By Davis Carlton

Is it even possible to be a Christian if you oppose interracial marriage and mass migration of non-whites to white countries? Owen Strachan doesn’t think so, and he’s recently made this abundantly clear on social media. Strachan is a theology professor at GBT Seminary who recently posted on Twitter, “Real talk: you go against inter-ethnic marriage, you go against God.” Strachan has also publicly called out Andrew Torba, the founder of Gab and co-author of Christian Nationalism: A Biblical Guide For Taking Dominion and Discipling Nations. Torba had the temerity to suggest that God created the different ethnic groups and that preserving ethnic distinctions is “an inherent good.” Strachan called Torba’s statement “hot nonsense” that Christians need to oppose “like the plague.” Strachan also told Torba: “I pray you understand the true biblical gospel, which has nothing to do with your kinist message of ethnic preservation and propagation. I say this in love: you are promoting a false gospel. And you are leading many astray in doing so. Please, repent and follow Christ.”

I don’t intend to respond to everything that Strachan has said here. Instead I want to critique Strachan’s claim that opposition to interracial marriage is somehow contrary to the Gospel. What possible justification could Strachan give for the idea that the desire to preserve one’s ethnic identity is fundamentally opposed to the Gospel? Suppose that a well-meaning Christian were to disagree with the strong Kinist stance against interracial marriage and view such staunch opposition as a kind of legalism similar to a devout Baptist teetotaler who is opposed to any consumption of alcohol. Many teetotalers justified their rejection of any alcohol consumption on the basis of the dangers of alcoholism and drunkenness. Most Christians historically have disagreed with teetotalist opposition to all alcohol consumption because it goes beyond the Biblical condemnation of drunkenness as well as positive examples of alcohol being mentioned in the Bible.

Christians who defend the proper usage of alcohol contend that the real and perceived dangers of drunkenness should be acknowledged and warned against, but that total abstinence from alcohol is not a requirement although it is personally permissible. I don’t know of anyone who rejects the teetotalist position on alcohol who believes that teetotalists are somehow opposing God or teaching a false Gospel even if their approach on the subject of alcohol errs on the side of legalism. Why don’t Christians like Owen Strachan who reject Kinism’s opposition to interracial marriage think of Kinists in the same vein? In other words, why doesn’t Strachan believe that this is an issue that Christians can disagree on without being in direct defiance to God? Wouldn’t Kinists just be erring on the side of legalism on an issue which isn’t essential to salvation?

Whatever grace might be extended to teetotalists by Christians who disagree should be even more readily offered to Christians who are opposed to interracial marriage. Even if someone thinks that this is a legalistic restriction they should still concede that it’s at least understandable given the importance of marriage. It’s impossible to think of an institution more important to the flourishing of a healthy society than marriage. Marriage has been under attack for awhile and it has become increasingly rare for men to be traditional husbands and fathers and women to be traditional wives and mothers. Reliable studies indicate that interracial marriages have a greater likelihood of ending in divorce.

Zhang and van Hook observe, “Indeed, interracial marriages are less stable. The risk of marital dissolution among mixed marriages is about 1.21 times that of (or 21% higher than) non-mixed endogamous marriages and this did not change after adding controls for marriage cohort and region of residence.” Greater racial dissimilarity also seems to correlate to higher divorce rates, with black/white couples divorcing at the highest rate. Another study observed, “Mixed-race adolescents showed higher risk when compared with single-race adolescents on general health questions, school experience, smoking and drinking, and other risk variables.” The researchers concluded, “Adolescents who self-identify as more than 1 race are at higher health and behavior risks. The findings are compatible with interpreting the elevated risk of mixed race as associated with stress.”

Given these realities shouldn’t Christians at least see racial differences as something that should be avoided when picking a spouse? Even if some Christians think that Kinists or ethno-nationalists are being overly restrictive by opposing interracial marriages as such, why aren’t Kinists treated similarly to Baptists who oppose all consumption of alcohol? This is especially the case considering how it is relatively easy to recover from a night of overindulgence of beer or whiskey compared to being poorly matched in a bad marriage. If opposition to interracial marriage and the desire to propagate one’s particular ethnic group is somehow contrary to the Gospel and opposition to God Himself then this means that there were virtually no Christians in the entire United States prior to the 1960s, and only in the 1990s did this particular “opposition to God” finally dip below 50% after decades and decades of constant propaganda.

Numerous movies and television shows used the power of persuasion to break down resistance on the subject of interracial marriage as well as virtually every relevant social issue. Is Owen Strachan prepared to suggest that secular Jewish producers like Norman Lear were doing the Lord’s work by standing against a particularly heinous “opposition to God?” All of this leads me to ask why Owen Strachan has protested against Kinists or even Christian nationalists who haven’t embraced the Kinist label. I don’t pretend to know or understand what is psychologically motivating Strachan to go on this particular warpath. I suspect that Strachan enjoys the attention that he is getting by taking the winning side in a culture war in which otherwise conservative Christians such as himself often seem to be fighting losing battles. Perhaps Strachan thinks that taking a stand against pro-white ethno-nationalism will give him credibility with others on the evangelical left so that they will take more seriously his feeble protests against “woke” theology. Whatever the case with Owen Strachan he definitely protests too much. I plan on doing a follow-up in which I address his objection to “mono-ethnic nationalism.”