Guess Who’s Coming to Church?

Confronting Christians’ fear of interracial marriage.

“Pastor, we really enjoyed your teaching,” the young African-American man said. “We just got married and we’re looking for a church home.”

The minister smiled and nodded as the man introduced his blond, blue-eyed bride. As the pastor shook her hand, he remembered how the congregation had turned and stared when the couple entered the sanctuary. Usually he introduced visitors to one of the deacons. This time he hesitated.

“Thanks for coming,” he said instead, ending an awkward silence, and turned to the next person in line.

The smiles on the young couple’s faces faded. Their hands interlocking, they turned and left the church.

The issue of interracial marriage was once far from my mind. As a native of India, it was expected that I would marry within my race and culture. But then I married a White man. My husband and I have been fortunate. Aside from a few startled stares, church members have made us feel accepted and loved. But our experience is not widespread.

A growing number of couples in America are crossing racial and cultural lines to marry. And they are searching for churches that feel like home. If national trends are any indication, the American church needs to prepare itself to face a growing phenomenon.

In 1966, 17 states still had formal prohibitions against some form of interracial marriage. All of them regulated only marriage between Whites and other races. The Supreme Court overturned all state antimiscegenation laws in 1967. But as late as the seventies, at least 12 states still had laws forbidding marriage between Whites and other races.

Despite slowly changing social taboos, the number of interracial marriages in the United States has increased significantly. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in 1970 there were 310,000 interracial couples—less than 1 percent of all married couples. By 1987, 799,000 American couples were interracial—2 percent of all married couples. Interracial marriages have increased by 250 percent over the past 20 years—compared with a 17 percent increase in all marriages.

The entertainment industry has attempted to keep pace with the increasing number of intermarrying Americans. Television shows such as General Hospital and L.A. Law and major Hollywood releases like Jungle Fever, Mississippi Masala, The Joy Luck Club, and The Bodyguard have all highlighted interracial romances.

This is one area where the media may be morally ahead of the church. In Black and White Mixed Marriages, Ernest Porterfield’s classic survey of interracial marriages, one fact stands out. The majority of couples actively involved in Christian churches before marriage discontinued church membership and attendance after marriage.

“There are people who are supposed to be religious,” said a respondent in Porterfield’s study. “Some of them will come to you and say: ‘If I had a son or a daughter that married a black, I would have killed them.’ ”

What is it about American Christianity that made these interracial couples pull away from the local church?

Marrying a Cushite

Throughout our nation’s history, people have used religious arguments to justify laws forbidding intermarriage. “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red,” argued a county court judge in 1967, defending Virginia’s antimiscegenation law. The judge continued, “The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Evangelical Christians may no longer use this judge’s line of reasoning, but an honest self-evaluation may lead us to look beyond a vague discomfort to discover a subtle, unexamined prejudice.

Wichan Ritnimit, a Thai pastor married to a White woman, contrasts his Thai church’s joyful response to the news of his betrothal to the American missionaries who were less excited. “The missionaries, mostly Americans, demurred,” remembers Ritnimit. “Nationals crossing over the racial and social lines were an embarrassment.”

A monoracial couple generally finds support and encouragement from the church as they embark on their marital journey. Sometimes that support is not given to interracial couples. One Black-White couple interviewed by Porterfield reported: “Every couple has their own crisis period. But when we have ours, … the same church officials who are against divorce will turn around and recommend that we separate … not because [we] are man and wife, but because [we] are black and white.”

In several places in the Old Testament, intermarriage is strongly opposed by God and his prophets. When Moses gave the Israelites the law, he warned them not to intermarry with the unbelievers of the many nations in the land God would give them (Deut. 7:1–4). Ezra and Nehemiah, two of Israel’s God-ordained leaders, challenged the people to repent over intermarriage and encouraged divorce en masse. They described intermarriage with those who do not revere God as one of Israel’s most offensive sins (Ezra 9:10–15; Neh. 13:23–27).

A closer look at these passages, however, reveals that biblical opposition to intermarriage arises only when the people of God marry those who cause them to worship a God other than Yahweh. One of the purposes of marriage for Jews was to pass on and preserve their covenant relationship with God through their children. If marriage entailed the worship of the other spouse’s gods, the covenant would be broken.

The Old Testament clearly shows that God affirms racial intermarriage when religious compromise is not an issue. When Miriam and Aaron criticized Moses for marrying Zipporah, a “Cushite woman,” the “anger of the Lord was kindled against them” and Miriam was struck with leprosy (Num. 12:1, 9–10).

There is no hint that Boaz was acting contrary to God’s will when he married Ruth, a Moabitess (Ruth 4:13–15), through whom both David and Jesus our Lord were descended. In each case where intermarriage is allowed in the Hebrew Scriptures, the non-Israelite spouse did not hinder the man or woman from serving God.

In the New Testament, the same principle applies: the only requirement is that the Christian not become unequally yoked with an unbeliever (2 Cor. 6:14). Race is not a barrier for Christians, since we are all one in Christ, “neither Jew nor Greek” (Gal. 3:28). In the Book of Revelation, John describes the bride of Christ as a great multitude “from every nation, tribe, people, and language” (Rev. 7:9). Certainly, particular couples are free to foreshadow this heavenly racial cornucopia in their marriages.

Celebrating radical unity

Unless interracial families live in cosmopolitan cities where interracial marriage is becoming more common, they will face a set of challenges monoracial couples can avoid. They will need to use more energy and imagination to balance, and celebrate, two cultures. They must be strong enough to endure being stared at, tough enough to keep working at their cultural differences, confident enough to raise confident kids.

Black-White marriages elicit more negative reaction than other types of interracial marriage, having to straddle the wide chasm between two groups that share a 400-year history of hostility and tension. For example, a study of 39 middle-class Black-White marriages in New York found that most of the couples had experienced being pulled over by police who suspected either that the Black woman was a prostitute or the Black man was a rapist.

How Our Children Surprised Us

Fred and Anita Prinzing know about interracial marriage. Their traditional family dreams were shaken when, in a two-year span, both their son and daughter married African Americans. The Prinzings never thought of themselves as racist, but being confronted personally by one of the most controversial of social taboos left them questioning their beliefs. In their book Mixed Messages (Moody), Fred, vice president and dean at Bethel Theological Seminary, and Anita share their story and examine interracial marriage from a Christian perspective. The couple recently spoke to CT.

Anita: One reason we chose the book’s title was that we realized we had probably sent mixed messages to our children. We had tried to expose them to missionaries and foreign students and people of different ethnic backgrounds; yet when our son announced that he was marrying a Black woman, it really took us by surprise.

I had to deal with my pride. My mother had come from the South and didn’t think she was prejudiced. She said she loved her mammy, but when I asked her about allowing the woman to sit at her dining table, I was told that that wasn’t done. And my father, although a loving man, was Archie Bunker in the flesh. I prided myself that I wasn’t prejudiced like my parents. Yet when it came to dealing with my son marrying a Black woman, I realized I had a lot of those same feelings.

Fred: My parents were involved in sending missionaries to Africa, and so all our lives we talked about Black people in Africa. However, the idea that anybody would think of dating or marrying a Black person was inconceivable. So, although my parents never talked about being prejudiced, they were probably just as prejudiced as Anita’s folks.

Anita: It was a spiritual struggle for me. For years I had prayed for our children that God would have the right person for them, and I could not believe this could be God’s will. Why did I even think of trusting him?

Finally, I tried praying about it, but because I was angry with God, I didn’t feel I was getting very far. One evening, after Fred had gone to bed, I was reading in Colossians. I cried out to God, “I have to have something. I’ve either got to accept this and have peace about it, or I’m just going to throw up my hands.” And just as I was pleading for peace, it came: “You are living a brand new kind of life that is continually learning more and more of what is right, and trying constantly to be more and more like Christ who created this new life within you. In this new life, one’s nationality or race or education or social position is unimportant; such things mean nothing. Whether a person has Christ is what matters, and he is equally available to all” (Col. 3:10–11, LB).

Fred: We’ve discovered that the real problem people have with intermarrying is not necessarily race but color. We found that the first questions we were asked were about color—how dark our daughter-in-law was. When our grandchildren were born, the first questions were, “How dark are they?”

It’s still primarily a Black-White issue. For instance, half of the female Asian immigrants are married interracially, but many don’t consider that interracial in the same way.

Our son married back in 1982. Our daughter got married in 1984. I think if our daughter had married first it would have been much harder on the family because of the stereotype of Black male/White female relationships. So we had two marriages inside of two years. And it was unbelieveable, because there was nothing in our kids’ backgrounds that indicated this would ever be a possibility.

Anita: We’ve learned that people intermarry for the same reasons that two White people or two Black people marry, and it’s basically for love. There are rare exceptions, such as when somebody’s trying to prove a point or punish someone or shock someone, but probably no more so than when other couples marry for the wrong reasons.

Once I got to know my daughter-in-law and son-in-law as persons, I could really appreciate them. When we get to know an individual, it makes a world of difference.

Fred: I think a distinction should be made between “prejudice” and “racism.” All of us are prejudiced. Prejudice means simply prejudging. You’re prejudiced because you don’t know. But with education and exposure, you can change that. However, racism is a sinful condition of the soul, when one believes that a person or group is superior to another because of skin color or physical features or heritage.

Anita: I had a friend whose son was engaged to an Asian girl. So I asked her how she was dealing with accepting a daughter-in-law of another background. And she said immediately, “Oh, I don’t have any problem with that, but if she had been Black, I would have.” I pulled back like a turtle and went into my shell. The first people I actually told were two women who were not Christians who had shared with me the struggles they had experienced with their kids. And because they had been vulnerable to me, I felt safe with them.

One person asked, “Why are your children trying to hurt you so much?” That had never occurred to us, because we knew our children. They have never been rebellious and purposely done something to hurt us. But in the eyes of some people, it was like this was the worst thing our kids could have done. But we realized they had married people they loved.

Then someone asked the opposite question, “What did you do right?” We didn’t purposely set our children up for marrying someone of another race. But we told them we were no different from anyone else. Yet, when it came to their taking us at our word, we had to own up that we had meant something else. Did we really mean that we were all equal in God’s eyes?

Fred: We are not promoting interracial marriage. But I think most families between now and the year 2000 are going to face this issue in a personal way somewhere in their family.

Christians need to be open and honest and discuss it within the church and discuss it with their children and those who are potential marriage partners. It’s no longer an isolated thing.

Interview by Edward Gilbreath.

Donald Rochon, a Black FBI agent married to a White woman, sued the FBI for harassment. Rochon’s family picture sat on his desk at work where only fellow employees had access. One day, Rochon arrived to discover a picture of an ape pasted over the faces of his kids.

Opposition to intermarriage may come from members within the minority group as well as from the majority. Some minorities object to intermarriage because they are afraid their culture will disappear into a cultureless melting pot.

In addition to these challenges from outside, the couple sometimes faces the most opposition from members of their own families. When somebody in the family is considering intermarriage, relatives often identify with Samson’s father and mother in their discomfort, asking, “Isn’t there an acceptable woman among your relatives or among all our people?” (Judges 14:3, NIV).

In each of these areas of possible conflict, American churches can become havens of safety and support for interracial couples. A pastor counseling an interracial couple before marriage may feel uncomfortable or ill-equipped to explore their racial and cultural differences. But helping them to count the cost and see potential benefits can make a big difference.

Despite the church’s potential to be a refuge for the interracial family in a racist world, the sad fact is that most churches are unprepared to minister to this rapidly growing group. Some day, America’s churches may better demonstrate Christian unity to a nation scarred by racial division and hatred. More creative, heterogeneous churches may emerge, becoming places that feel like home to interracial families. In the meantime, the church must acknowledge the reality of interracial marriage and accommodate the unique needs of these Christian couples.

Instead of wallowing in our doubts and fears about intermarriage, we should rejoice over the barrier-shattering potential each Christian interracial marriage brings to our churches. In his letter to the Ephesians, Paul reminded Jews and Gentiles alike that Christ “made the two one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility.” In Christ, God wants “to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he puts to death their hostility” (Eph. 2:11–14, NIV).

Paul’s language—“making one out of two”—is reminiscent of the “one flesh” description of marriage given in Genesis. The “one flesh” of marriage binds family to family, culture to culture, and even race to race. It can make kith and kin out of people with a legacy of division and bitterness.

Where exploitation and anger have separated the races in society, an interracial family called by God is a compelling example of the gospel of reconciliation. Perhaps an even more profound witness to the world is for the church to embrace and celebrate interracial union, standing as a living example of what can be done in Christ.

The frame around the license plate of our car (a bachelor-party gift given to my husband) reads: “We’re Talking Radical Unity!” Christian interracial marriage vividly demonstrates the “radical unity” we have in Jesus Christ, who came to tear down every dividing wall.

Paul Brand is a world-renowned hand surgeon and leprosy specialist. Now in semiretirement, he serves as clinical professor emeritus, Department of Orthopedics, at the University of Washington and consults for the World Health Organization. His years of pioneering work among leprosy patients earned him many awards and honors.

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