Numerous people in “Reformed” “Churches” today are going after a handful of ministers today because they refuse to embrace what we might call “Racial Marxism.” Fathers like Dabney, Thornwell, Palmer, Girardeau, Machen, Rushdoony, and even Morton Smith are currently anathema to modern Reformed thought and so ministers today who advocate, in any measure, what those men advocated are being given the left foot of fellowship.
However, the views that these men held when it came to the issue of race were not unique to the men of the South, but were held by Reformed theologians of the North, including a giant of the Reformed faith, Dr. Charles Hodge. In a theological Journal before the War Against The Constitution the great Charles Hodge wrote on page 549;
“Another feature of that plan (to compensate slave owners for their freed slaves) was the expatriation of the liberated blacks. This also when feasible is wise. There are natural laws which forbid the union of distinct races in the same commonwealth. Where the difference is slight, as between Saxons and Celts, or the Teutonic and Romaic families, the different elements are soon fused. But even here we find that they often refuse to combine and remain apart for ages, the weaker constantly sinking, and the stronger constantly advancing. We have examples of this in the French payans of Canada, and Louisiana. The effect of the amalgamation of distinct races is seen in the physically, intellectually and socially degraded mongrel inhabitants of Mexico and South America. In these cases the chief elements were the Spanish and Indians, elements less widely separated than the Anglo Saxon and the Negro. The amalgamation of these races must inevitably lead to the deterioration of both. It would fill the country with a feeble and degraded population, which must ultimately perish. For it is a well ascertained fact that the mulatto is far more frail than either the white man or the negro. We read in the disastrous physical effects of the amalgamation of the blacks and whites, a clear intimation that such amalgamation is contrary to the will of God, and therefore is not an end which statesmen ought in any way to facilitate.”
Reformed Theologian – Old Princeton
Article — Emancipation
Now, the point here is not necessarily that Charles Hodge was correct in this view. The point here is that this view was considered consistent with the Reformed faith and nobody was screaming for Hodge to be excommunicated for this view.
This compels us to ask; “Does truth change?” If it was taught for centuries that race was/is real and that certain considerations must be made because race is real (as the two books “Racialism in Sacred Tradition,” and “Who Is My Neighbor” clearly demonstrates) then how can “Reformed” denominations today be seeking to cast out clergy who hold to comparatively thin versions of what the Church has believed for millennium– and that in all times and in all places? Isn’t this demonstrating a kind of cultural or historical relativism where these “Reformed” denominations are saying that truth is culturally conditioned and so what was true for one generation is a lie and offense for another generation and so cannot be allowed?
The warfare in Reformed denominations (ARP, PCA, OPC, etc.) has to end lest these denominational bodies be seen as fighting against God.
