Apartheid and Christian Doctrine

Hi AiG

I dont know if you know it but I came across a web page that claims that your web sight has in the past been involved in the support of racism in south Africa the writer John Stear is an obvious evolutionist and has an axe to grind with you but if this is not true then there should be a rebuttal of it some where

Here is the webpage address [link deleted per feedback rules]

Yours S.G.
UK

The whole issue of Christian responses to the former apartheid regime in South Africa is an area fraught with difficulties and errors. My own position on the issue has always been clear. Throughout my adult life, I boycotted South African produce in UK shops, making clear to shopkeepers my distaste of the former South African regime.

John Stear (to whom we have previously responded on other topics) is incorrect in his assessment that a belief in creationism is hand-in-hand with racism. Although Stear accuses AiG of being duplicitous by removing the article he misconstrues, there was no Machiavellian plot in the absence of the article that he reproduces on his site. Because of the concern that others could misconstrue it, we did remove the article and the accompanying reprint of a South Africa bulletin, which was clearly critical of creationists (allying them with apartheid generally), and which mentioned that young children were being targeted for evolutionary indoctrination (our reason for its inclusion). The fact that the article no longer exists on the Internet Archive website to which Stear refers (www.archive.org), however, is not due to our removing it, as he suggests. That children in present day South Africa are being indoctrinated with evolutionism—as indeed they are in the UK, Australia and the USA—is undeniable, and this was our attempt to underline this. Where we initially may have made a mistake is posting the bulletin while not refuting the portion allying creationist teaching and racism. But, as a ministry, Answers in Genesis has always stood against racism of all forms.

While the unfortunate existence of racism in Christian churches is not denied, it must be emphasised that it always occurs because of a faulty interpretation of biblical truth. True biblical doctrine is opposed to racism. The same cannot be said of evolutionary theory. While many, many evolutionists are strongly opposed to racism, it cannot be denied that many racists see their beliefs as a natural corollary of evolutionary belief.

In 1947, evolutionary atheist Sir Arthur Keith admitted:

The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform to the theory of evolution.1

A belief in evolution can easily be used to suppose that one race or another is more or less highly evolved than other races. This has led to many examples of injustices perpetrated in the past. Indeed, even in South Africa, it can be shown that faulty ‘Christian’ theologies were caused by compromising belief in Genesis with evolutionary ideas. It is true that many evolutionists find racism to be abhorrent, and would be opposed to such ideas. Nevertheless, racism draws comfort from evolutionary doctrine, but is opposed by true biblical doctrine.

There is a large wealth of material on this site which refutes racism from a biblical perspective (see Get Answers: Racism).

Paul Taylor
AiG–UK