Christians Spreading Intolerance: Pastor Donny Reagan rails against interracial marriage in viral sermon

Donny Reagan runs the Happy Valley Church of Jesus Christ in Johnson City, Tennessee. This weekend, he was marked as “the most racist pastor in America” for the video sermon shown below. But Reagan’s teaching is serious business, and it can teach the uninitiated a lot about American evangelicalism’s dirtiest laundry,
The sermon — which is from last year — has gone sort of viral in the past few days, on the basis of links in The American Jesus and The Raw Story.

But while teh interwebz are understandably laughing “Look at this f***ing Bible-thumper” at Reagan, they’ve been slow to ask a bigger question: How does somebody believe this, in America, in 2013 or 2014? What is the historical or biblical source of that belief?

The answer is critical to understanding one of the craziest turns in America’s centuries-long pop-flirtation with Protestant revivals and personal revelations.