Mixed Race Marriage Resources?

[SolaScriptura]

I'm in the process of putting together a bible-study on courtship and marriage, and as odd as this sounds, having to make an argument that inter-racial marriage is biblical and reformed and not the result of political correctness in the church.

Andy -

I've been watching this thread. I see you were given some references. However, I would argue that it is AT LEAST POSSIBLE that what we see "so clearly" concerning the teaching of Scripture on the subject may in fact be our culture's values having come into the church.

Or it could be the opposite - we are getting over the fog of past culture.

That is quite probably true... but I think it is interesting that it took a secular civil rights movement to "clear the fog" of countless years of Christian thinking.

But then again, your comment is PRECISELY - almost word for word - what some of my egalitarian friends say of their movement.

The bottom line is that we interpret Scripture through a cultural lens. We should at least be cognizent of this so that we can be on guard against ourselves.

 

[Zenas]

Wow, Rich would probably weigh in with my pastor and his concerns. He was and I think still is very uncomfortable with his daughter marrying me because she comes from a covenant family and I do not. She was raised Reformed, and I was raised some loose form of Baptist that doesn't go to church, read Scripture, or honor God. This has consistently bothered him about me, not me personally, but for his daughter and having to deal with someone that was raised differently than she was, and for his grandchildren and their covenantal blessings.

Not to derail the thread, but I thought I'd note that.

You're not helping anything Rich!

 

[py3ak]

Zenas, wouldn't that line of reasoning, or perhaps more properly feeling, have made it rather difficult for Titus to get married? Timothy would presumably have been all right.

 

[Zenas]

Yes, but it's the reasoning nonetheless.

My question was always why I needed to marry another believer who came from an unbelieving family like me. That wouldn't seem to make complete sense because then we'd have no solid example to support us or to look to spiritually. It's like punishment for your parents not being believers.

Moot now anyway. She has my ring on her finger.

 

[Civbert]

Andy -

I've been watching this thread. I see you were given some references. However, I would argue that it is AT LEAST POSSIBLE that what we see "so clearly" concerning the teaching of Scripture on the subject may in fact be our culture's values having come into the church.

Or it could be the opposite - we are getting over the fog of past culture.

That is quite probably true... but I think it is interesting that it took a secular civil rights movement to "clear the fog" of countless years of Christian thinking.

But then again, your comment is PRECISELY - almost word for word - what some of my egalitarian friends say of their movement.

The bottom line is that we interpret Scripture through a cultural lens. We should at least be cognizant of this so that we can be on guard against ourselves.

Yes, our culture can prejudice our understand on Scripture. We Christians are notorious for rationalizing our reading of Scripture to get out of it our preconceived notions. But I don't like the "cultural lens" analogy. Lens distort everything we see through them - everything is corrupted and we could not be sure that anything is correct. But the Scriptures should transcend cultures. With God's help, we should be able to count on Scripture to overcome our cultural bias.

I think it was a cultural bias that led Christians in the past to believe that marrying outside of your race was a kind of sin. But thankfully, our society was moved us away from our old ethnic biases - so on this issue we can now more reasonable understand scripture and see that it has little to no concern about race (a modern concept) and is more concerned with a Biblically healthy marriage.

There are a few good things that have come out of modern culture.

 

[Semper Fidelis]

Wow, Rich would probably weigh in with my pastor and his concerns. He was and I think still is very uncomfortable with his daughter marrying me because she comes from a covenant family and I do not. She was raised Reformed, and I was raised some loose form of Baptist that doesn't go to church, read Scripture, or honor God. This has consistently bothered him about me, not me personally, but for his daughter and having to deal with someone that was raised differently than she was, and for his grandchildren and their covenantal blessings.

Not to derail the thread, but I thought I'd note that.

You're not helping anything Rich!

Zenas, wouldn't that line of reasoning, or perhaps more properly feeling, have made it rather difficult for Titus to get married? Timothy would presumably have been all right.

Yes, but it's the reasoning nonetheless.

My question was always why I needed to marry another believer who came from an unbelieving family like me. That wouldn't seem to make complete sense because then we'd have no solid example to support us or to look to spiritually. It's like punishment for your parents not being believers.

Moot now anyway. She has my ring on her finger.

Sorry to make this difficult.

I wasn't creating a rule by this reasoning but I merely stated it is something to reckon with. I think the man would have to weigh how much a suitor "hates" his family with relation to his love for Christ. Not every man that darkens the door of a Reformed Church has necessarily lost all ties to his family that could pull him back in that direction. He obviously figured you were a good choice so you got over that hurdle.

Just think though, there are folks, like Doug Wilson, who were once Baptist, seemed Reformed to everyone and now look. All I'm arguing is that culture is a factor.

Let me note another thing. For women, get a sense for how the man's father loves his wife. For the men, take a look at how much the mother of the women your courting seems to trust her father. There are simply a lot of things to weigh when you're talking about a woman you must love as both of you shall live or for the women, especially, to have to sumit to this fellow for the same period. Let not romance be the guide.

 

[Gloria]

Here is my few cents.

And you all may not like what I am going to say. I hope I am not offending anyone here.

I have been around the Church since 1981. I have seen fathers put restraints on their kids on many issues. I know some parents who wouldn't desire their kids to marry others because they listen to the devil's music and have an uppity attitude. And for some reason the children still secretly go out on dates with and marry these kinds of persons.

I personally have friends who are in mixed marriages. Some are strained and some are great. The President of the Bible College I attended for a short time was an Elder in my Church. He is Black as the ace of Spades and his wife is white as you can get. They are beautiful together.

I married a white woman who was supposedly theologically aligned with me. She apostated and we divorced.

Even though I do not think one skin color makes one more acceptable before God and that I know we are all image bearers of God I still hope my boys marry within the caucasian part of our Human race. I have enjoyed having my boys all resemble me. When people see my boys they know who they belong to. I enjoy this. And I am not so sure this is sin.

I also hate.... and I mean hate the Rap community. It has infested all skin colors, but it is mainly a black thing. I hate the culture it comes from. It is degrading and worse than any of the Rock and Roll I use to listen to. I can't stand pulling into a gas station and hearing the F word and Ho pounded out of the speakers. This started 15 years ago and it is terrible. I agree the Drug infested Rock culture that I grew up in is almost as bad. And I don't want my kids to marry into either culture.

After saying the above I will enjoy whatever choices my boys make when they come of age. I will not be overly disappointed if they marry good godly black women. It is really up to God and His sovereign choice. It would be sin if it was Gods will for them to be in a mixed marriage and they were not. It just is not my first choice for them. It isn't my choice for myself either. Another reason is that white women appeal to me more than black women.

Well enough rambling.

Be Encouraged,

Once again seeing that I'm not, nor will I ever be, in the eyes of some of the brethren, Just another girl in the PCA. At least you're honest. Scratch that...at least you put it out there for all to see.

 

[SEAGOON]

Hi Martin,

It's simply undeniable that Christ had blessed cross-cultural marriages in his genealogy, that Moses married outside his "race" and that the thrust of the NT would indicate that the son of Jewish Christians marrying the son of Gentile Christians would not have been a problem.

Andrew,
Your fingers got mixed up when you were typing.

Yikes! You got that right brother. Sons marrying sons is indeed never right. Sorry.

Regarding your quote about the Rap community though Martin, one thing that has to be recognized is that the precipitous moral decline in most ethnic communities in the USA has been almost entirely the work of white men and to a lesser degree white women. If we think about the wreck that was made of the mainline churches, that was white men, if we think of the rise of the existentialist and nihilist philosophies that dominate our culture that was white men, if we think of the socialist political philosophies, the class war, and "entitlements" thinking, that now controls almost all of our political thought, that was white men, welfare, the decline of academics, etc. All of it was driven by white politicians, academics, philosophers, revolutionaries, etc. We have successfully exported our decadence and godlessness to other cultures, and in many of them it has had an even more pernicious effect, but the roots of the culture that has spawned Rap are on our side of the color bar, and frankly Marilyn Manson, Slip-Knot, Joy Division, are in some senses worse than rap. The thug culture, as bad as it is, with its lauding of sex, violence, prostitution and drugs, doesn't yet accept or even glorify homosexuality, atheism, and satanism as much "white" music does.

But here again, we fundamentally err when we assign the blame for decline on one culture or another, it would rather be like saying Israel became hopelessly decadent because of the strong "Assyrian influence on their religion and mores." The truth is the culprits are always our three great enemies, the world, the flesh, and the devil, and the catalyst is always the unbelief and consequent rejection of the word of God regardless of whether we are talking about Ancient Israel or Modern America. I think we'd all do well to pay less attention to materialist ideology and more attention to what our own theology teaches us.

 

[Pilgrim]

I'm in the process of putting together a bible-study on courtship and marriage, and as odd as this sounds, having to make an argument that inter-racial marriage is biblical and reformed and not the result of political correctness in the church.

Andy -

I've been watching this thread. I see you were given some references. However, I would argue that it is AT LEAST POSSIBLE that what we see "so clearly" concerning the teaching of Scripture on the subject may in fact be our culture's values having come into the church.

I'd be interested to see how many sources can be found advocating the propriety of mixed marriages that 1) come from respectable theologian/pastors - even if they weren't Reformed - and 2) were written well before the civil rights movement.

On the other hand:

Many who formed the PCA defended the right of their churches to exclude blacks. Is now wanting to bring them into the churches a capitulation to culture?

Who is to say that the writers who argued against mixed marriages weren't captive to the mores of their own cultures?

 

[Pilgrim]

I had an OPC Pastor - a Korean - who was adopted by parents from Iowa. Not to sound stereotypical but he was more whitebread than I am - his manner of speech, his political convictions, and outlook on life. The culture doesn't come with the pigmentation.

I know a Korean who was adopted by white parents from Oklahoma. He has an Italian last name and speaks with a southern accent.

 

[Pilgrim]

Andy -

I've been watching this thread. I see you were given some references. However, I would argue that it is AT LEAST POSSIBLE that what we see "so clearly" concerning the teaching of Scripture on the subject may in fact be our culture's values having come into the church.

Or it could be the opposite - we are getting over the fog of past culture.

That is quite probably true... but I think it is interesting that it took a secular civil rights movement to "clear the fog" of countless years of Christian thinking.

But then again, your comment is PRECISELY - almost word for word - what some of my egalitarian friends say of their movement.

The bottom line is that we interpret Scripture through a cultural lens. We should at least be cognizent of this so that we can be on guard against ourselves.

Agreed. Homosexual activists say the same with their movement. The issue with all such questions is, what does the Bible say?

 

[puritanpilgrim]

John Piper has some stuff on it. probably look at his web site.

And I would add it is great. I never knew Moses had a black wife, a Cushite. That really knocks the wind out of so many arguments.

 

[SEAGOON]

Hi Ben,

I'm in the process of putting together a bible-study on courtship and marriage, and as odd as this sounds, having to make an argument that inter-racial marriage is biblical and reformed and not the result of political correctness in the church.

Andy -

I've been watching this thread. I see you were given some references. However, I would argue that it is AT LEAST POSSIBLE that what we see "so clearly" concerning the teaching of Scripture on the subject may in fact be our culture's values having come into the church.

I'd be interested to see how many sources can be found advocating the propriety of mixed marriages that 1) come from respectable theologian/pastors - even if they weren't Reformed - and 2) were written well before the civil rights movement.

While plenty of expositors rightly condemn marriages to "foreign wives" it is not because they are foreign per se, but because they are unbelieving and such marriages inevitably draw the covenant community away from their God.

Now one can find respectable Reformed expositors who condemn mixed-race marriages, and indeed define certain races as inferior and of "low intelligence" but these are almost exclusively American commentators of the 19th and early 20th century and in particular (but by no means exclusively) Southern commentators. To be perfectly frank, the fact is that they do not uniformly condemn all mixed marriages, or view most other races as inferior, this is reserved almost exclusively for Africans. Even today, those whites opposed to "miscegenation" seldom get upset when Hispanics marry Asians or Slavs marry Celts, their ire is almost exclusively reserved for marriages between Caucasians (regardless of their actual ethnic background, Celt, Gaul, Anglo-Saxon, Slav, etc.) and Blacks, Near and Middle Easterners, or Hispanics, which they view as degrading the "white race." The arguments against inter-racial marriage are usually stalking horses used to cover that which offends them, namely people who appear to be of their race marrying people outside of it - i.e. whites marrying non-whites.

Now I want to be fair, I've seen exactly the same thing in the Korean community, in using biblical pretexts as an excuse for why their children should not marry non-Koreans, and I've also seen hostility in the black community towards marriages to whites (and whites adopting black children). And just as the Greeks considered non-Greeks to be "Barbarians", Asians have historically viewed non-Asians as inferior or simply uncivilized. But generally speaking the real issue is simple racism, and just as we are very good at coming up with supposedly biblical reasons to justify divorce, we are also good at finding reasons to justify things like slavery or feelings of racial superiority. This is common to fallen man. I myself will admit that while I wouldn't have a problem with my daughters marrying godly Asian or Black men, I'd have more difficulty getting over them marrying believing French or Irish men because of an ingrained racial hostility towards those races. If any of us think we've escaped the ravages of the fall in regard to our neighbors, we'd better think again.

So, while Spurgeon could support abolition and write praises for mixed-race marriage in the bible, and the unity of all races in Christ:

We note that two women are mentioned in this fifth verse: a Canaanite and a Moabitess. Thus Gentile blood mingled with the Hebrew strain. Our King has come to break down the partition wall. As Gentiles we rejoice in this. Jesus is heir of a line in which flows the blood of the harlot Rahab, and of the rustic Ruth; he is akin to the fallen and to the lowly, and he will show his love even to the poorest and most obscure. I, too, may have part and lot in him. - Spurgeon

I'm not certain that he would have been happy if one of his own sons had married a godly black woman, even though his own words could frequently be used in support of the decision.

The problem is often that we make theology the bond-servant of our innate inclinations, or that we fail to let the theology we confess guide our thoughts, feelings, and actions. So even more often than we have people creating a theology that excuses their detestation of other races, we have people simply acting out of accord with the theology they profess to believe. Sure I believe we are all one in Jesus Christ and confess that the believing African is my brother, I'm just not going to have him over is all. I'm not even going to realize I'm doing it.

 

[Southern Presbyterian]

The issue with all such questions is, what does the Bible say?

and

 

[timmopussycat]

Just a few thoughts, let me start with a few practical applications of the "you should should your pride in your ethnicity and only marry within your kin" mindset. And then move to a theological consideration.

First, instructing your children to marry within ethnic lines inevitable communicates strong disapproval for failing to do so, and a sense that the people outside of our ethnicity no matter how good a Christian they might be are in some sense not quite as good. Non-discriminatory ethnic pride, while a nice idea just doesn't occur in a fallen world. Indeed to favor one thing or person over another is to discriminate between them.

I agree. And I also agree with your theological reasons for condemning "the practice of marrying within your kin." Yet may I interject a cautionary note, as one who, for the last 7.5 happy years has been married to the lovely and loving Orchid Lady, a Singaporean whose ancestry is purely ethnic Chinese?

Interratial marriage brings some real problems with it. And while those problems are not enough to block a marriage between Christians they can make achieving a successful marriage more difficult. In our case those problems were primarily cultural and linguistic. In the first case, we received a preparatory blessing from God in that my mother's family were Canadian anglophiles so I was somewhat prepared to understand the influence English culture (something quite different from Canadian culture) had on Singapore in general and on OL and her family in particular. One linguistic problem I still have is that OL sometimes tends to think in her Chinese dialect which lacks the concepts "thank you" and most especially "please", together with using an "imperative" sounding voice tone where Canadians use a "request" tone. If OL asks me to do things when thinking in Chinese, sooner or later I have to remind myself that OL is not treating her husband as if he were her slave, which is what she would sound like should you overhear her. No, she is just thinking in Chinese again.

I mention these examples to make this point: if two people are considering interrational marriage, they should try, or be advised to try, to discern the basics of the cultural and linguistic differences between them; then form an outline of how to deal with them. In our case we worked out the basics of happy compromises before marriage, and those work to this day. What if a couple can't come to basic compromises over these issues during courting? Maybe they should not get married. Not every difference between people needs to be harmonized and not every two people will make a good couple. But if they decide not to get married for such reasons I don't think they are being racist for doing so.

 

[RamistThomist]

John Piper has some stuff on it. probably look at his web site.

And I would add it is great. I never knew Moses had a black wife, a Cushite. That really knocks the wind out of so many arguments.

It is okay. Some of his arguments are good. Some are, quite frankly, naive. I know I will step on toes but his appeal to Martin Luther King, Jr. isn't the smartest move. King was a socialist, and I hate to say it, a womanizer and given his doctoral studies, it is questionable if he affirmed the deity of Christ.

I have no problem with mixed-race marriages, and I do appreciate that some real moves forward have been made by the black community, and I realize that King did accomplish some good due to the sinfulness of some whites, but that being said, I cannot give my endorsement to him.