“We affirm God made all people from one man. Though people often can be distinguished by different ethnicities and nationalities, they are ontological equals before God in both creation and redemption. “Race” is not a biblical category, but rather a social construct that often has been used to classify groups of people in terms of inferiority and superiority. All that is good, honest, just, and beautiful in various ethnic backgrounds and experiences can be celebrated as the fruit of God’s grace. All sinful actions and their results (including evils perpetrated between and upon ethnic groups by others) are to be confessed as sinful, repented of, and repudiated.
We deny that Christians should segregate themselves into racial groups or regard racial identity above, or even equal to, their identity in Christ. We deny that any divisions between people groups (from an unstated attitude of superiority to an overt spirit of resentment) have any legitimate place in the fellowship of the redeemed. We reject any teaching that encourages racial groups to view themselves as privileged oppressors or entitled victims of oppression. While we are to weep with those who weep, we deny that a person’s feelings of offense or oppression necessarily prove that someone else is guilty of sinful behaviors, oppression, or prejudice.“
Scripture: Genesis 1:26–28; Acts 17:24-26; 1 Corinthians 13:4-7; 2 Corinthians 12:16-18
Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel
The “Statement on Social Justice & the Gospel,” was supposed to be a conservative response to racial Egalitarianism in the Church. Instead we merely got more of Egalitarianism toned down and supported by Scripture improperly interpreted. The document, while indeed better than what is prevalent today in many many Evangelical and Reformed Churches is still a poor reflection of Scripture, an even worse re-articulation of what the Church has taught through the century, and just a poorly and confused written document.
Let’s note briefly just a few embarrassments in what is written above.
1.) On the statement that “Race is not a Biblical category,” see
https://ironink.org/?p=8662&fbclid=IwAR14Xsh7pRhr2kz4yX3zaMFt0H6T4BbH7qH8JrlVzV9tP9HP4R8U_0QMFTE
2.) On inferiority and superiority it is clear that just as there are individuals that are superior to others (Let’s do have Beethoven over for supper honey instead of Charlie Manson) so there are people groups, ethnicities, and races that are superior and inferior. At the very least this is true in terms of varying tasks. For example, it is clear that White Christians have been, until they recently abandoned Christ, superior at building civilizations. Similarly, it is clear if you wanted recipes for cannibalism you would typically have to go to one of the inferior people groups. Concretely speaking, who would argue that Cortez’ Spanish Conquistadors were not superior to the inferior Aztecs that they mercifully conquered? Concretely speaking, when St. Paul spoke of Cretans in Titus he was speaking to them as inferior people. Concretely speaking, when the Hebrews cleansed the land of Canaan they cleansed the land of inferior peoples.
Now, some may consider the idea of inferior or superior people groups as “hate facts” but they remain facts all the same as long as we recognize that all of this is by the decree of God and as long as we understand that any superiority is by grace alone and has nothing to do with any people group being made of better dirt.
In conjunction with the above observation that it is necessary to understand that just as superior and inferior can run through different genres so that we can talk about superior and inferior fugues, superior and inferior Gregorian chants, superior and inferior Big Band music and superior and inferior Rock Ballads so inferior and superior can run through different people groups so that we can talk about superior and inferior hospitality as existing among people groups, superior and inferior courage as existing among people groups, superior and inferior standards of cleanliness as existing among people groups and superior and inferior organization skills as existing among people groups. Recognizing this we might well say that superiority status and inferiority status co-exist together in all people groups depending on what “genre” or “category” one is speaking of. At one time this was readily recognized. We used maxims to describe these. If we spoke about “Dutch clean” everyone knew was was being said. If we spoke about the Irish Temper or the Irish gift of gab everyone knew what was being said. If we talked about how pugnacious the Scots are everyone knew what was being said. When de Tocqueville wrote “Democracy in America” part of his task was to talk about what made Americans superior and inferior. Once upon a time we understood what is being denied today as a sin against egalitarianism. The above statement gets this dreadfully wrong.
3.) There is nothing sinful in voluntary ethnic or racial group segregating even as pursued by Christians. This is another egalitarian canard that is only an infant in its pedigree when measured against the course of Christian civilization. Here we will refute the idea that segregation is sin by quoting from greater men who lived before this time of egalitarian madness.
When the magazine, Christianity Today, did turn to the question of segregation in 1957, Dr. Carl F. H. Henry wrote that civil rights legislation ending segregation would be morally problematic,
“Forced integration is as contrary to Christian principles as is forced segregation,” he argued. “A voluntary segregation, even of believers, can well be a Christian procedure.”
In the same 1957 issue there was also an article by E. Earle Ellis, a Bible professor at Aurora College, in Illinois, who would later teach theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kentucky (where, according to his obituary, “many students considered it an honor just to sit in his class”). In his article, Ellis argued that racial segregation could actually be a positive good.
Ellis wrote,
“Segregation has the potential to develop into a partnership of mutual respect … Southerners often wonder whether integrationists are as interested in good race relations as in forcing a particular kind of race relations. The unfortunate fact is that ardent Christian integrationists, however conscientious, are one cause of the worsening race relations in the South today. Their moral superiority complex, their caricature of the segregationist as an unchristian bigot and their pious confession of the sins of people in other sections of the country have not been wholly edifying.”
Dr. H. Morton Smith added this on the subject of segregation,
“If from this we may conclude that ethnic pluriformity is the revealed will of God for the human race in its present situation, it is highly questionable whether the Christian can have part in any program that would seek to erase all ethnic distinctions. That such distinctions may be crossed over by individuals may be granted, but it is at least questionable whether a program designed to wipe out such differences on a mass scale should be endorsed by the Christian. It is this line of argument that the average Christian segregationist uses to back his view. He fears that the real goal of the integrationist is the intermarriage of the races, and therefore the breakdown of the distinctions between them. Many who would be willing to integrate at various lesser levels refuse to do so, simply because they feel that such will inevitably lead to intermarriage of the races, which they consider to be morally wrong. . . .
The mass mixing of the races with the intent to erase racial boundaries he does consider to be wrong, and on the basis of this, he would oppose the mixing of the two races in this way. Let it be acknowledged that a sin in this area against the Negro race has been perpetrated by godless white men, both past and present, but this does not justify the adoption of a policy of mass mixing of the races. Rather, the Bible seems to teach that God has established and thus revealed his will for the human race now to be that of ethnic pluriformity, and thus any scheme of mass integration leading to mass mixing of the races is decidedly unscriptural.”
Dr. Morton H. Smith (1923-2017)
(For more see: Dr. Morton H. Smith on Christianity, Race, and Segregation)
4.) The statement above about identity is accurate as far as it goes. For the Christian his overarching identity is found in who he is in Christ. However, the statement above almost sounds as if the writers are diminishing the importance of the creational identities that God has assigned to us. Again, it is true that our creational identities cannot rise above our identity in Christ for that would be a form of idolatry. However that doesn’t mean our creational identities are unimportant. They are extremely important and shouldn’t be disregarded as important.
5.) “We deny that any divisions between people groups have any legitimate place in the fellowship of the redeemed.”
The problem that the Biblical Christian has here is that this seems to assume the multicultural Church congregations should be the norm. Does this statement mean that the authors and signatories believe that Korean Churches are unbiblical or that Black Churches are unbiblical simply because they could easily be seen as existing because of division of people groups? This statement is unclear as is much of the whole document.
On those portions we have not commented upon we are in complete agreement. However, these statements considered above are poison pills for the whole document and as such the whole document should be eschewed and left unsupported.
