‘A Prisoner in Darwin’s Garden’

is a poetic and compelling phrase coined by Ken Ham in his book One Blood, One Race to describe one particular victim of racist ideology which found a soul place in evolutionary thought.

“Biological arguments for racism may have been common before 1859, but they increased by orders of magnitude following the acceptance of evolutionary theory”

Steven Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny , 1977

The victim was an Australian Aborigine named Ota. His family was slaughtered by the Belgian government in an assault against “the evolutionary inferior natives”. Ota was made a prisoner for public display as an example of an inferior race.

Ota was first displayed as an ’emblematic savage’ in the anthropology wing of the 1904 St Louis Worlds Fair. Treated as a zoo animal, he was subjected to public humiliations and base treatment for years before gaining his release.

Sadly, worn down with despair and stress, concluding that he would never be able to return to his homeland, he took his own life in March of 1916.

His focus in the book is on identifying and rectifying racism within the Christian church.

After briefly describing the misuse of scripture to justify racism and divide the church, he adroitly states:

“The virus of religious racism needs a strong antibiotic immediately. Should extreme groups like the KKK (Klu Klux Klan) be eradicated completely, the church would still be plagued with the disease of racism” (p. 57)

The hope for this disease is recognition that the scriptures identify only one human race that the apostle Paul referred to as “one blood” when talking to the Greek philosophers of his day.

“And (God) has made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth…”Acts 27:26

There is a commonality that unites all men in at least two ways:

1. “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23)

Ware states: “I define racial reconciliation in the church as : groups of different cultural ethnic, economic, etc. backgrounds bonded together by redemption in Christ and growing together according to biblical principles for mutual edification, evangelism and the glory of God. (John 13:34,35; Romans 15:1-13; Galatians 2:1-14; 3:26-29; Ephesians 2;11-22).

This is not only a good solution to the problem of racism; it is the only lasting solution… whether in personal actions or systemic change, we must look to the cross of Christ to bridge the racial gap” pp. 59, 61