In Today’s Conversation, Leith Anderson and Walter Kim discuss race and the Bible.

We talk about race a lot in the United States. Whether it's the growing population of Asian Americans, trends in Latino immigration, or racial unrest in metropolitan cities, race plays a major role in the American experience. As evangelicals, we want to start with the Bible.

In this podcast, you’ll hear from a respected pastor and theologian on:

What — if anything — the Bible says about race;

How the Tower of Babel and Pentecost relate to diversity;

The racial situation among first century Christians; and

How Christians today ought to respond to racism and racialization.

Read a Portion of the Transcript

Leith: Events of the last couple of years in Ferguson, Baltimore, South Carolina, and other places in our country have exposed long-standing injustices and misunderstandings between those in black and white communities and have brought the issue of race to the forefront of many discussions. As evangelicals we want to start with the Bible. What does the Bible have to say about race? That’s the focus of our conversation today, so thanks for joining us, Walter. First, let’s just get right to a basic question — making sure we’re on the same page. What are we talking about when we use the word “race”? What does that mean?

Walter: Well, it depends who you ask. If you ask a biologist or sociologist, they would give different answers, but I think functionally when most people consider the issue of race, they associate it with perceptions of physical or genetic characteristics. Characteristics like skin color or facial features, black or white skin tone, Latino or Asian facial features. And it’s this particular access and definition of race that is probably most present on the consciousness of people as they raise this issue to address.

Leith: And I’m assuming that most people notice. I’m sensing that in some cultures this is a bigger deal than it is in others. I had sort of an embarrassing moment recently. I was at a conference with an African American friend, and the topic was race. And a few months later, we were talking about one of the speakers there. And the race of the speaker came up, and I said the person was Caucasian. My friend said the speaker was African American. I looked it up, and I was wrong and he was right. So is our culture more or less addressing and sensitive to this than others in history and around the world?

Walter: I think this really gets at the issue of categorization. As humans we have a finite ability to organize all the information that comes through our senses, and so of course we’re going to try to come up with ways of categorizing the information. And when it comes to people, one of the ways we attempt to categorize is by the features that we see with our eyes and associate with a certain set of meanings — a person’s origin or value or so-forth. This really isn’t a problem just for North Americans; this is really a function of being human —the need to categorize. The real question is: Are the categories that we use appropriate, or can they be misused? And this is where we in America have gotten ourselves into a very complex and challenging situation.

Leith: Let’s tie that back to the Bible. Does the word “race” even appear in the Bible?

Walter: Yeah, that’s an interesting question. The Bible is completely comfortable with this notion of categorization. In fact if you go to the Old Testament in Genesis Chapter 10, categories are in fact used to divide humans. And so you have these table of nations. So you read about the sons of Japheth. “And from these the maritime peoples spread out into their territories by their clans within their nations, each within its own language.” The categories that exist — at least in this passage — are territories (geographical categories...