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So, let's start with sin. So, in the book, I talked about early Christian theology. And when I say early, I mean through the 1800s. Calvinism, a lot of the theological wellsprings from which Joseph Smith threw. It had a notion of sin that was much more rich and complicated than the one we teach in primary. And we get a sense of it in some of the higher teachings in Mormonism and some of the language about being free from the sins of your generation, right? So, we get a sense of it there.
But sin was understood by early Protestant theologians, as early Christian theologians, it's just something we're born into as humans. It's a condition, right? I mean, it's the natural man that's an enemy to God, right? So, as created beings, we operate in a material sphere that is flawed, that is not yet exalted, that where there are just mistakes, there are accidents, people are hurt badly, people can lose their lives, laws are broken.
And that's the sphere we move in. So, sin is the condition that defines us all. And achieving redemption from sin in early theology was about covenant with a community, to look out for the community and do your best to hold each other accountable and you transact through the redemption of Jesus Christ, right? So, it was a collective understanding. In the 19th century, that gets really rationalized, as what I call it is individualized and emptied out.
So, we move to an idea of sin that's less about belonging to a community that struggles than it is about you individually did something wrong. You put your hand in the cookie, you stole a cookie from the cookie jar, right? You didn't pay your tithing. You killed someone, you coveted your neighbor's spouse. That individualized notion of sin. And then, churches offered a notion of redemption. That was if you come to church in a transactional way, you'll be forgiven of that, right?
You show up. You pay your tithing or give your offerings every week and be a good citizen and don't say bad words and you're safe. You're check. But the downside of that is that sin evacuates us of have a much deeper sense of moral responsibility and culpability. It makes it impossible for us to conceive of, everybody's caught up in something wrong. We're all caught up in something wrong, right? And that is the scale of moral imagination we need to understand the extent of racism, right?
So, sin is the structure and condition of humankind. Racism is the structuring condition of human life in the US in the 20th and 21st centuries. It's just the way it is. And it was made that way. It came into being through a set of deliberate choices, millions of them to privilege white over black. But it's a system. It's a condition. And the only way out is through choosing out and choosing out in community.Share
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