Responding to Claims about Darwin and Racism

Creationists continue to accuse Darwin of racism. Their argument appears to be:

Darwin was racist
Racism is wrong
Therefore all Darwin's ideas are wrong

The logic is clearly flawed, but still they trot it out - I guess because they have nothing better on offer. But the sorry fact is that racism has been rife throughout Christianity. Is that reason to conclude Christianity is wrong?

Here is a recent example by the Discovery Institute, though it is rather saying science is bad, rather than specifically Darwin. It is about Alexander H. Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy who made the "Cornerstone Speech" - so called because he quotes one of the Psalms. Yes, this racist and advocate of slavery was a Christian. No surprise there!

An example from Ken Ham here, with the same lies and hypocrisy, very much targeting Darwin.

The main reason for this page is so the next time someone on CARM pretends a link from Darwin to racism, I have a ready response.

Anti-Semitism in Christianity

Martin Luther

Luther was the founder of Protestantism - and very much anti-Semitic. Luther's blueprint for the holocaust:

First to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn, so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them. This is to be done in honor of our Lord and of Christendom, so that God might see that we are Christians, and do not condone or knowingly tolerate such public lying, cursing, and blaspheming of his Son and of his Christians. ...
Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. ...
Third, I advise that all their prayer books and Talmudic writings, in which such idolatry, lies, cursing and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them. ...
Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb. ...
Fifth, I advise that safeconduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. ...
Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping. ...

Hitler was a great admirer of Luther, by the way, in stark contrast to his view of Darwin (Nazis burnt Darwin's books).

The Blood Curse

The anti-Semitism seen in Luther has been a cancer in Christianity from very early in its life. It stems, at least in part from this verse:

Mat 26:25 All the people answered, “His blood is on us and on our children!”

The author was probably thinking that the destruction of the temple was God's revenge for the Jews letting the Roman's crucify Jesus, but it was not long after that the verse was used to blame the Jews for Jesus' death. Never mind that that was exactly God's plan!

This is know as the Blood Curse, and has been used to justify anti-Semitism by Christians for nearly two millenia. An early example was Saint John Chrysostom AD 347 - 407). As this article makes clear:

Events and beliefs of centuries earlier are quoted as though still accepted. On the strength of Psalm xcvi, 37, he states that they ' sacrificed their sons and daughters to devils: they outraged nature; and overthrew from their foundations the laws of relationship. They are become worse than the wild beasts, and for no reason at all, with their own hands they murder their own offspring, to worship the avenging devils who are the foes of our life" [Sermon I:6]. ... The whole sermon is an insulting sneer at their misfortunes and exile, and a gloating over the certainty of their damnation. ... ' I hate the Jews ' he exclaims roundly, for they have the Law and they insult it'.

What was Chrysostom's impact on Christianity? This article tells us:

Chrysostom's Adversus Judaeos homilies have been circulated by many groups to foster anti-Semitism.[49] James Parkes called the writing on Jews "the most horrible and violent denunciations of Judaism to be found in the writings of a Christian theologian".[50] His sermons gave momentum to the accusation of deicide—the idea that Jews are collectively responsible for the death of Jesus.[51] British historian Paul Johnson claimed that Chrysostom's homilies "became the pattern for anti-Jewish tirades, making the fullest possible use (and misuse) of key passages in the gospels of St Matthew and John. Thus a specifically Christian anti-Semitism, presenting the Jews as murderers of Christ, was grafted on to the seething mass of pagan smears and rumours, and Jewish communities were now at risk in every Christian city."[52] During World War II, the Nazi Party in Germany abused his work in an attempt to legitimize the Holocaust in the eyes of German and Austrian Christians. His works were frequently quoted and reprinted as a witness for the prosecution.[53]

Nazis were Christians

As that last quote makes clear, the Nazis were Christians, and they used Christian beliefs, such as those of Luther and Chrysostom to justify the Holocaust.

Hitler's own words:

My feelings as a Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a fighter. It points me to the man who once in loneliness, surrounded by a few followers, recognized these Jews for what they were and summoned men to fight against them and who, God's truth! was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I read through the passage which tells us how the Lord at last rose in His might and seized the scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of vipers and adders. How terrific was his fight against the Jewish poison. Today, after two thousand years, with deepest emotion I recognize more profoundly than ever before the fact that it was for this that He had to shed his blood upon the Cross.

- My New Order, Hitler, 1922

I think it is dubious to say Hitler was a Christian himself; his beliefs were something else. But he was definitely religious, not atheist; creationist, not Darwinist.

Further more, Germany was a predominantly Christian country:

The German census of May 1939 inndicates that 54 percent of Germans considered themselves Protestant and 40 percent considered themselves Catholic

These were some of the reasons why most Christians in Germany welcomed the rise of Nazism in 1933. They were also persuaded by the statement on "positive Christianity" in Article 24 of the 1920 Nazi Party Platform, which read:

We demand the freedom of all religious confessions in the state, insofar as they do not jeopardize the state's existence or conflict with the manners and moral sentiments of the Germanic race. The Party as such upholds the point of view of a positive Christianity without tying itself confessionally to any one confession. It combats the Jewish-materialistic spirit at home and abroad and is convinced that a permanent recovery of our people can only be achieved from within on the basis of the common good before individual good.

Despite the open anti-semitism of this statement and its linkage between confessional "freedom" and a nationalistic, racialized understanding of morality, many Christians in Germany at the time read this as an affirmation of Christian values. See here.

Another one here:

Still others actively supported Nazism, calling themselves "storm troopers of Jesus Christ." As a result, as Protestant churches responded to National Socialism, some struggled to preserve the independence of their churches from politics and government, while others sought to claim a central place for Christianity in Nazi Germany.

Both politicians and church leaders took advantage of the public appeal of church liturgy to Nazify churches and re-Christianize Germany. On February 3, 1933, four days after Hitler was appointed Chancellor, pastor Joachim Hossenfelder led a service of thanksgiving at the Mariankirche in Berlin. He used 1 Corinthians 15:57 as his sermon text: "But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Solberg 147).

On March 20, 1933, Protestant church leader Otto Dibelius preached at a service in the Nikolaikirche in Berlin. His sermon text was Romans 8:31, "If God be for us, who can be against us." Afterward, Hermann Goering joyfully shook his hand. See here.

Many professing Christians in Germany saw no incompatibility between their faith and the Nazi-controlled church. But a group of largely Lutheran and Reformed believers -- including theologians Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer -- recognized the errors of Nazi ideology and formed the Confessing Church to protest. The movement's chief complaint concerned Nazi interference in the church, although it protested anti-Semitism to a degree.

http://bpnews.net/43382/baptists-humbled-by-failure-to-oppose-nazis

Germany suffered from hyperinflation in the 1920s and began sliding into economic depression in 1927. The gross national product of the Weimar Republic contracted by a quarter; unemployment soared and incomes fell dramatically. Support for the Nazi Party, less than three percent of eligible voters in 1924, rose to 31 percent in July 1932, 27 percent in November 1932, and 39 percent in March 1933.

https://wilsonquarterly.com/quarterly/summer-2009-thrift-the-double-edged-virtue/who-voted-for-hitler/

Slavery in the States

The institution of slavery in the US was founded on racism - the belief that the white man was naturally superior to the black man. This was a Christian belief, and is the root of racism in the US today.

From Alexander Stephen's Cornerstone speech, aluded to earlier:

They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.
...
Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.
...
It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances, or to question them. For His own purposes, He has made one race to differ from another, as He has made “one star to differ from another star in glory.” The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to His laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders “is become the chief of the corner” the real “corner-stone” in our new edifice.

That last bit references this Psalm, leaving us in no doubt of the man's religious position.

Psalm 188:22 The stone which the builders refused is become the head stone of the corner.

James Thornwell was an American Presbyterian preacher and another man who spoke on how slavery was good.

The parties in the conflict are not merely abolitionists and slaveholders. They are atheists, socialists, communists, red republicans, Jacobins on the one side, and friends of order and regulated freedom on the other. In one word, the world is the battleground – Christianity and Atheism the combatants; and the progress of humanity at stake.

He saw the fight of slaver owners against abolitionists as that of Christians against atheists - and the Christians were the slave owners.

[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God ... it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation ... it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.

— Jefferson Davis, President, Confederate States of America[29][30]

... the right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.

— Richard Furman, President, South Carolina Baptist Convention[31][32]

Southern Baptist Convention

Building on the quote from Furman, the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) is the largest Protestant denomination in the United States. They recently admitted:

The founding faculty of this school—all four of them—were deeply involved in slavery and deeply complicit in the defense of slavery. Many of their successors on this faculty, throughout the period of Reconstruction and well into the twentieth century, advocated segregation, the inferiority of African-Americans, and openly embraced the ideology of the Lost Cause of southern slavery.
...
Eventually, the questions come home. How could our founders, James P. Boyce, John Broadus, Basil Manly Jr., and William Williams, serve as such defenders of biblical truth, the gospel of Jesus Christ, and the confessional convictions of this Seminary, and at the same time own human beings as slaves—based on an ideology of race—and defend American slavery as an institution?

More here and here.

Segregation in Education in the Bible Belt

Once slavery ended, the white Christians introduced a system of segration to ensure the black man knew his place. It took a long time for that to end.

It was 1954 that segregation in education was declared illegal. This horrified many white folk - the last thing they wanted was they children mingling with black children. So they set new private schools, where segregation was still allowed. Who were these racists?

If you said "Protestant Christians" you were right. From here:

While monitors report that Catholic dioceses have frequently made public pronouncements that their schools would not become havens for fugitives from de-segregation, individual Protestant churches in most cities have participated in and often led the private school movement during desegregation. Charleston, South Carolina probably leads the region with eleven church-operated segregation academics. (A public school official in Charleston advised our monitor that one could usually identify a segregation academy by the word “Christian” or “Church” in the name. This advice held true for other cities, including Selma, Alabama; Hattiesburg, Mississippi; Norfolk, Virginia; Little Rock, Arkansas; Nashville, Tennessee; Montgomery, Alabama; Columbia, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia, and West Memphis, Arkansas, each of which has at least two racially segregated “Christian” schools.)

Eventually, segregation in private schools was also declared illegal (though to this day most are still very much predominantly white). There is a theory that the anti-abortion thing has its origin in getting revenge for the Carter adminstration. More here.

Bob Jones University

Bob Jones University is an example of the same racism carried through to higher education. It was 1971 before the university admitted black students. Incredibly, it was not until 2000 that the university ended it prohibition of interracial dating.

On national television in March 2000, Bob Jones III, who was the university’s president until 2005, stated that BJU was wrong in not admitting African-American students before 1971, which sadly was a common practice of both public and private universities in the years prior to that time. On the same program, he announced the lifting of the University’s policy against interracial dating.

More Racism in USA

The Klu Klux Klan

The KKK were a white Protestant organisation. They were all Christians; it was a necessary requirement for joining them.

The second Klan required its members to be not only white and male but also Christian. Religion became the centerpiece of the second Klan’s platform, and Klansmen showed their allegiance to their faith through church attendance, speeches and writings and the recruitment of ministers as members. Visiting churches to make monetary donations was another method used by Klan members to show their commitment.

- here

The number one source of knowledge for the Ku Klux Klan is the Holy Bible. Members of the Klan believe in the literal truth of the Bible. One KKK member once wrote, “the Klansmen pins his faith to the Bible as the revealed will of GOD.” In fact many active Klansmen were ordained ministers. In addition, the majority of the members belong to some Protestant church.

- here

Used extensively, ministers provided a powerful force in promulgating Klan religious ideology. ... Further defending the Klan, the parson accused enemies of the order of being "unchristian," ...

- here

The fact that the KKK and Protestant fundamentalism were intertwined in the 1920s is testified to by the fact that two-thirds of the national Klan lecturers were Protestant ministers.

- here

Demographic studies have shown that two of the prominent professions in the Klan were Protestant minister and police officer.

- here

By 1925 perhaps as many as four or five million white, Protestant, native-born patrriots were engaged in or tacitly supported acts of intimidation, terror, and torture against their Negro, Catholic, Jewish, and foreign-born neighbours.

- here

The second Klan, a memorial to the Reconstruction Klan and its work in the postbellum South, was to act as a restructured fraternity that supported white supremacy, the purity of white womanhood, nationalism and Protestant Christianity. William J. Simmons, a fraternalist and former minister, organized the charter for the new order and consecrated its beginning by setting afire a cross on the top of Stone Mountain, Georgia.

- here

The Klan was above all a Protestant movement, whose events were accompanied by beloved hymns like “Onward Christian Soldiers,” but its trademark anthem was “The Old Rugged Cross.” Protestant clergy were prominent in the leadership of this “crusade,” “consecrated beneath the fiery cross of militant Protestant Christianity.”

- here

When fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan died shortly after arguing for creationism in the famous Scopes Trials, the Klan held a memorial service in Dayton where the burning cross bore the inscription: "In memory of William Jennings Bryan, the greatest Klansman of our time." It is not clear if Bryan was really in the KKK, likely he was not, but it is clear that the KKK were anti-evolution, and pro-creationism (see here).

Tulsa Race Massacre

We also have to note the Tulsa Race Massacre in 1921 (see here and here). When oil was doscovered on formerly worthles land, many black and native American people become pretty wealthy. That did not sit well with the white Christian folk of the city, so they orchestrated a massacre; dropping fire from private planes, and gunning down the black people. Estimates of the death range from 75 to 300, and more than 800 were hospitalised. Ten blocks were destroyed. Around 6000 people were arrested. Black people, not the white people perpetrating the atrocity - many of them had been deputised by the city.

Around 3200 of the 72000 residents of Tulsa were in the KKK, so it is a safe bet to say the KKK was influential in this. It is also safe to say that the vast majority of white population at that time was Christian. This event was a follow-on from the Red Summer, a year of racial battles, mostly (but not all) perpetrated by whites against blacks.

Modern Racism

Racism in Creationism

They not only accuse Darwin of it, but they also turn a blind eye to their own founder...

Henry Morris

Henry Morris is the grandfather of modern creationism. And he was a racist.

From his book, The Beginning of the World (p133-134):

The prophecy is worldwide in scope and, sibce Shem and Japheth are covered, all Ham's descendants must also. These include all nations that are neither Semitic nor Japetic. Thus, all of earths "colored" races - yellow, red, brown, and black; essentially the afro-Asian group of peoples, including the American Indians - are possibly Hamitic in origin and included within the scope of the Canaanitic prophecy as well as the Egyptians, Sumerians, Hittites, and Pheonicians of antiquity.

Morris does say how the Hamities were the early explorers and inventors, but then:

Yet the prophecy again has its obverse side. Somehow, they have only gone so far and no farther. The Japhethites and Semites have, sooner or later, taken over their territories and their inventions, and then developed them and utilised them for their own enlargement. ften the Hamites, especially the Negroes, have become actual personal serrvants of even slaves to the pthers. Possessed of a genetic character concerned mainly with mundane matters, they were eventually displaced by the intellectual and philosophical acumen of the Japhethities and the religious zeal of the Semites.

To be clear, Morris presents this as a prophecy not a curse. That is to say, God was not saying black people should be slaves, but rather was warning that that was what would happen. Nevertheless, the last sentence above, in bold, is racist, however you spin it (and creationists do try to spin it).

Morris himself seems to have taken the view that he was not racist because he believed certain nations or tribes or people or whatever were more blessed, rather than certain races, as he says in this article.

According to the Biblical record of history, the Creator’s divisions among men are linguistic and national divisions, not racial. Each nation has a distinct purpose and function in the corporate life of mankind, in the divine Plan (as, for that matter, does each individual). ... No one nation is "better" than another, except in the sense of the blessings it has received from the Creator, perhaps in measure of its obedience to His Word and fulfillment of its calling.

Apparently in his head to consider white nations to be more blessed is not racist.

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