Take Your Choice
Separation or Mongrelization

By Theodore G. Bilbo

Chapter VIII
False Concepts
of The Christian Religion

God hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation. -- The Acts: 17:26
CHAPTER VI answered the arguments for complete racial equality in the United States which have been made in the name of science; Chapter VII answered the arguments for absolute racial equality which have been made in the name of democracy; and now we come to the third argument which has been advanced by these Negro equality advocates, that of religion.

There have been many discussions and pleas based on the assumption that the concepts of our Christian religion now force us to grant total social equality to the Negro race in the United States. The following statement from the colored president of Wilberforce University, Charles H. Wesley, is typical: "The Negro wants a realistic interpretation of religion in terms of brotherhood." (1)

Many colored leaders, as well as some misguided white people, would have us believe that the Christian religion teaches the social equality of the white and black races. They would have all forms of segregation and all racial barriers in the churches and elsewhere abolished and have the approval of Christianity stamped on marriages between whites and Negroes. It is reported that a few Methodist, Catholic, Jewish, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian ministers, and maybe some others, are now performing such marriage ceremonies. God forbid!

If Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam keeps on in the direction which he is now going he will soon be doing likewise. (2)

Nothing could be more foreign to the ideals of the Christian religion than miscegenation and amalgamation. There is absolutely no foundation for advocating the mixing of the blood of the races as a part of our religious doctrines. Professor Smith has emphatically stated: "The notion of social racial equality is thus seen to be abhorrent alike to instinct and to reason; for it flies in the face of the process of the suns, it runs counter to the methods of the mind of God." (3)

The attempts to destroy the color line in the name of religion are in many respects more dangerous than those arguments relating to science and democracy. Gordon. B. Hancock, Negro Professor of Economics and Sociology at Virginia Union University, Richmond, Virginia, has observed:

"It is a most significant and salutary fact that the races can come closer together in the name of religion than in any other capacity; why this great opportunity is not more thoroughly exploited is at times bewildering." (4) Americans are a religious people and the teachings of the Bible have throughout the years been the very strength and foundation of our Republic. Anyone who would today interpret God's Divine word and His teachings in such a manner as to destroy the blood of the race which created this Nation is a traitor to his religion, to his country, and to his race. However, such false interpretations are being placed upon God's word and upon the teachings of Christ. Pleas for social equality are coupled with condemnation of the Southern policy of segregation as "unchristian." Many colored leaders proclaim that "if the church does not desire to be known as a hypocrite in history and in fact, it must cleanse itself of segregation, discrimination and exclusion...." (5) Concerning such arguments, John R. Irwin of Sandersville, Georgia, has this to say:

During the past decade magazines, newspapers, writers, professors, philanthropists and fanatical reformers have flooded the country with discussions of racial relations, and with propaganda, teaching the public that there is no difference between the various races, and that they are all the same flesh and blood and EQUAL in refinement, culture, accomplishments and civilization, and are physically and mentally alike excepting in COL0R and that intermarriage is unharmful.

If social barriers are destroyed, and all segregation eliminated, social equality enforced by Governmental EDICT and LAW so that schools, churches, hotels, restaurants, parks, recreation centers and picture shows, clubs, buses and Pullmans must be open to all persons of every creed, color, character or station in life, then indeed is racial integrity a thing of the past, and the white people of the United States would be transformed into a hybrid yellow or brown nation within the next several generations.

Human experience teaches that social association and intimacies, between people of different races certainly will bring about, and lead to, intermarriage, even between those who differ in racial affinity, culture or color.

God saw fit to segregate and separate the different races by placing each in different lands. He located the white races in the middle northern hemisphere, and placed the Negro in Africa, and the brown and yellow peoples in other spheres, as far as possible from each other. He divided them by color lines as well as by territorial lines so that each race would maintain its racial integrity.

Isolation and segregation, and racial purity and integrity appear to have been the Divine plan and intent when He divided mankind by giving to them a distinct varied coloring. There are many misguided Christians and fanatics who think God made a mistake when he made the black man, and now seek to bleach him by absorption, and amalgamation.

Some of the Southern states have been criticized severely for the passing of laws segregating the whites and Negroes. Since God set the example, why should Southerners be so severely criticized for following His footsteps? (6)

Probably the most frequently used religious plea for the social equality of the races is that "God hath made of one blood all nations." According to Leslie P. Hill, colored President of State Teachers College, Cheyney, Pennsylvania: "A thousand years was needed to document and verify the assurance of the most vigorous of all the saints that God has made of one blood all the nations of men. But the laboratories did in the end indubitably produce the proof." (7) With such statements as these, men are supposed to be led to believe that there is no difference in the blood of the white and black races and that it is in accordance with the teachings of Almighty God that the blood of these races should mix freely. What these colored leaders fail to point out is that when their false concepts of religion are used to destroy racial integrity, nothing can ever restore the vitiated and corrupted blood of either the white or black race.

Nothing is more sacred than racial integrity. Purity of race is a gift of God. but it is a gift which man can destroy. And God, in his infinite wisdom, has so ordained it that when man destroys his racial purity, it can never be redeemed. This should be sufficient to show that any statement which says our Christian religion forces us to accept the social equality of the races and to sanction intermarriage as the private affair of the two individuals concerned is utterly and absolutely fallacious. If God gave the Negro the inalienable right to social equality and intermarriage with whites, then we must go further and say that He gave to the black man the right to destroy the white race. Everyone knows that the white person who marries a Negro becomes the parent not of a white child but of a colored one. And that colored child will in turn produce colored offspring. In other words, when the blood of the races mix, the white blood, as far as reproducing its own is concerned, is forever lost. We refuse to believe that the destruction of either the white or the black race is in accordance with the Divine plan of God. Rather, there is every reason to believe that miscegenation and amalgamation are sins of man in direct defiance to the will of God.

The question of the mixing of the races seems simple indeed to those who are not blinded by color. As aptly stated by A. H. Shannon: "Which is better, a mongrel race whose origin is in sin, and which represents the worst of all the races; or a race, whatever its limitations, yet true to its own racial peculiarities and striving to attain, intact, the best and highest of which it is capable?" (8) And from God's own word comes this warning: "A bastard shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord; even to his tenth generation shall he not enter into the congregation of the Lord." (9)

The author of White America, Earnest S. Cox, made a special study of the early attempts of the Christian missionaries to spread the Gospel in South Africa. Some of these early missionaries made the fatal and serious mistake of teaching the social equality of the races and advocating intermarriage. At a time when much condemnation was being hurled at the missionaries, Mr. Cox wrote a letter to the Transvaal Missionary Association, which was composed of nineteen separate missionary organizations in South Africa. He stated that his purpose was to show that not Christianity but a false social teaching of certain of the Christian missionaries was the object of the criticism. The following quotations are from this letter:

There has been a tendency in teachers of Christianity to utilize its social tenets to level races and cultures. But Buddhism did this, and so did Mohammedanism. The last named arose among a white people and threatened to attain world domination, but its influence gradually waned as its white custodians interbred with colored races.

In Africa, in China, in India, in Nearer Asia, in Latin America - in these countries, some of them evangelized by the Apostles - Christianity has been implanted by the white man and has not survived the white man. Two thousand years of Christian activities seem to establish that the white race as white is custodian of the Gospel of Jesus, and that to the white man as white is entrusted the spreading of the Gospel.

A Gospel of equality of races cannot but end in free miscegenation of races ...

It will not injure, but actually promote the missionary influence in South Africa for the well meaning missionaries to admit the errors of their movement: The political errors of their influence,... The economic sins of their number who came as spiritual advisers and remained as commercial exploiters. Their social sins, such as the perpetual and pitiless misrepresentations of the Boer civilizers of South Africa; the failure to warn against and prevent by legal mandate the marriage of European men and women to Negro men and women; the endless harping upon the nobility of colored races and the depravity of the white; the licensing of co-racial schools and the persuasion of ignorant and poverty-stricken white parents to send their children to these schools to receive utterly false teachings in matters concerning equality of races; the placing of white children with black ones forming them in public parade, the children carrying banners inscribed Ex uno sanguine' (of one blood); the refusal to permit the word 'colour' to be used in co-racial schools, when it is inscribed indelibly in human history; the citing of the willing prostitution of women of the black race to men of the white as parallel to and offsetting black men's forceful assaults upon white women. (10)

The warnings in this letter, although given to missionaries in South Africa, hold a special meaning for those of us who are interested in maintaining and preserving a white America. Mr. Cox further comments on the letter and the false teachings which prompted his writing it:
These 'errors' of the missionary apply mainly to the past. Not so however, the last one enumerated. The missionary type has changed for the better, and also the social teaching of the missionary. The present missionary teaches of the same God as the former, the same Redeemer, but there is a much modified negrophilism in his social teaching.

It is evident that those posing as custodians of a Gospel whose genius is missionary, whose scope is universal, and whose claim is exclusive, may be of great harm to the cause they misrepresent by placing literal constructions upon the anthropomorphisms of a spiritual religion.

Why place an interpretation upon the 'Fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man' ideal of the Christian religion which nature and human history have proved to be fallacious? Why literalize 'brotherhood of man' and spiritualize 'fatherhood of God'? If the brotherhood through Christ is physical, then so is the fatherhood through God.

Let those who believe themselves chosen to evangelize the world understand that, up to the present time, after nearly two thousand years of Christian activity, apparently God has entrusted the heralding of the Gospel to the white race, not to the Negro or to the mixbreed. Christianity, times without number, has been implanted by white teachers among colored races, but the Christian religion has never survived the white teachers. When the whites have departed or become eliminated through miscegenation, the Christian religion has been abandoned altogether, or has degenerated into crass superstition. This is a cold fact that is verifiable. It may not be a welcome fact to European Christianity.

The Apostles turned to the white man and to the colored. The white man perpetuated the Apostles' teaching and made the Christian religion ascendant among the creeds of the world. Had the Apostles confined their activities to negroid Africa, how different would have been the result! The Christian Fathers came to Africa and taught and suffered martyrdom. There the blood of the martyrs did not prove to be the seed of the Church. Christianity perished in the soil of Africa, but the Christian religion is becoming universal through the blood of Europe. . .

The God of these churchmen saw fit to make some men white and some men black; to endow the white with potentialities, the realization of which would, in fullness of time, conceive an ethical monotheism and a spiritual brotherhood of mankind. What God has done, the churchmen may succeed in undoing, but that which the churchmen seek to do, God cannot undo. The churchmen may succeed in hybridizing the white and the black. The God of the churchman will not transform the hybrid into its original elements. If the churchmen are making a mistake, it is irremediable. (11)

Mr. Cox has posed a question which should forever answer any argument that suggests an interpretation of the "brother- hood of man" in such a manner as to advocate the intermar- riage of the white and Negro races. He asks: "Why liter- alize 'brotherhood of man' and spiritualize 'fatherhood of God'?" Both the brotherhood of man and the fatherhood of God are spiritual, and any other interpretation is not only fallacious but is in direct opposition to the ideals of the Christian religion. Racial integrity and the purity of the blood are in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ who set the standards for high and noble living some two thousand years ago. Nowhere in the sermons of Christ do we find Him seeking to bring about the social or any absolute equality among men on earth. He preached to all men and the Gospel of Christianity is universal to be spread throughout the earth for all men to hear and accept. But His Kingdom where there will be no human inequalities, no imperfections, no worldly wealth, and where all men will be judged by God's own standard of perfect justice is not of this world but is the Kingdom of Heaven - a spiritual not a physical kingdom.

The Biblical reference to "one blood" which has been so often quoted and misconstrued is from the teachings of the great Apostle Paul. These are the words:

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of Heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands;

Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things;

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation;

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us:

For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring. (12)

Paul's statement that God "hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on the face of the earth' is as much spiritual as his other statement that God ''dwelleth not in temples made with hands" and his assurance that the Lord "be not far from every one of us, for in him we live, and move, and have our being. . . for we are also his offspring." It may also be pointed out that in the same verse which made reference to the "one blood" of all nations of men, the great Disciple said that God "hath determined. . . the bounds of their habitation." Until some men migrated and others were moved by force by their conquerors, who can say that it was not in the Divine scheme of things that the different races should be on the separate continents with physical barriers to prevent their intermingling?

Those who are attempting to implant the doctrine of social equality of the races throughout this land and seeking to promote the intermarriage of the races must indeed think that Almighty God, the Creator of the heavens and the earth, made a mistake, or perhaps played a practical joke, when He made the skin color of the Negro race black. And these social equality advocates would now have the white man share his blood with the Negro in order that the black man may become bleached and the white man lost in the intermingling process. Would those who preach this infamous doctrine have us believe that they would thus improve on the handiwork of God ? "And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so." (l3)

There are those who point out that Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, were the fathers of three great divisions of mankind. And this gives grounds for the argument that Canaan, son of Ham who was cursed, was the father of the black race. We quote the following verses from Genesis and leave the reader to his own conclusion as to what constituted the curse of Canaan:

And he said, Cursed be Canaan, a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.

And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.

God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. (14)

It should also be noted that Abraham and his sons had no fear of God's wrath when they practiced "discrimination" in the selection of wives. Surely, God bestowed his blessings and approved his household when He said to Abraham: "Lift up now thine eyes, and look from the place where thou art northward, and southward, and eastward, and westward: For all the land which thou seest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed forever. And I will make thy seed as the dust of the earth: so that if a man can number the dust of the earth then shall thy seed also be numbered." (l5) Later, we find these verses in the Holy Scripture which we leave to the reader's interpretation:
And Isaac called Jacob, and blessed him, and charged him, and said unto him, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan.

When Esau saw that Isaac had blessed Jacob, and sent him away to Padan-aram, to take him a wife from thence; and that as he had blessed him he gave him a charge, saying, Thou shalt not take a wife of the daughters of Canaan;

And Esau seeing that the daughters of Canaan pleased not Isaac his father:

Then went Esau unto Ishmael, and took . . . the sister of Nebajoth, to be his wife.

The fact and permanency of race have been recognized throughout the ages. "Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots?" asked the prophet Jeremiah. (l7) The answer is quite evident to every thinking person. The Negro or any other race cannot change the skin color, the hair texture, or any of the other characteristics of race as long as racial integrity is maintained. The only way that modification can be brought about is by the crossing of different races, and we have already seen that this is in direct defiance with the laws of God. Each race should remain true to itself and develop to the highest and noblest status of which it is capable. Racial pride should be instilled in the youth of all races.

The desire to maintain purity of blood and to preserve the blood of his forefathers is a respectable and welcome quality in white and black men. Indeed, it is a necessary quality if the races are to be preserved and racial integrity triumph over mongrelism.

Just as we have never interpreted American democracy to mean that there will be no racial barriers in the United States, so the true concepts of our Christian religion have never taught the social equality and the intermarriage of whites and blacks. There is nothing un-American or unchristian in racial segregation and the preservation of the color line.

The demands of the Negro leaders for complete political, economic, and social equality were shown by statements from the Negro leaders who were asked to write essays for What the Negro Wants. From a study of these essays, we found that the pleas for full equality were based on the doctrine of the equality of the white and Negro races. This doctrine, as well as the argument for equality in the name of science, was refuted in Chapter VI. We have considered the demands for complete equality in the name of democracy in Chapter VII and found that they are based on false and dangerous interpretations of American democracy. In this chapter, we nave considered the pleas for Negro racial equality in the name of religion and have discovered that they are based upon concepts of our Christian religion which are absolutely unfounded and untrue. Thus. we see that the three fundamental reasons given for the granting of full equality to the Negro race the teachings of science, democracy, and religion, are denied by facts and logic. This leaves the colored leaders asking for full equality for the Negro race when history and science have shown that the white and black races are unequal and when American democracy and the Christiall religion have never taught such equality.

Americans must meet the arguments for complete equality openly and frankly, tear away the smokescreens and false in- terpretations, and then guard the barriers which separate the races more firmly. We must denounce those who would interpret either science, democracy, or religion in such a manner as to bring about the social equality of the races and the intermarriage of whites and Negroes as traitors to race and to country. They are seeking a mongrel America. Those who do not wish such a Nation must join forces to prevent the spread of these fallacious and flammable doctrines and to guarantee a white America for the generations yet unborn.

Whenever and wherever you hear a Negro preacher or a white negrophilistic minister or layman advocating social equality of the races under the high and ecclesiastical sounding terms of "all one blood," "brotherhood of mankind," "the golden rule," or "the fatherhood of God," you will instantly know that he is either a fraud and hypocrite or an unthinking and ignorant man. Whichever may be the case, you are beholding and listening to a dangerous and destructive enemy to both the white and black races. Selah!

To make secure the purity and integrity of both the white man's blood and the Negro's blood, every congregation whether white or colored in this broad land should promptly and unhesitatingly unfrock the pastors in the pulpits who desecrate their sacred calling by preachments which through direction or indirection seek to destroy and mongrelize both races by advocating or even tolerating social equality in the name of the Christian religion. Selah!

Therefore, let me call upon the good Christian mothers of the Nation never again to take the life of the choicest fowls in the yard with which to please and satisfy the craving and ravenous appetite of an ecclesiastical negrophile! Selah!


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Notes
  1. Logan, R. W., What the Negro Wants, p. 108.

  2. See Oxnam, G. Bromley, "The Nazis Aren't Licked Yet," Yet," The American Magazine, October, 1945, p 28.

  3. Smith, William B., The Color Line, p. 13.

  4. Reprinted from What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan, by permission of The University of North Carolina Press. Copyright, 1944, by The University of North Carolina Press.

  5. Logan, R. W., What the Negro Wants, p. 108. These are the words of Charles H. Wesley (colored) President of Wilberforce University, and Trustee of Fiske University, Nashville, Tenn.

  6. Irwin, John R. Let's Keep the United States White, p. 1.

  7. Reprinted from What the Negro Wants, edited by Rayford W. Logan, by permission of The University of North Carolina Press. Copyright, 1944, by The Umverslty of North Carolina Press.

  8. Shannon, A. H., Racial Integrity and Other Features of the Negro Problem (Nashville: Publishing House of M. E. Church, South, 1907), p. 94.

  9. Deuteronomy 23:2.

  10. Cox, Earnest S., White America, p. 289.

  11. Cox Earnest S., White America, p. 294.

  12. The Acts, 17:24-28.

  13. Genesis, 1:24

  14. Genesis, 9:25-27.

  15. Genesis, 13:14-16.

  16. Genesis, 28:1, 6, 8, 9.

  17. Jeremiah, 13:23.