“Faith Against Idols: Racism and White Christian Nationalism through the Eyes of Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Joseph Cardijn”
Disciples making Disciples
“Faith Against Idols: Racism and White Christian Nationalism through the Eyes of Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Joseph Cardijn”
Let me start with a question that should keep us all up at night: What happens when our faith stops following the Gospel and starts bowing down to the idols of race and nation? This is not a question for tomorrow, but for today, for now.
It’s an uncomfortable question, I know. But here’s the thing—racism and white Christian nationalism aren’t just political problems we can debate on cable news. They’re theological crises. But remember, our faith has the power to transform these distortions of who God is and betrayals of the love that’s supposed to define us as Christians.
Three remarkable people understood this deeply: Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and Joseph Cardijn. Each of them, in their own time and place, called the Church to wake up—to really see what’s happening around us, to measure it against the Gospel, and then to do something about it with integrity.
Let’s explore together today.
SEE – Naming the Reality~Let’s put it on the table!
Merton’s Clear-Eyed Vision
Back in 1964, Thomas Merton wrote something that still pierces: “Racism Is a White Problem.” Think about that. Not a test. The test.
For Merton, racism wasn’t primarily a social issue—it was a contemplative failure. It’s what happens when we lose the ability to truly see another person as a “Thou,” as someone made in God’s image. When we can’t see that, we’ve lost our spiritual vision entirely.
He talked about what is called ‘mythic whiteness’—this collective illusion we create about ourselves, particularly in the context of race. It’s the idea that being white is somehow superior or more ‘normal’, and it often leads to the marginalization and oppression of people of color. And you know what? He saw it operating the same way Cold War nationalism did. Both are forms of self-deception we agree to believe together.
Bonhoeffer’s Witness in the Darkness
Dietrich Bonhoeffer lived through something even more terrifying. He watched his beloved Germany—a deeply Christian nation—fuse Christianity with nationalist ideology. They called it “German Christianity,” and it baptized racism and state violence with holy water.
Bonhoeffer called this what it was: idolatry. The Third Reich had replaced Christ with an idol made of blood and soil.
His writings—especially Ethics and Letters and Papers from Prison—show us a man who refused what he called “cheap grace.” You know, the kind of religion that doesn’t cost us anything, that lets us feel spiritual without actually following Jesus anywhere difficult, and replaces the Sermon on the Mount with the Prosperity Gospel.
Cardijn’s Method from the Ground Up
Joseph Cardijn came at this from a different angle. Working with young Belgian laborers, he developed what we now call the See–Judge–Act method. This method encourages us to ‘see’ the reality of social sin, ‘judge’ it in the light of the Gospel, and then ‘act’ to transform it. And it started with something simple but radical: actually looking.
“See” meant paying attention to the real, lived experiences of people suffering under what he called social sin. Not theorizing from a distance. Not explaining it away. Just looking reality in the face without flinching, without denial.
JUDGE – Reading the Signs in the Light of the Gospel
(This is harder than most people think because you have to understand the situation at the time the gospels were written.)
Merton’s Contemplative Lens
So how do we judge what we’re seeing? Merton would tell us that both racism and nationalism run on illusion. They’re expressions of what he called the “false self”—that collective identity we construct that has nothing to do with who we really are in Christ.
Real contemplation —the deep kind —strips away these illusions. It helps us see all of creation as one in Christ. And here’s the challenging part—Merton would push us to listen in silence, to encounter people suffering from racism not as problems to be solved or objects of our pity. Still, as bearers of truth, we desperately need to hear.
Bonhoeffer’s Prophetic Challenge
Bonhoeffer had this unforgettable way of putting it. He said the Church can’t just “bandage the victims under the wheel.” Sometimes we have to “jam the spoke in the wheel itself.”
That’s not comfortable language. It means the Gospel demands solidarity with the oppressed even when it costs us our privilege, our comfort, our safety.
His theology of “Christ existing as community” insists that the Church’s witness has to be public, incarnational, and countercultural. Faith isn’t a private hobby. It’s meant to reshape how we live together.
Listen to what we are hearing coming from Pope Leo XIV.
Cardijn’s Kingdom Measure
For Cardijn, “Judge” means measuring what we see against the values of God’s Kingdom—justice, mercy, and the inherent dignity of every human person.
By that standard, racism and nationalist exclusion violate both natural law and the Incarnation itself. In Christ, every single human being is our neighbor. No exceptions. No borders. No “othering” allowed.
ACT – Living a Discipleship of Truth: Are we disciples making disciples?
The Integration Merton Sought
Now we get to the hard part: action. And Merton would warn us here—activism without inner conversion just leads to more violence. But contemplation without action? That’s just hypocrisy dressed up in spiritual language.
What he’s calling us to is an integral spirituality—one that weaves together prayer, humility, and public witness into a single fabric. You can’t separate them.
Bonhoeffer’s Costly Path
For Bonhoeffer, action meant following Christ even when—especially when—it leads to suffering. He wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
That sounds extreme until you understand what he meant. His eventual martyrdom wasn’t about being a hero. It was about staying faithful, about remaining human in an inhuman time. Sometimes that’s the most radical act possible.
Cardijn’s Everyday Revolution
Cardijn’s vision is perhaps the most accessible. “Act” isn’t just big, dramatic gestures or heroic resistance. It’s ordinary believers transforming unjust structures through daily witness.
His vision shaped Catholic social teaching from Mater et Magistra all the way to Laudato Si’. It’s faith lived in community, for the common good, in the small choices we make every single day.
What This Looks Like Now
So what does this mean for us, today, here? It means we are not alone in this journey. It means treating anti-racism as a spiritual discipline, not just a political position. It means building communities where we actually encounter each other across our differences-communities that resist the polarization tearing us apart.
It means treating anti-racism as a spiritual discipline, not just a political position. It means building communities where we actually encounter each other across our differences—communities that resist the polarization tearing us apart.
It means using the See–Judge–Act method in our parishes, our schools, our movements to educate our consciences.
To practice seeing clearly, judging truthfully, and acting lovingly.
This is a wrap: The Contemplative Revolution.
Here’s what I want to leave you with: The prophetic task facing us today isn’t about nostalgia for some imagined past, nor is it about partisan politics.
It’s contemplative.
To see truthfully. To judge wisely. To act lovingly. That’s the path Merton, Bonhoeffer, and Cardijn walked, and it’s the path they’re offering us now.
In their spirit, we’re being called to build what all three men would call “a community of atonement”—a place where faith dismantles the idols of race and nation, where love restores the image of God in every person we meet.
That’s the revolution we need. And it starts with each of us choosing to really see.