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“Does the Bible promote multiculturalism?”

For our purposes, we may define multiculturalism as the political policy of promoting the settlement of large numbers from diverse ethnocultural backgrounds in the same geographic space on the assumption they can coexist peacefully, profitably and permanently. Most Western countries are increasingly multicultural these days, the developing world much less so.

Is that a good thing? Does multiculturalism originate in biblical thinking?

Where Do Different Cultures Come From?

The Bible teaches that at one time not so long ago, our whole earth had one language and the same words. Ethnic distinctions and cultural differences did not exist. The world’s growing post-flood population settled on the plain in the land of Shinar, ignoring God’s mandate to Adam to “fill the earth and subdue it”. At Babel, God created the nations* by confusing the language of Noah’s offspring in order to accomplish his goal of dispersing earth’s population across the planet. Genesis 6 tells us the impulse to centralize and unify originated with man, not with God, and implies it was rooted in disobedience. There is no reason to imagine that has changed in the last 4,000 years, and every reason to think it has not. Moses wrote, “When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance, when he divided mankind, he fixed the borders of the peoples according to the number of the sons of God.” That is to say, God ordained the original division of the nations after Babel for reasons relating to their representatives in heaven. The first nations numbered seventy (26 from Shem, 30 from Ham and 14 from Japheth), each with its own language, all laid out in Genesis 10.

Paul picked up this theme from Moses and expounded it in Athens. Luke quotes him on the subject of nations as saying that God “determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place” with this purpose in mind, “that they should seek God”. The division into discrete ethnic groups at Babel was both good and desirable, the best way of promoting God’s goals for mankind, including a desperately-needed relationship with their Creator.

Naturally, mankind has not cooperated.

Diversity is Our Strength

Since Babel there have been numerous attempts to reunite the nations God divided, usually under the banner of multicultural world empires: Assyria, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Rome and so on. These were usually local empires, their success at reuniting the nations severely limited in scope and duration notwithstanding the occasional moment of earthly splendor. India avoided being part of any such faux unity until the British arrived in force, and China has never been part of any world empire. In its quest for empire-building mankind has blurred or erased many of the national boundaries originally established by God. The number of languages in the world continues to climb, currently thought to be almost 7,000. Intermarriage between ethnic groups over generations has softened some of the harder genetic distinctions here and there. Even so, there are still numerous and significant physical and cultural differences readily observable today between one ethnic group and another.

The claim that diversity is a strength and multiculturalism desirable is advanced on little or no evidence by the Western media, governments and Human Resources departments. Manifestly, countries like China and Saudi Arabia do not buy in. The Bible answers that claim with Daniel 2’s image of a future kingdom that will not hold together “just as iron does not mix with clay”. How will this kingdom come about? The clay and iron will mix with one another “by the seed of men”. That sounds more like miscegenation than multiculturalism, but either way, the implication is that diversity makes an empire more fragile rather than more cohesive. It is not surprising the US is more fractured and disunified than at any period in its history (except perhaps the Civil War, though that too was fought over the issue of racial differences) as millions from nations all over the world pour over its southern border.

The impetus toward globalism today is the same sinful spirit first evidenced at Babel, and multiculturalism is one means of selling globalism to the nations.

The Old Testament Model

Some Christians point to the Law of Moses and its instructions to Israel to welcome the sojourner as a precedent for multicultural thinking. This is wildly incorrect. A sojourner is by definition coming for a visit, not establishing a politically protected ethnic beachhead in another nation. Remember, for Israel, sojourning in Egypt started with political influence through Joseph, but ended in years of slavery. Israelites never became Egyptians no matter how long they were resident in Egypt because by and large they remained a distinct ethnic group. God resolved their problem by miraculously removing them from Egypt, not by helping them better integrate into Egyptian society. And from an Egyptian perspective, multiculturalism was literally a disaster. Ten of them, actually!

Further, once Israel became established as a nation, all sojourners were subject to Israel’s laws, both civil and religious, with all the benefits and dangers that came with them. There was no cultural diversity or religious freedom encouraged in Israel. Breaking the Sabbath would get a sojourner executed as speedily as a native, and blasphemy laws applied equally to people from other ethnic backgrounds dwelling with the Israelites. In addition, people of certain ethnicities were restricted from participating in the civil life of Israel for varying numbers of generations. In a modern setting, they would not have gotten the vote, though their great-grandchildren might once they had been sufficiently assimilated into Israel’s culture to be free of their own.

So yes, immigrants, refugees and visitors were welcome in Israel, but only on Israel’s terms. There were laws in place to manage immigration so that Israel remained distinct in its character. Consider Ruth’s words to Naomi: “Your people shall be my people, and your God my God.” Not only was she a convert to YHWH, she effectively threw away her Moabite passport. This is nothing like the multiculturalism Western nations are encouraged to embrace, which strives to preserve increasingly sizable pockets of culture and ethnicity intact, regardless of differences in religious beliefs and political goals, maintaining deep emotional and sometimes physical connections to the original homeland.

In any case, modern multiculturalism has no Old Testament basis.

The New Testament Red Herring

Much has been made of Paul’s statement that in Christ Jesus there is “neither Jew nor Greek”. The suggestion is that Christians should be promoters of multiculturalism because we are all one in Christ. The error here is too obvious to indulge at great length: it is only “in Christ”, where the Holy Spirit resides in every heart, that overcoming ethnic defaults, prejudices and preferences is remotely possible. Expecting unity from unregenerate cultures in collision is a fool’s errand. History shows us it barely works even when you maintain it by force, and quickly falls apart when incentives are removed. Paul was not writing a political manifesto, he was describing the natural unity that occurs between members of God’s household, one that we ought to be at great pains to preserve and display to the world. All believers are “heirs according to promise” regardless of ethnic origin. We should reflect that unity in our churches and in our personal dealings, but we have no mandate to try to impose it on those who do not have the necessary spiritual equipment to maintain it. Unbelievers are not heirs to anything lasting or worthwhile, though we would certainly like to change that as the Lord permits.

So then, modern multiculturalism has no New Testament basis. The use of Galatians to promote it is a total red herring.

In Summary

No, the Bible does not promote multiculturalism. Any political agenda that requires top-down imposition and endless propaganda to sustain it is destined to either fail or break up the greater entity (one can hardly call it a nation) in the long run.

The prophetic scriptures teach us that one man will attempt to unite the entire world under his banner. That man will be the enemy of all righteousness, and his kingdom will not endure. The God of heaven will dash it to pieces and replace it with an unshakeable kingdom of which his Son is king.

The attempt to build empires on any foundation other than Christ is doomed to failure, and no Christian should support any mechanism used to promote such efforts, multiculturalism included.

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* Webster’s Dictionary 1828 has this note: “Nation as its etymology imports, originally denoted a family or race of men descended from a common progenitor, like tribe, but by emigration, conquest and intermixture of men of different families, this distinction is in most countries lost.” Our current dictionaries have deliberately erased any distinction based on ethnicity or culture, defining a nation as “a large body of people, associated with a particular territory, that is sufficiently conscious of its unity to seek or to possess a government peculiarly its own”. Such a definition prioritizes the concept of self-perceived (and self-deceived) unity over ethnic homogeny, but does not indicate what might bring about or maintain that unity. So was invented the concept of the “proposition nation”. Its shortcomings are increasingly obvious.