Ken Ham and his associates in the book under review favor interracial marriage, provided it is between two Christians or two non-Christians.
For the former, one verse that is cited is, predictably, Gal. 3:28 (p. 91). Now, I wish these fellows would write the following statement on a flashcard and memorize it: If Gal 3:28 proves that interracial marriage is okay, then it also proves that homosexual marriage is okay. It may be that miscegenation is permitted, and of course, homosexual marriage is not marriage at all, but you can’t prove that from Gal 3:28. By itself, that verse could certainly be used by homosexuals if it can be used to support miscegenation. The same exegetical mistake would be committed by both parties. The point of Gal 3:28 is not to overthrow all differences between the sexes, and thus it is also not to overthrow all differences, if there are any, between the races.
They continue: “Malachi 2:15 declares that an important purpose of marriage is to produce godly offspring…In addition, the man and woman must be one spiritually so they can fulfill the command to produce godly offspring… According to the Bible then, which of the impending marriages in the illustration does God counsel against entering into?” (p. 91). The chart on the following page shows three couples:
- A Negro and an Aryan, both Christian
- An Aryan and an Oriental, neither Christian
- Two Aryans, one Christian and one non-Christian.
(Note the Aryans as common denominator in all three scenarios. I wonder if in the Chinese edition of the book the targeted race will be changed.)
“The answer is obvious — the third one.”
But if that is obvious on the basis of the “godly seed” argument, why is not the marriage of two non-Christians equally questionable, since these have no purpose to produce a godly offspring? Why is the second scenario not also highlighted as sinful? Is there a perverse neutrality principle at work in their not seeing #2 as a violation of their stated premise? It is as if the unbeliever gets a bye on the commands of God.
(There is even something oddly perverse about the language used here, starting with the expression, “God counsels.” I thought God commanded. I didn’t think he merely gave counsel.)
Presumably, the Hamites believe that all three scenarios describe valid marriages once contracted. That is, I take it that, whatever sin might have been involved at stages leading to any of three scenarios, the status quo would not be grounds for annulment on their view. The only question then is whether sin would be involved in entering into any of the three.
If there are other principles of marriage that must also be understood, such that one might conclude that scenario #2 is not inherently sinful, then one would need to check to make sure that those missing principles would not have something to qualify scenario #1 as well. If the only principle at work was the desire to “have a godly seed,” scenario #2 would fail just as quickly as #3. Ken Ham instinctively recognized his mistake at a gut level, yet utterly failed to see that his argument was therefore simply inadequate. In their haste to conclude from a carefully selected biblical principle, they have clearly stepped into a major non-sequitor, or they are affirming that unbelievers are not required to obey the law of God.
The eagerness to ratify political correctness leads to a suspension of thought, and a suppression of sanctified instinct. It reminds me of a Board that I twice sat on, which, upon the agitation of one busybody on the Board, became concerned about a “dangerous outbreak” of opposition to miscegenation — well at any rate, a fellow out in the hills that demurred from miscegenation had once visited the busybody’s church. This created a crisis that had to be addressed immediately. The catalog could wait, finding ways to recruit new students could wait — everything could wait until this dire heresy would be stamped out. (Geneva could not even be used in the institution’s name, because someone — why, is anyone’s guess — might associate it with a website known as “Little Geneva” that the busybody found objectionable.) So, in fourteen minutes, they proposed, debated, and passed a motion defining a new heresy, in these words: “The Board of [such and such] denounces the Kinist core idea that miscegenation is a sin, and affirms that the only Biblical limitation for Christian marriage is that believers marry only in the Lord, I Cor 7:39.” From the context, it was clear that by “in the Lord,” they meant “another Christian” — for, if “in the Lord” is meant to designate “all relevant biblical principles,” it would be question-begging so far as settling the miscegenation question — then all the biblical data would have needed to be scanned to make sure, and this can surely not be done in 14 minutes; and it was not done. The context is clearly, that only the religious faith of the person functions as a norm when choosing a mate.
They never noticed that according to their new definition, you can marry your mother as long as she is a Christian!
Such is the result of a generation that feels the magnetism of the politically correct, and acts in haste born of fear.
There are a variety of considerations that might lead fathers or tribal leaders to forbid their daughters to be wooed by tribal outsiders.
1. When it comes to inter-racial marriage, there is a distinct asymmetry between the possible pairings as to desire. There are far more Aryan men that successfully woo Oriental girls than Orientals that avoid being spurned by Aryan girls. There are one or two orders of magnitude more Negroes interested in Aryan girls than Aryans that desire Negresses. This means that, when inter-racial marriage is permitted on a wide-spread basis, there is one sex of each tribe that is the competitive loser — some members of which must either become more aggressive in a way that should not be necessary, or give up. Namely, Orientals vis-à-vis Aryans, Aryans vis-à-vis Negroes, and Negresses vis-à-vis Aryan girls.
Why should this be considered a good or healthy situation? Why should one half of a tribe be put at a competitive disadvantage in the marriage market?
Why should Korean elders insist that their girls may be wooed by Vietnamese? Who would have thought of it?
Why would a Negro seek to seduce or marry an Aryan princess, when there is an ample quantity of Negresses eager to receive his advances? What possible motive could there be other than pure lust? And yet, the pictures of favorable miscegenation shown by Ham and cited by pro-miscegenation preachers is always a Negro with an Aryan fox. Why is this? Has MTV triumphed? What is really at the bottom of this excitement? I will speculate a bit on this down below.
2. Mr. Ham and his colleagues make the analogy between dog breeds and the speciation of humanity from a common pair of parents (pp. 36-45). The differentiation in the case of humans came about by natural selection, they say, but the inter-breedability establishes that there is no racial norm. But carry the analogy through: if you had a nation of cocker spaniels, another of great Danes, and another of Labradors, might it not be well within the rights and natural desires of each of these “tribes” to preserve its distinctives? To forbid the dams to make themselves available to the dogs of the other breeds? What possible “biblical argument” could there be to say that inter-breeding must be permitted, if not encouraged? What could possibly be wrong with recognizing the great gifts inherited by your breed and wishing to preserve them?
The libertarian will have a ready answer: what each individual chooses, let it so be; no one dare object.
At bottom, I think the Christian miscegenists are libertarians to a far greater extent than they are aware. They really model humanity as a miscellaneous collection of individuals, with libertarian choice the highest value governing everything. Society is only a matter of voluntary association. Earlier I showed why this solution is inadequate.
3. Other analogies can be imagined. Consider forbidding your daughter from dating an inmate of a nut-house, for example. If tribe A has an IQ of 70, and tribe B has an IQ of 100, then would it not be insanity for tribe B to permit its daughters to marry into tribe A?
Yet this is exactly the case!
4. Not just the future look and character of one’s descendants, but the organization of society is threatened. The reason is easy to comprehend. There are three possibilities for the mulatto first-generation offspring of the inter-racial marriage. (1) They will bond to the mother’s tribe, (2) they will bond to the father’s tribe, or (3) they will become exemplars of tribeless society, continuing the free and libertarian mixing of their parents into the next generation. Either (1) or (2), continued for several generations, means the race of one of the parents is effectively renounced in favor of the other, and the inter-racial marriage proves to be a brief turbulence that settles back into one ethnic identity eventually. (3) is a view of society which, universalized, implies that the ethnic stock that forms the core of every nation is to be ignored; then government is, at most, a matter of geography, and even geography then becomes arbitrary. That is, “borders” no longer define the concrete land settled by a people. If there is no bond of national blood, why should things be different just for hopping over an arbitrary border? Thus, there is a teleology of one-world government when one ponders this matter deeply. The Hamites consider an objection under this name (pp. 105-111) and poo-poo it, but without showing evidence that they have thought the matter through teleologically. Their analysis fails to consider the deeper issues involved in nationality, and thus this section is not worthy of further interaction.
Why do the Hamites lust for Negroes to have their way with Aryan girls? For, inevitably, that is the picture that is given as Scenario #1 (see illustration on p. 92). The Bible certainly does not command this. We can only speculate.
1. The most charitable view would be to suppose that they pick the most aesthetically repulsive combination in order to set up an a fortiori for libertarian mixing, which model of humanity they really believe is taught by the Bible.
2. Perhaps it is a sign of simple capitulation to the memes and images imposed on us by our secular rulers for the last 40 years, both de jure and de facto: jewish propaganda through movies, starting with Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner and culminating in MTV; agitation through ADL, SPLC, and ACLU; and the rulings of revolutionary judges. The Stockholm syndrome is very real. The desire for praise and acceptance by those holding power leads to a double mind. The beaten dog not only wags his tail but really does desire acceptance by its abusive master. The busybody that brought complaint against me to the Board very clearly and explicitly indicated his fear of the ruling establishment: but it was a fear his conscience approved of, a fear that he did not blush to admit.
3. I don’t think we can rule out a motivation that would properly be designated as “racist” if that word has any meaning at all. Namely, perhaps they think the Negro can only be raised to civilization by raising his IQ and character through interbreeding. In that sense, they are willing, Christ-like, to sacrifice themselves for the sake of another. I believe it was Barth who said there is only one story: the Christ story. Perhaps they see the destiny of the Aryan to lay himself down in sacrifice for the sake of the other races, and specifically, for the Negro race.
4. Most sinister of all, could it be that there is a subtle belief that evangelism of the Negro in a serious, culture-changing way, will only take place by this means? Perhaps the enticement of White girls is the evangelistic trick they wish to hold out, replacing the magic shows, snake handling, and other gimmicks of huckster evangelists of a century ago?
These possibilities are not disjunctive. They all could be in play, feeding one another, supplementing the same grotesque monster. It is not biblical, though in their conceit they think it is. It is messianism on man’s terms. These men have dedicated themselves to a cause that can only be identified as evil. If they persist, the only just fate for them will be exile to Africa.
We should hope for better from them: that they will come to their senses. Let us pray and hope so, before the gifts that God has distributed to humanity, organized into tribes, are washed away, never to be recovered again so far as what can be discerned humanly.
[…] Miscegenation […]
Absolutely flawless logic.
I do believe you’ve pinned him with your best post on the book so far.
Agreed. Best post on the subject here. The paragraph that forms point 4 is impeccable. How could our opponents rebut this?
Great work.
Don’t know how I missed this back in November. DanielJ is correct, absolutely flawless logic.
One thing most Hamites do not think of is the internal struggle that the children of mixed race couplings go through; I’ve seen these personally in my career, and can tell you that these are more painful than the average teenage angst and usually result in the rejection of one or the other race. Our president is a good example of this; he truly rejects his White half in favor of his black half, even though the White half gave him most of the parenting that he received. You touch on this, but not on the emotional pain even the children of Christian mixed race parents experience. Not something I would wish on my own offspring, or my grandchildren.
A fine analysis. Thank you.
Glad to have my attention directed to this posting once again. A homeschooling mom (who is intelligent, anti-TV, and therefore should know better) told me the other day that “little latte-colored babies are SO cute” (with raised pitch on “cute”). When I suggested that I actually like being white, and that I like the white tribe, I was met with an open jaw, staring eyes, and absolute silence. Even a recent episode of Foyle’s War had as its central theme interracial marriage, with the South Carolinian black male making the decision to move to Harlem with his very white English wife to try to escape from verbal, if not worse, attacks against the couple.
To say race mixing is permissable is one thing. But to say it is Biblical and preferable is another. Japheth was blessed, Ham (not Ken Ham, hee hee!) was not. Besides, interracial marriages have slightly higher divorce rates than marriages that started with cohabitation, and much more so than differences in religious magnitude. So if I marry a white agnostic girl, I have a much better chance of lasting than if I marry a black christian girl. Maybe interracial marriage is worse than interfaith marriage after all. Interracial marriage is much more violent than intraracial. That’s enough to oppose it for me, if only for practical reasons
[…] to Their Morality, Part 1 and Part 2, by yours truly; and Tim’s commentary on First Word, Mr. Ham Introduces Miss Egenation and Ham on Genealogy: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Christ. […]
[…] 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 […]
[…] young people date and marry non-Christians, thus destroying the meaning of the family” (96). (I earlier showed that even the family-thesis is badly stated, as marriages between non-believers do not utterly […]
[…] 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 […]