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Contrary to what one has heard from the pulpit or on Christian radio, the Bible supports racial preservation and even separation. The Bible teaches that mankind is composed not of an amorphous mass of individuals but of nations. It also teaches that the basis of all genuine nations is a common ethnic stock, which is more important even than a common language, culture, political allegiance, or locale. The Bible praises homogeneity as a blessing, and posits it as the basis of love, friendship, social peace, and national harmony. The Bible also sanctions love of nation and fatherland, a virtue antagonistic to indiscriminate and large-scale immigration.

According to the famous “Table of Nations” in Genesis 10, God organized mankind into discrete nations in the aftermath of the Great Flood. He created three sets of nations, each set descending from one of the three sons of Noah: Fourteen nations from Japheth; 30 from Ham; and 26 from Shem. After listing the progenitors of each of the nations that sprang from Shem, Genesis uses a formula closely repeated for Ham and Japheth, “These are the sons of Shem, according to their families, according to their languages, by their lands, according to their nations” (Gen. 10:31). The Genesis account of the dispersal of the nations concludes, “These are the families of the sons of Noah, according to their genealogies, by their nations; and out of these the nations were separated on the earth after the flood” (Gen. 10:32). These passages make clear that the essential constituent element of each nation is common ancestry, together with a “land” and a distinctive language. This is God’s creation, with no indication that it is anything other than entirely in accord with His will.

Genesis describes the areas in which these different nations settled in terms of migration patterns that conform to a broad division of races. For centuries there was universal agreement in Christendom that the Europeans were descended from Japheth, the Semites (Jews, Persians, Syrians, Arabs, and Asians) from Shem, and the Africans (including Egyptians and Canaanites) from Ham. However literally or figuratively one chooses to interpret this account, Genesis clearly divides the peoples of the earth into groups of related but racially distinct peoples.

Modern Biblical commentators and Christian leaders have tried to deny the obvious by insisting that the division of nations is not providential but accidental. They believe God intended the nations to be all as one (i.e. to cease being distinct nations). Therefore, they urge Christians to do all they can to restore mankind’s lost unity by tearing down national boundaries, promoting mass immigration, teaching English as a universal language, and intermarrying freely with members of other racial families.

This interpretation suffers from several flaws. First, if God intended mankind to be as one, why did He create many nations in the first place? Second, it is contradicted by the order of the Genesis narrative. The Table of Nations comes before the story of the Tower of Babel, indicating that God’s ordering and separating of the nations was part of His plan from the beginning. The sons of Noah refused to follow God’s clear mandate to separate and fill the earth. Instead, they gathered together, founded a city, and built a huge tower as a symbol of their power and independence. However, God’s sovereign purpose cannot be frustrated by the designs of men: “The Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth” (Gen. 11:9).

The scattering was neither arbitrary nor chaotic. According to the Biblical account, people moved with their nations in an orderly exodus that fulfilled God’s purpose. As we learn in Deuteronomy, God gave each nation or people its own lands and separated these lands by territorial boundaries: “When the Most High gave the nations their inheritance, when He separated the sons of man, He set the boundaries of the people” (Deuteronomy 32:.

The third flaw of the modernist interpretation of Genesis 10 and 11 — and from a Christian perspective the most dangerous — is that it repeats the sin of the people who built the Tower of Babel. The modern desire for global unity, amalgamation of peoples, destruction of territorial boundaries, English as a universal language, and construction of a world government is difficult to see as anything other than a sinful desire to rebuild the Tower of Babel and create an autonomous humanistic order independent of God. It is a rebellious project that defies God’s plan for world order based on discrete nations each residing within its own lands.

Fourth, the project for global unity sullies the beauty and diversity of God’s human creation, in that it suggests that the existence of different races, which vary markedly in physical appearance, is a mistake that man is to remedy by racial intermarriage. In this warped version of creation, God is the bungler and man the redeemer.

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The New Testament

The New Testament reaffirms the national and ethnic distinctions of the Old Testament, if anything, in stronger and clearer terms. Unlike Hebrew, the Greek in which the New Testament was written does have a word for mankind, anthropon; however, it is used infrequently and never suggests the elimination of the national or racial divisions of mankind. Luke wrote that God “made from one [Adam] every nation [ethnos] of mankind [anthropon] to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times, and the boundaries of their habitation” (Acts 17:26). Christ himself commanded his disciples to go and “make disciples of all the nations [ethna]” (Matthew 28:19).

Paul — though often cited in Christian attacks on race and nationality — both in his writings and personal loyalties clearly supports the view that nationality is based on a common ethnic origin. To begin with, one can well ask to what nation did Paul belong, and on what basis? He was born a Roman citizen in the province of Cilicia in Asia Minor. He spoke both Hebrew and Greek fluently. Religiously, he was not only Jewish but a Pharisee. He converted to Christianity. In answer to our questions about his nationality, the modern Christian could offer four possible answers: Paul was a Cilician (place of birth); he was a Roman (citizenship); he was a Greek (language); he was a Jew but became a Christian (religion).

According to Paul himself, all four answers would be wrong, for Paul on numerous occasions, after he became a Christian, identified himself as belonging to the Jewish nation on the basis of birth and heritage — not merely a Jew but of a particular tribe. He was, he claimed, “of the nation of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew of the Hebrews” (Philippians 3:5). When he wrote to the Romans in the city of Rome, he did not claim to be Roman (except by citizenship) but Jewish: “I too am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin” (Romans 11:1). He referred to the Israelites as his “brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites” (Romans 9:3, 4). He also referred to the Roman Christians as his “brethren” (Romans 11:25), but he is clearly speaking in a spiritual sense.

Thus, Paul made a distinction between his ethnic nation (Israel) and his spiritual nation (the Christians). Far from the latter superseding or abolishing the former, as most modern Christian leaders would claim, Paul affirms and honors both as an integral part of his identity. He hoped that more of his ethnic kinsmen would come to accept Christ as the Son of God: “Brethren [Roman Christians], my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them [Israel] is for their salvation” (Romans 10:1 NKJV). He also expressed confidence that God will not “reject His people,” meaning the Jews (Romans 11:1).

Paul uses the Greek word laos (a people) to refer to both an ethnic people, as in the people of Israel, and a spiritual people, as in the people of God. Paul’s use of that word in both contexts proves that ethnicity is not rendered obsolete or illegitimate by coming to Christ.

Paul’s ethnic identification is consistent with everything we know about the ancients, whether Greek, Roman, German, Celt, or Semite. They understood a nation to be a people of a common ancestry or race. The Roman Empire was not a nation, nor did any ancient author consider it to be a nation. They understood it to be an empire made up of many nations.

Intermarriage

The Bible endorses ethnic homogeneity as a positive good that contributes to peace, harmony, and happiness, whether it be in marriage, friendship, or society. The Hebrews were forbidden, first by their patriarchs and later by God Himself, to marry the sons and daughters of the peoples of the land God had promised them. Abraham made his chief servant swear not to search for a wife for his son Isaac “from the daughters of the Canaanites [Hamites], among whom I live; but you will go to my country and to my relatives [descendants of Shem], and take a wife for my son Isaac” (Gen. 24:3,4).

When Jacob and his family (sons, daughters, and grandchildren), 70 persons in all, went to Egypt to dwell in the land of Goshen under the protection of Pharaoh, only one son, Simeon, had a Canaanite wife in addition to a Hebrew wife (Genesis 46:8-26). Thus, out of all the grandchildren of Jacob, only one was part Hamitic. Upon their return to the Promised Land some 400 years later, Moses forbade the children of Israel to intermarry with the Canaanites, whose land they were preparing to invade and occupy (Exodus 34:12-16; Deuteronomy 7:3).

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The Book of Revelations provides clear evidence for the eternal destiny and indestructibility of the nations. In the New Jerusalem (Heaven), “the nations [ethne] shall walk by its light . . . and they shall bring the glory and honor of the nations [ethnon] into it” (Rev. 21:24, 26). Furthermore, John revealed that the leaves of the Tree of Life in the midst of Paradise “were for the healing of the nations [ethnon]” (Rev. 22:2). These passages are impossible to understand without recourse to a doctrine of Christian ethnic nationalism.

Moreover, it is only recently that the churches of the West have claimed that ethnic and racial nationalism are in conflict with Christianity. The great Protestant reformer John Calvin affirmed the necessity and goodness of the national division of mankind: “Just as there are in a military camp separate lines for each platoon and section, men are placed on the earth so that each nation may be content with its own boundaries.” In this manner, “God, by his providence reduces to order that which is confused” (Quoted in William J. Bouwsma, John Calvin: A Sixteenth Century Portrait; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, p. 35).

Of the major Christian churches, only the Eastern Orthodox Church seems to have retained an understanding of the legitimate and necessary place of the nation in the life of the individual Christian. In a recent document, the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church affirm both the universality and particularity of every Christian: “The universal nature of the Church, however, does not mean that Christians should have no right to national identity and national self-expressions.” Rather, they urge Christians to develop “national Christian cultures.”

The Christian Doctrine of Nations - American Renaissance

Biblical law respects boundaries of race and nation.

American Renaissance · amren.com