Was William Branham a racist?: Difference between revisions

Here are some comments on biracial marriages that William Branham made that are clearly racist:

:''Hybreeding, hybreeding, oh, how terrible, hybreeding. ...'''What white woman would want her baby to be a mulatto by a colored man?''' God made us what we are. <ref>CONDEMNATION.BY.REPRESENTATION_  JEFF.IN  60-1113</ref>

:'''''What good would a white woman want to have a baby by a colored man making him a mulatto child? It's not sensible.''' <ref>BUT.IT.WASN'T.SO.FROM.THE.BEGINNING_  BLOOMINGTON.IL  TUESDAY_  61-0411</ref>

:''He makes white man, black man, red man. We should never cross that up. It becomes a hybrid. And anything hybrid cannot re-breed itself. You are ruining the race of people. There is some things about a colored man that a white man don't even possess them traits. A white man is always stewing and worrying; a colored man is satisfied in the state he is in, so they don't need those things.<ref>O.LORD.JUST.ONCE.MORE_  HOT.SPRINGS.AR  63-0628M</ref>

:''He makes white flowers, and blue flowers, and all colors of flowers. '''Don't interbreed them. Don't cross them up. You get against nature.'''<ref>THE.THIRD.EXODUS_  JEFF.IN  63-0630M</ref>

:'''''Now, I don't believe in mixing marriages. I believe that a white man should not marry a colored girl, or a colored girl marry a white man, or a yellow marry a colored, or a white,''' ...It fools me that I seen some real pretty colored girl, intelligent, nice looking kid, just as pretty as any woman you'd want to see... '''What does she want to marry a white man and have mulatto children? What would an intelligent colored girl want with such a thing as that?''' <ref>QUESTIONS.AND.ANSWERS.4_  JEFF.IN  COD  SUNDAY_  64-0830E</ref>

William Branham was all over the map on what he believed and what he preached.  So it is not surprising that this is also true when it came to his position on racism.  He clearly stated in 1947 that:

:''if you're black, white, yellow, red, American, Canadian, Russian, Spanish, Mexico, wherever you're from, we're all one in Christ Jesus, every one of us. God don't love one any more than He does the other one. He doesn't love me any more than He loves you. He doesn't love you any more than He loves me. So there we are; we're all one together in Christ Jesus.<ref>THE.CHILDREN.OF.ISRAEL_  PHOENIX.AZ  47-1123</ref>

But in later years, he would state that he was a segregationist, was an anti-miscegenist (strongly opposed to biracial marriages), and thought that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a communist.

In the latter part of his life, William Branham's stance on many controversial doctrinal issues became more vitriolic. This also appears to be true of his positions on miscegeny. We were unable to find any opposition to mixed race marriages in any of William Branham's sermons prior to 1960.  His most objectionable comments all appear to have been in the last several years of his life.

William Branham's first pastor, [[Roy Davis#Roy Davis and the KKK|Roy Davis, had significant ties with the KKK]] and William Branham also indicated that when he was a boy, the KKK paid his hospital bill (see quotes below).

William Branham also clearly sided with George Wallace, the governor of Alabama in 1963, who stated:

:''The President (John F. Kennedy) wants us to surrender this state to Martin Luther King and his group of pro-communists who have instituted these demonstrations."<ref>Alabama Governor George Wallace, public statement of May 8, 1963 in The New York Times. (May 9, 1963).</ref>

=What does the Bible say about biracial marriages?=

We are not aware of any passages in the Bible that condemn or even discourage inter-racial marriage.

Here are five arguments that are used to oppose interracial marriage and Biblical responses to each argument.<ref>The arguments which follow are from the sermon notes of John Piper's sermon on "The Ethics of Interracial Marriage", February 14, 2001</ref>

The Hebrews were forbidden to marry Canaanites and other pagan peoples (see (Exodus 34:12, Deuteronomy 7:1-4, 1 Kings 11:1-3, Nehemiah 13:25, Ezra 9:11-14). The reason was because those people worshipped idols, not because of race.  In fact, the Hebrews, Amorites, Canaanites, etc. were all racially similar.

==2. Races are God's will and therefore amalgamating them is against his will.==

Genesis 11:6-9, Deuteronomy 32:8, and Acts 17:26 are texts that are used to support this argument.  However, these texts refer to separation of peoples that are along lines much more narrow than race. They are not racial divisions, so, used this way, they "prove" too much, since they would seem to forbid intermarrying between any people group boundaries even within the same race.

When God separated the peoples in Genesis 11:6-9 it was by language, not race. Racial distinctions came later. This passage does not teach that people cannot learn each other's languages and marry each other. Rather, the lesson to be learned is that no group of people should conspire against God.

God's punitive judgments (like the curse at the tower of Babel) do not become our mandates. For example: God cursed creation at the fall, but this does not mean that we should not use antibiotics or aspirin. So God's separating peoples does not mean there should never be any coming together of people, including in marriage.

The curse was on Canaan, Ham's son, not on Ham (Genesis 9:18-27), and Canaan was not the father of the Black race.

Even if a particular race were cursed, the curses of God are not mandates to his people. God's curses are not commands to treat the cursed people badly.  All of these things have been done away with by the cross of Jesus Christ and the new covenant that God made with man.

This argument might carry some weight, perhaps, if there were the real possibility that interracial marriage diminished diversity. But doesn't it actually increase it?

The statement of relational and social unity among the races that is made by marrying interracially is as important as any biological differences, whereas opposing interracial marriage makes the statement that races are not relationally or socially equal.

Genetic studies have shown that there is more genetic diversity within various "races" than there is between the "races".  In fact, there is not a single absolute genetic difference between the perceived races, for example, where all Africans have one variant and all Europeans another one.  In fact,  there is so much variation within "racial" groups that two people of European descent may be more genetically similar to an Asian person than they are to each other.<ref>https://sitn.hms.harvard.edu/flash/2017/science-genetics-reshaping-race-debate-21st-century/</ref>

As Christians, we should base ideas of compatibility on the facts of a situation not on the color of the people.

There are same-race couples that are less compatible than interracial couples, because the issue is not race but sufficient spiritual union, common conviction, and similar expectations to make the marriage workable.