Dr. Mike Jones

Q: What Does The Bible Really Teach About Interracial Marriages?

Q: What does the Bible really teach about interracial marriages?

A: The first thought that comes to mind as an African American minister is this, if slave owners, who brought the first African slaves to the North America colony of Jamestown, Virginia back in 1619, to assist in their tobacco production, had put more effort in studying the Word of God to ascertain the true meaning of scripture, rather than permitting the “Love of money” (1 Timothy 6:10) to be their god, we wouldn’t be in the mess we’re in, from a racial standpoint.

The idea of enslaving a race of people, and using God’s Word to justify/support this sinful and ignorant view, of proclaiming that the Bible meant for the races to remain pure, is drawn from two different biblical texts. One is the fact that Noah had three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Shem and Japheth received their father’s blessing; and Ham, because he looked upon his father’s nakedness, was cursed. The scripture stated “Cursed be Canaan” was the pronounced curse on Ham and his descendants. Some have claimed that this is the biblical justification for there being a curse put on the black race, and white people should have no intermarriage with them. [In recent years, it has been uncovered that this was a mainstream teaching in the early documents of Mormonism, which has become a great embarrassment to their church.]

The other biblical text is in the Book of Genesis, during creation, when God created everything “after its kind.” Some would go as far as to say that this is the divine order of things in creation; that God made things according to their kind, and “HIS” intent was that they should stay according to their kind.

We find in Deuteronomy 7:3-4, that God commanded His people [the Israelites] not to engage in interracial marriage, and even in this passage you can’t draw a conclusion that the reason was primarily racial. Rather, it was religious; because of other races were worshippers of false gods. And God did not want His race of people intermarried with idol worshippers.

I agree wholeheartedly with the consensus of my theologically minded brothers in the gospel, that I don’t see anything in scripture that would prohibit interracial marriage(s). As one noted theologian so eloquently stated, “Other than the problems people might face in terms of cultural prejudices, any couple that chooses to get married in a culture that has a high degree of racism is asking for all kinds of tension directed against their marriage. If they are willing to do that, it doesn’t mean that they are sinning by going ahead and entering into a marriage covenant.”