In recent years, America’s persisting history of vitriolic racism towards people of color has been at the nation’s cultural forefront. These conversations on race are happening in courtrooms, in classrooms, at dinner tables, and of course, in churches. One such church that has continued to carry on the legacy of racism in America is a local church in Johnson City called the Happy Valley Church of Jesus Christ. Happy Valley Church of Jesus Christ is a non-denominational church about twelve miles from Milligan University. The church as approximately 600 congregants of “diverse makeup” from all over the U.S., as well as from countries such as Trinidad, Kenya, and the Congo. In 2013, the current pastor at Happy Valley, Brother Donny Reagan, preached a sermon against interracial marriage. In it, he claimed that God does not want white people to marry black people.
History
Happy Valley Church of Jesus Christ began was planted in 1949 and was originally named Roan Hill Church of Jesus Christ. While the church claims no denomination today, it began as an independent Pentecostal church. In 1965, Roan Hill Church purchased the land it was located on and the name was changed to Happy Valley Church of Jesus Christ. Roy Phillips, the son of Edward Phillips, the church’s third pastor, introduced the teachings of Christian minister William Marrion Branham to the church in 1969. Branham was a deliverance minister, faith healer, leader of the Post WWII Healing Revival, and self-proclaimed prophet who converted to Christianity after attending the First Pentecostal Baptist Church of Jeffersonville, Indiana. While the church was Baptist in name, it observed many Pentecostal teachings, such as faith healing. Prior to starting his own ministry, Branham worked as an assistant pastor at the Missionary Baptist Church in Jeffersonville, the same church where he was ordained as an Independent Baptist minister, and his ministry there reflected the mixed tradition he was raised with. His non-traditional teachings, such as his teaching of the “serpent seed doctrine”, made him a controversial figure.
Branham has a history of racist and white supremacist associations. He claimed in a sermon titled “Souls That Are in Prison Now” from November 10, 1963, that the Ku Klux Klan paid his hospital bill for him when he was a teenager. The pastor of First Pentecostal Baptist in Jefferson, Indiana, a man named Roy E. Davis, was the pastor who ordained Branham. Roy E. Davis also happened to be an Imperial Grand Wizard in the Ku Klux Klan. One of Branham’s race-related doctrines is the “serpent seed”, an alternate teaching of the doctrine of Original Sin. Branham taught that the serpent in the Garden of Eden had sexual intercourse with Eve, causing her become pregnant and give birth to Cain. He also taught that the serpent was the missing link between chimpanzee and humans, and that the descendants of Cain comprise “the majority of societies criminals.”
Branham in Reagan’s Sermon
In the sermon he preached against interracial marriage in 2013, Reagan opened his message by saying, “There is a move in the message, of blacks marrying whites, whites marrying blacks. And folks think that is alright, but you know what, my God still has nationalities outside the city.” Immediately following this, Reagan quoted Branham, whom he calls “the prophet”, saying,
Hybreeding, Hybreeding, oh, how terrible, hybreeding. They’re hybreeding the people. You know its a big molding pot. I’ve got hundreds of precious colored friends that’s borned again Christians. But on this line of segregations and things they’re talking about, hybreeding people. What, tell me what fine cultured, fine Christian colored woman would want her baby to be a mulatto by a white man? No, sir. It’s not right.
After he quoted Branham, Reagan echoed this point: “Let’s stay the way God made us. I believe it’s right.” Later on in Reagan’s sermon, he quotes Branham again, saying,
Today, we have so much fussing and stewing about this segregation of white and colored and everything. Why don they just leave it alone? Let it the way God made it. Tell me what real good, smart, intelligent, beautiful, colored woman would want to have a baby by a white man to make it a mulatto? Not sense. Many thing the colored people have is far beyond the white man.
Reagan uses the latter quotation, where Branham refers to a hypothetical black woman as “intelligent” and “beautiful” to make the claim that Branham “is not a white supremacist.” Throughout the sermon, Reagan questions why black athletes want white wives, and even goes as far as to compare interracial marriage to communism. This comparison to communism was likely inspired by a sermon preached by Branham on August 30, 1964, where he said, “I’ve told you here in this pulpit, Martin Luther King is the greatest impediment the colored people’s ever had. Right. That man’s going to lead thousands of them to a slaughter, inspired by communism.” Branham also preached a sermon on December 27, 1964, titled “Who Do You Say This Is?” where he said,
God is a segregationalist. I am too. Any Christian’s a segregation. God segregates His people from all the rest of them. They’ve always been a segregation. He chose a nation. He chooses a people. He is a segregationalist. He made all nations. But still, a real genuine Christian has to be a segregationalist. Separating himself from the things of the world and everything, and come into one purpose, Jesus Christ. But they holler that. I’ve tried to tell them, ‘That’s not the thing that’s going to save our nation. That’s only a political scheme. It’s a thing of communistic background.’
At the end of his sermon, Reagan addressed the white congregants of the church, saying,
Let me tell you right up front, any of you young people, you wanna marry a black man, you girls, don’t ask me to do it, ‘cause I will not. I refuse. I cannot do it with the conscious towards God and look at these quotes in the face. You white brothers you find a black sister in Africa or whatever, don’t ask Brother Donny…[unintelligible]…quit church, suit yourself. I’d rather you quit than me get in trouble with God.
Reagan later told local news outlets such as the Johnson City Press that he has “seen the hardships” of couples in interracial marriages, and he doesn’t think it would be “right or fruitful” to ever officiate a wedding between two people of different races. Despite this, he also claimed, “this doesn’t have anything to do with race.”
Theology
In a sermon preached by Branham in 1958 titled, “Serpent’s Seed”, he lays out the theological groundwork behind the racist interpretation of scripture that Reagan used in his sermon in 2013. In this sermon, he references Daniel 2:43, which says, “In that you saw the iron mixed with common clay, they will combine with one another in their descendants; but they will not adhere to one another, just as iron does not combine with pottery.” He uses this verse to argue that Catholics and Protestants should not intermarry. He says, “Your boy goes with a Catholic girl. When they go to get married, they have to promise to raise the children Catholic, vice versa. See, it’s to break the power of the other. But what is it? The Bible claims the whole thing’s a prostitute.” He then goes on to reference Deuteronomy 23:2, “No one of illegitimate birth may enter the assembly of the Lord; none of his descendants, even to the tenth generation, may enter the assembly of the Lord.” About this, Branham says, “That was under the law, and Christ come to magnify the law. How much more is it now?…And if Christ come to magnify it, we’d say a hundred generations or five-hundred generations.” Further along in the sermon, Branham reads from a passage in Genesis,
Now, the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, has God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden? The woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden, but of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, God has said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall you touch it, lest ye die. And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day that ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. (3:1-5)
This is the part of the sermon where Branham discusses his controversial belief in a doctrine called “the serpent’s seed”, which the sermon is named after. Branham’s belief of the serpent seed doctrine becomes relevant when considering his beliefs on interracial marriage. First, Branham argues that Adam and Eve did not realize they were naked from eating the forbidden fruit, and that the realization was the result of something sexual in nature. He says, “You know eating an apple, that wasn’t what they did, made them realize they were naked. Certainly, it wasn’t. It had to come through sexually. It had to be, ’cause they realized they were naked when they taken this forbidden fruit.” Secondly, Branham claims that the serpent in the Garden of Eden who tempted Eve with the fruit was actually not a serpent at all, but “a prehistoric giant” and “the missing person between the chimpanzee and the man.” Unlike animals, Branham said, the blood of the serpent could mix with the blood of human beings and create offspring. He argues that this is exactly what happened in the Garden of Eden, that Eve and the serpent (Satan) had sex, which caused her to become pregnant and give birth to Cain. In Genesis 4, Cain kills his brother Abel because he is “jealous” and “angry”. Because Adam is the son of God, he is “pure” and impure attributes like jealously, anger, and the desire to murder cannot come from him. Therefore, Branham says, “It had to come through another place…And it come through Satan, who was a murderer to begin with.” The serpent seed is passed down through Cain’s corrupted bloodline to his descendants. The pure bloodline of Adam therefore proceeds from Abel to Seth, to Noah, to Shem, to Abraham and so forth. However, the bloodline is not completely linear, as according to Branham, “the seed of the serpent is religious”. It is a spiritual bloodline, not genetic. After God had flooded the Earth and killed most of humanity, the serpent’s seed was brought onto the ark with Noah. This is where Branham addresses the curse of Ham, one of Noah’s sons.
“And out of there then come Ham, Ham with his wife and them. He had a curse put on him. From Ham come Nimrod, who built Babylon. Out of Babylon come the Catholic church, the beginning of it. Come on down through Ahab, come on down from Ahab into Judas Iscariot, wound it up–the antichrist. And in this last day, here is the spirit of the antichrist and the Spirit of the Christ. The spirit of the antichrist saying, ‘The days of miracles is past,’ the Spirit of Christ saying, ‘He’s the same yesterday, today, and forever.’…Now, you say, ‘Can they dwell together? You said that they’re in that ark, Brother Branham. You had in there both Ham and Seth.’ That’s right, exactly right; Ham was evil. Seth was religious and righteous. All right, let’s follow Ham. All right now, there’s Ham and Seth in the same ark, one righteous, and the other unrighteous. There was a crow and a dove in the same ark. There was Judas and Jesus in the same church. There was the antichrist and the Holy Spirit in the same church. And today the same spirits work, having a form of godliness, very religious, but having a form of godliness and denying the power thereof. From such turn away.
Despite the fact that Ham is the son of Noah, Branham argues that he is one of the “unrighteous” ones, while Seth, the third son of Adam and Eve, is one of the “righteous” ones.
The Curse of Ham
How is Branham’s belief that Ham was born from a corrupted, unrighteous bloodline relevant to Reagan’s views on interracial marriage? Gen 9:20-27, the Biblical passage that tells the story of the curse of Ham, and subsequently his son Canaan, has been used to justify slavery for millennia. In the text, Ham catches his father Noah drunk and naked, and covers him with a blanket. When Noah awakes and realizes what Ham has done, he says, “Cursed be Canaan; A servant of servants He shall be to his brothers” and also, “Blessed be the Lord, The God of Shem; And may Canaan be his servant. May God enlarge Japheth, And may he live in the tents of Shem; And may Canaan be his servant” (9:26-27). Ham was most likely the originally recipient of Noah’s curse. However, earlier interpreters of this text used it to justify the enslavement of the Canaanites, and later interpreters used it to justify the enslavement of Africans. Ham had four sons, the first three of which, Put (Libya), Cush (Ethiopia) and Mitsraim (Egypt), and associated with regions of Northern and Eastern Africa, with Canaan as the outlier. A plausible reason for the inclusion of Canaan can be found by looking in the Book of Judges. Here, the Israelites are shown to have conquered and enslaved the Canaanites, subjecting them to “forced labor” (Judg 1:28, 30, 33). As part of the curse, Canaan becomes the slave of his brothers, especially Shem, who in Biblical tradition is the ancestor of the Israelite people. A glimpse of this interpretation can be seen in Branham’s sermon, “The Serpent’s Seed”, when he described Adam’s pure bloodline by saying, “After Noah come Shem. After Shem come Abraham”. The curse applying not just to Ham, but to Canaan and his descendants, is what James Kugel called an “exegetical motif” which is an interpretation of a Biblical story that, once established, becomes difficult to resolve. Many early Jewish and Christian theologians supported this interpretation, including Rabbi Huna, Rabbi Hiyya, Augustine, Ambrose, and Hippolytus. These early interpreters, through the use of specious etymology, concluded that Ham’s name (ham חם) shared the same etymology as the verb (hamam חמם)which means “to be hot”. This “hotness” could be interpreted as either relating to the warmer temperatures of the region of Africa, or as an allusion to the sun’s power to darken skin. Also worth noting is Ambrose’s inclusion of all of Ham’s descendants, including Cush, in the curse. He believed that the “dark side” of humanity could be seen in Nimrod, who was black, like his father Cush. This is reminiscent of Branham’s theology regarding the two-seedline origins of humanity. The conclusion following these exegetical steps is that if Ham is cursed by Noah, and Ham is the common ancestor of people from hot regions with dark skin (Such as Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, and other countries in Africa) then the curse must be dark skin.
Branham’s belief that Ham is a descendant of Cain has it’s roots in a tradition of Biblical interpretation called British-Israelism, which spread to North American from mid-19th Century English Protestants. British-Israelism is the belief that the people of the British Isles are direct descendants of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel, and that Jews and other “nonwhite” people are the descendants of Satan. After World War II, this became a prominent exegetical motif in the Christian Identity movement in the United States. Scholar Michael Barkun describes this doctrine as, “Either the devil himself or one of his underlings has intercourse with Even in the Garden of Eden. Cain was the product of this illicit union. Hence Cain and all his progeny, by virtue of satanic paternity, carry the Devil’s unchanging capacity to work evil. These descendants of Cain became known in time as ‘Jews’”. Some advocates of the Christian Identity movement argue that Ham had a Cainite wife, which is what links his descendants to Cain. This argument is also used to explain how the Cainite bloodline survived the Flood.
To summarize the exegetical steps: Eve and the Serpent (Satan) produced Cain. Cain’s bloodline begets Ham. Ham and his son Canaan are cursed, and the curse is both dark skin and eternal slavery. All the peoples of Africa descend from Canaan. Therefore, black people belong to the corrupted bloodline and should not intermarry with the righteous descendants of Adam. It is this flawed interpretation of scripture that ministers like Branham used, and ministers like Reagan currently use, to justify their racist views of black people. While Brother Donny Reagan of the Happy Valley Church is no Imperial Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, he is certainly a pastor that keeps Branham’s legacy of racist theology alive in the present day. In doing so, he contributes to the ongoing problem of racism and discrimination towards people of color in America.
Bibliography
Bembry, Jason. “Justifying Slavery via Genesis 9:20-27: The Vicious Legacy of Racist Interpretation of the Bible.” Stone-Campbell Journal 23 (2020): 69-82.
Branham, William. “The Serpent’s Seed.” Accessed June 16, 2021, https:// churchages.net/en/sermon/branham/58-0928E-serpent-seed.
Branham, William. “Souls That are in Prison Now.” Accessed June 15, 2021, https:// http://www.williambranham.com/souls-that-are-in-prison-now-63-1110m/.
Branham, William. “Who Do You Say This Is?” Accessed June 16, 2021, https:// branham.org/articles/12172014_WhoDoYouSayThisIs.
Collins, John A. Preacher Behind the White Hoods: A Critical Examination of William Branham and His Message. Jeffersonville, IN: Dark Mystery Publications, 2020.
Happy Valley Church of Christ, “New Here?”. Accessed June 10, 2021, http:// http://www.happyvalleychurch.com/about-us/.
“Johnson City preacher’s video against biracial marriage goes viral.” Johnson City Press, February 17, 2014. Accessed June 10, 2021. https://www.johnsoncitypress.com/ johnson-city-preachers-video-against-biracial-marriage-goes-viral/article_2e61d9e1- ddce-5336-b22c-6a731327a4d0.html.
Revelation 3:20, “Questions and Answers #4 (William Branham 64/08/30E).” February 08, 2017. YouTube Video, 1:50:03, https://youtu.be/hxJz5KWOVb8.
The Young Turks, “Is God Racist? Pastor Rants About Biracial Babies at Happy Valley Church.” February 14, 2014. YouTube video, 7:09, https://youtu.be/23mx_vRCg64.
Weaver, Douglas C. The Healer-prophet: William Marrion Branham: a Study of the Prophetic in American Pentecostalism. Atlanta: Mercer University Press, 2000.
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