Faithfullyliven:the podcast
Do you want to learn how to study the Bible? Do you wish you could understand the Bible better? Do you want to know how you can remain faithful to historic Christianity in our contemporary society? Let's take a journey to explore and learn how to be a faithful follower of Christ. Faithfullyliven, the podcast is here to uplift your soul and encourage you to live a life honoring to God
Faithfullyliven:the podcast
Race, Faith, and the Christian Journey with Dr. HC Felder
Ever wondered how the concept of race emerged and its relationship with Christianity? In this episode Dr. H.C. Felder challenges the notion that Christianity is a "white man's religion" by exploring the origins of race and its alignment with biblical teachings. We uncover the man-made constructs of race developed in the 18th century to justify slavery, highlighting that Christianity has always been inclusive of all ethnicities. Our discussion extends to the Great Commission and the inclusive vision of humanity in the Book of Revelation, reinforcing Christianity’s inherent non-discriminatory nature. We also delve into the pivotal role of Christianity in the abolition of slavery, dismantling misconceptions and highlighting the faith’s foundational belief in the image of God in all humans. By grounding our beliefs in biblical truth, we recognize the inclusive and transformative nature of the Christian faith.
To connect with Dr. H.C. Felder
Email: hcfelder@givingananswer.org
Giving An Answer
www.GivingAnAnswer.org
www.facebook.com/GivingAnAnswer
www.YouTube.com/GivingAnAnswer
Do you want to learn how to study the Bible? Check out the YouTube channel Faithfullyliven youtube.com/@faithfullyliven
Do you want to read about how to live faithfully? Check out the blog http://lyfe102.org
Get a free Road Map to get started learning how to study the Bible https://mailchi.mp/88f9c9405da0/bible-study-road-map
Welcome to Faithfully Living, the Podcast where we learn how to live for Christ in our daily lives. I am Dwan, your host, and I would like to invite you on a journey with me to explore and learn how to be a faithful follower of Christ. Hey everyone, welcome to Faithfully Living, the podcast, where we strive to encourage you to live for Christ faithfully by offering guidance on how to study the Bible, how to understand the Bible better and how to remain faithful to historic Christianity in a contemporary society. Genesis 1.27 tells us. So God created man in his own image. In the image of God, he created him Male and female. He created them. So, you know, as a people in this world, we are image bearers of God. It's important to understand how much care God gave to creating humans. We are valuable. We should treat each other with respect and dignity. Yet, you know, sin has led us to mistreat our fellow man. And it's also important to understand how the world was put together and how history helped us to know how people lived and moved. And it's vital to understand, as a believer, what we believe as Christians and why.
Speaker 1:In this episode I talk with Dr HC Felder about is Christianity a white man's religion? But before we get started, let me tell you a little bit about Dr Felder. Dr Felder is a former atheist and NASA software engineer. After becoming a believer and being exposed to the truth of Christianity, he has dedicated his life to sharing that truth with others. He has an undergrad degree in computer science and a master's and doctorate in apologetics from Southern Evangelical Seminary. His articles published in scholarly journals on the topic of racism and the Bible. He is the author of the African American Guide to the Bible, which details, with the inspiration of scripture, the black presence in the Bible, the bible and racism and the unity of man. Dr felder founded the given answer ministry, which focuses on providing evidence for the christian faith. Dr felder also speaks at churches and various apologetic conferences around the country. He resides in charlotte, north car, carolina, with his wife and four children. All right, let's dive into this episode. Well, hi, welcome to the show.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you for inviting me to the show.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for inviting me, so I'm excited to talk about our topic. Is Christianity, a white man's religion?
Speaker 2:But before we get into our topic, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Okay, sure, I was actually born in a Christian family, but I didn't consider myself much of a Christian. I more considered myself maybe a theist, because I went to church every Sunday. I believed there was a God. I didn't know anything about him, definitely didn't know anything about Jesus.
Speaker 2:But when I joined the Navy, my first duty station was the Philippines, and the first day I walked off that base and saw all the beautiful women and saw all the bars, I knew that belief in God was going to conflict with the way I wanted to live my life. So I made a decision, right then and there, to no longer believe in God, because I didn't want to be held accountable to no one outside of me. I didn't want nobody telling me what to do, when to do it and who to do it with. So I said I'm not going to believe in God, and God, you know, turned me on with the desires of my flesh. And I lived that way for the whole time I was in the Navy, for sure, sure, and even after I got out the Navy, but um, but there were times, though I gotta admit that I did struggle with my atheism when I was in the Navy, and that would be when I would go out to sea and I would see God's creation, I would see the stars at night and I would know that just no man made that Pookie didn't make that. That had to be something way beyond us. Yeah, so I would come back to shore and I would just have to like double up on my atheism in order to reinforce it, because I could not let God in, because God would just mess up my plan, my plan, the plan that I had for my life, and I hated Christians. I hated everything about Christians because they represented God and I didn't want anything to do with God, and I would often belittle Christians, I would belittle their faith, because I would say that there's no, you know, you believed in this fairy tale, god, and because I had to, I had to reinforce it for myself.
Speaker 2:But I did meet a young lady once that my uncle introduced me to, and she was actually the first Christian I ever met in my life that talked the talk and walked the walk, and just being with her gave me some insight into what it means to be a Christian, and one day she took me to church. She invited me to go to church and I remember it clearly because it was on a Friday night and I'm like who goes to church on a Friday night? You go to happy hour on a Friday night. And something happened to me. The Holy Spirit just worked on me and it just rose up in me and I fought it off and I was telling her about it on the way home and she was like that's the Holy Spirit calling you and I was like I actually believed it. For some bizarre reason, I believed it and I actually gave my my my heart to the Lord.
Speaker 2:But afterwards, after the euphoria wore off, I was like what did I do? You know, I just made some emotional decision to believe in this fairy tale, god, and so I started doing research to find out if Christianity was really true. And that's when I found all the evidence for Christianity. And I found that there was evidence that the Bible was true, that God did exist, and that the God did exist, corresponding to the God of the Bible, jesus did rise from the dead. There was plenty of evidence for it. And so I was so surprised by the information that I actually decided to give my life to Christ and to focus on sharing that information with others, and at the time I was an engineer. I was a software engineer at NASA and I actually quit my job, sold my house and moved to Charlotte to study apologetics under Dr Norman Geisler, and I've been into apologetics ever since.
Speaker 1:Well, that's an amazing story, how you started off knowing what was true as far as God being authority, and you knew that you didn't want that authority in your life.
Speaker 2:so I knew enough to know, yeah, and if it was a God, I would be held accountable to him.
Speaker 1:I knew, I knew that much and then once you, you know, you saw, I guess, the light or saw who Jesus was, you, you know, you actively sought him out, which is, and then him, I completely gave my life to him. That's an amazing story. Thank you for sharing that. Alright, so to get into our topic. You know it's not uncommon for people to label Christianity as like quote unquote the white man's religion. But it kind of goes back to having the right perspective on race and ethnicity. So let's kind of start off as far as like. Why is it important to understand ethnicity from a biblical perspective?
Speaker 2:Well, because a lot of people when they look at the Bible, they believe that the Bible is a book written by white people for white people. They don't even see black people in it, they don't even see people of color in it. So then a lot of people disassociate themselves from it because they say, well, that has nothing for me, because that's about white people and it's for white people, when it's really not true at all. I mean, god looks at us as all the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. All ethnicity come from those two people to people, and their genes was every color and hue that we see. So when God looks at humanity, god looks at people as the descendants of Adam and Eve, and as they developed and became more numerous and migrated, they became ethnic groups, they became nations and that's how God dealt with people. He dealt with people by nations, and God doesn't deal with Black people and white people.
Speaker 2:Race is not a biblical concept. There's no such thing as race in the Bible. If you look at the Bible and you start looking at race, then you've already gone wrong, because there's no such concept. This concept came later on, but there's no such thing in the Bible as a concept as race, there's ethnicities, there are nations, and that's the way that God sees people. And God sees us all as being made in the image of him. And I think this is so important because if black people think that God does not like them or that God views them as second class citizens, people cannot view themselves higher than they think that God views them. So it's important that people understand that God views us all. He makes us all different kinds of colors, like he makes the flowers different kinds of colors, like he makes the birds different kinds of colors. There is beauty in that diversity and that's what God sees. He sees the diversity and beauty in that diversity because he created it so you mentioned race.
Speaker 1:You know, you said race is not in the bible. So where did race, the concept of race, come from then?
Speaker 2:race is a man-made idea. It is a man-made construct. It goes, we can. We can trace it back to some swedish guy named carlos lennox and in 1758 he actually wrote a book and he actually classified people by their characteristics and he called that race. But he went further. I mean, he talked about personalities like you know, blacks being lazy and being shifty and being, you know, untrustworthy and all those type of things. So he was the first one to sort of come up with the whole idea of race. And it was actually. It was actually Darwin, actually built upon what this guy had actually done and what happened was is that the slave owners used that as evidence or as a reason to enslave Black people, to say that they were inferior, that they needed white people. But it's important to understand that slavery came first. The justification by race came later, because slavery existed long before this guy wrote this book in 1758. But race was invented as a way to justify slavery.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. I knew slavery has been around for thousands and thousands of years, but I guess I didn't realize the concept of race was used as like a justification.
Speaker 2:Well, actually, you know I can touch on that a little bit more when the first Blacks came to America, they came as indentured slaves, indentured servants, and they were in the fields right alongside indentured slaves. I mean indentured servants from other places, from Europe. Indentured slaves, I mean indentured servants from other places from Europe. So you have the Irish working right next to the African, right next to the German. But what happened was there was a thing called the Bacon Rebellion.
Speaker 2:In the Bacon Rebellion people rose up, the service rose up against the landowners, and after that then the landowners decided that they need a way. They need a way to be able to keep a class subservient, and they came up with that was one of the reasons behind race. And so the people who were Irish and who were German, these people weren't considered white. So they sort of made the landowners say if you help us keep the black people down, we will. Whites were only landowners. If you help us keep the blacks down, then we will give you basically whitehood. And so that's basically how white and black came about. They were both invented, they were both created. They're both social constructs.
Speaker 1:Like a man-made construct. Clearly a man-made construct so I guess for the for the next few questions in light of that. You know people have made such claims as like christianity's races, does christianity support um slavery? Was christianity brought um over by to af Africa by white missionaries? So let's address each of those questions there. So let's start off with is Christianity racist?
Speaker 2:No, I go back to saying you know Adam and Eve. We all come from Adam and Eve and we are made in the same image of God as Adam and Eve were. Christianity was not racist when it was founded. It's not racist today.
Speaker 2:Pentecost when the church was founded, if you look in the Bible you see that there were people from every nation, pretty much well under the sun. At Pentecost, that's when the church started 3,000 people from every nation under the sun. There were people there from Africa. So the first converts, the first converts to Christianity, the first church consisted of Africans. So there were Africans and people of color from day one. So we start there. But another thing the first Gentile convert to Christianity was the Ethiopian eunuch. Right, yeah, god went out of his way to perform a miracle To bring the Ethiopian eunuch into knowledge about Christ. Eunuch into knowledge about Christ. That Ethiopian eunuch went back to Africa and told his queen, candace, and Africa spread and Christianity spread throughout Africa. But not only that. Let's look at what Jesus said when Jesus was given the. What is that called Matthew 28. The commission, the great commission.
Speaker 2:He said go into all the nations, make disciples of all nations. He didn't say the white nations, he didn't say the black nations. He said all the nations and we know that they did this Because Christianity spread over the black nations. He said all the nations and we know that they did this because Christianity spread over the whole world. But then when we look at John the Revelator, when he has a picture of heaven, when he's looking at heaven, he's seeing people singing to the Lamb. He's seeing people singing to God, singing to Christ, and they are people from every nation, language, tribe and tongue. They are all there in heaven.
Speaker 2:So it was never racist. There are more Christians in Africa today than there are in the US, so it would be very difficult to go to Africa and try to convince them that Christianity is racist when there are more Christians there. So it has never been a white man's religion. It's never been racist. That is. I think. What happens is that people have this tunnel vision and people. I look at people, for instance, like Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad, and they looked at people who they saw, who were their oppressors and they were. They happened to be white and happened to be Christian. So they had this few view that Christians and white equaled the same thing. But they had a very narrow view of the world. They had a very they had a very narrow understanding. They they relegated it to their own personal experience, where the world is a lot bigger than their personal experience right?
Speaker 1:yeah, definitely so. I. I think it's important to, like you said, have a wider perspective than just your own. Just your own narrow you. You can't classify people into one category if you don't know the broader scope of who people are and what the Bible says about. Like you said, nations and ethnicity, yeah, so I guess that kind of transitions to does Christianity support slavery?
Speaker 2:to? Does the? Does christianity support slavery? Now, this is always a hot button, a hot button issue. Um, yeah, there's slavery in the old testament, definitely slavery in the old testament. But before the old testament there was slavery. Slavery had always existed. Slavery existed before the Jews. Slavery has existed in every society. Slavery is all about a stronger nation enslaving a weaker nation.
Speaker 2:In the Bible we see slavery. We see slavery in the Old Testament. But when we look at the Old Testament we see that God did put boundaries around slavery, Like, for instance, after every six or seven years they had to be left free. A lot of it had to do with people who were destitute, who would actually sell themselves into slavery. But there was actually slavery also where it was perpetual, where God put a nation into slavery as punishment. When the children of Israel went into the promised land, the land of the Canaanites, God said go to a city. If they subject themselves to you, then they become your slaves. If not, then destroy them, Because God was punishing those nations.
Speaker 2:But this has nothing to do with race. For some reason, people look at race and say this has nothing to do with race. It has nothing to do with race. There's this idea that the Jews were white and everybody else was black, and that's just simply. That's just simply not the case, because we see that the Jews themselves went into slavery in Babylon. And an interesting note Babylon, the descendants of Babylon, come from Cush, which is the founder of the African nations. They also went into slavery in Assyria. So it wasn't. It had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with race. But let me say this, and this is going to sound really, really weird Slavery was not even seen as a problem until Christianity came along.
Speaker 2:Slavery had always existed. It existed in the Americas before the white man came. Before the white man came, Native nations were enslaving Native nations. It happened everywhere In Africa. There's this idea that these white people went to Africa and that they captured these slaves, like we see on Roots, which was completely false. The fact of the matter is the Africans were taking Africans as slaves and was selling them to the white man. Slavery existed a long time in Africa before the white man came. The white man didn't teach slavery to the Africans. The Africans knew slavery very, very well. As a matter of fact, Africans, the Africans, knew slavery very, very well. As a matter of fact, when the Europeans tried to outlaw slavery. They rebelled. They were like why in the world would we do that? This is our culture, this is what we do. This is what we've always done In America. We hear, of course we hear about the whites taking Africans as slaves. We don't hear about the fact that Native Americans had Black slaves. You ever heard of the Trail of Tears?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:The Trail of Tears is when they relocated Native Americans from one part of the country to another. What they do not tell you is that when they relocated these Native Americans, they took their slaves along with them. Native Americans had slaves, just like the white people had slaves. Not only that, africans had slaves as well. In America there were African landholders who had slaves. As a matter of fact, I mentioned before about indentured slavery. The first example of perpetual slavery was a Black man going to court to enslave his Black slaves perpetually. And then it was a Black man and his slaves. Then, once that happened, it opened up the floodgates and then slavery became perpetual. It wasn't seven years anymore, it became, you know, never-ending. So yes, slavery had always existed, but it's only one culture where slavery was dealt with and was made to be wrong, and that is the Christian worldview. That's about an abolitionist movement. The abolitionist movement took hold of the idea that man is made in the image of God and because of that idea the abolitionist movement started. And it's because of that idea, it is because of that movement that we know that slavery is wrong, that slavery around the world pretty much will stop because of that. So not only did Christianity not endorse slavery. Christianity is responsible for the abolition of slavery. When we look at slavery around the world, slavery only exists in small pockets right now and those are in Muslim nations. Christianity pretty much well wiped out slavery worldwide. So, no, christianity does not support slavery. Christianity was responsible for the abolition of slavery.
Speaker 2:And when people say that slavery is wrong, whether they know it or not, they are borrowing from a Christian worldview, because before that Christian worldview, before the abolitionist movement, no one thought slavery was wrong. There was no reason to think slavery was wrong. Atheists can't give you a reason why slavery is wrong, because we're not made in the image of God, because you know morality is, because you know it's morality is whatever you want it to be. Islam cannot give you a real reason for why slavery is wrong. Which is why when they tried, when the, when the British tried to force other nations to give up slavery and they went to the Muslim, the Ottoman Empire, they rebelled. They were like what do you mean? Slavery is wrong? It's like them, like many other people, like our culture is built on slavery. That is why there are certain pockets of slavery right now and those pockets are run by Muslims and enslavering Christians. So the idea that Christianity supports slavery is completely backwards.
Speaker 1:It's all interesting that you're talking about, you know, having to know, like, the history of how things got started, yeah, which is totally opposite of what the narrative that we have.
Speaker 2:It is completely opposite of the narrative we have. Completely opposite of the narrative. And you know I'll give you an example of that, and you know, I'll give you an example of that.
Speaker 2:So when I was growing up and when I was in high school, roots came out and I saw Roots and it made me angry, especially the part where Kunta Kinte was captured by these white men that just incest me. Matter of fact, I was in the DC at the time and there were race fights breaking out because of that, but now we know that it was a lie Right. First of all, roots was a book that was plagiarized by alex haley. He plagiarized a work of fiction written by a white guy oh, I didn't know that part yes, written by a white guy.
Speaker 2:And alex haley admitted. He said well, I was just trying to give us you, give us morals to live by. He admitted that he plagiarized it. But not only that.
Speaker 2:The Mendingo warriors that we hear all about in the Book of Fruits actually were some of the worst slave traders in Africa. They would go into Central Africa, captured slaves. They were the ones that captured the slaves and brought them back to the coast and then sold them to the white people who came were looking to buy slaves. So the fact of the matter is this is the opposite. They were the actual slavers. They weren't the victims of slavery. They probably were victims of slavery too, because everybody was a victim of slavery. Right, whichever tribe was stronger enslaved the weaker tribe. So it was going on back and forth. And that's why, when I look, I went and did my ancestry and I saw that I had, you know, relations all over Africa, central Africa, the coast of Africa because they went into Central Africa, took the slaves and brought them to the coast. So, yeah, yeah, we have. We've been told a lot. That's not true.
Speaker 1:Well, I guess kind of segwaying piggyback on that. Our last question would be was Christianity really brought to Africa by white missionaries? And you kind of touched on that a little bit. So tell us the history of you, told us a little bit of how Christianity got into Africa, but could you elaborate on that a little bit more?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mentioned the Ethiopian eunuch who came back to Ethiopia.
Speaker 2:In the Bible Ethiopia is called Kush and that actually reflects modern day Sudan, ethiopia, southern Egypt, the places where the dark people are. He came back to his queen. She accepted Christianity and Christianity, flourished and, as an interesting fact, ethiopia has been Christian ever since. Ethiopia is Christian to since, oh, ethiopia is Christian to this very day. But not only that. Ethiopia was one of the few places that were Christianized without any influence from Rome. They were Christian before the Roman Empire accepted Christianity. So Christianity continued to spread throughout Africa.
Speaker 2:At the end of the third century, Northwest Africa was majority Christian, northwest Africa was majority Christian. By the third century, that means the 200s, and by 200, like 280, there were churches in Africa. Now the Akosumite kingdom, which came from Ethiopia, which came from Kush they just changed names over time became the first Lubian kingdom to adopt Christianity as the official religion in the fourth century. This is the 300s. Oh wow. This is long before America was discovered, early on, very early on. The African kingdoms of Nabati I can't pronounce some of these names, but there were a number of African nations that became Christian around this same time. Christianity was present all up and down the Nile River during the 5th, 6th and 7th centuries, and they were Christians without interruption until the Arab conquest Now, and this included places like present-day Uganda, kenya. All these places were Christians until the Arab conquest Now, when the Arab conquest came along, then some of these places became Muslim, some of it through conquering, some of it through just regular trade. And some of these nations did revert back to their previous religions or they adopted Islam.
Speaker 2:And then, around the 1400s, there was another wave of missionaries that did come from Europe. But what is interesting is that this wave of missionaries that went there, they were basically bringing the same Christianity, because in Africa, africans actually exported Christianity to Europe. When the persecutions happened, a lot of the African Christians went to Europe. So that's how a lot of Europe became Christianized. And when Rome became Christianized, they needed scholars, they needed people who knew Christianity, and they would go to some of these places in Africa Because Christianity had been firmly established in Africa.
Speaker 2:So when these missionaries came back to Africa, it was with the same Christianity that they originally exported to Europe in the first place. So it became sort of full circle. So so originally, yes, africa was Christian before there was even in America there was a law. Then Christianity did come back. But even when Christianity came back, a lot of the nations did evangelize other nations. So Christianity spread within Africa, even from those missionaries at that time they actually spread it among other nations. So Christianity in Africa. But at no point did Christianity disappear from Africa, at no point. There was always a Christian presence in Africa, always a Christian presence in Africa. As I mentioned, ethiopian has always been Christian.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's interesting how they got it turned around. Yeah, I think it was like you said it's a full circle. It's a full circle.
Speaker 2:Some of the most famous theologians, christian theologians, were African. I mean, we look at Augustine, who was actually responsible for Christianity as we know it today as far as doctrine. I mean, when you go to seminary, a lot of the stuff that you learn is built upon, uh, what, what augustine taught. We look at athanasius, who was, uh, one of the early church fathers. I mean he was, he was, he was zealot, he was zealous for the faith. I mean, he was in some of the the early church councils. As a matter of fact, they have the athanasius creed after him, which he had implemented to or pretty much would develop, which is today still used as a test for orthodoxy in the Christian church. And we know he was African. As a matter of fact, his enemies used to call him the black dwarf.
Speaker 2:So, Africa and Christianity have a long, rich history together. Unfortunately, when the Roman Empire did take over, they did start to influence Christianity in a way that you know it became more. We call it Hellenistic. You know it became more. What do we call it Hellenistic? It lost a lot of its African roots, but Christianity in Africa has gone way back, way back to the very beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Well, I'm glad you're correcting our misinformation of history that we have learned and just kind of segue into that. You know how people get misinformed and have a lot of ideas that develop. So what would be like some misconceptions about Christianity that, like black people, the black community has developed or had or has?
Speaker 2:Some of the things I've attested on already is that Christianity is incompatible with people of color. A few years ago, my wife for my birthday. We actually went on a trip to Kenya and I was surprised when I got to Kenya and saw all the Christians.
Speaker 1:And I asked our guide.
Speaker 2:I asked our tour guide I'm like what a couple of all these churches is there a heavy Christian presence here? He's like this is a Christian nation. He says it's a mostly Christian nation and I did not realize that and I started doing some more research on it. But there are more Christians in Africa today than any other continent. We're talking about 630 million Christians, which makes up 45% of Africa, and 30 million Christians, which makes up 45% of Africa, and they're estimating by 2050, it'll be 1.5 billion more than Latin America and Europe combined.
Speaker 2:So these are some of the misconceptions that people have, but another one is and this is a big one is that we have this idea that these white slave traders took Africans from their native religion, brought them to America and forced them to worship this Christian God. The fact of the matter is remember I told you, a lot of Africa was Christian. A lot of those slaves who came to Africa were already Christian. When they got to America, they were already Christian. In fact I will statistic here 97,000 of the 388,000 slaves that came to America came from Christian nations in Africa. That's 25%. One in four slaves who came to America from Africa came from a Christian nation. The Congo was big. The Congo was big in the slave trade. But the Congo was also a Christian nation. So this idea that they were stripped of their religion given some foreign religion is just not all the way accurate.
Speaker 1:I did not know that, that majority of slaves that came over.
Speaker 2:Well, not the majority. About a good number of them were Christians.
Speaker 1:So what does the Bible tell us about how early Christianity viewed ethnic identity and diversity and you touched on this a little bit about? We are all created in the image of God, all created in the image of God.
Speaker 2:Race is not a biblical concept. The early Christian church was very diverse. I mean, we read about it in the scriptures, we read it. We could tell by some of the names that they were very ethnically diverse. So there was no, there was, there was no black church or white church. The churches were very diverse. Leadership in these churches were very diverse and there was no such thing as an idea of race in the early church.
Speaker 1:There was ethnic identities, but it had nothing to do with race understanding. You know the historical context of you know what the bible tells us about christianity and how it views who we are related to god and then what this what has history told us about how christianity spread from africa into like europe and how it started and those leaders that we look to.
Speaker 2:Like you said, augustus was one of the prominent theologians that we look to as far as our Tertullian was another one and he's actually the one that coined the phrase the Trinity he was an African. The first seminary was in Africa.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, I did not know that either. You need to read my book, is it? Is it important? It's very important. Yeah, I love history, but it's very important to know, you know, the history and origin of things. Yeah, how things were, you know, passed on to to generation to generation, and then you can see how the misconceptions of certain ideas developed, like you were talking about the I forget what his name was that coined the concept of race. Oh yeah, yeah. Right. And then Darwin picked up that in his Origin of Species.
Speaker 2:Now, now, most people don't know this, but they call it the Origin of Species. But that's the short title.
Speaker 1:Right, that's not the whole title.
Speaker 2:Yeah, go ahead and tell us the full title the Origin of Species and the Survival of a Preferred Racist Darwinism. Survival of a preferred racist Darwinism is, at its heart, racist. That's why the slave owners were able to latch on to it. Because it is racist. It teaches that that one race is inferior to another.
Speaker 1:It teaches that and I think you know, as believers as believers, you know, sometimes we latch on to things that are not biblical. It's not, it's not a I'm not trying to give slave owners a pass. But you know, as sinful people we, sometimes we, we go down the trail of false teachings and don't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and another thing that people don't realize is that you know, not every white person was a slave owner and every white person was a racist. When the British government decided to outlaw slavery, they went full force, and what I mean by that is they used their military and economic power to force other nations into giving up slavery. They would actually board ships. They would confiscate ships if they thought the ships were involved in the slave trade. They patrolled off the coast of Africa to prevent any ships from trafficking in slavery Africa, to prevent any ships from trafficking and slavery. They lost thousands of lives and many ships for the prevention of slavery. That's the part we don't hear about. We just hear the white man is evil. The white man, you know, wants to put us in slavery and change. Sin affects white people and black people alike?
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely so. You can see that in Genesis 3, how the fall affected us all. Yes, yeah, all right. Well, thank you so much for giving us your insight into how to look at ethnicity biblically and how it contrasts to what people call as a concept of race. So our last question is how can, or what encouragement can, you offer a believer who wants to live faithfully for Christ?
Speaker 2:To understand that God loves you and he doesn't care about the color of your skin. He loves black people as much as he likes anybody else. If we read the scriptures, we see that I talked about the Kushites. Kushites were the people who were very dark, like I say, from Sudan, ethiopia. When we read the Bible, we read that they were actually mentioned in favorable light many times. They were considered warriors. They were often mercenaries for other armies. Because they were so good with the bow, they were part of David's army. Because they were considered such good warriors, god often mentions them with favor Because God sees us all as one.
Speaker 2:In the Bible there is a unity. God seeks to I mean man seeks to divide us. God seeks to divide us. I mean to cease to unite us. When the Bible we see the Tower of Babel, when God separated the nations, what do we have at Pentecost? We have people speaking in tongues that everyone can understand, because now God is uniting us. At Pentecost there were people who were speaking languages from African nations and they understood the gospel message because God wanted them to understand that message too. We see that unity message throughout the entire Bible and I mentioned it before. The Great Commission talks about all nations. We see heaven is filled with people from every nation, tribe and tongue. God values you as much as he values anyone else. He loves you as much as he loves anyone else. He likes to die for you like he died for anyone else. Yeah, that's the message.
Speaker 1:Well, amen to that. Can't add anything to that, all right, well, amen to that. Can't add anything to that, all right, well, as we wrap up, where can people find you on all your socials or in the internet?
Speaker 2:giving an answerorg is my website. I do havea youtube channel, also called giving an answer as well, where I have a number of shows up there, interviews that I've done with people over the years, and there are also articles up there that people can read, and also my book, the African-American Guide to the Bible, which is a book that outlines a lot of what we talked about here today, a book of good encouragement.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. Thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:Ideas can have a powerful impact. They can influence how and what we believe, and as believers, we should always use God's word, the Bible, as our guide for what we believe and how we think. And what we believe affects how we act and react to our world today. You know history is a good reference for how ideas have evolved and have taken shape. And as humans, you know we are prone to believing false ideas because of our sinful natures. You know we can be swayed if we don't ground ourselves in the word of God.
Speaker 1:So I hope this episode was helpful and encourages you to ground yourself in God's word, to know what he says and who we are in him. If you'd like to know more about Dr Felder, you can find his contact in the show notes, and if you found this episode helpful, please share it with your family and friends. Until next time, remember that God is always good and he's always faithful. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Do me a favor by following the podcast and leaving a review to help spread the word. I look forward to hearing from you.
