SOCIETY
Devoutly dividing us
Opponents of interracial marriage say God is on their side
By Phillip W. D. Martin, 11/07/99
Boston Globe
The following article, from the Online edition of the Boston Globe, details how
some Americans feel about interracial marriages thirty years after the Loving landmark case.
here is only one state in the country that
still bans interracial marriage and, if the polls are right, a majority of Alabama voters will vote next year to
repeal that statute.
But about a third of them are expected to vote against repeal, just as a third of South Carolinians voted unsuccessfully
last year to keep their state's ban. Both states mirror the nation as a whole: Polls show that between a quarter
and a third of us oppose the marriage of whites to blacks.
It is telling that most Alabamians opposed to interracial marriage identify themselves as evangelical Christians,
according to a poll by the Alabama Educational Association. They say they believe that such relationships contravene
the word of God.
Indeed, religion is among the most enduring rationales for the remaining opposition to interracial marriages. As
outright racism - ''I don't like blacks'' or ''blacks are inferior'' - has become less pronounced publicly, and
as statutes banning interracial marriage have been overturned, religious arguments against mixing the races are
being called up in their place.
While evoking ''God's will'' may seem a more socially acceptable way to divide us, it's effect is the same. The
words of state Representative Lanny Littlejohn of Spartenburg, S.C., capture the sentiment. Asked about interracial
marriage, he responds: ''That's not what God intended when he separated the races back in the Babylonian days.
The races would be a lot better off if they stuck with their own kind.
''I been raised a Baptist all my life, and I guess that's exactly where it comes from. My family taught me that
over the years, and that didn't take place during my upbringing, and therefore I don't espouse it.''
Beliefs such as Littlejohn's are not limited to Southern Baptists.
''It's a complex doctrine that can't be isolated in any one denominational strain,'' says Alan Callahan, a professor
of theology at Harvard Divinity School and an ordained Baptist minister. ''It circulates within American evangelical
religions; generally, it cuts a broad swath of religion in America.''
Any prohibitions - religious or otherwise - against interracial relationships would seem moot in 1999, 32 years
after the US Supreme Court's landmark decision known as Loving v. Virginia. In the middle of the night on July
11, 1958, Richard Loving, who is white, and his African-American wife, Mildred, were rousted from their bed and
arrested in Caroline County, Va.
Soon afterward a Virginia judge ruled their marriage illegal and added, ''Almighty God created the races ... and
the fact that He separated the races showed that He did not intend for the races to mix.'' The Supreme Court ruled
otherwise.
But today, three decades later, a sizable percentage of Americans continue to be skeptical about mixed marriages.
A Washington Post poll conducted last summer revealed that 1 in 4 Americans still found marriages between blacks
and whites ''unacceptable.''
That disapproval helps explain why only 1 percent of marriages nationwide are between whites and blacks - even
as other ''mixes'' (between, say, Jews and non-Jews) account for about 4 percent of marriages. Measured another
way, the pattern continues: The marriages of blacks to whites equaled 9 percent of all intermarried couples in
1998, while the marriages of Asians to whites equaled 19 percent, and Hispanics to whites, 52 percent.
Despite those statistics, marriages of blacks to whites are on the increase, especially in the military. And it
is perhaps ironic that South Carolina, with its huge military presence, experiences four times the number of black-white
marriages than the nation as a whole.
Not all interracial couples experience religious hostility, says Bob McNamara, a Furman University sociologist
who interviewed 30 such couples for his just released book, ''Crossing The Line, Interracial Couples in the South.''
A few South Carolina churches were supportive of these interracial relationships, and most of the couples said
they found solace in prayer. And, says McNamara, what they prayed for most was a more enlightened society.
Then there are institutions such as the Rhema Bible Church in Tulsa, Okla., where the Reverend Kenneth Hagin Jr.
advises his integrated congregation on how to keep their children from intermarrying. ''We're friends. We play.
We go together as a group, but we don't date one another. ... I don't think we ought to mix any of the races.''
His words ignited an ongoing feud in Pentecostal sects, prompting the Reverend Fred Price of Compton, Calif., who
is black, to declare a ''holy war'' against racism. Price says the world has too many hypocritical Christians,
who may welcome blacks to their church but not to their families.
''Don't shake my hand and act like you love me ... as long as our children are little babies, but when they start
to be teenagers and start getting eyes for each other, and they want to date, then you want to start acting funny.
Be honest about it; tell me from day one that you don't like black folks, and you don't like the possibility of
some black folk in your family.''
Conservative Christians are not alone in expressing opposition to interracial relationships as unholy unions. Some
Judaic scholars also argue that interracial and intercultural sexual bonds between Jews and non-Jews contravene
the edict of God. And although the Nation of Islam no longer refers to whites as devils, interracial relationships
are still frowned upon by Minister Louis Farrakhan, its leader, who views them as further endangering the black
family.
But Brent Walker, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Public Affairs in Washington, D.C., and himself
a former preacher, is among those who believe that - at least in its current, largely Christian incarnation - region-based
arguments against mixed marriages have more to do with prejudice than God.
''I think that if you're looking for the cause, it's racism, pure and simple. In some cases latent, in some cases
blatant,'' Walker says.
''The New Testament, with the coming of Jesus and the writings of Paul, pretty much dispels any lingering notion
that there is some ban in the Bible on interracial marriage. When Paul says there is neither Jew nor Greek nor
slave, male or female, he's saying that these old barriers that used to exist have been broken down by Christ's
coming.
''So not only do I not think that there was ever any ban in the Old Testament, properly read. Certainly by the
time that we get to the New Testament, there should be little doubt about it.''
According to some interpretations, black people bear a curse and anyone who marries into a family of African descent
is cursed as well. Other opposition to mixed marriages springs from Moses' warning to the children of Israel about
mixing different types of textiles and sowing seeds of different cereals in the same fields. It is viewed as an
admonition against interracial relationships in general, and black-white relationships specifically.
''Some would base their rationale of anti-miscegenation against a kind of expansive reading of these texts,'' says
Harvard's Callahan, ''that, as a biblical principle, things that are unalike shouldn't mix. It seems to be quite
a stretch, and it is. But within the logic of American racism, where black and white is almost ontologically distinctive,
the logic of difference can be applied.''
But God never said, ''Thou shall not race-mix'' argues Bill Merrill, national spokesman for the 16-million-member
Southern Baptist Convention. In 1995, Southern Baptists - who broke with their Northern counterparts in the 1840s
over the issue of slavery - issued an apology to African-Americans for condoning and perpetuating racism, and asked
for forgiveness.
Still, says Merrill, he is not surprised that some Southern Baptists continue to believe interracial relationships
to be an affront to God. But he doesn't buy it. ''To wrap our prejudice in the Scriptures is not only an extremely
bad thing to do from the standpoint of human affairs, it is also a sinful thing to do. This is the word of God.
We simply cannot treat it as though it is Silly Putty to be shaped in any form that we want it to be.''
A direct interpretation of the Scriptures is not always necessary. That's what James Landrith found out when he
expressed interest in attending Bob Jones University, an independent Christian evangelical school in Greenville,
S.C.
Landrith edits an on-line newsletter promoting interracial tolerance. He is white. His wife, Cheryl Gamble Landrith,
is African-American. They and their children are practicing Christians in the Washington, D.C., area.
Landrith received a letter from the school stating, in part, ''Bob Jones University is opposed to intermarriage
because it breaks down the barriers God has established. ... Although there is no verse in the Bible that dogmatically
says that races should not intermarry, the whole plan of God as He has dealt with the races down through the ages
indicates that interracial marriage is not best for man.''
A separate note from an admissions counselor noted: ''I noticed on your application that you are interracially
married. Bob Jones University does not endorse this. It would be no problem for you to be a student here as long
as your wife was not (or vice versa). I trust you understand this.''
The school continues its policy despite a US Supreme Court decision in 1983 that stripped it of its tax-exempt
status, and admonished that ''racial discrimination in education is contrary to public policy.'' And South Carolina
continues to pay for tax-supported scholarships to the school, using revenue collected from the state's general
population, which includes interracial families, although legislation to stop the practice is pending.
Jonathan Pait, a university spokesman, defends the school's policy. ''We respect and recognize the differences
among races and cultures, but we seek to focus most of all, on the things that unite us, which is our love and
service for Jesus Christ.''
And it was not long ago that Alabamians watched as religion was used as the rationale to keep students of different
races apart. In 1994, a Randolph County High School principal, Hulond Humphries, threatened to cancel the school
prom rather than allow interracial couples to attend. He won the backing of many white parents, who argued that
God frowns on interracial relationships. Other parents demanded he be fired.
The School Board refused to remove Humphries, but eventually he was forced from office under a settlement of a
lawsuit brought by the US Justice Department's civil rights division. Yet two years later - with little of the
national publicity of the prom case - Humphries was elected school superintendent.
Could what happened at the Randolph County High School prom happen today? Probably, given lingering attitudes about
love crossing color lines. And can such relationships thrive in a climate of racial intolerance disguised in the
cloth of religion? Most certainly, because humans can no more change the way two people in love feel about each
other than part the Red Sea. Even some staunchly religious opponents of such unions, such as state Representative
Littlejohn, are accepting the social reality of mixed-race marriages.
''Everything goes now,'' Littlejohn says. ''When I was a teenager growing up, I saw some mixed marriages and I
thought that was very wrong. But society has changed such that we have mixed races from black to white to red to
yellow to brown, whatever. And that's the way it's accepted in society.''
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