The insulting jokes and comments directed by participants in Donald Trump's rally at Madison Square Garden this past Sunday toward Puerto Rico and toward people of color made it clear that racism remains a prominent problem in the United States. That these jokes could be made in such a public forum—and greeted with approval by many attendees—shows we still have much work to do to combat racism.
How might an Ignatian-inflected view of the Gospel help social activists in their confrontation with racism?
My reflections on racial matters in the United States come as a Christian theologian rather than a social activist. My familiarity with the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola prompts me to use them as a way of applying the Gospel message of Jesus to a social situation.
Given the size of the topic, it might be helpful to make some distinctions that can make the discussion possible. Defining racism as a prejudicial understanding and behavior toward other people because of perceived differences, I focus here on white prejudice against Black people. But I do not treat racism in the personal or subjective terms of one person or group despising another. I rather address cultural and social racism in its more objective forms.
Culturally, this refers to ideas, values, feelings and connotations that are contained in vocabulary learned in the processes of socialization from family, friends, schools and media. Socially, this objective perspective refers to patterns of behavior in all spheres: in education, housing, work, religion, geographical location and politics. This racism subsists in the setup of society in which all participate. Thus, we can say that while the United States is not a society of racists, it is a racist society.
Looking at racism in this objective way provides a step toward opening up conversation across the divides.
Christian spirituality is intrinsically hostile to racism. Authentic Christianity both forbids racism and fuels a spirituality, a way of life, that militates against it. The spirituality contained in the Exercises is evangelical in the root sense; it mirrors the essence of Christianity because it directly appeals to the Gospel narratives as motivation to live spiritually.
Confronting the reality of racism
Racism is an objective dimension of American culture and society. I learned much about this racism through “The 1619 Project,” published in 2019, in which a large number of authors contributed articles that chart different aspects of racism over America’s 400-year history. Just as after slavery, racism took new forms in both the South and the North, so too after World War II and again during the civil rights movement, racism has again taken on new forms, some of them legitimated by law.
At the absolute center of American racism is the ideology of white supremacy. This may exist as a doctrine that people cling to as a matter of identity, or a feeling that guides people’s perceptions and reactions without them actually thinking about it. It is one of the aspects of racism that makes it invisible for some and yet operative in the formation of opinion and spontaneous action.
So long has racism been with us, and so deep are its roots in social life, that one has to say that racism points to a structural dimension of America into which people are socialized. White over and against Black existed before the nation; it is written into the Constitution in the indirect ways of compromise, and it characterizes life in America in a variety of forms and intensities.
The structure of the 'Spiritual Exercises'
The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola have a structure which forms a counterpoint to racism. They form a program of meditation and reflection designed to stretch over a month, using mostly but not exclusively the Gospel stories of the New Testament as subject matter. Their design reflects Ignatius’ narrative and experience as he moved from being a servant of the Spanish crown to an ardent disciple of Jesus. I follow an interpretation that sees the deep structure of the Exercises as having three intertwined dimensions.
The first element is recognition of sin within the self, discovered by an extensive examination of one’s past and flanked by God’s love and forgiveness.
The second dimension of the Exercises turns to Jesus of Nazareth as the historical revealer of God and simultaneously the paradigm of faithful human existence. The Christian looks to him as both the revelation of God and the criterion of life lived before the face of God.
The third element—and the apogee of the Exercises—resides in the call for a decision to change one’s life. The Exercises find their resolution when one forms a life-decision that concretizes one’s relationship with God.
In sum, by intending to evoke a turn from evil toward good, the inner logic of the Spiritual Exercises is uncannily similar to what the theologian Edward Schillebeeckx called a “negative experience of contrast.” One recognizes the sin in one’s life; that recognition urges a turn to Jesus, who exemplifies how human life should be led, and one resolves to change one’s life so that it comes closer to its ideal form before God.
The sin of racism
Racism can be integrated into the Spiritual Exercises when it is considered to be structural sin. The notion of “structural” sin is subtle, if not paradoxical. The idea of “sin” includes responsibility and guilt, but individuals are not personally responsible for the conditions into which they are born. At the same time, however, discernible racist patterns of behavior cannot exist apart from their human carriers. Structural sin refers more directly to social awareness and responsibility. Participation in racist behaviors, therefore, includes a range of consciousness that extends from ignorance to indifference to knowing acceptance. This generates the strange result of racism being both “in your face” and ignored at the same time.
When racism is thought of as structural sin, it finds a ready place in the logic of the Spiritual Exercises where Ignatius fixates on sin. This does not substitute for a broader personal examination of conscience, but it can serve as a lens that reorients the Exercises in order to allow the Gospel to shine its light on racism. The shift calls forth a larger and often hidden layer of social responsibility. Even though individual white people are not personally responsible for the existence of racism, we participate in it. Just by living in a society and culture saturated with racial bias, we contribute to its existence and bear some social (rather than individual) responsibility for it. As the author Michelle Alexander says, most people participate in racism by indifference to it.
Racism and the rule of God
Racism is pertinent, too, to the second dimension of the Exercises, in which the Christian looks to Jesus as both the revelation of God and the criterion of life lived in God’s presence. Ignatius followed the intrinsic structure of Christian faith when, during his protracted conversion, he turned not to the catechism to learn about Jesus but to the stories in the Gospels to encounter him personally. For the Christian, Jesus is the revelation of God and of God’s will for human existence. To the blunt question of how Jesus of Nazareth revealed God, the answer appears in the Gospel stories themselves: Jesus revealed God by his ministry, by his teaching and his behavior as prophet and healer of those infected by evil spirits. Jesus channeled God’s presence by the way he lived.
To put a finer point on this, New Testament exegetes say that Jesus revealed God by communicating the rule of God. “The rule of God” is another more active phrasing of the term “the kingdom of God.” It is not a place; it is not in the past, present or future, but all of these together. In my reckoning, the New Testament’s best definition of the rule of God appears in Matthew’s version of the prayer that Jesus taught: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth” (Mt 6:10). It includes a social sensibility.
The rule of God is wherever human beings live according to the intention of the creator. The second dimension of the Exercises consists of meditation on the ministry of Jesus in order to understand how life should be lived under God’s rule as revealed in Jesus’ ministry—in response to racism or any other institutions that impede “the rule of God.”
Anti-racism and discipleship
The third element of the structure of the Spiritual Exercises consists of leading a person to appropriate the rule of God into his or her life. This happens when, at some time during their course of considering Jesus’ ministry, those doing the Exercises are invited to make a decision about their lives.
We know that Jesus gathered disciples who traveled around with him. These disciples were active followers who were also his assistants, helpers, collaborators and the ones whom he was especially teaching—and who were even sent out on their own for a period. The disciples are of interest to the one making the Exercises.
In contemplating the Gospel stories, the people doing the Exercises are asked to relate to Jesus as disciples—as people who are learning to do as he did. Jesus appealed to all people, but Ignatius focused attention more particularly on those people who wanted to accompany Jesus as disciples. Disciples absorb in a more intentional way how Jesus points the direction of their lives.
This leads to what may be called the goal of the Exercises, where those doing them commit to reorganize their personal lives in accordance to the criteria laid down by Jesus’ ministry. That can only be done on the basis of one’s identity and situation, but Ignatius wants it to be done decisively, in a life-decision. With regard to racism, people answer the question of how Jesus’ revelation shapes their lives on matters of race with a decision. When one’s identity of being a Christian coincides with a sense of discipleship, the active spirituality promoted by the Spiritual Exercises merges anti-racist action and union with God. Anti-racist action unites one with God.
Racism and the ‘Contemplation to Attain Divine Love’
The final meditation of Ignatius’ Spiritual Exercises, the “Contemplation to Attain Love,” offers a recapitulation of the program with three basic Ignatian principles for the spiritual life. A preliminary observation before the meditation states bluntly that “Love ought to manifest itself more by deeds than by words.” This phrase was not a cliché for the ex-military and still-militant Ignatius; it defined a way of life.
The second point of the meditation says that God can be found in all things. It is not stated thus but appears in beautiful short descriptions of how God the creator is present to and active in all things. God creating turns the whole world into a gift (grace) that should elicit gratitude and a response of love in action.
The third point states that our lives should be led as by one who is a contemplative in action. This combination of contemplation and action weds two terms often seen as competing into a single responding activity. The issue has a long tradition of interpretations. One, fitting for the Exercises, draws from the Parable of the Good Samaritan. That parable answers the question of a lawyer, “Who is my neighbor?” by implying that “you have to create your neighbors, and all people are your candidates, even your enemies.” You create your neighbors by your action, and you cement your union with God especially by loving your neighbors who are God’s friends in distress (Lk 10:25-37).
How are these pertinent to our duty to be anti-racist? “The Contemplation to Attain Love” concludes the consideration of the three-part structure of the Spiritual Exercises in response to the social sin of racism. That sin, extended over four centuries, carries a potential scandal analogous to the Holocaust. The rule of God, mediated by Jesus confronts a negative historical force with an alternative vision.
Ignatius’ response consists of internalizing the liberating vision of Jesus and decisively converting the energy of God’s rule into an actual movement in history. Although this anti-racist summons is drawn from Christian sources, its humanism calls all Americans to participate in the project.
