by Billy Roper
“Mixing the races is unnatural. While not directly a theological matter, it is a moral one. It is not a theological issue because terms such as “race” had no reference thousands of years ago. “Race” was not a separate category, abstracted from all else. There certainly were “races,” but these were not scientific categories in our modern sense.
The Israelites condemned race mixing but they did not have the modern conception of race in mind. Race was intrinsically connected with faith, adherence to the law, family life and an underlying, foundational culture. Most of the time, religious practice derives from a specific ethnic category, but conversion is always permitted. At the same time, the Old Testament sought to preserve the tiny Israelite people on both racial and religious grounds since these were never really separated. Race — in isolation — did not exist. Only the modern world takes important areas of human life such as economics or theology and treats them as separate from ethnicity or family…”
On this issue, I respectfully disagree, as a Christian Identist, with Dr. Johnson’s interpretation of scripture. While it is true that the primary reason why Orthodox Christianity has remained majority White for so long is simply because its home in Eastern Europe was more geographically isolated than Catholicism or Protestantism from nonWhites, more recent contact with other races has led to specifically and pointedly anti-racist pronouncements by the Orthodox Church. This statement on Orthodox Church doctrine in regards to race is pretty clear.
But really, the Orthodox Church has been openly and vocally anti-racist for over a century, far longer even than other branches of mainstream, Judaized “Christianity”.
In fact, both the Old Testament and the New Testament define race (“generations” as it is often translated from the Hebrew in the Old Testament, as in Genesis Chapter 5) genetically, in terms of ancestry and kinship, just as we do today, divorced from any specific theological or cultural connotations, specifically. In fact, long before there was an Israelite nation or culture, Noah and his family were specifically spared from the flood because “he was pure in his generations”.
In the book of Exodus, one of the ten commandments refers to coveting your neighbor’s wife, and a separate one to adultery, so we know that the two offenses don’t refer to the same problem. In fact, “to adulterate” still means “to mix”. Not only does the Bible explicitly say that race mixing (Adultery) is a sin, and one of the ten sins which we are commanded against as being a biggy, the treatment of non-religious Israelites, from Moses when he was raised by the House of Pharoah in Egypt and unaware of his ancestry as a youth, to Ruth the Israelite who lived in the land of the Moabites and practiced their culture and faith until she was saved by a Kinsman Redeemer, show that the Israelite concept of race very clearly WAS separate from their faith and culture. Jesus reminded them of this in his story about the good Samaritan. Samaritans were Israelites who had become heretical in their faith, but were still their racial kinsmen. He was reminding them of that racial kinship in his parable.
Jesus himself also stated as much clearly in Matthew Chapter 15, verse 24, when He said “I have come ONLY for the lost sheep of the House of Israel”. He cared not for their faith, or whether they were lost, nor did He care for any other people, regardless of their faith. His goal was to bring His people back to their faith. His sheep, from His flock, wherever they had roamed, not any other sheep of any other flock, wherever they pastured. In that, Jesus shows a clear understanding and well-defined, modern genetic exposition of race, as separate from theological or cultural connotations.
It is not out of rancor, but rather out of love for my fellow believer that I, as we are commanded to do when we judge a brother to be in error, point out this truth.
Race mixing. It’s not just a bad idea. For Christians, it’s a literal sin.
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