Is Christianity a white man's religion? An conversation with Abdu Murray - Podcast Episode 124

Welcome to the Got Questions podcast and today's episode, I've got a special guest with me today, Abdu Murray.

He's the author of More Than a White Man's Religion. This is a topic that's fascinating to me because over the last few years as race issues have become very prominent in the

United States and also around the world, of course, but especially here, we've been a lot of questions where people are wondering, is

Christianity just a religion for white people or people who have seen the church do very poorly when it comes to race relations and have, as a result of that, turned away from the faith or at least begin questioning it, whether is

Christianity really a religion for people of color? So we're going to be discussing that today. Abdu, welcome to the show.

And maybe let's start out, tell our listeners a little about yourself and your background and what led you to write this book.

Absolutely. Well, thanks, Shay, for having me on. I've always been a fan of the site and its popularity is well -deserved and its influence is just God -honoring.

So I'm thrilled to be on with you and thanks so much for having me. So I was raised in a

Muslim home. I was very proud of being a Muslim. I was a Shia Muslim and there are many, many different sects within Islam, but the two biggest ones are the

Shia and the Sunni. And that's made a lot of news because of the strife between them. That's made quite a bit of public clamor of late.

And the Shia are minority, but the differences are largely political and have to do with the origins, not origins of Islam, but the origins of the leadership of Islam after Muhammad.

But other than that, they're basically the same. And I thought it was true. And I grew up in America.

I was raised, I was born and raised in America and we were exotic. I was the olive skin.

We were sort of the dollop of olive oil in the pot of rice in the area I grew up in. So we were exotic and that led me to opportunities to be able to share why

I thought Islam was true because people wanted to know, what do you guys believe exactly? And after 9 -11, everyone wants to know that now.

But I became a believer in Christ before 9 -11, but leading up to that, people were still curious.

Well, I was challenging Christians and Christians were sort of low -hanging fruit. Shia was more of an equal opportunity, faith knocker, outer -over.

It didn't matter if you were a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist, or a Jew, or an atheist. I would eventually tell you why you were wrong and I was right when

I was a Muslim. But Christians were low -hanging fruit. It was in the 80s and 90s when it was fashionable to say you were a

Christian, even if you didn't really mean it. So I would engage Christians in conversations. And very few actually knew what they were talking about in terms of why they believed what they believed.

But a few did. And along the way, they challenged some of my assumptions, not only about Christianity, but also about Islam.

And I began to go through a process where I was seeing if what I believed is based on tradition or it's based on truth.

Because it can be both. But I wanted to see if what was the primary motivation for this. And over the course of nine years,

I began to study Islam, Christianity, and every other ism and schism there is, to try to find out the truth.

And after the close of that nine -year journey, I saw that the answers that my mind longed for and my heart also longed for were both satisfied in the

Christian faith. Historically, scientifically, philosophically, theologically, and then ultimately existentially.

They really coalesced together. And I found that the Christian faith and the Christian faith alone actually answers all of those questions from all of those various vantage points,

I think, in cohesive ways, and coherent ways, and comprehensive ways.

Does that mean I found the answer to every single question I'm ever going to have? Well, the answer is no, of course not. But I found enough answers to justify that having faith in Christ was not only true, but also worth it.

And that's a fundamental distinction people often make, is that people don't come to faith just because it's true.

They come to faith because it's true, and it speaks to their lives, and it speaks to their hearts as well. So that took nine years.

I was in the midst of that, studying law school to become a lawyer. I passed the bar, became a lawyer, practiced law, did complex commercial litigation, and then also jumped into ministry.

And I do this now, writing books, speaking on various venues, including and especially college campuses, and those venues as well.

And that led me to write more than a white man's religion, partially because of my background. As someone from the

Middle Eastern descent, and I have the sort of the non -white perspective, but also someone raised in the

West, in a predominantly white area, I also know the insider perspective from the white community as well, and from people of color, and having come from an ethnic minority, but also a religious minority.

I know what it's like to actually assess Christianity as sort of wanting in one sense, from a skeptic's point of view, but then seeing how it's not really wanting.

And I wanted to express that in more than a white man's religion, because Jay, and I'll wrap it up by saying this, I think that the world is still asking questions.

The culture is still asking questions like, is the Bible true? You know, was Lysanias really Tetrarch of Abila, as Luke says, or did he get it wrong?

You know, they have those minutiae questions, and those fact -based questions as well. But the primary question

I think the culture is beginning to ask isn't, is the Bible true? They're asking, is Christianity moral?

And race and gender issues, therefore, come to the fore. And that's why I think this book was such a timely book for me to write, and it's been something that I've been addressing at college campuses and from the platform for quite some time now.

Absolutely. And like I said earlier, we received a lot of questions about this over the years, and it's becoming more and more a question.

So in your experience, both in your research on preparing to write the book and speaking on college campuses, what is the main driver of why some people are asking this specific question?

Is Christianity only a religion for white people or even only religion for white males?

What's driving that inquiry? Yeah, I think that there's several things that are several factors that are all sort of the confluence of things happening all at the same time.

You know, you have the death of George Floyd, for example, that catalyzed the world, really.

It wasn't just Western culture that's asking this question. Now everyone's asking this question. And I think the politicization of Christianity, specifically evangelicalism, being associated with one particular either political party or one sort of side of the spectrum, as it were.

And so it's become viewed as white -favored and male -centered in that way.

And some of that is earned in terms of the reputation of Christendom versus the actual teachings and foundation of Christianity.

So I think that's part of what's driving this. And obviously there's a history here.

Christians have not always acted that well when it comes to issues of race or gender.

We have a history we have to be honest about and have to deal with. Christians, people who were

Bible -believing Christians back in the antebellum South, owned slaves and were part of the slave trade, whether it's in the

Americas or it's in Europe or in other parts of the world. We have to own that.

And I think that has catalyzed a view that Christianity is a white male religion because in the past, white males have used it.

I would even go so far as to say misused it to justify actions.

In other words, to baptize otherwise evil practices that the Bible actually prohibits. And so that's the shame of it all, that it's been come to be seen as a white male religion because it's dominant in sort of white

Western European circles. But the reality is it's an olive -skinned religion that spread across Africa and was actually promoted strongly in the earliest centuries by Africans and Middle Easterners to influence the

West for the good. And so many of the abominable practices that were happening in the first century were put to death in a sense because of the message of the

Bible. Yeah. I think one of the most interesting quotes in your book was the quote by Frederick Douglass, and I'm probably going to butcher it, but I think

I'll get the spirit of it right, when he essentially said it wouldn't matter if every white person on the planet was a terrible racist.

That does not change the truth of the resurrection, does not change the truth claims of Jesus Christ, and how he is the

Savior and he is the only answer to the problems we face in the world. Yeah. Frederick Douglass, in fact,

I remember a lot of the quote, it was that between the Christianity of this land, and he's speaking of Antebellum South, between the

Christianity of this land and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference.

So wide that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy is a necessity to be the enemy of the other.

And he basically is saying that the Christianity that was the perversion of the original message used by slaveholders and slave traders to justify their positions is as far a chasm as there possibly could be from the

Christianity of Christ, from the gospel of Jesus Christ, absolutely. Yeah. So let's jump to the solution, because I like a lot of what you talk about, both the biblical solution, the gospel solution, and then you go even a little bit into the more practical solutions.

But when someone asks that question, is Christianity a white man's religion, what have you found in your experience is the best response or responses to people who have that struggle?

Yeah. And there's very many, and I go to it in the book. But a couple of things I think are worth pointing out.

The first thing is that we have to understand what we mean when we say it's a white man's religion. Certainly religions don't have ethnicities, and certainly they don't have gender.

So what do we mean when we say this? And I think if you point out the fact that Christianity is actually growing in the global South and in Asia, whether it's in Africa, Sub -Saharan

Africa, South America, or Asia, it's growing primarily among non -white people in a post -colonial world.

So it's not because colonialism is to blame, as it were, or that these poor non -white people don't realize that their beliefs are based on a colonialism they can't seem to shake.

Because that's actually insulting in itself, isn't it? It's saying that these people of color can't figure things out for themselves.

That's not true. So it's growing not because of politics. It's not growing because of white influence.

In fact, white influence in those areas is waning, yet Christianity is growing. So I think that just the fact that we see today is that it's not a white religion.

It's actually a religion for all people, including white people and including people of color. That's just a fact.

You can't get around that fact. But I think fundamentally, one of the most important fundamental things is the

Bible, whether Old or New Testaments, doesn't actually focus on race. It does have a lot of distinctions on ethnicity, but this is an important characteristic.

When the Bible judges certain people and brings God's condemnation upon them and either uses the nation of Israel or others to judge those people, it's not because of their ethnicity in terms of the way they look or their genetics.

Because genetically speaking in the ancient Near East, everyone was essentially identical. No, God is judging them based on the cultural expressions that lead to wickedness, like child sacrifice and temple prostitution and rape and murder being just rampant behaviors.

So God in essence is not judging cultures based on their appearances or estimations of their lower intelligence or whatever these racist ideas might be.

No, the God of the Old Testament and New Testament is judging people based on their ideas and their expressions.

In other words, it's very similar to what MLK said is that we don't judge someone by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

And that's what the Bible actually does. In fact, it can't be decided to be racist in one sense, because Israel, the favorite nation as it were, or as it would be said, isn't immune from the same judgments that its neighbors are.

So it's a universal religion in that it says justice comes to all, but all are offered equal mercy.

In fact, that's what the Bible message is all about from Genesis to Revelation.

In fact, it's interesting, William Lane Craig has pointed this out, that in other ancient Near Eastern creation myths, what you have is a sort of a generalized discussion about the creation of humanity, usually as slave labor for the gods.

And there's no real specificity as to women's creation, but there is in the

Bible. And that's a statement of equality all by itself. The Bible does not begin with the call of Abraham as the father of the

Hebrews. No, the Bible begins with the creation of the entire world and goes in specific because the

Bible is about the redemption of the entire world, regardless of ethnicity and gender. Yeah, it's one of the things

I really liked in your book is how you, in a sense, separate, okay, let's talk about, is

Christianity a white religion? And is Christianity a white man's religion?

You discuss both race and ethnic identity, and also gender in there.

And I think those are helpful to separate, because both of those are big issues in the culture, and both are especially common questions we receive.

I mean, if you look on our top 20 questions of all time, the question of can women serve as pastors over men is still the number one question of all time that we've received.

And any sort of restrictions can make, well, why is the Bible just favoring men over women?

Or why does Christianity seem to be predominantly a religion for Europeans over the past 1 ,500 years or so?

Why has it been dominated in one particular ethnic group? And so both questions are really important, and you separate them, but then also bring them together to discuss that Christianity is a faith for all people of all color, of both genders, et cetera.

And it's a powerful reminder of how everything is tied together. Yeah. And one thing

I made sure I wanted to do was to address some of the tougher passages of the

Bible. I remember when I first started out in speaking and speaking at universities,

I was invited to speak at a university, and I was taken by the group who had invited me on a tour of one of the buildings.

And they said, we want to show you this display. And the Secular Student Alliance had put up a display.

This is back when Dawkins and Dennett and Hitchens and Harris, the four horsemen of the new atheism, as it were, were just absolutely just new on the scene.

And the display had a division, and it had the Bible on one of the displays, and it had various passages plucked out of context, frankly.

And it said the word false over them, like, you know, women were forced to marry their rapists, and women were considered property for men, and slavery and all these things all throughout there.

And then the other side where the Dawkins, Hitchens, Dennett books, and the words true were labeled all over them.

And I think that has carried over since. And so, yes, these are the pressing issues of our day.

But when you look at those passages, because we have to look at them, we have to look at them, I think, honestly, hopefully what

I've done in the book is provided enough cultural context, enough historical context to point out that passages in the

Old Testament that seem to condone slavery are actually passages that regulate indentured servitude.

And in fact, when you look at the way that is in itself regulated, first, none of the servitude is involuntary, it's voluntary.

Second, even where it is regulated, it's regulated in a way that actually regulates itself out of existence.

There are things in the Old Testament that were intended to remove the kind of debt incursion that someone would have to the point where they'd have to become an indentured servant because their lives are so destitute.

And those passages actually require certain things of the so -called masters to rectify the situation and to free people from their burdens, even if they haven't paid them all off yet.

So in those proper contexts, you can start to see they're not race based, they're not really chattel slavery, they're nothing like the slavery we think of in the antebellum

South or the North Atlantic slave trade. And when it comes to women, I mean, there's a couple of just beautiful nuggets.

Honestly, the more and more I read the scriptures, and as I was researching this book and reading some things, just some things just jumped out at me that were just beautiful.

Take, for example, the book of Esther. So Esther is a hero of that book. In a so -called sexist book, why would you make

Esther a hero? You'd make it only Mordecai, and Esther would be sort of a side character, but she's not a side character.

In fact, it's her bravery that allows her to defy the king and walk into his presence, realizing that that might get her killed, because that was against the rules in ancient

Persia, in order to save her people. So you can see almost like a reference to Christ in here.

A hidden reference to Christ is that she goes in risking her life for the sake of her people, and that hearkens us right to the idea of the cross, which is that Jesus doesn't even risk his life.

He sacrifices his life willingly for the sake of all people. Interesting that a woman should be a figure of that ahead of time.

But what's also interesting in one of these beautiful nuggets that the Bible gives to us is the story of Vashti.

You know, the book of Esther opens up with the king of Persia, and he's got a banquet, and he's got his wife, and she's got her banquet going on.

So the men and the women are separate, and Vashti is beautiful. She is incomparably beautiful. And the king summons her to come into her chambers to be a trophy wife, to show off to all the guests, look how beautiful my wife is.

It's interesting. Vashti says no. She refuses the king, and that's of course a crime, and she's banished for it.

But that very act is a story of character. Vashti's not the prime character in the story, yet she bravely holds up her own dignity, says,

I will not be an object of men's desire. And so she refuses to go into the chamber of the king when he summons her.

Esther, in contrast, goes into the presence of the king even when he didn't summon her.

In other words, women are showed in this one book alone, and there's so many others, to be extraordinarily brave and have tremendous character.

And they figure prominently all throughout the Old and New Testaments. Yeah, absolutely. And so many other beautiful stories in the

Bible. There's a book called Vindicating the Vixens that I read recently where it just goes into different women in the

Bible who are unbiblically maligned, like trying to attach something immoral or sketchy about women whom the

Bible says absolutely nothing negative. And it's refreshing to be reminded how the Bible uplifts women in a way that's amazing for, especially the literature at the time that it was written.

Powerful nuggets, like you said. In a sense, one thing

I really like about the book is how honest you are with the difficult passes in the

Bible and the difficult aspects of Christian history where we've royally messed up, to say the least.

But the way that the Bible doesn't explicitly outlaw slavery but lays the foundation for how it should be done away with.

The way it does not forbid treating women poorly or like property, so to speak, but uplifts them to the point where if you're really looking at what

Scripture says about women, you would not be treating them poorly. So it addresses a culture that existed at the time, and it since regulates it, but also points to a better way, especially when we get to the

New Testament and see how Christ dealt with people, uplifted women, and the apostles speaking so positively of women throughout.

You see how the foundation is being laid for what Christianity is still striving to become, the faith of following Christ and following His example and how

He treats people. A lot of people look at the Scriptures and say, why didn't God just outlaw this, outlaw this, outlaw this?

And it's like, I mean, I get that. I understand that. I really wish there was a command completely against human slavery.

You are not allowed slavery, indentured servitude, whatever. But God chose to not do it that way, but instead chose to teach people love and respect and recognize that all human beings are created in the image of God.

And how could you possibly enslave another human being who's created in the image of God? So laying the foundation,

I really like how you express that in your book as well. Yeah. And it's interesting because when you do look at some of the passages of the

Bible that are partially the most troubling, for example, when the

Bible references how you can acquire certain people, Robertson, McLuckin, and Paul Copan actually point out that this word actually doesn't connote the idea of actual chattel ownership of a property so much as it's akin to how the

Chicago Bulls acquired Dennis Rodman from a different team.

You don't really acquire someone in that way, but you have to wrestle with the fact that the

Bible actually is regulating something in a very harsh environment, in a very harsh surrounding environment.

And when you look at the biblical regulations on indentured servitude compared to the laws of comparable and contemporary ancient

Near Eastern cultures, which didn't regulate indentured servitude, but actually regulated actual chattel slavery, what a difference it makes.

And those things are actually meant, those biblical regulations are actually meant to gradually do away with the practice altogether if you completely follow them.

A good example is the fact that when a servant pays off their debt finally to their master, if they haven't already been freed because of the seven -year rule, because servants were required to be freed after every seven years, whether they paid the debt off or not, or every time on Jubilee.

In other words, if you were an indentured servant for six months, and then the year of Jubilee came, you went scot -free.

And what happens with that is the Adan, or the master, as it were, of that debt has to give liberally from his own livestock, his land, and his property to the freed servant so that the freed servant would never go back into indentured servitude again.

Here is something that is so important for us to understand. When the American Civil War was over, and emancipation had happened, slaves were freed.

In fact, W .E .B. Du Bois pointed out that slaves were freed, but freed to what? To wander the wilderness with nothing but the shirts on their backs.

Now, had there been a provision, some kind of measure during Reconstruction where you'd actually said, maybe from the plantations they've been freed from, they're allowed some land, or they're allowed some kind of monetary gain to make up for what's happened to them, so they don't actually end up back in this situation economically, maybe not, you know, forcefully, but economically in slavery, we wouldn't be having the situation we'd be having today.

We wouldn't have talk about inequities. This is not an argument in favor of or against reparations, but my point is, is that the biblical regulations, had they actually been followed,

I think would have cured us of the very ills the Bible sometimes is often blamed for. So I think that's a really important distinction.

Yeah, that's an excellent point, Abdu, and again, I could not recommend more than a white man's religion any stronger, because it's a much needed message.

But may I just conclude with this, if someone comes up to you and says, why shouldn't

I view Christianity as a white man's religion, and you don't have the opportunity to hand them your book, and you've got like the two -minute opportunity to speak to this person, how do you answer that question?

That's a great question. Wow. I think I would say it this way. Say, at first,

I'm a big fan of asking questions. So I would think I would say, I think I would ask you to really ponder what you mean when you say white man's religion.

But let me answer it this way. Christianity is a religion that was founded in olive -skinned region, dominated by a white

Western European power. And it wasn't the European power that influenced Christianity. It was Christianity that changed the very heart of that Western imperial power to end slavery eventually, and to vaunt women.

There is a reason why the initial progenitors of Christianity were people of color.

There's a reason why the predominant population of the world right now of Christians is people of color.

And it's not because they don't know any better. It's because they know who Christ actually is. And there's a reason why first century and the second century,

Christianity was made fun of by the Romans as a religion of women and children, because it was women who flocked to Christianity, not because of sexist ideologies, but because of the savior who vaunted women to being the equals that they really are.

So I challenge you, read the book with that in mind, read the Bible with that in mind, and see that men like Frederick Douglass, people like Amy Carmichael, these people saw the difference between the character of Christianity you see today and the

Christianity of Christ that we see that. You know, there's this poem by John Greenleaf Whittier that I love.

It's called Hymn. And there's a couple of stanzas that are so beautiful. He says, when from each temple of the free, a nation's song ascent to heaven, most

Holy Father unto thee, may not our humble prayer be given. Thy children all, though human form, are varied in thine own goodwill, with thine own holy breathings warm and fashion in thine image still.

Our hues and our forms, male and female, dark and light, were all fashioned in God's image.

And Revelation tells us that all of us will keep our ethnicities, we'll keep our gender when we lay our crowns before the

Lord of glory and have a wonderfully beautiful unity in our diversity as we worship a

God who is Trinity, unity, and diversity. Amen, amen. Well said.

Again, love the book, highly recommended. We'll definitely be including it as a recommended resource on numerous

GotQuestions articles when it comes out, which will be soon. So I'm excited for that. So Abdu, thank you for joining me on the

GotQuestions podcast today. What an honor it was, Shea, and thanks for the time. I really appreciate it and great work you guys are doing.

Well, thank you. Thank you for that encouragement. We'll include links to where you can learn more about Abdu and his ministry and also

More Than a White Man's Religion, where it can be purchased both in the show notes for this episode on podcast .gotquestions

.org when this episode goes live and also on the description on YouTube. So if you missed it, weren't able to catch it, we'll include some links so you can for sure learn more or purchase the book because it is a tremendous resource.

I love how theological it is, but that's my wavelength. So thank you for that as well.

So again, Abdu, thank you for your time today. Really enjoyed our conversation. This has been the GotQuestions podcast.