I feel compelled to defend the traditional biblical position on marriage; a position that even those who call themselves “Christian” have abandoned for the secularist idea of marriage. This secularist view of marriage is unnatural, counter to God’s plan, and detrimental to the future of mankind.

In the seventeenth chapter of the book of Acts the apostle Paul delivers his sermon on Mars hill. He declares that God has created the heavens, the earth, and all things on the earth. God has given life and breathe to all livings things. Then in verse twenty-six he says that God “hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (KJV). The bible does not just state that God has created “all nations of men”, that is all races of men, but it also states that he created the “bounds of their habitation.” The liberal secularist agenda of multiculturalism and miscegenation through interracial marriage is in direct opposition to the natural order established by God.

Interracial marriage is not simply unnatural; God specifically makes commands against it (e.g., Deut. 7:3). God commanded the Israelites not to marry people of other ethnic groups regardless if they were believers or not. In the book of Numbers there are several examples of this. For instance in chapter thirty-six, the Lord commands Zelophehad’s daughters that they can marry anyone they choose so long they married within the clan of their father. In chapter 26, God is angry with the Israelites and has set a plague on them. Phinehas, grandson of Aaron, removes the plague from the Israelites by killing an Israelite man and the Midianite woman he was sleeping with.

Interracial marriage is also contrary to the plans of God. In the book of Revelation, God reveals that there will be a multitude of races in heaven. For instance, John wrote, “After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no one could number, of all nations, tribes, peoples, and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed with white robes, with palm branches in their hands” (7:9). Interracial marriage seeks to destroy these God given distinctions between races, but the Lord plans for racial distinctions to persist into eternity.

I can no longer keep up this charade, but sadly this is no Poe (an extremist parody). The above arguments and biblical justifications are all taken from sermons that were preached in the 1940-60’s when it was the prevailing opinion of American Christians. It was not until 1967 that the Supreme Court of the United States declared anti-miscegenation laws as unconstitutional, and since then the Christian interpretation of scripture has changed to reflect this.

My reasoning for researching these old sermons was not to show how silly conservative Christians were 50 years ago. It is to show how silly conservative Christians are now. Biblical interpretation changes with society. This is why most Christian churches no longer force women to wear head coverings (1 Corinthians 11). A Christian who still holds an anti-miscegenation interpretation of the Bible is considered a racist today even in the most conservative denominations. In another fifty years, anyone who holds an anti-homosexual interpretation of the bible will be considered homophobic and a bigot even within the denominations that now protest gay marriage.

The idea that we as a country, or we as people, receive our morality from the Bible is ridiculous. In the 1700’s slavery was considered moral and right by the overwhelming majority of Americans. So they read this morality into the Bible, and used the Bible to justify their actions. The Bible was used to oppress women and claim them as property well into the 1900’s. For centuries, it was immoral to work on Sunday but most Christians no longer find this to be true (even if it is one of the Ten Commandments they want hung in courtrooms). These facts force the conclusion that the Bible is too ambiguous to be an authority on morality and Christians use the Bible to justify that which they presuppose to be moral.

TL;DR The Bible has no authority in a debate on morality, and certainly has no place in a discussion of legalities.