David Whitney of the Institute on the Constitution believes he knows whyRichard Collins III was murdered on the University of Marylands campus in May:

Evolution is also the basis of racism, [and] many assert that racism played a role in the motivation for this murder, Whitney said. You see,evolution is essentially racist. Sowhere did Sean Urbanski learn racism? He learned it in his classes on evolutionat the local public high school that his parents sent him to and his parents funded that school by the payment of their property taxes.

This statement should be surprising, but it is not. Prominent creationist Ken Ham is well known for arguing that evolution is the root of racism, and that the solution to racism is belief in biblical creationism.

Shortly before coming upon Whitneys words, I read an Atlantic article taking on a series of myths about Robert E. Lee. I found the articles discussion of Lees Christianity an interesting counterpoint to Whitneys claims:

The war was not about slavery, Lee insisted later, but if it was about slavery, it was only out of Christian devotion that white southerners fought to keep blacks enslaved. Lee told aNew York Heraldreporter, in the midst of arguing in favor of somehow removing blacks from the South (disposed of, in his words), that unless some humane course is adopted, based on wisdom and Christian principles you do a gross wrong and injustice to the whole negro race in setting them free. And it is only this consideration that has led the wisdom, intelligence and Christianity of the South to support and defend the institution up to this time.

Lee had beaten or ordered his own slaves to be beaten for the crime of wanting to be free, he fought for the preservation of slavery, his army kidnapped free blacks at gunpoint and made them unfreebut all of this, he insisted, had occurred only because of the great Christian love the South held for blacks.

Lee claimed that slavery was Christianand his argument was a common one for his time. Whites inthe antebellum South used scripture to back up their defense of slaveryand this wasnt just limited to verses telling slaves to obey their masters. Southern whites argued that the black race was subject to the curse of Ham. They based this claimon a passage from Genesis chapter 9:

20Then Noah beganfarming and planted a vineyard.21He drank of the wine andbecame drunk, and uncovered himself inside his tent.22Ham, the father of Canaan,saw the nakedness of his father, and told his two brothers outside.23But Shem and Japheth took a garment and laid it upon both their shoulders and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father; and their faces wereturned away, so that they did not see their fathers nakedness.24When Noah awoke from his wine, he knew what his youngest son had done to him.25So he said,

Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants He shall be to his brothers.

26He also said,

Blessed be theLord, The God of Shem; And let Canaan behis servant. 27May God enlarge Japheth, And let him dwell in the tents of Shem; And let Canaan behis servant.

Southern whites argued that as a result of this incident the descendants of Ham were condemned to serve the descendants of Shem and Japheth, forever. The descendants of Ham, they argued, werethe black race. The descendants of Japheth were the Jews, and the descendants of Shem were the Europeans. Slavery, then, was not only passively biblical but actually explicitly commanded by God.

I should note that this belief predated even the idea of evolution. In other words, the curse of Hamwas not based on evolutionary ideas about race.

Nor did the use of the Bible to defend racialdiscrimination or racial segregation end there. During the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, many white southern pastors preached that God had commanded the separation of the races. These individuals tended to argue that different races should not intermarry, andthat God had different purposes for different races. And here, again, their concept of races was rooted inthe Bible,notevolutionary ideas.

Have a look at this excerpt from a 1960 radio address by Bob Jones:

What does God teach about the races of the world? If you will go to the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, you will find where Paul preached a special sermon on Mars Hill.

Paul tells us in his sermon on Mars Hill, God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. Now, the statue of the Grecian goddess, Athena, was in the Parthenon; and Paul said that God did dwell in buildings made with hands. Neither is worshipped with mens hands, as though he needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and all things.

Now, noticethis is an important versethe twenty-sixth verse of the seventeenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth (in some of the best original manuscripts, the word blood is not there, but it is not important anyhow, because the thoughts are the same). And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth. . . . But do not stop there, . . . and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation. Now, what does that say? That says that God Almighty fixed the bounds of their habitation. That is as clear as anything that was ever said.

Pastors like Bob Jones explicitlypreachedthat God had createdseparate races, giving each its own boundary and roleand they used the Bible to back up their claims. Trumpetingthese passages, Jonesvehemently opposed both interracial marriage and school desegregation.

Here, then, is the central problem faced byevangelicals like Whitney: If racism stemmed from evolution, as they claim,we should not see Christians base racist ideas on the Bible, eitherin recent generations or in thedecades before the birth of evolutionary science. And yet, we see just that. If evangelicalsaccept that racism is part of the human condition, and understand that a variety of ideasfrom evolution to Christianityhave been used to justify racism,they grow closer to reality.

Of course, they also lose a favorite anti-evolution talking point.

As an aside, both young earth creationism and evolution holdsthat humans are descended from agroup of early ancestors. Creationist Ken Ham is fond of using the one blood terminology quoted by Jones to argue that young earth creationism is anti-racist. To the extent that Hamis able to persuade his followers to reject racist ideas, great! Im just not sure Hams were all descended from the same people rhetoric is as original (or as different from that ofevolutionary scientists) as he thinks.

The rest is here:

Evangelicals Who Link Evolution and Racism Forget Christianity Was Used to Defend Slavery and Segregation - Patheos (blog)