Ken Ham is no Racist

Continuing the discussion from Ken Ham and the GAE:

A couple excerpts:

Credit is due to unlikely reformers. Ken Ham, a well-known young earth creationist, argued early and often that we all were one race, and that there was no Biblical justification for segregation. Emphasizing the “one” in Acts 17:26, an indirect reference to Adam, Ham correctly insisted that there is just one race, the human race.

This means that from a biblical and observational scientific perspective, interracial marriage is nonexistent. In fact, society should use terms like “people groups,” “cultural groups,” or “ethnic groups,” rather than “races,” when referring to humans around the world.

I am convinced Ken Ham is wrong about many things, but he is no racist. He pressed to end the legacy of segregation in his fundamentalist community. Ken Ham published One Race, One Blood in 1999, before Bob Jones University’s “interracial” dating ban was ended. Ham’s book is a polemic against evolution, but he acknowledged that fundamentalism also inherits a legacy of racism.

The 1960 address by Bob Jones Sr. merits discussion. This is what Ken Ham argues against.

First, I have to say that Bob Jones’s speech is as cringeworthy a document as I have seen in years. We may be glad that his influence has diminished greatly over time, even in his “university”. But I don’t think Ken Ham’s courageous stand against segregation in 1999(!) is all that big a thing to be proud of, and comparison with Bob Jones is a very low bar. Billy Graham comes off much better in that article, though. He was against segregation when it actually mattered.

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I agree.

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