(The following is from Greg Doudna, Showdown at Big Sandy: Youthful Creativity Confronts Bureaucratic Inertia at an Unconventional Bible College in East Texas [Bellingham, Wash.: The Scrollery, 2006], 109-144. Copyright Greg Doudna. All rights reserved.)
CHAPTER 4
THE DOCTRINE AGAINST INTERRACIAL MARRIAGE
Ambassador College was begun by founder Herbert Armstrong in 1947 for white Israelites only. He spelled this out in his original California articles of incorporation for Ambassador College. By “Israelites,” Armstrong explained, he meant white Anglo-Saxons.
The Worldwide Church of God has not had a history of anti-Semitism (speaking institutionally and of the leadership). Prevailing sentiments have been favorable toward Jews. But the story of attitudes toward African-Americans in the Worldwide Church of God (“Radio Church of God”) is an ignoble and shameful one. Attitudes toward African-Americans in God's True Church in the 1950s and 1960s sometimes were explained as reflecting white, conservative, anti-civil rights thinking of the larger society. But it went far beyond that. Herbert Armstrong and many of the top ministers held to a white southern ideology of segregation of the races. (In the southern states up to the 1960s, segregation was the law, "separate but equal." Whites in the front of the bus, blacks in the back--separate but equal.)
Herbert Armstrong wrote lead articles in the Plain Truth in the early 1960s condemning the attempts in America to end racial segregation. He made clear that God's divine will of segregation had nothing to do with superiority of one race over another. Rather, it was that God made the races different from each other, each with specialized talents, to the glory of God. The God-ordained way was "separate but equal."
For some strange reason, however, Herbert Armstrong's emphasis seemed a lot more on the "separate" than the "equal" part of the aphorism. African-Americans were strictly separated out of Ambassador College because of their skin color. But Herbert Armstrong and his headquarters support team oddly never got around to any serious consideration of the logical corollary of the perceived mandate for racial separation in God’s True Church: providing an “equal” college for black church members’ kids. Blacks were just left out in the cold on this one. The tithe rates of black members were not even proportionately discounted to reflect this inequity. Any budding complaint from the occasional black church member who objected to being expected to subsidize white kids’ educations when his own kids were prohibited was dealt with by a very simple argument: “Look how much worse off blacks in Africa are right now.”
But God’s Church could not uphold the inspired no-blacks rule forever against social pressures from a secular society. As the Ambassador College whites-only admissions policy became increasingly untenable in light of changing attitudes in America, blacks were reluctantly admitted to Ambassador … but only if they were married. The reasoning for this was very logical. Single students date. If black single students were allowed to mix with white students on campus, that carried the horrifying risk of interracial dating and marriage. Therefore the solution was completely logical: just prohibit single African-Americans from Ambassador College. That would prevent such a dreadful spectre from becoming reality. Thus for years faithful, loyal, tithe-paying single young African-American men and women church members continued to be denied admission to the college because of their race.
Finally in 1971, just one year before I arrived at Big Sandy, policy was changed to at last admit single black students to God’s Colleges at Pasadena and Big Sandy for the first time (at Bricket Wood single blacks never were admitted) … but with careful attention that equal numbers of single black men and women were admitted, and a strict rule that there was to be no interracial dating.
At Ambassador College, “dating” in which young men accompanied young women to things like Friday night Bible studies and Sabbath brunch, as well as Ambassador Club “Ladies’ Nights” and dances, was encouraged and part of the way in which students came to know each other. No one tried to segregate other hyphenated American ethnic types from going to Sabbath brunches, etc. with their fellow students of the opposite sex. But African-Americans were supposed to “date” only from among the few other African-Americans of the opposite gender—from week one upon arrival for the next four years until graduation.
Curiously, I do not recall a single sermon or student forum at Big Sandy directly explaining the campus policy on race and dating. It was enforced by college officials in private conferences but, to my memory, never explained publicly in any official college venue. Nor was the policy explained to students in anything written issued by the college.
(I suspect certain intelligent administrators perceived it was best not to have their fingerprints on this if possible. Dean of Students Ronald Kelly and Director of Admissions Lynn Torrance were the major operational enforcement, but at least at Torrance’s end there was care to not admit in writing the race-based reasons involved in admissions exclusions. Sometimes it seemed young Dean Kelly was tasked to announce and enforce sensitive policies and decisions, with wiser invisible ones above him giving signals, but not in writing, as to what was to be done.)
In practice all students, including African-Americans, mixed freely in the student dining hall at meals, work, group activities, classes, and living areas (there was no segregation in roommate or housing assignments). But there was this barrier, applicable only to African-Americans and no other ethnic group, against participation in “dating” other than with the handful of other African-Americans. In this way there was an exclusion of African-American students at Big Sandy from part of the college experience of every other student. The rationale supposedly was the doctrine against interracial marriage, which was believed to be biblically objectionable.
And Ambassador College, of course, was based on the Bible, “the foundation of knowledge.” That was engraved in stone (at the Pasadena campus, literally).
How I came to research interracial marriage
The summer after my freshman year (the summer of 1973), in company with a couple dozen other Big Sandy students, I set off bright-eyed and excited to make big money and gain great experience selling student handbooks door-to-door in southern Ohio for the Southwestern Company. First there was a week of sales school in Nashville where they cut the hot water off from the showers in the morning, made you memorize sales pitches for twelve hours a day, and didn’t let you take naps or use the swimming pool. This was followed by driving to strange towns in southern Ohio and looking for neighborhoods with white frame houses (prime selling territory, working poor with lots of kids), not brick houses (people in brick houses, usually a little better off, don’t buy). We would quickly rent rooms and go to work. The daily routine consisted of getting up at 6:00 a.m. to the sounds of loud rock music (to get the blood moving) and success tapes (to increase motivation to “WIN!”). Then there would be thirteen hours of grueling door-to-door entertaining and selling. We would joke with the people at the door and some would buy (the product did help kids in school—that part was for real). When we got in at night we would fill out our sales reports and mail in the day’s money to Mac (our sales manager in Nashville), then drop asleep exhausted until 6:00 a.m. the next morning. These days would be punctuated by such exciting events as getting chased by dogs, being run out of town by angry sheriffs enforcing no-soliciting ordinances, and hearing more small-town gossip than could be imagined. I decided not to make a career of it.
During the first half of the summer I roomed and sold with fellow student Rex Sexton in a sleepy, impoverished southern Ohio town called Washington Courthouse, where we stayed in a rundown rooming house that turned into a funeral home after we left. During the second half of the summer I sold in Columbus, Ohio. There I stayed with two black fellow student salesmen a year ahead of me at Big Sandy, one of whom was the illustrious John James Griffin III. During the school year Griffin was a saxophonist on Garner Ted Armstrong’s Personal Appearance Campaigns held in various cities in the United States and Canada. Griffin was widely read, bright and witty, and I had many interesting conversations with him. There were adventures as well. One weekend, I persuaded Griffin to accompany me hitchhiking from Columbus to Indianapolis, Indiana, to visit a fellow student, Jamie Rush. Unexpectedly, at one point during our rides a knife was pulled on us for no reason by two guys who looked like something out of the movie Deliverance. Griffin responded with a joke, there was laughter, and the knife was put away. I was glad I had invited Griffin along.
Griffin sensitized me to the complete lack of biblical basis for the church rule against interracial dating and marriage. He had read books by anthropologist Ashley Montagu and conducted a wealth of other research including things like corresponding with presidents of leading Jewish universities. Griffin showed me that common conceptions of race were completely out of keeping with the most basic findings in anthropology. Naturally I plied him with questions. He responded with more information than I dreamed possible. (I had not heard one clue to the existence of this information in classes at Big Sandy. It used to amaze me how much of my education during my Big Sandy years kept happening outside of classes.)
Griffin quoted chapter and verse of unimpeachable authorities who refuted some of the most widespread beliefs people have about race. After what Griffin showed me, I came to appreciate with him that in few fields is the gap between scientific knowledge and popular thinking more disparate than the subject of race—or more damaging in its social consequences. I saw clearly that there were unfounded, harmful, and unbiblical racial attitudes in the Worldwide Church of God. These were not just isolated attitudes in some individuals. These attitudes were grounded in the church’s very structure and makeup.
I wrote a paper on the subject, entitled “The Bible and Interracial Marriage” (Jan 23, 1974). I had no personal stake in the matter. I wrote the paper simply because I saw clearly a point which ought to be changed because it was wrong. It was quite simple to me. The truth of the gospel was incompatible with racism. I would write a paper and show this to the church.
A controversial topic
One friend commented on it in retrospect this way. Writing a paper on any other topic, he said, could ruffle feathers, challenge cherished beliefs, maybe even bring charges of heresy. But in the other cases (like discussing 7000-year plans or who was Melchizedek) these were still mostly in the realm of academic or theological dispute. For a real Fourth-of-July fireworks showdown, my friend sympathetically explained, there could be no surer-fire recipe than writing a paper explaining to church leaders that there is nothing in Holy Writ which can be quoted to forbid, as my friend put it, “their daughters from dating a You Know What.”
Complicating matters was the location of the Big Sandy campus. In the midst of the rural, peaceful beauty of east Texas and the hospitality and friendliness of the people of the region, there were also pockets of people with attitudes on racial matters which could fairly be described as something less than fully enlightened. Even the presence of black students on campus at all was cause for unkind comments from some quarters.
But I was oblivious to these practical exigencies. I forged ahead, so convinced was I of the utter rightness of the case I was presenting in my paper. The issue was to get straight what the Bible said, as a factual matter. My paper showed that there was no biblical justification for forbidding marriage between Christians on grounds of race (contrary to what the church insisted was the command of the Creator of the universe).
I wrote this paper on interracial marriage just three weeks after I had turned in the term paper, “Evidences for the 7000-Year Plan.” That paper agreed with church doctrine and sought to make it more compelling. Now I felt bold enough to submit a paper which would take issue with a church teaching. After all, I had just received a “95” for my paper on the 7000-year plan. (I was quite proud of that “95.”) And, I was now fully a sophomore. The new deputy chancellor and resident administrator at Big Sandy, Ronald Dart, communicated intelligence. He seemed to be someone to whom a reasonable argument would be judged on its merits and would get results. Most important of all, I knew what I had to say was on firm ground biblically. I was ready to take on all comers on that. I was ready to go into the ring, knock out all opposition, and emerge victorious (all in a completely submissive attitude, of course). This would culminate in Herbert Armstrong announcing a complete change to the whole church. My efforts would contribute to a better church, growing in truth.
With trepidation, but convinced of the rightness of my cause, I submitted my paper to Mr. Dart with a brief cover note. It was the only submission of numerous ones to follow in which Mr. Dart returned to me a response.
I will tell the response this paper received, but first here is a condensed version of the paper itself if you’re interested. (If not, just skip over it and continue reading.)
“The Bible and Interracial Marriage”
Greg Doudna
January 23, 1974
Does the Bible prohibit marriage between the races? It is a common conception that the Bible does. The purpose of this paper is to show that this assumption is in error.
Why does the Church of God teach against interracial marriage? It is difficult to know where to begin since various reasons are put forth by different individuals. The Church has published nothing on the subject since 1963 and there is some confusion as to exactly what the Church doctrine is on the subject. If nothing else, perhaps this memorandum could prompt some kind of statement setting forth the teaching of the Church and reasons behind it on this subject.
It should be noted that nowhere does the Bible define “race” or tell us which races are not to mix. It would be another subject in itself to dispel the popular and deeply-ingrained misconceptions that prevail about race. Race is to many people an emotionally loaded subject, something that Ashley Montagu calls “man’s most dangerous myth.”
There seem to be almost as many opinions on the doctrine concerning interracial marriage as there are ministers. For the purposes of this discussion, the definition of interracial marriage is accepted as being marriage between the modern-day descendants of Shem, Ham, and Japheth. This seems to be the church teaching, although a few would carry the restriction down the line to nationalities of the same race.
It has been proven that no differences in blood or blood types exist racially. Yet we often hear of racial mixing referred to as “mixing blood.” Paul said God “hath made of one blood all nations of men” (Acts 17:26, KJV).
Deuteronomy 22:9-11 speaks of not plowing with an ox and ass together, not mixing linen and wool, and not sowing different kinds of seeds. This is supposed to demonstrate the principle of keeping the varieties separate. But the ox and ass are two distinct “kinds.” Human beings are all one mankind. All races of men can mix and produce offspring. Deuteronomy 22 is speaking of kinds, not varieties. It does not speak of mixing for purposes of reproduction in any case.
Leviticus 19:19 is the premise for the doctrine forbidding interracial marriage, in the final analysis. It is the one scripture used to show that God intends varieties to be kept separate. “You shall not let your cattle breed with a different kind: you shall not sow your field with two kinds of seed: neither shall there come upon you a garment of cloth made of two kinds of stuff [KJV, “mingled of linen and woolen”]” (Lev 19:19). It is pointed out that there is only one Hebrew word for both “kind” and “variety,” and that since cattle can reproduce only with cattle, this proves God doesn’t want cattle bred with different varieties of cattle. Now it is a long jump from cattle to humans, but it seems that this statute here in Leviticus regarding cattle is the basis for prohibiting whites, Spanish-Americans, and blacks from dating each other at Ambassador College.
This is a misunderstanding of Leviticus 19:19. It is not even talking about mixing cattle, let alone humans. Any concordance will confirm that it is talking about unnatural breeding of cattle with different kinds of animals [i.e. cattle with non-cattle]. The commentaries confirm this is the correct understanding of this verse. Yet this verse is the basis—the trunk of the tree—for the entire doctrine against interracial marriage. A few verses later we read: “The stranger who sojourns with you shall be to you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God” (Lev 19:33-34). Nothing here about keeping separate. Nowhere, absolutely nowhere in God’s Word do we find a single statement forbidding marriage for racial reasons alone.
This should be simple enough to show that the “trunk of the tree” is without foundation. However, other reasons are given to show that God frowns on interracial marriage, some of the more common ones being: (1) “common sense,” (2) God divided the nations, (3) God commanded the Israelites not to intermarry with the Canaanites, (4) the examples of Solomon, Ezra, and Nehemiah, and (5) the Flood. Let us examine each in turn.
Common sense. This memorandum is concerned with biblical revelation on the subject, not “common sense.” Factors such as “common sense,” tradition, social pressures, effect on the children of such a union, genetics and so forth are factors that need to be considered by individuals contemplating marriage, but since when are these factors for establishing doctrine? Isn’t dating and the final decision on marriage a personal thing between the individuals and families involved? Where in the New Testament does it say Christians must get permission from a minister to marry? Is racial separation really “common sense” after all? Much that passes for “common sense,” especially on the subject of race, is pure nonsense. Let’s recognize that “common sense,” in itself, is not grounds for establishing church doctrine or policy. And of course we know that partisan prejudices should play no part.
God divided the nations. Didn’t God “divide to the nations their inheritances” (Deut 32:8; Gen 10; Acts 17:26)? God also gave inheritances to tribes and individuals within the tribes of Israel. But that did not mean the various families and tribes of Israel could not intermarry. The laws of inheritance do not forbid intermarriage.
The Canaanites. The Israelites were told to stay away from seven specific Canaanite nations (Ex 34; Deut 7; Joshua 23). All examples of mixed marriages are condemned because of idolatry, not race, and this is stated as such in the context of each reference. The Israelites were also told to destroy these peoples. Are we also to obey this part of the command today and be consistent? The New Testament also tells us not to marry heathens (1 Cor 7:39; 2 Cor 6:14)—the only restriction on marriage in the New Testament. Race was not the issue. Religion was the issue.
Proof that God allowed interracial marriage. Deut 21:10-13: “When you go forth to war against your enemies, and the Lord your God gives them into your hands, and you take them captive, and see among the captives a beautiful woman, and you have a desire for her and would take her for yourself as a wife, then you shall bring her home to your house, and she shall shave her head and pare her nails. And she shall put off her captive’s garb, and shall remain in your house and bewail her father and her mother a full month; after that you may go in to her, and be her husband, and she shall be her wife.”
Here, plainly, God specifically allows interracial marriage.
Well, someone is sure to say, just because God allows something doesn’t mean He intends it. God also allowed war and polygamy in the Old Testament but Christ showed us better. Quite true. But where is the New Testament teaching countermanding or setting us straight on Deuteronomy 21? Christ was silent on the subject. If God forbids interracial marriage why would He specifically allow it in this case and never say differently anywhere else—either in the Old Testament or the New Testament? If this is the exception to the rule, where is the rule?
Solomon, Ezra, Nehemiah. Solomon sinned because his wives were pagan and idolatrous, not because they were of a different race. 1 Kgs 11:3-6 shows Solomon’s sin was letting his wives turn his heart to other gods. Race was not the issue. Verse one speaks of Solomon sinning by marrying strange women and lists who they were—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites. Yet Moab, Ammon, and Edom are from Shem—these were not interracial marriages! Marrying a Moabitess in itself is no sin—the Book of Ruth holds out as an example to us the beautiful love story and marriage of Boaz and Ruth. Ruth was a Moabitess, and Christ was descended from them. A whole book of the Bible devoted to glorifying an Israelite-Gentile marriage! There is nothing indicating this was an “exception.” Probably some would condemn Boaz and Ruth if they lived today. The cases of Ezra and Nehemiah are similar. The Bible compares them with Solomon’s (Neh 13:26). These also involved marriages of Jews with pagan foreign wives including Moabites and Ammonites (Neh 13:24), which were not interracial or outside of descendants of Shem. It is historical fact that any Gentile who embraced Israel’s religion was accorded full citizenship in Israel’s society.
The Flood. Did the Flood come on the world because of interracial marriage? Nowhere do we find a clear-cut statement that a Race A was marrying Race B, let alone that this is why God sent the Flood. “The sons of God saw that the daughters of men were fair; and they took to wife such of them as they chose” (Gen 6:2). It is reading into this verse what it does not say to insist it has to mean marriage between races. Some claim Genesis 6:9 refers to Noah being racially “pure.” This is highly debatable—this view is in a minority among commentators. In any case, is racial purity something God looks upon with special favor? Christ Himself was not racially pure! Marriage between the races is not mentioned by Christ. If God destroyed all humanity in the flood totally or in part because of a make-believe rule not part of the Ten Commandments let alone even so much as stated in Genesis, would not one be justified in wondering at the rationality of this fickle God?
No command of God forbids marriage on racial grounds alone. Deuteronomy 21:10-13, on the contrary, makes specific provision for it. If any question remains on the subject let us now examine actual case histories of interracial marriages recorded in God’s Word. Rachab the Canaanite harlot married directly into Israelite society and the line of Christ (Josh 2:1; Matt 1:5). Rachab is spoken of very highly by James and Paul (Heb 11:31; James 2:25). No mention is made of any so-called “sin” of intermarriage. Uriah, one of David’s most loyal men, was a Hittite who was married to Bathsheba (2 Sam 11:3). David later married Bathsheba after Uriah was killed. One of them interracially married. Joseph married the daughter of an Egyptian priest (Gen 41:42-52). Judah took a Canaanite wife, Genesis 38, with no expression of God’s disapproval. The tribe of Benjamin in Judges 21 took foreign wives when all their own women had been destroyed in war. Six hundred Israelite-Gentile marriages. Moses married an Ethiopian woman (Num 12:1). Was this sin? Aaron and Miriam thought so. God told Aaron and Miriam that Moses had not sinned! “My servant Moses … who is faithful in all my house” (Num 12:7). “Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart” (1 Sam 16:7).
Full and complete integration was practiced in Israel. Doesn’t the Fourth Commandment itself, as well as many other scriptures, plainly speak of the “stranger within thy gates” (Ex 20:10)? The Israelites were to have one law for the strangers and themselves, and the strangers were to be treated the same as native Israelites (Ex 12:49; Lev 19:34; Num 9:14). The Israelites were repeatedly warned not to oppress the strangers, fatherless, and widows. Many “strangers” did live within the land of Israel. It was definitely not an apartheid arrangement. The doctrine of separate schools, separate ghettos, separate restaurants, and separate living quarters for different races living in the same nation is nowhere found in God’s Word.
What does all this have to do with interracial marriage? Simply this. Integration and interracial marriage stand or fall together. Segregation and racial “purity” stand or fall together. There is no way an integrated society can prevent some mixing of the races. Segregation discourages interracial marriage. Integration will sooner or later make cases of it inevitable, for how do you stop young people from falling in love?
Ambassador College is integrated.
Yet College policy forbids dating between the races.
Why is this?
The New Testament contains absolutely no restriction of marriage on racial grounds. Israel was the church in the wilderness (Acts 7:38), and not to marry heathen idolaters is saying don’t marry outside the church. This is the Bible interpreting the Bible. No one in God’s church today is a heathen (Gal 2:29). In Christ, “there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, free man, but Christ is all, and in all” (Col 3:11). Paul said all nations are “from one” (Acts 17:26). Paul rebuked Peter for his segregationist tendencies (Gal 2:11-12). See also Acts 2:10; 2:44; 10:28; 1 Cor 1:10; James 2:1; and 2:9. Neither Christ nor the apostles taught racial separation. It is not part of the gospel. It is not part of the doctrines of the church given in Hebrews 6:1-2. This doctrine is not from God. Why then is God’s church teaching it? “Every word of God proves true … Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you, and you be found a liar” (Prov 30:5-6).
Questions that need to be asked. What defines a race, in God’s sight? What about those of mixed ancestry—or are they not allowed to marry anyone? Who is to decide? Many American blacks are actually over fifty percent white. Should they be required to marry a white person, to be consistent? How could such a rule be applied today even if it existed (which it doesn’t)? Doesn’t the application of such a rule depend on identification of the races—who is from Shem, who is from Ham and Japheth, and so on, which carry no guarantee of infallibility—indeed, some of which are nothing more than speculation? Isn’t doctrine supposed to be established from clear scripture? What possible spiritual antitype is there for racial separation in God’s Church? No matter how alien to us personally interracial marriage may be, God nowhere reveals Himself as condemning of it. If two individuals of different races, both converted Christians, wish to date, what is their sin, in the sight of God? Is the doctrine or policy being taught and enforced among Church members in foreign lands? If Italians are Chaldeans from Ham why was an Italian Student Body President of Ambassador College allowed to marry an English-American? Is this not inconsistent? What would be the crime in letting the decision on who is to marry whom rest with the individuals and families involved? How much needless trauma and tragedy has been caused in the past by the church policy on race? How much is continuing still today?
Conclusion. Whatever the reasons one may cite for considering interracial marriage inadvisable in today’s society, scriptural principle is not one of them, and should not be claimed as such. It is not the purpose of this paper to set forth evidence showing that over thirty million whites in the United States have some Negro ancestry; that leading anthropologists have noted that all great civilizations have been built by mixed races; that a correlation has been found between racial purity and cultural inferiority; that in the United States the purest whites are white Southern mountaineers—and this is also the most culturally deprived group in the U.S.; that it is a fallacy that interracial marriage is genetically harmful (it simply is not true scientifically)—but inbreeding is, and so on. The sole purpose of this paper has been to examine the biblical revelation regarding interracial marriage. It is easy to attach God’s name to our own viewpoints. If we look to the Word of God, however, the doctrine against interracial marriage cannot be found. [END]
A favorable response
Mr. Dart, the still-new deputy chancellor who had not previously had a significant personal interaction with me, sent me a very respectful memo in response to this paper. Mr. Dart’s memo said he had read my paper. He said he could offer me considerable credit for it as my required term paper for his Old Testament Survey class (in which I was enrolled). And, he said, he intended to take up the matter with the Doctrinal Committee in Pasadena. After these favorable comments, he cautioned that it was necessary to be aware that “some slowness of change is necessary for stability” (or words to that effect). His memo asked if my paper reflected the views of most of the black students on campus. I wrote back that I believed it did, but I had written the paper on my own initiative and it was my own work. I mentioned the talks I had had with John Griffin on the subject when I roomed with him in Ohio the previous summer.
~ ~ ~
It is difficult to describe how elated I felt. I was heartened! I felt Mr. Dart’s answer was a completely fair response. My paper was on its way! One of the most powerful men in the church was sufficiently impressed with the merits of what I wrote that he had promised to take up the matter with the Doctrinal Committee! I knew there could not help but be serious clashes further down the road. But the issue was going to be discussed. I was confident that truth would win out.
At the end of the semester Mr. Dart, otherwise a notoriously tough grader, gave me an “A” for his course based on this paper. I didn’t care much about that. I was interested in the reaction my paper would receive from headquarters.
This paper alone could have been my showdown at Big Sandy. Unfortunately, this one never made it to high noon. It got derailed before the first rays of dawn.
Bad timing
Unfortunately, I had the misfortune to submit my paper approximately one week before the most threatening crisis in the history of the Worldwide Church of God up to that time exploded in full-blown fury (a dissident uprising). When it hit, Big Sandy looked, spiritually speaking, like a shootout at the OK Corral. When the smoke and carnage cleared over the following weeks (speaking metaphorically), the uprising was quelled and the dissidents defeated and in disarray. But a number of leading ministers and a couple thousand members across the United States were gone.
There was a real showdown all right, but it passed right over my head. It left my humble paper on interracial marriage abandoned in the swirling dust way off to one side of the road.
The battle raged between the True Church and the deceitful dissidents who were inspired by Satan the Devil himself, as Herbert Armstrong evenhandedly characterized it. The dissidents, of course, put it in slightly different words. They thought of it as a clash between a corrupt, controlling organization and courageous individual responsibility. A classmate friend of mine used more colloquial terms. He just said to me (with a philosophical smile as he packed his bags to leave): “I’ve been sold a bill of goods by an ad-man.”
In the midst of this raging battle, I was an insignificant gnat. My unsung paper with its examination of ancient scriptures showing Moses married a black woman, and so on, was just pretty small stuff compared to this cosmic battle between Good and Evil. I watched sadly as my paper became completely sidelined and forgotten in the midst of (again, speaking metaphorically) the shootout and crops and houses set ablaze.
I waited patiently over the following months, but I never heard anything further regarding my paper. College policy was not changed. The church doctrine remained the same for another sixteen years. (In 1990 the Worldwide Church of God finally put an end to its Jim Crow biblical exegesis.) Thereafter, as the rest of this book illustrates, I had extreme difficulty even getting my papers acknowledged at all, let alone arranging for a fair and equitable showdown.
~ ~ ~
As for the Doctrinal Committee at Pasadena, it was abolished by Herbert Armstrong the first time it disagreed with him. Years later, Herbert Armstrong still rankled over the nerve of the Doctrinal Committee to suggest that he, Herbert Armstrong, had possibly been wrong on major points. He made this clear in 1985 in his book Mystery of the Ages. In the midst of a rhapsodic description of the glories of the millennial World Tomorrow, he interjected: “One thing there will not be in the millennial Headquarters Church is a doctrinal committee of intellectual ‘scholars’ to decide whether Christ’s teachings are true doctrines” (p. 350).
John Griffin
The following is from an unpublished manuscript by a fellow student from those days, Peter Leschak. Leschak’s diary-like manuscript was entitled A Dissident’s Viewpoint: A Chronicle of the Hassle and was written October 1974. Leschak was two years ahead of me at Ambassador College, Big Sandy (his years: 1970-1974). During his Big Sandy years Leschak worked with E.C. Phillips at the water treatment plant, occasionally helping Mr. Bailey who handled Ambassador College’s sewage treatment. (That later furnished a rich source of metaphor when he wrote about . . . oh, never mind.) Leschak went on to become an acclaimed writer.[29]
Of interest is Leschak’s report of a Nov. 18, 1973 Ambassador Club meeting featuring John Griffin and the topic of interracial marriage. Unknown to me at the time, this occurred only two months before Mr. Dart received my paper on the topic and follow-up note bringing to his attention again the name of John Griffin. Here are the relevant passages from Leschak’s 1974 account:
April 30, 1973.
It was my turn for table topics in [Ambassador] club, and man, I was prepared. My show-stopper for the evening was going to be a baited question on interracial marriage. Here was the plan:
I presented a little story to the club about these two young people, John and Mary, [who] were ideally suited for marriage. They had dated for years, had similar backgrounds, parental approval, etc., the whole works, except for one detail: John was white and Mary was black or vice versa. I then asked, “Would it be a sin in God’s sight for them to marry?”
Of course the idea was for some confident, but only semi-informed (as are most AC students) dude to jump up in holy righteousness, thump his Bible and loudly declare “NO!” Then I, having done extensive homework, and poised for the kill, would ask him to prove it from the Bible. Then, even if he did happen to know where to turn, I would demolish his arguments one by one. My point would then be to urge the men to be careful of dogmatism and to be sure they knew what they were talking about when they brandished their Bibles.
Just for the record at this point, let me explain that I do not in any way advocate interracial marriage. That is from purely social considerations, however, and I don’t believe God would consider it a sin.
Anyway, back to the topics session. It went beautifully. I threw out the bait and was a bit surprized at first because three or four of the men rose and said they didn’t think it would be a sin, but wouldn’t recommend it for social reasons. I was afraid the plan was going to fall flat, but then a sophomore got up and gave the dogmatic “no.” I asked him to prove it. He stammered for a few seconds, turned red and sat down. A junior then rose and gave the coup de grace. He informed the unfortunate sophomore that the point could not be proved from the Bible. I then gave my warning against unenlightened dogmatism. It was a real high. I had even better results with the same topic the next year.
<. . . snip . . .>
November 18, 1973.
It was six months since I had used the interracial marriage topic in club, and the mood had changed somewhat at AC since then. Things were a little more sensitive.
This time around it was my own club. I had only really desired one position of leadership with any enthusiasm since I arrived at AC, and that was to be a club president. I was afraid that with the image of a “free thinker” which I had developed the previous school year, I might not be given the influence and responsibility of an Ambassador club, but I heard through the ever-active grapevine that a somewhat influential friend of mine had convinced some skeptical and hesitant faculty members that I should be a club president. I was grateful. I had the opportunity to select my own officers, so Wayne Janes, Bob McBride, Gary Smith, and John Griffin made up my “administration” … It was a lively, outspoken, and even sometimes thoughtful bunch. Mr. Mark Kaplan was our director, and since it was his first time in such a post, he contributed an enthusiasm which often gave the club a shot of inspiration.
On the evening of Nov. 18th we experienced one of the most stimulating topics sessions I’d participated in during 3-1/2 years of club at AC. I was topics master and I presented the same topic on interracial marriage as I had on April 30th of the last semester.
Immediately junior John Griffin, a former black roommate of mine, who had thoroughly researched the subject from every conceivable aspect, rose and gave about a three minute defense of the point that interracial marriage was not a sin in God’s sight. A freshman then brought up a scripture he felt was to the contrary and Griffin again rose for another few minutes to counter his argument. Another rose to challenge him and John dispatched him as well. He spoke for another few minutes, quoting the Bible and other secular sources. He hit it from all angles, Biblical, biological, social, historical. The club members and Kaplan were surprized and slightly overwhelmed. The discussion went on for 15 or 20 minutes with Griffin the master of it all.
In his evaluation of the session Kaplan, who had apparently never heard anything quite like it in a club before, suggested that perhaps we could take the discussion to Mr. Dart. He apparently wasn’t aware that it had been an “underground” issue for about a year. The administration was well aware of it.
Here is still another echo of John Griffin. A fellow Big Sandy student wrote me in 1988:
I remember John Griffin well. I sat at the same dining hall table with him once and was struck by a profound comment he made: “All things are relative.” Wonder what became of him. Also, there is an anecdote about John Griffin and ____ that goes far to point out where the WCG was really coming from on interracial dating. This was before I knew ____. Seems she and John Griffin got into a heated discussion about some academic point and, while pressing a point, ____ touched him momentarily on the arm.
A few days later she was called into [Dean of Students] Mr. Kelly’s presence, who informed her that there were rumors going around concerning her and John Griffin, and he wanted to know if she knew of those rumors and if there was any basis to them. He apparently was satisfied by her explanation that the arm touch was all, and that was that.
That was the way things were. I myself heard a story—secondhand but I believe it to be reliable—concerning a senior white male student and a sophomore female black student during my freshman year. He had driven her into nearby Tyler for some innocuous errand as a courtesy since she had no car and they were friends. According to the white senior student, Mr. Kelly had called him in to his office and asked him if he had taken the young black woman in to get an abortion. (The answer was no, nor was there any basis for the question.) But back to John Griffin.
~ ~ ~
At the student level, I don’t know of anyone who didn’t like John Griffin, including those with whom he engaged in spirited debate. He was just that kind of person—engaging, lively, and upbeat, such that even if one didn’t agree with him, one still liked him. The administration’s view of Griffin, however, may have been a different matter. Here they had magnanimously let him in even though he was black, and he was ungratefully taking advantage of their beneficence by pointing out absurd contradictions in their policies with razor-sharp logic, making them look like idiots—and worse still, talking about it right and left indiscriminately to other students, all of whom liked him and a good number of whom thought he made excellent sense. My mention of Griffin to the deputy chancellor as in the background of my paper was only one of a number of points at which Griffin came to their unwelcome attention.
I don’t know the circumstances, but at some point Griffin disappeared without graduating. In retrospect, how could it have been otherwise. He shone too brightly. He was too much for the institution to handle. I wonder where he is now. He was missed.
A graduating student at Big Sandy is disqualified from
employment in the “Work” because of the interracial
marriage doctrine …
Another African-American fellow student at Big Sandy when I was there was Murdock Gibbs. Gibbs was one of the most decent persons there was: thoughtful, considerate, and he had a conscience.
It was Gibbs who passed on to me this behind-the-scenes glimpse into American politics. Shortly before he came to Ambassador College in Big Sandy, Gibbs had occasion to talk with the first African-American mayor in Alabama, the mayor of Tuskegee, Gibbs’ hometown. This mayor told Gibbs about George Wallace, the governor of Alabama. Wallace had gained national prominence for being a hard-liner on segregation and always got the white racist vote, both in Alabama and throughout the United States in 1968 and 1972 when he ran for President. (I remember how white racists in Akron, Ohio at the gas station where I worked just loved George Wallace.) But this black mayor told Gibbs that Wallace was no racist. Wallace only talked like he was, pretended to be racist, to get the votes he needed to get elected! Privately he treated the black leaders fine, gave them what they needed, worked along well with them. When Gibbs told me this I marveled that while a lot of people are racist and pretend not to be, this was the first I ever heard of the reverse (if it was true). But this is a digression.
Gibbs entered Ambassador College at Big Sandy the year after I did, but Gibbs was about four years older than me as I recall. The reason he was older as a freshman had to do with his having been refused admission to Ambassador College Big Sandy in earlier years because of the color of his skin, since Ambassador College was not accepting single blacks until 1971. (Of course they did not say that in his rejection letters, which never gave a reason.) When he was refused admission to Ambassador College the first time he applied in 1968, he went to one of his second choices, prestigious Brandeis University in Massachusetts which had offered him a scholarship. Every year after that he would apply to transfer to Ambassador College and get turned down again, never being told why. The first three years he was turned down Gibbs did not even realize that Ambassador College had a policy not to admit blacks. After about three years of his applications being turned down a local white WCG minister clued him in to what was going on, and then later black WCG ministers in New York City confirmed it to him. Still Gibbs kept applying.
After four years Gibbs graduated from Brandeis in 1972 with a B.A. Following his graduation from Brandeis Gibbs then received an acceptance letter from Ambassador College (in response to his annual application #5). But Gibbs was on summer vacation in Cleveland, Ohio at the time and there was a slight delay in him receiving the letter due to the forwarding. By the time Gibbs got the letter and promptly made contact with the Admissions Office at Big Sandy to accept the happy news, he was told it was too late!—in the delay they had accepted another black guy in his spot! They were filling a quota of four black men and four black women that year so that there would be the right number for blacks to date among “their own kind.” Under no circumstances could there be a fifth black male admitted when there were only four black females for them to date. Since the quota for black male students was unfortunately now filled, Gibbs was just out of luck again, no matter how well qualified he was and despite his having been sent a letter of admission.
Gibbs then moved to New York City in the fall of 1972, landed a job as a publicity writer for McGraw-Hill, and applied yet another time to Ambassador. He received an acceptance letter in the summer of 1973, and at last was able to come to Ambassador College, his dream. He started in the fall of 1973. He was selected as freshman class president.
If anyone would have made a good pastor of a church congregation one would think of Gibbs. He had it all: sincerity, empathy, dedication, people skills, teaching skills, outstanding reputation, the works. He completed the full ministerial training program at Big Sandy and was interviewed for the job for which he had trained and was, to all outward appearances, fully qualified. This would be spring 1976. But there was a slight problem: Gibbs was an honest man. They had ways of screening for that. One stock question the ministerial hiring committee asked the aspiring seniors being interviewed was this: “Do you disagree with any church doctrines?” The correct answer to this question was “No.” (Whether or not it was true.) Any answer other than an unqualified “no” was a practically certain kiss of death.
Gibbs appeared before the three-man hiring committee, which consisted of Dean Blackwell in charge, and two other ministers, David Robinson and Norvel Pyle. The first question these men of God asked Gibbs was how he felt about interracial marriage. (That was not the first question asked of white ministerial candidates.) Gibbs disclosed truthfully that he did not see where in the Bible interracial marriage was a sin, and that he personally could not kick someone out of the church over this issue. Gibbs was therefore disqualified from being hired as a minister. All three agreed with the thumbs-down. Though I remember Gibbs well and remember being puzzled that he had not been hired, it was only years later when I came across the following newspaper account by accident that I learned why. This is from the 1996 Worldwide News (the in-house WCG newspaper) reporting on a church symposium on racial healing:
Murdock Gibbs, a local church elder from the Dallas, Texas, North church, related how Ambassador College at one time did not accept blacks. Mr. Gibbs asked: How would you feel if your children could not attend the school you were donating so much money to?
Mr. Gibbs eventually attended Ambassador and was interviewed for the ministry shortly before graduation. “I told them I didn’t feel that interracial marriage was a sin. I didn't think it was something that would determine someone’s salvation. That it wasn’t something I would kick someone out of the church over.”
The presiding minister replied: “Well, until we prove to you that it is a sin, you will never be used in this work.”
Mr. Gibbs said: “From that point forward I said, ‘God, if you want me to be used, it’s up to you. I’m not going to try to work through men and please men.’ And about a year ago I was ordained an elder in what I consider is a new Worldwide Church of God.”[30]
… while, amazingly, headquarters simultaneously denies to
the PUBLIC that a doctrine against interracial marriage
even exists!
In an article in the American mass-circulation monthly Christianity Today, a journalist reported to that magazine’s readership that he had been told by officials of the Worldwide Church of God in Pasadena in the spring of 1976 that there was no doctrine against interracial marriage. The journalist, Joseph Hopkins, reported that unnamed officials at Pasadena had told him: “we cannot and do not forbid people of different racial or ethnic backgrounds to marry even though such marriages may not be wise.”[31]
I do not remember hearing anything about this at the time. And based on the experience of Murdock Gibbs at Big Sandy cited above, it seems long-time ministers at Big Sandy doing ministerial hiring interviews also were unaware that the doctrine they were punishing Gibbs for not believing was not believed at headquarters either, and in fact, according to the report, was not a doctrine of the church.
The Christianity Today report, it should be noted, was not a misquote or a mistake. (The particular journalist, Hopkins, was otherwise scrupulously accurate.) In fact, what headquarters told Christianity Today seems to have been a sound bite for public consumption which never was implemented. Surprisingly, it appears headquarters at Pasadena indeed was poised to make a change in the doctrine on interracial marriage in 1976 (though it seems virtually no one at Big Sandy, including at the senior ministerial level, knew this at the time they torpedoed Murdock Gibbs’ employment prospects). According to Church of God historian Richard Nickels, papers for the headquarters Systematic Theology Project issued at Pasadena in late 1976 included a written statement on “Race and Ethnic Relations in the Church” which stated that the church would no longer teach against interracial marriage.[32] But few church members in the Worldwide Church of God seemed aware of this. I do not think it was announced by most ministers to their congregations. If it was, it was cancelled in 1978 when Herbert Armstrong condemned the entire Systematic Theology Project as a plot done behind his back and fired the ones who had prepared it.
The doctrine against interracial marriage as it was
carried out in God’s Church
Wesley Webster was a later Ambassador College (Pasadena)-trained African-American who did become a Worldwide Church of God minister. He has written of his experiences with race issues in the 1980s. Webster writes:
I can remember a very unfortunate experience that I once had when I was being trained in the Ministry [of the Worldwide Church of God] in 1987. The Assistant Pastor had me assist him in visiting a new contact and prospective member. The young lady was of mixed parentage. Her mother was white, and her father was black. She was very light in complexion, but her brother was very dark. Before inviting her to Church, the Assistant Pastor had to inform her that we did not allow interracial dating and marriage in the Church. We had no clear scriptures to support our point. However, the minister went on to explain that since she was not clearly in either racial group, she would have to decide before attending services which race (skin color) she would date. Her decision once approved would be final and lifelong. For approval she was required to write an essay explaining her decision which was to be sent to Pasadena along with a photograph, before a final decision could be made.[33]
This is what the doctrine meant in practice: a young woman forced by these ministers to choose what skin color of man in the future she would be forever forbidden to love and marry, no matter how honorable and good that man might be and even though she herself shared the same skin color. Webster also recounted the day he learned he was accepted to Ambassador College.
I’ll always remember the day that I found out that I was accepted to go to Ambassador College. I’ll always remember because the Pastor was instructed to inform me and make sure that I understood interracial dating at Ambassador was strictly forbidden. White males were not subjected to this questioning. This was definitely a form of racial discrimination and reflected the racist view that black men are desperately desirous of white women. These views are a carry over from the slavery and Jim Crow periods of the United States’ history.
Impact in individual lives
Around 1990 a man identifying himself as a Worldwide Church of God member wrote to William F. Dankenbring, a former writer for the Plain Truth magazine now running an independent publishing ministry. The distraught letter writer was dumbfounded to hear Worldwide Church of God headquarters claim the church had never broken up interracial marriages (as distinguished from forbidding new ones to happen). The letter writer said they were lying; he claimed his interracial marriage had been broken up by church officials because of the doctrine against interracial marriage. The author of this letter wrote:
In the Worldwide News of July 30, 1990 … Joseph Tkach said: “Herbert W. Armstrong did not require interracially married converts to separate.” This is a lie, Mr. Dankenbring. How do I know it is a lie? I know it is a lie because I was forced to separate from my beautiful, loving, wonderful wife—only because of her skin color!!!
I have suffered untold misery over the years, repenting of my longing for this woman, never fully being able to get her out of my memory. Now the Church is telling me that no one was ever forced to leave their mate because of interracial marriage.
I am going crazy, Mr. Dankenbring. I can’t stand this. My beautiful wife is now married to someone of her own race, and every time I think of her living with another man I have to repent of my anger and sorrow in the loss of the best thing that ever happened to me … I just can’t believe this!
I can’t sign this. I’m still a member and couldn’t take being disfellowshipped … This is too much. Help me … I don’t know how I can live with this.[34]
The writer of this heart-wrenching letter did not identify himself because of fear that his loving fellow Christians would ostracize him if he did. Was this man’s story true? Another letter Dankenbring received said:
I was forbidden to marry the person I intended to marry because that person had mixed blood of two races … that decision hurt me and my family a lot and now that the doctrine is changing it makes me feel sick inside at how I separated from my mixed-race friend, only because of her race.[35]
Ronald Dart on interracial marriage
In 1979 Ronald Dart, for many years in high position in the Worldwide Church of God, and who appeared to have done nothing with my paper on interracial marriage or the arguments in it in those years despite his letter to me saying he would, left the Worldwide Church and joined with Garner Ted Armstrong’s new church, the Church of God, International, headquartered in Tyler, Texas. Mr. Dart soon became Number Two man in Garner Ted’s church. In 1987 I sent Dart a draft of an earlier version of the present chapter. Dart responded:
The segments in your paper on race relations are an interesting illustration of the problem of change in any organization. There were many of us who were uncomfortable with the college’s policy, but not even Herbert W. Armstrong could change that policy by fiat—amazing as that sounds. Racial feelings were too deeply rooted in everyone concerned, and there are some changes that have to be made over time as people grow and learn. They cannot be forced. I believe this is one of those questions.
I hate to say this, but this reminded me of the time I saw the American evangelist Jerry Falwell on television commenting on the subject of apartheid in South Africa. This was back when South Africa was still white-minority ruled and practicing apartheid. (Conservative Christian leaders such as Falwell were among the strongest supporters of the racist regime.) Falwell said that the problem in South Africa was that apartheid existed, but no one liked apartheid. According to Falwell, the blacks didn’t like apartheid, and the whites didn’t either. It was something that was inherited that no one today supported or wanted, but it still existed. (Therefore, the white government of South Africa should not be condemned, since they were against apartheid too.) There was this unjust system in place, enforced brutally by laws and police, but no one was responsible since everyone was against it. So Falwell’s logic. Unfortunately Ronald Dart’s statement sounded too much like Falwell’s unconvincing apology for the South Africa regime. It brought back memories of the 1960s in which I heard, as a child, whites telling blacks they needed to be more “patient” in seeking equality before the law—after all, it was only 100 years after blacks had been promised equality, and these things take time and cannot be forced.
Certainly changes of attitudes take time. But what did Dart, who was in a position to do something, do to encourage the process? Dart had the no-interracial dating policy, which was certainly racist since it was so singularly and emotionally focused on African-Americans, enforced by those under him at Big Sandy. I do not remember Dart ever giving a sermon or Bible Study showing that the doctrine against interracial marriage was unbiblical. As the most influential and respected administrator and teacher at Big Sandy, he could have changed attitudes significantly by as little as a single effective Bible study on the topic. But so far as I am aware, it never happened.
Meanwhile, senior student Murdock Gibbs was being told at Big Sandy, on Mr. Dart’s watch, that he, Gibbs, was banned from employment in his field of training unless he would believe and enforce the doctrine against interracial marriage—a doctrine without any valid basis.
~ ~ ~
How was interracial marriage handled in the new church led by Garner Ted Armstrong and Ronald Dart? How did Dart’s “changes that have to be made over time” work out in practice in the Church of God, International? In September 1990 Ambassador Report reported:
The significance (or lack thereof) of race and the way in which the world’s races should interact is another doctrinal area undergoing sweeping changes in the WCG. Whereas HWA saw the Anglo-Saxon “race” as having a special past and future historical role, Tkach increasingly emphasizes the complete equality of all races. Whereas HWA was known to have refused to marry interracial couples, Tkach has stated that while his church is not trying to encourage interracial marriage, he now strictly prohibits ministers from refusing to marry a man and a woman because they are of different races (WN, July 30, p. 1).
As Tkach himself acknowledged (p. 5), the topic of interracial marriage is an emotionally charged one in WCG circles. Even in the Church of God International, once thought to be more “liberal” than the WCG, interracial couples have had difficulties being accepted by fellow church members and have even been denied marriage by some ministers. For instance in 1986 when CGI ministers refused to marry one CGI couple because he was white and she was black, the couple was forced to go to a Baptist minister to have their wedding performed.
The couple, now Mr. and Mrs. (C. A. and Doreen) Foland, left CGI to help found the Sabbath-keeping Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ, which is pastored by former WCG minister Ross May. The Folands have appeared on a number of talk shows and their personal trials have been documented in newspapers …
A glimpse of the Worldwide Church of God African-American experience
The following is from a recent email exchange I had with an African-American who was a student at Big Sandy when I was there:
Me: When I looked at the Envoy [Ambassador College yearbook] for 1974 a few months back I was surprised to notice 100% white faces in all four classes of Bricket Wood shown (unlike Pasadena and Big Sandy). How come I didn’t remember that? Or did I know it and forget it? Did you know that?
Reply: Because you’re white. And it really wasn’t an issue that affected you. If you saw a Bricket Wood photo of only women, you probably would have questioned what was going on—you being a male, this would directly affect you and your perceptions.
I guarantee you, every time a black WCG family or person looks at a photo of AC—paging through the Envoy or some other idyllic portrayal of life at AC, we’re thinking, “Where are the black people?”
Me: When you came to Big Sandy, was there a formal mechanism in which you were instructed not to date non-blacks?
Reply: No, but other church literature—Plain Truth and booklets—implied or clearly stated that “God” placed the races in their boundaries and never intended racial mixing. The Big Guns from Headquarters adamantly preached racial separation, especially folk like Gerald Waterhouse who had the whole racial plan of God figured out.
Of course, this doctrine made no sense when they tried to explain Noah and his sons starting the human race and other races … we were told that God allowed Noah’s sons to marry outside of their races, that is, Ham (white) married a black lady; Japheth (white) married an Oriental/yellow lady; and Shem (white), of course, was like Noah—“perfect in his [bloodline] generations,” and married a white lady.
Yeah, black folks and other minorities heard this kind of preaching for years … but this was “God’s Church.” He would set things straight, some felt. Others recognized it as racist and either fumed quietly or left the church.
What can one say. It was so wrong. In earlier days in America white slave-owners heard sermons preaching that blacks had no souls and were not human, were under the “curse of Ham,” and so on. Biblical exegesis legitimizing hurtful attitudes and actions toward other groups of human beings in the name of God is an old, old story.
The doctrine of Anglo-Israelism formerly held by the Worldwide Church of God and continued in many of the splinter groups—even though the self-understanding of many of the groups holding the Anglo-Israel doctrine is that they are not racist—nevertheless underlies institutional racism, with its language of “Israelite” (whites) versus “stranger” (blacks). More on Anglo-Israelism later.
The long night ends in the Worldwide Church of God
on this issue
In mid-1989 the first edition of the present book, Showdown at Big Sandy, appeared with an earlier version of the present chapter featuring my 1974 student paper on interracial marriage written when I was at Big Sandy. In September 1989 Ambassador Report reported my book’s availability and favorably reviewed and recommended it. The book, and my interracial marriage paper and chapter within it, became known within Worldwide Church of God circles at that time. It was also at about this time that William Dankenbring, whose publishing ministry critical of the Worldwide Church of God had a substantial readership, published a partly derivative version of my interracial marriage paper under his own name, giving its arguments wider currency.[36] He blasted the WCG over this issue.
Whether either of these things played a role in what happened a few months later I do not know, but in July 1990 the Worldwide Church of God formally ended its doctrine that the Bible forbids interracial marriage. By decision of Pastor General Joseph Tkach, Sr., the doctrine and policy of the Worldwide Church of God came to be in agreement in almost every particular with what students such as John Griffin, and my 1974 sophomore paper, had argued on this subject so long ago at Big Sandy.
~ ~ ~
In 1994-95 the Worldwide Church of God, led by Joseph Tkach, Sr., and then Joseph Tkach, Jr. following the death of Tkach Sr. in September 1995, astonished observers in the religious world by repudiating the distinctive doctrines of Herbert Armstrong, expressing sorrow for the hurt and abuses of the past, and becoming a Sunday-keeping evangelical church. The transformed, humbler WCG—a church which had for so long attacked and condemned other Christian ministries—was embraced and welcomed by evangelicals like a prodigal son coming home. It was either breathtakingly courageous, a Damascus-road experience of a church repenting as a body, or else it was wholesale apostasy and a cruel abandonment of historic roots, depending on how one viewed it. Feelings ran very deep. The changes caused massive defections of ministers and members many of whom switched over to several major and a large number of minor “splinter groups” (as all sides refer to the phenomenon without opprobrium).
By far the largest and most important of the splinter groups is the Cincinnati, Ohio-based United Church of God, started in 1995 by a number of former high-level WCG ministers. Hundreds of WCG ministers and 12,000 members went over to the new UCG. The UCG announced their default doctrines were the ones of the WCG before the Tkach sweeping reforms, although they set up procedures to study and correct doctrines by top ministerial consensus as needed.
And so it was that from 1995 until 2005 the United Church of God resumed the old doctrine against interracial marriage, although their stated reasoning was different than Herbert Armstrong’s in arriving at the same conclusion. No longer were the traditional alleged biblical reasons forbidding interracial marriage of the old WCG cited; they explicitly acknowledged that those reasons were bad exegesis and baseless. They acknowledged that the Bible nowhere directly forbids interracial marriage. Instead, the UCG’s stated reasoning until 2005 was that the Bible (a) gives many examples of recommending marriage within one’s own extended family and community (rather than with different cultures or parts of the world), and (b) gives the ministry the task of counseling members with wise advice on social issues, such as the problems that face interracial marriages for social reasons.
These two stated reasons became the new Bible foundation for the (all-white) UCG governing ministers’ formal position that as a denomination they officially opposed interracial marriage—sight unseen in advance, in all cases, no matter who the people or what the circumstances. There were too many social problems, they explained, too much racism in the world for the UCG to approve an interracial marriage, due to the problems that would beset such a couple. (The UCG headquarters prohibition of interracial marriage was for the parties’ own good, arising from the ministers’ biblical mandate of care for the brethren, you see.) Same conclusion as the old WCG, different way of getting there from the pages of the Bible.
But in August 2005 the Council of Elders of the United Church of God approved a study paper announcing for the first time that that church body has no doctrine against interracial marriage. Unlike the Worldwide Church of God when it changed on this issue, the UCG’s statement appears unaccompanied with any formal statement of sorrow for the effects their former teachings and attitudes meant for their black brethren. But they did, in 2005, come to consensus on ditching the biblically indefensible doctrine itself, for reasons virtually identical to those of John Griffin and my student paper at Big Sandy of 1974, and of the WCG of 1990.
Closing comments from today
The whole notion of “three races” which was so basic and widespread in these discussions is bogus. There is no such thing as “three races” in any scientific sense. There are only multiple ethnicities in history which are largely socially constructed and self-defined. The “three races” idea was a 19th century notion, deeply racist in its origins, that is discredited today in anthropological circles.
Of interest for those wishing to do further research is a field called “whiteness studies” and a subset of that focused around a journal called Race Traitor. From one of the editors of this publication:
Race Traitor, whose first issue appeared in the fall of 1992 [had] the slogan “Treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity” on its cover. The aim was to chronicle and analyze the making, remaking, and unmaking of whiteness. My book on the Irish was the story of how people for whom whiteness had no meaning learned its rules and adapted their behavior to take advantage of them; Race Traitor was an attempt to run the film backwards, to explore how people who had been brought up as white might become unwhite … The goal of abolishing the white race is on its face so desirable that some may find it hard to believe that it could incur any opposition other than from committed white supremacists. Of course we expected bewilderment from people who still think of race as biology. We frequently get letters accusing us of being “racists,” just like the KKK, and have even been called a “hate group” … Our standard response is to draw an analogy with anti-royalism: to oppose monarchy does not mean killing the king; it means getting rid of crowns, thrones, royal titles, etc. …[37]
And from an online description:
One group of people involved in these discussions advocate a strategy they call race treason, and are grouped around articles appearing in the journal Race Traitor. The adherents’ main argument is that whiteness (as a marker of a social status within the United States) is conferred upon people in exchange for an expectation of loyalty to what they consider an oppressive social order. This loyalty has taken a variety of forms over time: suppression of slave rebellions, participation in patrols for runaways, maintenance of race exclusionary unions, participation in riots, support for racist violence, and participation in acts of violence during the conquest of western North America. Like currency, the value of this privilege (for the powerful) depends on the reliability of “white skin” (or as physical anthropologists would deem this construct, the phenotype of historical North Atlantic Europeans) as a marker for social consent. With sufficient “counterfeit whites” resisting racism and capitalism, the writers in this tradition argue, the privilege will be withdrawn or will splinter, prompting an era of conflict and social redefinition. Without such a period, they argue, progress towards social justice is impossible, and thus “treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity.”
In Race Traitor, the editors cite as basis for their proposed actions a call by African American writers and activists—notably W.E.B. DuBois and James Baldwin—for whites to break solidarity with American racism. Since that racism involves the awarding of various forms of white privilege, some have even argued that every white identity is drawn into that system of privilege. Only identities which seek to transcend or defy that privilege, they argue are effectively antiracist. This essential argument echoes Baldwin’s declaration that, “As long as you think you are white, there’s no hope for you,” in an essay in which he acknowledges a variety of European cultures, a multiracial American culture, but no white culture per se which can be distinguished from the maintenance of racism.
Race Traitor advocates have sought examples of race treason by whites in American history. One historical figure consistently valorized by Race Traitor (a publication favorable to the tenets of whiteness studies) is John Brown, a Northern abolitionist of European descent who battled slavery in western territories of the United States and led a failed but dramatic raid to free slaves and create an armed anti-slavery force at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.[38]
Now before (fellow white) readers of Christian-biblical grounding get their hackles up over this (and I do purposely quote the above to be provocative), consider three questions. Think:
(1) Is there any biblical basis to such a notion of classification as a “white race” in history?
Are Italians part of the “white race”? Why? Are Russians? What about Assyrian Christian Iraqis and other Iraqis who descend from the Assyrians of old? What about Jordanians? Are Arab tribes who claim descent from Ishmael? Are Spaniards part of the white race? Are Portuguese? Are Greeks? Are Poles? How about Muslim Shi‘ite Azerbaijanis from the Caucasus? How about Armenians and Georgians and Chechens from the Caucasus area, otherwise known as Caucasians, or in Russia known negatively as blacks (because their skin is typically darker and more “ethnic” looking than that of Russians)? Are these Caucasians, who are Russia’s blacks, members of the “white race”? (Remember, historically Armenians and Georgians from the Caucasus started out defining the so-called Caucasian/white race.) Are Hungarians part of “the white race”? Rumanians? Czechs? Gypsies (Roma)? Albanians? Serbs? How about the Persians of Iran, Iran’s largest ethnic group, who descend from the ancient Aryan Persians?
(2) What is the actual basis for such a notion of a “white race” in history?
Same questions as above, repeated. How did some of these groups get to be members of “the white race,” while others did not? Who decided, and why? And finally,
(3) Has this notion done more good or harm?
I leave these questions open, to encourage reflection. [END]
Notes:
29. Peter Leschak, Letters from Side Lake: A Chronicle of Life in the North Woods (New York: Harper and Row, 1987); The Bear Guardian: Northwoods Tales and Meditations (St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 1990); Brimming with the Furies Out on the Trail of Experience (St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press of St. Cloud, 1993); Seeing the Raven: A Narrative of Renewal (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1994); Hellroaring: the Life and Times of a Fire Bum (St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 1995); The Snow Lotus: Exploring the Eternal Moment (Minnesota: U. of Minnesota Press, 1996); Trials by Wildfire: In Search of the New Warrior Spirit (Minneapolis: U. of Minnesota Press, 1999); Rogues and Toads: A Poetry Collection (St. Cloud, Minn.: North Star Press, 1999); and Ghosts of the Firegrounds: Echoes of the Great Peshtigo Fire and the Calling of a Wildland Firefighter (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2003). The last named, Ghosts of the Fireground, has stories of Leschak’s Big Sandy days drawn from the unpublished 1974 manuscript named above.
30. Thomas Hanson, “Pasadena Church Conducts Racial Healing Weekend,” Worldwide News, July 23, 1996.