What the Bible Says about Racism

Why a Class on the Bible and Racism is Important

Americans are awakening freshly to the workings of race and racism in our society. Examples abound. Our culture is dragging White Supremacy out of the shadows and exposing it for the evil that it is. We are looking at our own bias and trying to do better. People are wondering why our police have gotten so militarized and why they keep shooting unarmed young Black men. We are weighing the reasons that Covid-19 has taken a disproportion number of Black and Brown lives. We’ve exposed voter suppression laboring to correct it.

What’s more, our generation is reviewing American history.  We’re reevaluating business practices and government policies that have locked non-White Americans in perpetual disadvantage.  

A new generation of writers are driving a publishing boom of books about race and Black heritage. Isabel Wilkerson’s brilliant book, ­Caste, for example is one of the latest provocative bestsellers in exploring race in America. 

Race is on people’s minds.

What About the Church?

Sadly, the Christian Church is bringing little to the discussion. 

It’s true that most Church denominations have condemned racism. A generation ago, Martin Luther King’s work of non-violent resistance pulled together clergy from most religious traditions in the last great ecumenical effort for social change in America. Before that, Christian ideas sparked the abolitionist movement.

But today, too many congregations gather for worship Sunday after Sunday oblivious of the racist injustice just outside their doors. In some cases, ministers are actively resisting efforts to banish segregation and racial injustice.

For example, between 1900 and 1940 there were 4000 lynchings of young Black men in America.  This ghastly practice of public torture and murder served to prop up White race dominance. Stunningly, White Christian leaders across the land were silent.   The lynching years were the same years that Dwight Moody was preaching and Reinhold Niebuhr was churning out books.  Neither of these towering Christian leaders had a word to say about lynching.   

Back in the second half of the 19^th century, a handful of Presbyterian and Baptist ministers actually wrote books that argued that the Bible supported slavery.  The names of these clergymen have faded from history.  But their ideas have persisted.  For example, I learned recently that Keil and Delitzsch’s now classic Old Testament commentary, which perpetuates the racist misinterpretation of “the curse of Ham,” is still available via Google. Preachers can actually purchase these volumes on Amazon.

Christianity’s Mixed Record

This is not to say that the Church is essentially a racist operation. 

For example, Clergy from all denominations marched with Martin Luther King.  Presbyterians together with most denominations condemned racism officially and long ago.  Scholars have corrected outdated interpretations of the Scriptures. One example is that Old Testament scholarship corrected the misinterpretation of the Curse of Ham (Genesis 9) decades ago. 

But a segment of White Christianity still has not repudiated its complicity with racism, And nearly all White congregations have failed to attract significant numbers of non-white members. 

Most alarmingly, White supremacy is ascendant in America. The spate of voting restriction laws being enacted in dozens of states together with state legislation designed to stifle public school teachers from introducing students to the worst aspects of slavery and racism are inspired by the Jim Crow laws that oppressed Black Americans for decades.

To be sure, Christianity is staunchly opposed to racial hierarchy despite the impression some people have that it doesn’t care about racism. The Bible, from cover to cover, is unambiguously an anti-racist testament.

Christians who are already committed to anti-racism will be thrilled to learn that their Bible aligns perfectly with their ideals.  Church-goers who haven’t given much thought to race or who feel that racism is a social problem that has nothing to do with church will be impressed with brightness of the light that the Bible shines on this vital issue.

A Class for Church Members

I’ve just finished a six session course on the Bible and race. Of course, the Bible makes no mention of race. There is nothing in the Bible comparable to the familiar five-fold division of humanity into color-coded racial groups: Black, Yellow, Red, Brown, and White. There is no race in the Bible because these racial divisions developed in the modern era at about the time when biologists were categorizing plants and animals into taxonomic groups.

But there were certainly social divisions in biblical times. Biblical characters, like us, were not above disliking people who were different from themselves. People from different places speaking different languages from different social classes and believing in different gods needed to interact in some way in the ancient world. Some of these interactions were pretty stressful. It’s important to understand that race was not one of the categories that divided people in biblical times.

The characters we meet in the Old and New Testaments certainly knew how to hate and fight one another. But throughout the Bible we find a consistent polemic against divisions in the human family. From the start, God enlists Abraham for the massive project of bearing the divine work in the world. A central part of Abraham’s calling is for he and his posterity to be blessings for all the families of the world.

Christians know that Jesus teaches at length about these divisions in his society. If we can understand how the Bible is teaching us to overcome human divisions we’ll have a good road map for seeing how biblical faith regards human divisions today. Thought of this way, there are dozens of texts and much underlying biblical theology that provide overwhelming attestation to the antiracist character of the Scriptures.

What Can Believers Read to Learn About their Faith and Racism?

For reasons I don’t fully understand, there are not a profusion of books dedicated to race and the Bible. I attribute this to the fact that racism is anachronistic with respect to the biblical literature. Biblical scholars doubtless realize that the Bible steers readers away from race hatred, and they wish to confine their study to topics that are explicitly embedded in the scriptural text.

Consequently, I read only two books in preparation for this class: Daniel Hays: From Every People and Nation: A Biblical Theology of Race (New Studies in Biblical Theology) and Keith Augustus Burton’s The Blessing of Africa: The Bible and African Christianity. Both are Intervarsity Press products and have a warm evangelical tone.

The following is the plan for an adult course on Christian faith and race.  The classes are designed to give participants a sturdy sense that the Scriptures are clearly anti-racist and that use of the Bible by racist propagandists is always an abuse of its core message.  The class will not depend on the teacher’s expertise but each participant’s personal conclusions about the many scriptural passages we will consult.   

Course Title: “What the Bible Says About Racism”

Class Topics:

Teacher

Doug DeCelle

Participants:

The class will be conducted on Zoom and welcomes all who are interested in this topic

Resources:

Burton: The Blessing of Africa: The Bible and African Christianity

Hays: From Every People and Nation