The Sin of Miscegenation Part I

An Irreversible Sin Resulting in Racial Genocide

By B. A. Wiseman

A Prelude into the 21^st Century Racial Crisis:

Some five hundred years ago a resolute, stubborn, German-born Christian dared to defy the unchallenged supremacy of the Roman papacy and bring the conscience of his people back to the authority of God and Scripture. In 1517, Martin Luther nailed his Ninety-five Theses on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences to the church door, a public bulletin board in Wittenberg, Germany. In so doing, Martin Luther shook the foundations of not only his own country, but also the whole European continent then under the shadow and iron-lad authority of the Roman church.  This act was the spark that ignited the most significant religious fire in the history of the Christian West.

Among other points of justification, Martin Luther said this in regards to his stand against the sale of indulgences: “If I profess with the loudest voice and clearest expression every portion of the truth of God except precisely that little point which the world and the devil are at that moment attacking, I am not confessing Christ, however boldly I may be professing Christ.  Where the battle rages, there the loyalty of the soldier is proved, and to be steady on all the battlefield besides, is mere flight and disgrace, if he flinches at that point.” With this principle of out-standing character in mind, without question the single greatest battle needing waged today by Christian men and women and their sons and daughters is the preservation of our genetic heritage.

The sin of miscegenation is irreversible. Interracial marriage is the single greatest challenge to the authority of God, Scripture, and the undeniable and empirical proof of nature. God, Scripture, and nature stand against the interracial cohabitation of the distinct races God created. The future of every race is challenged by the irreversible mixing of the genetic bank found in God’s original design for each race.  Preserving God’s original design for every separate race is imperative. The genetic heritage of every race is directly impacted by miscegenation. Buzz words such as racist and racism are irrelevant to this discussion. Any attempt to obfuscate the issue with smear words is detrimental to the well-being of every separate race God created.

Every prominent institution in society is busy exerting pressure to celebrate and exalt racial diversity. Christians, non-Christians, churches, educational institutions, television, cinema, and other venues have joined together in endorsing and promoting inter-racial marriage.  Any opposing opinion is target for the accusation of racism. If the person opposing interracial mixing happens to be White, that person is charged with white supremacy, plain and simple. The goal of the race baiters is to simply say that anyone who opposes miscegenation must have animosity for other races. The majority of Americans—whatever their feelings may be—have been silenced. 

John Piper, a well known advocate of interracial marriage, contends on his website [www.desiringgod.org/resource-library/sermons/racial harmony-and-interracial marriage] that “interracial marriage is not only permitted by God but is a positive good in our day.”  Paul Kurtz, a well-known secular humanist, likewise heartily endorses interracial marriage in the New Humanist, March 1992, Vol. 107, No. 1, pgs 4-6, on “The Limits of Tolerance:”  “The highest good, as I see it, is intermarriage between people of different ethnicities, races, religions, and cultures.” These humanist opinions are not a far deviation from the way growing millions of people think—professing Christians and unbelievers. 

Not unlike other biblical landmarks set by our Christian fathers and observed for centuries if not millennia, the idea of ethnic integrity is being swept aside in a torrent of humanism. Everything biblical in the path of this humanist tsunami is being swept away as a veritable floodtide of immorality plunges the Western Anglo-Saxon nations into the darkness of moral pluralism, racial diversity, multiculturalism, and situation ethics.

For centuries, the Anglo-Saxons and kindred peoples have ordered their lives on the foundation of absolute truth as God established it in His Word and confirmed in evidence found throughout the natural world. What former generations declared to be evil is now viewed as good.  Interracial marriage is now endorsed as not only normal, but good. What was once abnormal, a perversion, and a deviation from the absolute truth of God as established in Scripture is now presented as something that must have always been true.  Indeed, we are following the precise path followed by ancient Israel when Isaiah the Prophet thundered these powerful truths: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isa. 5:20).

Absolute Truth Is Unchanging

Some advocates for interracial marriage assume that this social phenomenon has always been accepted. Nothing could be further removed from truth.   The fact is this:  until the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ban against interracial marriage in 1967 in Loving v. Virginia, it was unlawful and a violation of statutory law for people of two different races to marry in the State of Virginia and throughout most of the United States.  For over three hundred and sixty years, from Jamestown’s settlement in 1607 until 1967, statutory law forbade interracial marriage throughout most of the U. S.   There is no long-standing historicity for the sin of miscegenation. Further, the very fact that racial segregation in most every form, including marriage, was openly practiced in parts of the United States for more than three centuries is the historical evidence for the rather brief life of miscegenation.

Prior to the late Sixteenth Century, the separate and distinct races remained essentially isolated by continental division, oceans, and other prohibitions.  The first historical evidence in the case against interracial marriage is the legislation and subsequent criminalization that grew out of opposition to this sin against God and nature in the early 1600s. The criminalization of human behavior does not occur without popular consent of the governed; this is surely the case for the plethora of legislation that made interracial marriage a criminal act in America.

Laws that carried a strong anti-miscegenation bias surfaced in various American colonies (later states) in the 1600s. Legislation prohibiting marriages between Whites and Blacks became law in Virginia in 1691; Massachusetts in 1705; North Carolina in 1715; South Carolina in 1717; Delaware in 1721; Louisiana in 1724; legislation in other states followed through the Eighteenth Century. Anti-miscegenation legislation appeared in Montana as late as 1909, with popular support of the people of that State.  The strong and pervasive feeling against interracial marriage was not based on racial animosity, but had everything to do with having an innate love for one’s own race and pride in the ethnic heritage of one’s birth

There is no positive fruit that has been born out of miscegenation; indeed, the social fabric, morality, and civility of American society has consistently plummeted with the enforced government integration of the races and the subsequent miscegenation that resulted in the decriminalization of interracial marriage. While these are not entirely attributable to miscegenation, the current moral decadence, societal disintegration, and dysfunction within the family has followed in the wake of government forced integration of the races, the decriminalization of interracial marriage, multiculturalism, situation ethics, and a disconnect from God’s Word and the empirical evidence of nature.

America’s historical paradigm for racial harmony was witnessed in the open practice of separatism. Each distinctive race followed the time-honored practice of racial segregation in marriage, the family, public worship, and other social venues.  Geographically, the various races tended to cluster among themselves and refrain from open integration. Not until the mid 1950s did popular opinion tolerate government enforced integration of the races; popular opinion showed no open toleration for interracial marriage until the latter part of the 1900s. It required thousands of armed soldiers to enforce the integration of American schools in the South in the 1950s. From the beginning of America’s historic founding, the social and moral paradigm for this country was established upon the unchanging moral absolutes of God’s Word and the laws of nature. 

The Sin of Miscegenation

A divergence of opinion exists between those who support interracial marriage and those who believe that it is sin, i.e., transgression of God’s law (I John 3:4; Romans 3:20; 7:7, etc).   The Bible affords no exception in the case against interracial mixing.  The law of kind after his kind established some ten times in the first chapter of the Bible is the first fundamental law or principle established in the revelation of God’s Word to His children.

The Word of God knows no middle ground or exception to the law of kind after his kind. All life forms in the plant and animal kingdom and among the distinctive and separate races of biped beings are to reproduce after their own kind. Every act of interracial marriage is wrong. Quite often, the comeback for those who endorse interracial marriage goes something like this:  “Is it not better to marry a believer of another race than an unbeliever of the same race?” This question deserves some careful analysis:

1. The premise of this question is an admission that while interracial marriage is assumed to be wrong, it would be better to excuse something wrong because marrying an unbeliever is more sinful than miscegenation.
2. The person posing this question asks something that is the exception, at least in the framework of their question, to become the new normal and allow something that is admissible only in rare circumstances to become the prevailing rule.
3. Why should a biblical Christian entertain marriage with either an unbeliever or with someone of another race? The question raised above assumes that one must choose between two positions, when both are clearly wrong (II Cor. 6:14-18).

The Witness of God, Scripture, and Nature 

God, Scripture, and nature clearly demonstrate the wickedness of interracial marriage.  The sin of miscegenation is an assault upon the original design of the Creator.  Not unlike the great variety one sees among the flowers in a garden, God created variety among the races. The fact that God has specially gifted the various races with a rational soul should encourage preservation of God’s original design—not foster its destruction.  Had it been the Creator’s goal to have one coffee-colored race, He could have handily made it so.  The fact that He did not is empirical evidence that He wanted variety, not sameness. What God has created, let not man destroy through interracial marriage.

Interracial marriage is an open challenge to the fabric and veracity of God’s Word. God speaks an unchanging truth in His Revelation to His children. His Word is true from the beginning, enduring, timeless, and unchanging (Psa. 119:160; Psa. 100:5; 146:6; Psa. 33:11; John 17:17; II Tim. 3:15-17).   The conscience of believers is bound to the authority of God’s Word. Cultures rise and fall, nations and empires appear and disappear, but God’s Word will stand forever as a timeless witness to its author.

In all of nature there is clear demarcation for every kind or species of plant and animal.  For thousands of years, plants and animals have demonstrated an enduring faithfulness to the instinctive law of kind after his kind.  Many species (kinds) of whales swim in the same water, yet have consistently reproduced after their own kind. The fact that racial diversity and distinctiveness has persisted for millennia is the empirical evidence that interracial marriage is a sin against God’s unchanging and absolute Word. 

Accumulated evidence from history, archeology, anthropology, and related branches of science has demonstrated that as far back into the archives of times as science can take us, distinctive and separate races existed on this earth. Advances in travel and movement of the races from their long-established habitats accelerated in the beginning of the Sixteenth Century.

Biblical Witness against Interracial Marriage

Those who want to be fully informed regarding the roots of interracial marriage became openly tolerated, endorsed, and even encouraged in the latter half of the Twentieth Century need to understand a bit of history.   Throughout most of time, interracial marriage has been unknown; yet there are many people today who assume it has always been an accepted tradition.   Millions of Americans today well remember when it was simply unthinkable to marry outside one’s own race. Race mixing was not only unacceptable in marriage, but also in the churches of America. Even the U.S. Military had a long history of racial segregation.  

The English settlers who settled Jamestown, Virginia in 1607 and for more than three centuries thereafter would not have entertained the idea of using the Bible to support interracial marriage. As late as 1900 and even through the mid 1950s, the idea of supporting interracial marriage from Scripture was largely unknown.  It was not until after the floodgates were opened with the integration of the U. S. Military (1948) and the infamous U.S. Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, 1954, that more than three hundred years of segregation of American public schools ended, and then only after the Government sent federal troops to force the integration of Little Rock, Arkansas’s public high schools.  The Civil Rights Act of 1964 continued the work of desegregating America. As the news media, educators, and the American clergy pressed for full equality and integration of the races, the long-established walls of racial segregation were torn down and interracial mingling encouraged.

The plunge into open unabashed interracial marriage in the U.S. occurred following the historic U.S. Supreme Court decision in Loving v. Virginia, 1967, when the Virginia statutory ban prohibiting a White person from marrying a Black was struck down.  Judge Leon Bazile, the presiding judge whose 1959 anti-miscegenation decision was overturned in Loving v. Virginia, 1967, stated his rationale in upholding Virginia’s attempt to prevent interracial marriage:  “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and He placed them on separate continents.  And but for the interference with His arrangement there would be no cause or such marriages.  The fact that He separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Long before the U.S. Government, particularly the U.S. Supreme Court, ever made serious advances to integrate American society and move toward the day when interracial marriage would be welcome in the American public, there was something occurring within the religious scene of America that greatly impacted the movement toward interracial mingling.

A historic religious movement that had established roots in early 1900 first in Topeka, Kansas then moved into Oklahoma and later Texas and was under the leadership of Charles Parham. It became the launching pad for interracial mingling among the professing Christians of this denomination. While this charismatic, tongue-speaking movement was underway in Texas, a Black preacher by the name of William J. Seymour became involved in the movement and transported the new Pentecostal fever to Los Angeles, California. Some religious authorities trace the real beginning of the Pentecostal revival to a meeting that took place under the leadership of William J. Seymour, a Black Preacher, on April 9, 1906, and continued until about 1915 in Los Angeles. In time this gathering became known as the Azusa Street Revival.

This revival was characterized by ecstatic spiritual experiences that included dramatic worship services, speaking in tongues, being slain in the spirit, alleged miracles, and interracial mingling.  The inclusion of Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics at a time when rigid segregation was still in place throughout most of America was significant. It is reasonable to assume that the first overt attempt at the full integration of the races and the groundwork for interracial marriage was incubated within the rank and file and clergy of this Pentecostal movement, for it was among the first segments of American society to openly integrate the White and Black races.

The Pentecost revival in Los Angeles under the leadership of William J. Seymour and others (including Charles Parham) published a newsletter called The Apostolic Faith that was begun in 1906.  This publication, which reached a press run of 40,000 copies by 1907, reported on the meetings known as the Azusa Street Revival.  One edition in 1907 wrote, “One token of the Lord’s coming is that He is melting all races and nations together, and they are filled with the power and glory of God.  He is baptizing by one spirit into one body and making up a people that will be ready to meet Him when He comes.”  

There are no limits to the liberty that professing Christians have used in trying to defend interracial marriage from the Bible.   Scripture verses have been taken out of context while others have been twisted and abused in every way possible to try and build the case for miscegenation.  While circumventing and ignoring the over arching and prevailing view of racial purity, segregation, and separatism among the individually created races as found in the Bible, the defenders of miscegenation have searched every text in Scripture looking for a pretext to defend the mixing, amalgamation, and justification for interracial marriage.  When these people are challenged they immediately want to employ the term racist or something even worse.  They simply do not want to believe that the Bible does not endorse the mixing, amalgamation, and cohabitation of the races.

Part II is to be continued in the Watchman Winter 2015 issue.