Kentucky church bans interracial marriage

yahoo ^ | 12/1/11 | Eric Pfeiffer

[Borges]

A small Kentucky church has chosen to ban marriages and even some worship services for interracial couples. The Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church, located in Pike County, made the vote in response to a longtime member who is engaged to a man whose birthplace is in Zimbabwe.

Other pastoral leaders in the area were quick to denounce the church's vote. "It's not the spirit of the community in any way, shape or form," Randy Johnson, president of the Pike County Ministerial Association, told the Lexington Herald-Leader.

The small congregation, which usually hosts about 40 members each Sunday, held the vote after longtime member Stella Harville, brought her fiancé Ticha Chikuni to church with her in June. The couple performed a song together at the church in which Chikuni sang "I Surrender All," while Harville played the piano.

[livius]

This had nothing to do with his ethnic background, but the fact that he was not a Catholic. Now Catholics and non-Catholics (as long as they are baptized Christians) can be married in a full Church wedding, but it was much more difficult at the time that he got married.

[PowderMonkey]

He converted. He still wasn’t good enough. His ethnic background did indeed play a role in the priest’s decision to exclude him from the main chapel. Hence, his lifelong resentment.

[livius]

I’d be really surprised at that, since normally getting a convert from another background was a real high point. It’s possible that the wedding was not very large and they didn’t want to use the main church or even rarely used the main church (I was in a parish at that time where virtually all weddings were in a side-chapel), or that neither he nor the bride’s family got along very well with the priest, who was therefore being vindictive (because normally even if the priest didn’t like one party, if the other party was a long-standing parishioner, that would win out). Or possibly the priest was a nut.

In any case, it would certainly have been uncommon, but if that’s what your father perceives, it may have happened. He should have complained to the bishop at the time, however, because the priest shouldn’t have been allowed to get away with this.

[Sherman Logan]

God healed Miriam only after Moses begged him in prayer to do so.

The episode does seem to indicate God doesn’t approve of racism. :)

Decades ago I used to use this passage and others in extended discussions with relative who believed the Bible wanted the races to remain separate. It is quite amazing that you quite literally cannot find racism in the Bible. Just isn’t in there.

[Reddy]

“It sure ain’t Christian,” Dean Harville said. “It ain’t nothing but the old devil working.”

Well said, sir.

I like what Ken Ham (Answers in Genesis)blogged today on his website:
“This news item should be a reminder to us that biologically, all humans belong to ONE RACE—we are all descendants of Adam and Eve. (Acts 17:26; 1 Corinthians 15:45; Genesis 3:20). There is no such thing biologically as a so called ‘interracial couple’ or ‘interracial marriage.’ There is an ‘interracial’ marriage the Bible speaks against—when the two ‘SPIRITUAL races’ marry—a non-Christian and a Christian—and that’s the ONLY ‘interracial marriage’ the Bible so clearly teaches against! It is so sad when people in the church adopt such an unbilical position claiming falsely that a couple who have different shades of skin color (every human has the same color—just differing shades) and/or come from different cultures constitutes an ‘interracial relationship.’ This is nonsense. Those in the church who claim there is such a thing as a biological ‘interracial couple’ need to repent before a Holy God.”