"Christianity is a racist religion."
Some racist people call themselves Christians and have tried reading racist ideology into the Bible. However, Christianity isn’t a racist religion because its authoritative text (the Bible) strongly opposes racist ideas.
1. According to the Bible there isn’t an evolved hierarchy of "civil and savage races" as Darwin taught in the "Descent of Man"(cite quote). Genesis teaches that all humans are made in the image of God and descended from the same two people (Genesis 1:26-28). The Bible never refers to anyone’s skin color or what we now refer to as biological race.
2. Galatians 3:28 teaches that there’s no distinction between races for those united in Christ. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. regularly cited this verse in his fight against racism and segregation .
3. Jesus commissioned his apostles to make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:19), and Peter obeyed this command by preaching to an extremely diverse crowd at Pentecost (Acts 2:5-11).
4. Heaven will be filled with every race and nationally because for 2,000 years Christian missionaries have traveled the world preaching the Gospel and helping the poor regardless of the skin color (Revelation 7:9).
5. When Moses’s sister protested his marriage to a black Cushite woman, God punished her for trying to justify racism on the basis that God "spoke through her" (Numbers 12:1-15).
"Noah’s curse of Ham/Canaan is Biblical justification for slavery and racism."
The "curse of Ham" is a reference to Genesis 9:24-27, when Noah cursed Ham and said Canaan would be a servant to his brothers. Some racist people have tried to use this passage to say Ham’s descendants were black Africans and Noah’s curse gave permission to enslave and destroy them. However, the text clearly has nothing to do with black people. Ham’s descendants were Canaanites, who were from parts of what is now known as Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, Syria, and Jordan; not Africa. Furthermore, Noah is not God and his curse of Ham wasn’t permission for his brothers to enslave Canaan; It was a prophecy of how the Canaanites would become prisoners of war and enslaved as a punishment for their idolatry, child sacrifice, and beastiality (Leviticus 18:23-24, 20:23, Judges 1:28). It’s prophetic in the same way as when God told Abraham that his descendants (Israelites) would be enslaved. In neither case did the author try to justify enslaving or treating people poorly.
"The “mark of Cain” is a Biblical justification for racism because Cain’s mark was black skin." (Genesis 4:10-16)
Nothing in the text suggests that Cain’s mark was dark skin or that racism is acceptable. The sole purpose of Cain’s mark was protection, not punishment (Genesis 4:15). Whatever Cain’s mark was, it somehow made it clear to people that there would be consequences for killing Cain. Brown skin wouldn’t communicate this and can be dismissed as an explanation. Furthermore, there would be no reason for Cain’s mark to be passed down to his descendants the way skin pigment is. Cain was the one who needed protection, not his descendants.
"Christianity opposes interracial marriage. God placed boundaries between the races and God’s chosen people Israel was forbidden to intermarry with other nations ”
When racist people try using the Bible to oppose interracial marriage, they force the text to say something it obviously doesn’t. They cite Acts 17:26-27, which never mentions skin color, race, or keeping races separate. The passage simply refers to how God sovereignly places people in the right time and place in order to hear the Gospel and be saved. The racist interpretation has unjustified built in assumptions that contradict Biblical teaching.
God’s command for Israel not to intermarry with pagan nations had nothing to do with race or skin color; it was given to protect Israel from adopting evil false religions that practiced human sacrifice (Deuteronomy 7:13-4). People of all races and nations were encouraged to become part of Israel and worship the one true God. If they did so, Israelites could marry them as in the cases of Boaz, Moses, and others (Ruth 4:13). Furthermore, the prohibition to intermarry citizens of pagan nations was only given to Israelites during the old covenant theocracy and was never intended for us today.
"The KKK is a Christian group and many Nazis were Christians."
It’s hard to believe that KKK members and Nazis are part of a religion that teaches they must spend eternity with people of every race and nation worshipping a Jewish rabbi for all of eternity (Revelation 7:9-10). KKK members and Nazis had to invent their own version of Christianity and abandon Biblical teaching in order to call themselves Christians. Since there were so many Christians in Germany, Nazis attempted to win over by inventing their own state regulated religion called positive Christianity; it rejected the core teachings of the Bible to make it conform to the ideals of national socialism. Likewise, the KKK imported their own racist ideas into the Bible, attempting to turn it into "a family history of the white race".
"Christianity is a white man’s religion."
If Christianity were a white man’s religion then the Bible wouldn’t portray heaven as being filled with Christians of every race, the diverse crowd at Pentecost wouldn’t have converted to Christianity, and the apostle Philip wouldn’t have baptized an African man (Revelation 7:9, Acts 8:26-49). From the beginning Christianity has been an extremely racially diverse religion. Today there are 364 millions Christians in Asia, 380 million in Africa, and it’s the dominant religion in Latin America (cite). Jesus and the apostles spread a message hope by offering salvation to all people regardless of their skin color (John 3:16). It’s important to realize that Christianity can’t logically be dismissed as a racist ideology by pointing to examples of racist "Christians". To judge Christianity, you have to examine the source material (the Bible) rather than the actions of so called Christians who twist scripture.