CHAPTER 7 Hard Questions on American History and Other Hot Topics
My pains are great; but, blessed be God, they are not eternal.
—Lemuel Haynes
In this final chapter, we will consider some common questions that come in response to the material presented in this book. In some cases, we have touched on these matters in earlier chapters. I raise them again here because it is right and good to ask questions about difficult matters. Our goal in the discussion over wokeness, after all, is never to shut conversation down. It is always to stimulate pursuit of the truth. Toward that end, we turn now to several reasonable queries and to my relatively brief responses to them.
Does the Bible Endorse American Race-Based Slavery?
No, the Bible does not endorse American slavery. The Bible prohibits "man-stealing" in the most straightforward terms (1 Timothy 1:10), and American race-based chattel slavery was founded in and dependent on man-stealing. In various African nations, slave traders stole families, brought them to market, and sold them to merchants trafficking in human beings. The people in bondage were then taken to America, where they were bought in public auctions and sold as human goods. The Bible gives no encouragement to the iniquitous agents, buyers, and sellers of this evil institution. No slaveowner working in this system could open his Bible, read passages on slavery, and think that he had gotten his slaves in a righteous and fair way. He had not.
To understand in greater depth why we must handle Scripture thoughtfully on slavery, we must make clear that the Bible—including the New Testament—does not prohibit it. We might expect God's Word to condemn it without nuance, but it does not do so. In both the Old and New Testaments, slavery is presented with depth and subtlety.
Considering first the Old Testament, slaves were generally household laborers. Though in a state of bondage, they were not subhuman, but were protected according to God's law, particularly from life-threatening acts (Exodus 21:20). From ancient times, it was wrong for God's people to steal fellow human beings and enslave them (Exodus 21:26). There were numerous opportunities for slaves to find freedom: purchase, sabbatical year law, the Year of Jubilee, or when their master died. Though slaves' experiences varied, they "were considered part of the owner's family" and "had the right to the sabbath rest and to participate in the religious feasts." Though it is a strange judgment in our time, wives and slave-concubines were in many cases indistinguishable.
Israelite slavery was, relatively, a notably humane institution. The New Testament went further, framing slave and master relationships in a Gospel light. Masters and slaves alike had responsibilities to one another. Masters had to treat slaves with full human dignity and do good to them (Ephesians 6:5–9); they could not threaten their slaves and were called by God to treat them "justly and fairly" (Colossians 4:1). Slaves were to obey their masters, working hard for them, honoring God as they honored their masters (Colossians 3:22–25). Serving one's vocational authority reflected the way the believer served one's metaphysical authority (Ephesians 6:9; Colossians 3:24).
In these texts we see that the day-to-day experience of slavery countenanced by the New Testament was akin to the duty of Christian labor more broadly. Slaves were to be treated much like non-slave workers of the Greco-Roman world, few of whom knew a fraction of the "rights" that workers claim today. Masters could not treat their slaves as human cattle; they could not do with their slaves whatever they wanted. Slaves were not subhuman or inferior to their masters in any fundamental way. Instead, masters were to do good to those who labored under them and not create a climate of fear and easy retribution for disappointed expectations. The end picture of slavery as shaped by apostolic decree is one remarkably similar to broader biblical teaching on vocation. Those in authority should be humane, knowing they were subject to God; those under authority should work hard and well, knowing they ultimately were serving not man but God.
All this is quite distinct from the institution of slavery as commonly practiced in America. Not all American slaveowners were the same. Some treated their slaves humanely and even sought to win them to Christ. But the American slave system as a whole differed in several important ways from the biblical portrait sketched above. First, American slavery was based in man-stealing, showing its evil roots. Second, American slavery was race-based or race-driven, grounded for many in the perceived inherent "inferiority" of Africans. Third, American slavery was often conducted outside the bounds of biblical morality, as masters treated their slaves in subhuman ways. Fourth, slaves in many cases could not buy or work their way out of slavery but were bound to their condition indefinitely (against the Old Testament code, even).
Ancient slaves generally entered their state as a result of defeat in war. The slavery discussed in both the Old and New Testament proceeds from this reality. Whole populations entered slavery not because of perceived anthropological inferiority (as the cause), but because of civilizational eclipse. Nor were slaves always considered below the line of ordinary personhood. Ancient slaves could rise to positions of immense power, could make serious money, and in a good number of cases found themselves better off than freedmen. None of this means that ancient slavery was a picnic, for it surely was not. But it does color our understanding of slavery and show us the uniquely dark nature of American slavery as practiced by many.
For this reason, we conclude that American race-based chattel slavery differs considerably from the institution Scripture engages. Ancient slavery was in several ways different from American race-based slavery, and both the Old and New Testaments humanized the institution in important ways. In the final analysis, the New Testament in no way mandates slavery, nor does it prohibit it absolutely. Instead, it is best to think of the New Testament (building on the Old) as reshaping slavery in a distinctly God-centered way. The Old Covenant law, so often unfairly maligned, made considerable provision for the release and liberation of slaves, a theme that recurs throughout the Old Testament, coming to a crescendo during the exodus. The New Covenant law does not outlaw slavery, but in enhancing the moral dimensions of acceptable slave-owning brings the theme of the salvific exodus of God's people to its peak. In Christ, we are free, gloriously free. Yet the one freed from slavery to sin is the same one who becomes a doulos Christou—a slave of Christ.
The New Testament, then, gives cold comfort to defenders of racist American slavery. But it leaves us in a place that perhaps surprises us regarding slavery as a whole. The Scripture does not end up condemning any form of slavery, but firstly reshapes our conception of slavery along Christian lines and secondly teaches every believer that our discipleship to Christ is not the discipleship of an equal to an equal, but that of a subject under bondage—the glad bondage of the Church to its gracious Lord and Master. Christ, the true master, is no cruel and tyrannical overlord, but is the King who rules His subjects with grace and truth, never failing to minister tender mercy to His blood-bought people.
Is It True That Christian Churches Were All Pro-Slavery in Past Days?
No, this is not true. As is often the case, there is more to the story than an easy one-sided narrative. There are at least two significant streams within nineteenth-century American Christianity: a pro-slavery wing and an anti-slavery wing. Some accounts tell the story of American church history as if only one side existed, but this is not the case. Both groups vied for influence and clashed repeatedly and unpredictably in the nineteenth century, as the evils of slavery came to light in the young nation and across the Atlantic in England.
The contingent that we hear much about today from woke voices is the pro-slavery faction. We make no effort here to whitewash the real failings of pro-slavery evangelicals in days past. To be sure, some believed earnestly that Scripture supported their views, and some Christians who practiced race-based slavery did so believing that they should treat their slaves humanely and even evangelize them. It is necessary to recognize that slaveholders were not monolithic in their practice, and that there was a clear spectrum of action among professing evangelicals that ranged from more humane to decidedly less humane. On the "more humane" side, some treated their slaves in terms consonant with the description of New Testament slavery given above.
But all too many Christians defended race-based slavery and the racist views it stood upon. They failed to recognize that American race-based slavery was distinct from the institution engaged and reshaped by the Old and New Testaments, and they enabled the subhuman treatment of slaves. They failed to condemn the evil practice American slavery was founded in (man-stealing), and they failed to speak up for the full personhood and dignity of slaves once they came to America. In this way we see that a good number of churches and Christians defended and promoted an institution that they should have opposed and opposed to the full. American slavery did not occur without the support of a solid portion of American churches. In this we see that many Christians failed to challenge a wicked institution based in unbiblical ideology. The Church all too often followed the world, and in doing so exchanged an enchanted vision of the human person as a God-made image-bearer for a secular vision that rendered slaves subhuman due to the color of their skin.
Praise God, this is not the full story, however. In both the eighteenth and especially the nineteenth centuries, protest arose against slavery and the slave trade among a wide range of professing Christians. Here we see the second major stream of American Christian response to this evil institution: the anti-slavery wing. We must recall what great odds this side faced. A sizeable but not monolithic percentage of the nation was pro-slavery. Being pro-slavery meant following the spirit of the age. It was generally assumed by many that slavery was justified due to the fundamental inequality of the "races." To go against this consensus that reached across societal and cultural lines was a fearsome thing indeed. It is always a fearsome thing to stand against the world, against the devil's own lies, and against evil.
But this is what a good number of Christians did, both in America and Great Britain. The greatest of the champions in the West was William Wilberforce. Wilberforce represents the evangelical abolitionist wing at its peak. Though the fight against slavery and the slave trade was a losing issue politically in many respects, Wilberforce was driven by his biblical convictions to campaign for abolition and cessation of the dreadful institution, a campaign he fought for decades. In America, a loose coalition of Christian groups rallied against slavery and the slave trade. All the way back in the early 1700s, Puritan New England witnessed the publication of The Selling of Joseph, an ardently anti-slavery tract by Samuel Sewall. Some decades later, Jonathan Edwards Jr. published abolitionist material, and numerous "New Divinity" clergymen agreed with his stance. In the nineteenth century, others joined the cause: Quakers, Moravians, and Pietists all spoke against slavery and the slave trade. William Lloyd Garrison caused a stir with his quest for "immediate abolition," with figures like Lyman Beecher (an evangelical leader) supporting this drive.
The story of the two sides in Christian circles deserves further telling and exploration. This book is not a history of American Christianity, nor of the complex dynamics of racism in the American past. With these brief comments offered, for our purposes it must suffice to say that the historic narrative about Christians and slavery is neither triumphalist nor desolate. Too many otherwise sound pastors and theologians stood for the wrong side of this matter. Others fare better in the counsel of history.