Is Segregation Scriptural?

Nathanael Strickland
Faith and Heritage
August 28, 2013

 

Bob_Jones_Sr
Bob Jones Sr.

Kinism is often accused of being a new invention by our multiracialist Alienist opponents.   Our response is that, while the name may be new, our beliefs are the same as historical Christianity; we are forced to take on a new name for ourselves due to the Marxist hijacking of modern Christianity.  While they may sit in control of the denominations and speak for what passes as Christianity at present, it is their views which are the new invention. We are the true heirs of the Christian tradition, and our views are the ones holding continuity with the past.  The first part of this proof is offered by the Alienists themselves.  That they must so thoroughly condemn and apologize for their forefathers betrays their discontinuity.  This alone should be enough, but as further and more concrete proof, I offer the following sermon by Bob Jones Sr. from 1960, entitled “Is Segregation Scriptural?”  In 1960, Protestantism was the predominant religion in the South, and Bob Jones Sr. was one of the most prominent figures in the Protestant South.  Bob Jones Sr. was the founder and first president of Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina, which, along with Pensacola Christian College in Florida, was and still is one of the most influential fundamentalist Christian institutions in the region and even the country.  His disagreements with Billy Graham were a large contributing factor to the split between fundamentalists and evangelicals in 1957.  He helped pioneer the practice of giving sermons on the radio, which in fact is how this particular sermon was given.  Thus it is reasonable to say that his views in this sermon are definitely representative of the views of white, conservative Christians in the South at the time, and probably even some of the more moderate Southern Christians and white, conservative Christians in the North.

Is Segregation Scriptural?

Address given over radio station WMUU, Bob Jones University, Greenville, South Carolina, April 17, 1960

Words in quotes like those above are Bob Jones Sr.’s, and words like this are my editorials.

What does God teach about the races of the world?  If you will go to the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, you will find where Paul preached a special sermon on Mars Hill. . . .

Now, notice – this is an important verse – the twenty-sixth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (in some of the best original manuscripts, the word “blood” is not there; but it is not important anyhow, because the thoughts are the same).  “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth…”  But do not stop there, “…and hath determined the times appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.”  Now, what does that say?  That says that God Almighty fixed the bounds of their habitation.  That is as clear as anything that was ever said.

This is great confirmation for Kinists, as we often use Acts 17:26 as a proof text as well.  It is comforting that our grandfathers viewed this verse as foundational to a Christian view of race, as we do, and even went so far as to rebuke those Alienists who always try to stop reading after the first half of the verse.  In the words of Bob Jones Sr., I too admonish them, “Do not stop there.”

God Almighty did not make of the human race one race in the sense that He did not fix the bounds of their habitation.  That is perfectly clear.

Our grandfathers saw the dictum, “there is only one race, the human race!” for the foolishness that it is.  In fact, they believed that the Bible made it “perfectly clear” that the opposite is true.

You talk about a superior race and an inferior race and all that kind of situation.  Wait a minute.  No race is inferior in the will of God.  Get that clear.  If a race is in the will of God, it is not inferior.  It is a superior race.  You cannot be superior to another race if your race is in the will of God and the other race is in the will of God.  But the purposes of these races were established by Almighty God; and when man attempts to run contrary to the directive will of God for this world, there is always trouble.

The fact that God has established boundaries between the races in no way diminishes the humanness of any race or implies that they aren’t fully Christian.  In fact, it is only inside of the boundaries that God has set that a race can truly be in the will of God and fulfill its purpose. We flourish only when we live among our own.

There is an effort today to disturb the established order [segregation].  Wait a minute.  Listen, I am talking straight to you.  White folks and colored folks, you listen to me.  You cannot run over God’s plan and God’s established order without having trouble.  God never meant to have one race.  It was not His purpose at all.  God has a purpose for each race. . . .

I want you folks to listen – you white and you colored folks.  Do not let these Satanic propagandists fool you.  This agitation is not of God.  It is of the devil.  Do not let people slander Almighty God.

Our grandfathers considered Christians advocating integration to be slandering God, since they were advocating for the overthrow of God’s established order in His own name.  How far we have come, that their grandchildren now praise a communist adulterer from the pulpit every Sunday in January for championing what their grandfathers apprehended to be blasphemy.

Yes, Paul said, “God… hath made of one blood all nations of men…” All men, to whatever race they may belong, have immortal souls; but all men have mortal bodies, and God fixes the boundaries of the races of the world.  Let me repeat that it is no accident that most Chinese live in China.  It is not an accident that most Japanese live in Japan; and the Africans should have been left in Africa, and the Gospel should have been taken to them as God commanded His people to do.

Wherever we have the races mixed up in large numbers, we have trouble.  They have trouble in New York.  They have trouble in San Francisco.  They have had trouble all over California. . . .

Let me tell you something.  When it comes to the quality of races, all these races have quality.  They have good qualities and bad qualities.

If we would just listen to the Word of God and not try to overthrow God’s established order, we would not have any trouble.  God never meant for American to be a melting pot to rub out the line between the nations.  That was not God’s purpose for this nation.  When someone goes to overthrowing His established order and goes around preaching pious sermons about it, that makes me sick – for a man to stand up and preach pious sermons in this country and talk about rubbing out the line between the races – I say it makes me sick.  I have had the sweetest fellowship with colored Christians, with yellow Christians, with red Christians, with all sorts of Christians – the sweetest fellowship anybody has ever had, we have had.  Christians have always had it.  We have never had any trouble about that.

The trouble today is a Satanic agitation striking back at God’s established order.  That is what is making trouble for us.

Having fellowship with Christians from other races on a spiritual level does not biblically lead to the erasure of God’s boundaries or the overthrow of His established order.  Trying to do the latter will only cause “trouble” for everyone involved, as the last fifty years of American history has shown.  The “pious sermons” of modern preachers and teachers like John Piper, Steve Halbrook, or Russell Moore would make our grandfathers “sick” and rightly be called “Satanic.”

There has never been a time, especially in the last ten years, when the white people in the South were so eager to help the colored people build their schools and see that they get what they ought to have.  All this agitation going on is not headed up by real, Bible-believing, Christian people.

These religious liberals are the worst infidels in many ways in the country; and some of them are filling pulpits down South.  They do not believe the Bible any longer; so it does not do any good to quote it to them.  They have gone over to modernism, and they are leading the white people astray at the same time; and they are leading colored Christians astray.  But every good, substantial, Bible-believing, intelligent orthodox Christian can read what the Word of God and know that what is happening in the South now is not of God.

Our grandfathers called those advocating for diversity and integration “infidels” who had abandoned the Bible for “modernism” and were leading the Christian flock astray.  I wonder what words they would use to describe the current crop of “pastors”?

God gave every race something.  He gave the Africans something.  He gave the Chinese something that he did not give the Japanese.  He gave races certain things.  He chose the Jews.  They are the most wonderful people who ever lived in the world.  God chose them; and God segregated them, not because they were inferior but because He had a purpose for that race. . . .

Yes, God chose the Jews.  If you are against segregation and against racial separation, then you are against God Almighty because He made racial separation in order to preserve the race through whom He could send the Messiah and through whom He could send the Bible.  God is the author of segregation.  God is the author of Jewish separation and Japanese separation.  God made of one blood all nations, but He also drew the boundary lines between races.

God is the author of segregation and racial separation.  Our grandfathers rightly believed that those who rebelled against racial separation rebelled against God Himself, the Author of those boundaries.

Of course, in America we do not have a serious problem with the Orient.  If we had as many Chinese and Japanese as we have colored people in the South, we would run into the same problem; but we have no Oriental problem here in the South. . . .

When you run into conflict with God’s established order racially, you have trouble.  You do not produce harmony.  You produce destruction and trouble, and this nation is in the greatest danger it has ever been in in its history.  We are facing dangers from abroad and dangers at home, and the reason is that we have got away from the Bible of our forefathers. . . . Do not let these religious liberals blowing their bubbles of nothing over your head get you upset and disturbed.  Let’s get back to the Word of God and be sensible.

Our grandfathers were wise enough to recognize that diversity and rebellion against God’s established racial order only breeds destruction and trouble, not harmony.  We, like our grandfathers, exhort Christians to “get back to the Word of God and be sensible,” and to ignore “these religious liberals blowing their bubbles of nothing over your head” about the wonders of diversity and multiculturalism.

Whenever you get a situation that rubs out the line that God has drawn between races, whenever that happens, you are going to have trouble.  That is what is happening today in this country.  All this agitation is a Communistic agitation to overthrow the established order of God in this world.  The Communistic influence is at work all about us.  Certain people are disturbing this situation.  They talk about the fact that we are going to have one world.  We will never really have one world until this world heads up in God.  We are not going to have one world by man’s rubbing out the line that God established.  He is marking the lines, and you cannot rub them out and get away with it.

Our grandfathers recognized that the drive behind integration was anti-Christian communism and one-world government.  What a shock it would be to them that many so-called Christians today advocate, as the biblical model for mankind, a borderless, unified world and the utter destruction of the boundaries God has drawn.

Read More