual differentiation is one such quality. This is not to say there is no value to it, that we must ignore it, but it should be relativized, following the way Paul said in Christ Jesus, there is neither male nor female, Jew or Gentile. Exploring our spiritual makeup will help us move beyond the body, and essentializing differences based upon bodily qualities. It is when we essentialize those differences we end up creating division in humanity, division which breaks apart and destroys what God intended to be one.

Of course, we might question this, and ask, is this kind of dualism appropriate? Does this kind of anthropology, a common one in the ancient church, undermine the body too much? Even if we answer in the affirmative, this is not to say we cannot and should not learn something from this ancient anthropology. We have put too much emphasis on the body, especially on various accidental features found on it. In doing so, we have ended up misunderstanding who and what we are, and what we are meant to be. So much of what generates conflicts in humanity lies in the way we take relative distinctions and turn them into absolutes, making them more important than we should. When we do that, we end up dividing humanity, having people on different sides of the divide fighting each other over something inessential. Christianity teaches us that we should seek to overcome such divisions, to find a way in which we can and will be one, realizing that unity is more fundamental than the relative distinctions found in humanity.

We have, therefore, misunderstood ourselves, and through such misunderstanding, allowed sin to come in and divide humanity up. “And you ought to know of it, that it has fallen altogether into humiliation and disgrace, which has come upon all of us, it is an immortal substance, not to be dissolved with the body.” [2] When we think of ourselves only in relation to our body, not taking into account our spiritual side, it is easy for us to lose sight of the fundamental unity of humanity. It is easy to let sin come into play, to use relative distinctions as points easily used to fracture humanity. This is exactly what happens every time we encounter the twin errors of racism and sexism. While Christians should know better, history shows they do not; too many have constantly taken in by such distinctions, using them to create hierarchies in society, saying some accidental qualities make someone superior to others. Racism uses qualities connected to the artificial construct of race to form such a hierarchy, while sexism uses sexual differentiation to create such a hierarchy. This means, Christians have not yet come to know themselves as they should; they have not come to see their essential core, and this has led them to sin, reinforcing the sinful divisions in society which Christ fights against and rejects in his work to save us all.

It is not, therefore, that Antony denied the value of the body; rather, he was resisting the simplistic engagement of the body which used accidental qualities found in it to determine who and what we are. He said we must understand who we are by taking into account our spiritual makeup, a spirit which transcends such accidental differentiations, showing that, at our core, all human persons are equal to each other.

[1] St. Antony the Great, The Letters of Saint Antony the Great. Trans. Derwas J. Chitty (Fairacres, Oxford: SLG Press, 1991), 17 [Letter VI].

[2] St. Antony the Great, The Letters of Saint Antony the Great, 17 [Letter VI].

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N.B.: While I read comments to moderate them, I rarely respond to them. If I don’t respond to your comment directly, don’t assume I am unthankful for it. I appreciate it. But I want readers to feel free to ask questions, and hopefully, dialogue with each other. I have shared what I wanted to say, though some responses will get a brief reply by me, or, if I find it interesting and something I can engage fully, as the foundation for another post. I have had many posts inspired or improved upon thanks to my readers.

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