Did people use the Bible to justify racial discrimination at some point during or before the civil rights era?

by lorddane
jasoncaspian

This is not my area of expertise, but I did study the civil rights movemnent when I was getting my undergrad degree. There were several prominent religious and political leaders who did use the bible to justify segregation and other types of racial discrimination during the 1950s and 1960s.

One just person was a rather well known pastor named Bob Jones Sr. He founded Bob Jones University and also had a radio program where he often intertwined race and religion.

One of his most prominent declarations of Gods mandate to continue using segregation came in 1960, in a sermon that would be known as "Is Segregation Scriptural?" I was lucky enough to find a link to the written message if you want to read it yourself.

In the message, Jones quoted the bible a few times and thus said things like:

Now, notice–this is an important verse–the twenty-sixth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” But do not stop there, “. . . and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.” Now, what does that say? That says that God Almighty fixed the bounds of their habitation. That is as clear as anything that was ever said....

There is an effort today to disturb the established order. Wait a minute. Listen, I am talking straight to you. White folks and colored folks, you listen to me. You cannot run over God’s plan and God’s established order without having trouble. God never meant to have one race. It was not His purpose at all. God has a purpose for each race. God Almighty may have overruled and permitted the slaves to come over to America so that the colored people could be the great missionaries to the Africans. They could have been...

I want you folks to listen–you white and you colored folks. Do not let these Satanic propagandists fool you. This agitation is not of God. It is of the devil. Do not let people slander God Almighty. God made it plain. God meant for Christian people to treat each other right. If you are a Christian white person or a Christian colored person, you will treat each other right. We Christians are children of God by faith in Jesus Christ. We are one in Christ; but let us remember that the God Who made of one blood all nations also fixed the boundaries of their habitations... Wherever we have the races mixed up in large numbers, we have trouble.

Essentially Jones manipulated scriptural texts in order to say that people shouldn't leave the borders of their own country, or if they do, they need to be culturally separated in any other place they travel too.

**Edits for adding one more quote.