Race is Not a Biblical Concept

Social media is a breeding ground for various ideas, and ideas about Christianity are no exception. Claims that the God of Christianity is racist are not uncommon, but none of those ideas are new; critics are rehashing ideas by past skeptics that have little to do with reality.  Both blacks and whites use many examples to challenge the morality of God.   We will discuss one such example.

The “curse of Cain” is often cited as evidence of God's favoring whites over blacks. Brigham Young, the second president and prophet of the Mormon church, wrote regarding God’s punishment on Cain for killing his brother Abel in Genesis 4: “and the Lord put a mark upon him, which was a flat nose and black skin.”(1) The Mormons used this claim to make the case that black skin is God’s curse. As a result, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints rejected blacks from its priesthood until the decision was reversed in 1978. 

I aim to address the argument that God is racist by demonstrating that race is not a biblical concept. This will be achieved by discussing race and context, recognizing race as a man-made construct, and exploring God’s actual view of His creation.

Race and Context

The idea that God favors races assumes Jews were white and everyone else around them was black, interpreting favoritism toward Jews as favoritism to whites. In reality, the Jews were not white; they were people of color, not blonde-haired, blue-eyed Europeans. We know this for several reasons, which I discuss in detail in my book The African American Guide to the Bible, but I will only touch on briefly here: (1) Abraham, the founder of the nation, was from Ur, modern-day Iraq (Gen. 11:31); (2) the Jews intermarried with the Egyptians during their 400-year captivity; (3) Israel left Egypt with an ethnically diverse group (Ex. 12:38); (4) two tribes of Israel, Manasseh and Ephraim, were African through Asenath, their Egyptian mother (Gen. 41:50-52); and (5) in the Promised Land, Jews intermarried with Canaanites, descendants of Ham and people of color (Ezra 9:1-2).

Understanding that God does not favor whites over blacks dismantles arguments for His racism. Regarding Brigham Young’s comment about Cain, there is no way to look at this event in the Bible and come to his conclusion. Cain responds to God’s punishment in Genesis 4:14-16:

“My punishment is too great to endure! 14 Behold, You have driven me this day from the face of the ground; and I will be hidden from Your face, and I will be a wanderer and a drifter on the earth, and whoever finds me will kill me.” 15 So the Lord said to him, “Therefore whoever kills Cain, vengeance will be taken on him seven times as much.” And the Lord placed a mark on Cain, so that no one finding him would kill him.”

The mark on Cain was not a punishment, but a form of protection, and nowhere in the text does it mention a flat nose or black skin.

Whenever someone reads race into a passage of Scripture, they are performing eisegesis, that is, reading into the text something that is not there. We know this because race is not a biblical concept but a man-made construct.

Race is a Man-Made Construct

Race is a recent invention. In 1758, in his 10th edition of Systema Naturae, Carolus Linnaeus classified the four basic races of humankind.(2)  Linnaeus not only categorized people by physical traits but also by personality traits and their social practices. This is the origin of the idea of race, and some of these stereotypes are still believed today. Later, Charles Darwin would reinforce this concept with his theory of evolution in his 1859 book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. This theory would later provide a justification for slavery and discrimination, stamped with the seal of scientific approval. Man, not God, developed racial categories and concepts.

All Are Made in the Image of God

When Scripture is taken as a whole, the overall biblical message is clear: All people descend from Adam and Eve, made in the image of God. We see this in Gen. 1:27, and it is also echoed in the New Testament: “From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth (Acts 17:26 NASB). We are all descendants of Adam and Eve. God created only one race, the human race.  Every human bears God’s image, but, because of the fall, we have become estranged from God. 

The gospel is the good news that God is restoring everyone to Himself, regardless of ethnicity. The Old Testament declares, “Envoys will come out of Egypt; Ethiopia will quickly stretch out her hands to God. Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth, Sing praises to the Lord, Selah” (Ps. 68:31-32 NASB), explicitly on African nations. In the New Testament, Jesus commands, “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you” (Mt. 28:19-20 NASB, emphasis mine), making no distinction by color, location, or ethnicity. And in Revelation, John paints a picture of heaven that includes people from all over the world, “And they sang a new song, saying, ‘worthy are You to take the book and to break its seals; for You were slain, and purchased for God with Your blood men from every tribe and tongue and people and nation” (Rev. 5:9 NASB, emphasis mine). 

Conclusion

People have used various passages in the Bible to attempt to show God as racist, but context refutes these claims. All such attempts involve reading something into the text that is not there, and when examined in context, these arguments crumble.  The concept of race did not exist during the time of the biblical writers, so they couldn't have imposed those ideas on the biblical text. Those ideas come from the mind of the reader.

When we examine the entirety of Scripture, we see that God planned to draw all people to Himself, regardless of their ethnicity. We see how we are all connected, and we see a God who made the ultimate sacrifice for each one of us, regardless of the color of our skin.  Although humans have been divided by race, that is not the case with God. Race is not a biblical concept.

---

Notes:

1. “Mormonism and Black Skin,” Department of Christian Defense, accessed August 31, 2025, http://christiandefense.org/mor_black.htm.

2. Alan H Goodman, Yolanda T. Moses, and Joseph L. Jones, Race: Are We so Different (Malden: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 19–20.