Christian Church's Teaching on Prejudice and Discrimination

1104 Words3 Pages

Christian Church's Teaching on Prejudice and Discrimination

Prejudice is thinking badly of others for no sufficient reason.

Prejudice is seen as a way of thinking about other groups of people.

Discrimination is when you act upon your prejudice and hurt people

either physically or mentally.

The Christian Church all teach similar things, that is, being

prejudiced and discriminating against others is wrong. They teach us

that everyone should be treated equally and that you should treat

other as you would like to be treated, "respect for the human person

considers the other 'another self'." (Catechism of the Catholic

Church.)

The Catholic Church believes that "every person is my brother or

sister". This means that we should treat everyone as our brothers and

sisters and love them equally.

The catholic church has many different views on prejudice and

discrimination and teaches us these views. One of them is that we

should treat everyone equally, they say that "the differences among

persons belongs to God's plan, who wills that we should need one

another. These differences should encourage charity." (Catechism of

the Catholic Church.) This teaches us that it was in Gods plan to make

everyone different, so that they are unique and special.

"Recognition of the diversity should lead to respect for differences"

(What the churches say) this teaches us that we should recognise the

differences in people but that it shouldn't lead to us acting

prejudice towards the persons differences. We should respect and be

thankful that we are all different.

In the bible there are many stories on prejudice one of them is The

Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37). In this parable a Jew is beaten up, a

fellow Jew walks on past with out helping him, a group of Jewish

priests also walk past him but the one person who stops to help him is

a Samaritan. This is of significance because Jews and Samaritans are

enemies and it was the Samaritan who stopped to help him while his

fellow Jews walked on past him.

Open Document