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Redeeming the White Man's God

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 July 2024

Extract

The violent interruption has subsided and Western imperialism has collapsed against the tenacious pliability of cultures that do not defend themselves by opposing, but by returning to their own perpetual shape, slowly but inevitably, absorbing any marks that have been left and cannot be forgotten.

Christians, too, are having to readjust themselves now that colonialism is officially dead. They are shaking off feelings of disillusion and embarrassment with their own role in this drama, and are finding a new courage and enthusiasm in a willingness to serve rather than to rule, to develop and display a sympathetic understanding of other ways of thinking.

But the basic question still remains: Why did they go out to invade these other minds in the first place? What really inspired the white man to leave his proper abode and to travel out to the four corners of the earth ? What gave to his soul that restless urge to preach his belief to all the nations? Was it only a burning love which no man can enjoy without sharing it with others, a fullness of grace that knows no rest so long as there are others who have no share in it?

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1972 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

page 292 note 1 ‘The Burden of the White Man's God’, New Blackfriars, June 1972.

page 293 note 1 O.U.P., Nairobi, 1968.

page 295 note 1 O.U.P., London, 1948.

page 296 note 1 S.C.M., London, 1965, p. 88.