Basically my dad (a devout Catholic) won’t allow my sister to date a black boy. What does the Bible say, if anything, about inter racial relationships? I’m just looking for something to shove in his face to show he’s more disciminatory than he thinks.
The question is flawed. In Biblical times, the concept of race as we know it was not in place. There were “tribes” and “peoples”, but not a few races incorporating a broad set of people based on common physical characteristics. You just won’t find racial issues (as a 21st century westerner understands them) addressed in a direct manner. You may find something on whether a Jew should marry a gentile, but nothing directly addressing relations between a Caucasian and Black Christian.
Anyway, I believe the epistles and Acts may have something to say about this situation, regarding the equality of Jews and Gentiles in the early church. Also the parable of the Good Samaritan, remembering that Samaritans were a religious (and ethnic?) subgroup in Jesus’ Judea.
The Bible says absolutely nothing about whether people of different skin colors should or should not date, or kiss, or sleep together, or make babies together, or get married.
Is the bible against interacial marriage?
Be cautious how you “shove it in his face”, 'cause he is, after all, your dad (I’m being serious here), and he’s only doing what he, in his admittedly prejudicial way, thinks is best for his daughter.
A good starting point for a discussion with him might be to ask him to consider, “Hypothetically speaking, what if the black boy were Catholic?”
Well, Solomon took the Queen of Sheba (now Ethiopa) as a wife.
While it’s generally agreed that Solomon was a righteous dude, and pretty smart besides, miscegenation has long been a touchy subject, and old Sol caught hell for his broad-mindedness posthumously-- the Pharisees figured that all those exotic women opened his mind a little too much:
Sorry if that doesn’t quite give you the ammunition you need. In a nutshell, Solomon (by all accounts a Wise Man,) was down with inter-racial relationships, but the fundies held it against him and undid all his good works soon after he left the scene. (The bastids knocked down the high places and burned down the sacred groves of Ashtoreth. Why oh why does organized religion attract the Fred Phelps’ of the ages?)
Well your father probably doesn’t even obey the Ten Commandments. (Exodus 20:2-17, Deut 5:6-21) In particular, the ones about not doing any work on the Sabbath (sundown Friday to sundown Saturday) - e.g. in Numbers 15:32-36, God even considered gathering wood to be “work”. (And so the offender was put to death) He might have also repeatedly broken the commandment about not bowing down to anything created in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or the waters below. (Ex 20:4-5, Deut 5:8-9) And maybe saying Jesus is God is having another god besides the Israelite one. (The Jews don’t recognize the Jesus god)
So anyway, Christians don’t follow much of the O.T. laws, including some of the Ten Commandments. In the O.T, people from other cultures had to be circumcized to be accepted by the Jews, but in the N.T. Paul says that circumcision doesn’t matter. And believers can also marry unbelievers (I think). I doubt race came into it.
There is nothing in the Jewish bible about inter-racial marriages.
Zev Steinhardt
Do people in this day and age, really look to the Bible for their moral guide and compass? As John Clay pointed out, one couldn’t even do any work on the Sabbath. It was a capital offense, and this included even gathering up wood to make a fire, and many other trivial offenses.
To the original OP, if God allows Lot to sleep with his own daughters and even get them both pregnant; then, I’m sure there is room for inter-racial marriages. The NT refers to him as righteous Lot.
John Zahn
I have heard a small section of fundamentalists say that racial separation was made at the Tower of Babel and that by intermarriage the races are creating one race and 1 world government.
This they back up with the Tower of Babel story which says NOTHING about racial intermarriage. So this is their extra-biblical interpretation & besides flying in the face of scientific, (& linguistic, anthropological, and genetic) evidence, it flies in the face of what the Bible says as well*, but it serves their purposes to find this in the Bible.
(*all that Loving your neighbor stuff and the somewhat about the debates about bringing the WORD to the gentiles – they decide its OK. But that is MY interpretation).
To be fair this was a small Fundie chorus. Lately I’ve heard more mainstream fundamentalists use Genesis to attack evolution as racist: As Genesis says we are all from Adam, while evolution implies, so the fundies interpret, that man became man at different paces & that some “races” may have more genes from people closer to the “apes”. This is how THEY interpret it, not me.
There are a few stories of “interracial” marriages in the Bible. Another example not yet mentioned is the story of Ruth, a woman of the nation of Moab, who ended up marrying a Jew. And certainly if the Song of Solomon is to be believed, Solomon (or whoever it was who wrote that book) considered interracial relationships to be very fine, indeed.
Along this line, you could point out to him this view of the universality of the Church:
From a specifically Roman Catholic view, you could point out the following comments from the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace. On their website they have their submission to last year’s anti-racism conference at Durban: Contribution to World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance. Some excerpts:
There is further material in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. See for example, Part Three (Life in Christ); Section One (Man’s Vocation: Life in the Spirit); Chapter Two (The Human Community), Article 3: Social Justice.
From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
[sup]40[/sup]PASTORAL CONSTITUTION ON THE CHURCH IN THE
MODERN WORLD GAUDIUM ET SPES Section 29, Paragraph 2
The references used to support “racial” notions taken from the bible are generally taken out of context and do not mean what the people who quote them (in English translation) believe that they mean.
OTOH, I would support Duck Duck Goose in noting that whatever particular prejudices or beliefs your father holds probably did not arise from religious belief and will probably not be put aside because of religious teachings. Unless your sister has already fallen in love with a black guy and needs to be defended, this is an issue that should be handled rather more delicately than more bluntly.
Thanks for the help.
piffle! I was trying to link to the same provisions of the Catechism as tomndebb, but now it says it’s moved. It was there an hour ago?
*Originally posted by Larry Mudd *
Slight hijack here, but I’ve been wondering for a while where the Solomon-Sheba love story comes from. All I found about her in my Bible was in I Kings 10, which says she visited Solomon, asked him questions, was very impressed, gave him presents and then “she turned and went to her own country.”
Does she come back at some point?
Hrmmm…Hot Philistine-on-Samaritan action in the Bible?
I am no Biblical scholar, but these people seem to be. Check it out.
Ages ago, in Catechism class, a Franciscan monk told the class I was in that the commandment: “Though shall not commit adultery” meant you were not to marry outside your race. Never heard it from anyone else since. Have no idea where he came up with it either.
domina:
No, you are correct - there is no indication of Solomon-Queen of Sheba romance in the Bible.
From the racist neighborhood where he grew up. It is not in any religious teachings that I am aware, although it could be in the interpretations of some fringe groups.
(To cut him a little slack–though not very much–if he grew up up in a state where inter-racial marraige was forbidden, then a marriage outside one’s race would be illegal and, if he deemed that no marriage, it would be adultery. The church would not agree with that logic, but individuals with the proper bias could work it out form themselves.)