feminism. This narrowing view of Galatians
3:28 allowed evangelicals to drift into what
Bonilla-Silva calls, color-blind racism, which is
the ideology that acquired cohesiveness and
dominance in the late 1960’s and differs from
Jim Crow racism (which focused on biological
ethnicity or moral inferiority) by the way it
views contemporary racial inequality on non-
racial dynamics such as; a lack of will-power
to do better, poor work ethic, and residential
segregation as being the result of natural
tendencies among groups. 3
An Honest Interpretation
First, it must be stated the Bible never places
God as one who is colorblind. Inside of the
one human race God created are multitudes of
ethnicities He created out of His genius for His
glory. Ethnic diversity is God’s idea. He has the
patent on it and licensed His Church to be His
marketing strategy for it. In the eternal state it
is God’s design for the nations (or ethnicities)
to be present with Him (Revelation 7:9). Since
the church is the preview of heaven, Jesus was
intentional to command His followers to make
disciples of every ethnicity (Matthew 28:19-20).
Second, Galatians 3:28 decrees three
classifications; ethnicity, gender, and social
class. Paul’s intention for identifying these
realties was to convey God’s ability and desire
to save humans no matter their bloodline,
biological make up, or financial wherewithal.
Paul does not advocate a sexual transition
resulting in gender neutrality after salvation.
Neither does he promote unemployment for
Jesus’ followers after conversion. If gender
and social class are not dissolved after one
becomes a follower of Christ, why would their
ethnic heritage disappear? It doesn’t. The
honest interpretation of this text renders the
affirmation of one’s ethnicity instead if ignoring
or idolizing it. In doing this, color-blindness is
defeated and no longer a viable option to be
considered by Christians.
Caroline L. Shanks, “The Biblical Anti-Slavery Argument of
the Decade 1830—1840,” The Journal of Negro History, 15,
no. 2 (1931), 132.
1
In his book James Solomon Russell: Former Slave,
Pioneering Educator and Episcopal Evangelist, (Jefferson,
NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2012), Worth
Earlwood Norman, Jr, identifies the post Civil War exodus of
Blacks out of Episcopalian churches. He references Yet with a
Steady Beat by Harold T. Lewis for numerical quantification
before expressing the tensions leading to segregation of
worship services and social ideologies between White and
Black Christians.
2
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Racism without Racists: Color-Blind
Racism and the Persistence of Racial Inequality in the United
States, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2006),
1—3.
3
D.A. Horton is a Mexican-Choctaw-American church planter and speaker.
His newest book, Intensional: Kingdom Ethnicity in a Divide World, was
published by NavPress in 2019.
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