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Proponents of so-called 鈥渞eligious freedom鈥� bills, devised to enable businesses to refuse service to same-sex couples on religious grounds, have in recent months pooh-poohed comparisons between these proposed laws and the Jim Crow laws that allowed businesses to refuse service to blacks. 鈥淧rotecting religious liberty and the rights of conscience does not infringe on anyone鈥檚 sexual freedoms,鈥� wrote Heritage Foundation fellow Ryan Anderson in a National Review Online column headlined 鈥溾�楬omosexual Jim Crow Laws鈥�? Get Real.鈥�

The theology of Donny Reagan, pastor of Tennessee鈥檚 Happy Valley Church of Jesus Christ, should inspire Anderson to think again. 鈥淚f corn was raised in a certain way, yellow corn, don鈥檛 mix it with white corn. If you do your mixing, you can鈥檛 bring yourself back again,鈥� Reagan warned in a sermon recorded last year at his 600-member church in Johnson City, Tenn. Claiming that black athletic stars choose white wives in a willful attempt to make their offspring lighter, Reagan declared, 鈥淚t鈥檚 another defiance of God鈥檚 law, it鈥檚 a worldly way.鈥澛�

Reagan also had some choice words for fellow ministers who perform interracial marriages. 鈥淪ome of the men in pulpits should have a pantywaist instead of a preacher coat on!鈥�

Reagan is not alone in this interpretation of the Bible. He is a follower of the theology of William Branham, a breakaway Pentecostal religious leader and faith healer whose followers translate his teachings into a biblical ban on interracial marriage.

Branham, a U.S. preacher who died in 1965, identified with the Pentecostal movement until the late 1950s, when he began to reject core aspects of traditional Christianity, preaching that original sin stemmed not from Eve biting the fruit and gaining forbidden knowledge, but from her sexual intercourse with the serpent, which resulted in the conception of Cain. Cain鈥檚 bloodline, through Noah and his son Ham, led to a race of human beings descended from the evil serpent.

Branham never made the identity of this race explicit, 鈥渂ut it鈥檚 not that far a stretch to begin to interpret it in a racist way,鈥� says James Walker, president of The Watchman Fellowship, a Texas-based evangelical ministry that researches cults and new religious movements. 鈥淎ny church that teaches this 鈥榮erpentism鈥� is going to have a tendency to be racist, because it separates people by DNA and bloodline.鈥�

According to Michael Barkun, political scientist and author of Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, Branham鈥檚 theology was also a precursor to the virulently racist and anti-Semitic Christian Identity movement. That movement posits that Eve mated with Satan and began the lineage of the biologically Satanic people who became today鈥檚 Jews, and that people of color are soulless 鈥渂easts of the field.鈥澛�

鈥淐hristian Identity has it all worked out who鈥檚 the lower people. Branham was not quite there,鈥� Barkun told the Intelligence Report.

Not all Branham churches are racist or embrace the anti-race-mixing position Reagan promotes, Walker says, but the theology clearly invites racism. These churches, Walker says, are scattered across the U.S. 鈥� including in Arizona, where in February legislators passed a 鈥渞eligious freedom鈥� bill that would have allowed businesses to refuse service to LGBT people and others on religious grounds.聽

Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the bill. Had she not, it鈥檚 easy to imagine Arizona鈥檚 Branham devotees invoking sincerely held religious belief in denying service or accommodations to interracial couples 鈥� exactly as National Review Online鈥檚 Anderson insists they never would.