CAUTIONARY NOTE:
TRADITIONAL CHRISTIAN MORALITY, RACISM, AND NATIONAL CHARACTER
According to the Bible, every human is Adams’s descendant. This means we all have the same ancestor and the same, evil nature corrupted by Adam's transgression and its original sin. Every child is innately proud, envious, quarrelsome, greedy, and lecherous. This basic assumption makes traditional Christianity incommensurable with racism.
Fortunately, the innate sinfulness caused by Adam's transgression could be -- indeed, absolutely had to be -- totally overcome. This assumption/requirement placed traditional Christianity to the extreme cultural determinism end in the nature-vs.-nurture debate; yes, there exists an innate human nature, but that nature could be totally changed. This is a second assumption that makes traditional Christianity totally incompatible with racism.
Christian cultural determinism did, however, come with an important caveat: changing the innate nature of fallen humans required exceptional methods. These methods -- the conversion process and meditation (there may have been others) -- do not exist in all cultures. In societies that do not use these effective methods, people will remain under the control of their bodies' innate urges -- i.e., Christianity's sins.
Conversion and meditation exerted their influence at a very deep psychological level. Among other things, these “psychological tools” changed people's rapid, instinctive feeling-reactions, will, “rational” thinking, and self-evident assumptions. These aspects of personality feel so natural and operate so rapidly they seem innate. Old theologian-therapists used the term "passion" to describe the innate urges' far-reaching psychological effects. Modern English does not have an equivalent word. The term "attitude" comes closest.
One wonders whether the old expression “national character” could be used to solve this problem? National character consists of attitudes, emotional reactions, and behaviors that are so deeply ingrained as to seem instinctive and thus innate. These characteristics are shared to varying degrees by the majority of a country’s population. Yet, there are always exceptions. One can always find individuals with totally different personalities. Most importantly, national character is learned and it can be unlearned. History shows numerous examples of surprisingly fast, thoroughgoing changes in national character -- England between about 1500 and 1650 is one of these.
