John Patrick Daly’s book “When Slavery Was Called Freedom: Evangelicalism, Proslavery, and the Causes of the Civil War” should be required reading for anyone interested in the relationship between Christian faith and public policy in America.
Daly traces the ways in which evangelical Christians supported the pro-slavery cause in the antebellum South. As Daly notes, evangelicals in the North tended towards abolitionism, and used theological and Biblical arguments in support of their position. But evangelicals in the South overwhelmingly supported slavery, and likewise used theological and Biblical arguments in support of their views.
It’s tempting to make a “no true Scotsman” argument at this point: the Southern evangelicals, we would like to suggest, were using theology and scripture improperly, as a mask for their greed. In a sense, I would argue along these lines. Like nearly all Christians today, I think it’s clear that a properly developed Biblical theology must consider slavery a great evil.
However, in another sense, this kind of argument is anachronistic. The Southern preachers who supported slavery really believed that Divine Providence had ordained the institution of slavery in the American South for the benefit of both the white and black populations. Interestingly, according to Daly, they for the most part did not rely on earlier arguments from creation and geneology (i.e., the so-called “curse of Ham”), but rather mostly framed their arguments in terms of Providence. Moreover, the Southern preachers argued that the revivalistic fires of the Second Great Awakening burned hot in Southern states where slavery flourished. For many antebellum Christian leaders in the South, Providence and Revival confirmed the righteousness of slavery.
Of course, to us today (and to most Northern theologians at the time), this was a tragic, awful, horrid betrayal of Christian principles. The lingering question is, do we have the courage to question our own beliefs about how our faith ought to relate to the pressing issues of our day?
One reply on “Evangelicals and Slavery”
As an African-American Quaker, I’ve been reading “Fit for Freedom, Not for Friendship: Quakers, African Americans, and the Myth of Racial Justice”. While Quakers are popularly known as being part of the abolitionist movement, many of them owned slaves and it was a source of contention within the church to go from slaveowners to working for abolition.
Your question about questioning our own beliefs is quite pertinent. My pastor just preached a sermon from a passage that people typically use as a proof text against homosexuality, but how often have we used scripture to justify and further our own agendas versus getting what God intended for us to get from it. Will we allow ourselves to be vulnerable enough to truly hear HIS voice in the scripture or will we continue to press for our own ideals. How sad, if at the end of the day, we’ve missed hearing from God because we could only hear ourselves. If we only read the scripture to confirm our own preconceived thoughts, what do we need scripture for?