In my first semester at seminary I came across a Douglas Wilson poem which implied that the American institution of slavery was good and noble (“The Experiment” in Untune the Sky). In fact, the noun used in the poem to describe the supposed goal of the American South was “virtue.” Later I came across another work by Wilson, this one coauthored by Steve Wilkins, Southern Slavery as it Was. While ostensibly opposed to the “racism” of the South, the book struck me as a nothing other than a thorough defense of antebellum Christians who were slave owners.

As a product of a secular university (and certainly a secular culture), I was floored to see a well-known Christian leader defending slavery. Since then, I have found many other Christians who believe the same thing: that the Bible not only permitted the American slave trade, but that those slave owners in the South who claimed the name of Christ and yet profited from the buying and selling of human beings could do so with a clean conscience before God.

Perhaps the pertinacity of this belief explains lingering racial issues in American Christianity. As recently as twenty years ago, Bob Jones refused admission to students who were inter-racially married. Many American politicians have refused to reverse laws banning interracial marriage because of fear of opposition from Christian voters. In fact, much of the racial divides that exist in churches today have their roots in the Fundamentalist churches that taught that the races were designed by God, and thus inter-racial marriage was sinful.

It was only a few generations ago when many American Christians would have described our form of slavery as both biblical and beneficial. There is no denying that the abolition of slavery in the US was delayed by appeals to how many Christians owned slaved. It was Spurgeon who said that slavery was often excused by Christians simply because “If slavery was indeed morally wrong, it wouldn’t have so many Christians on its side.” Spurgeon said if you were to ask a Christian slave owner what he thought of slavery, you might get this kind of answer:

Does he not go and talk Bible, and tell his slaves that they ought to feel very grateful for being his slaves, for God Almighty made them on purpose that they might enjoy the rare privilege of being cowhided by a Christian master?

He wasn’t being hyperbolic. It was common for Christians to defend American slavery as being “universal and divine” (Goldwin Smith, Does the Bible Sanction American Slavery? 1869, p. 1). Some believers today are hardly more nuanced then that. By pointing to Jonathan Edwards and George Whitfield as those who respectively owned and advocated for slavery, we often assume it must not have been that bad; otherwise how else could such men have supported it? Those kind of claims are not only precisely what Spurgeon was warning about 150 years ago, but are the perfect illustration of begging the question.

It is very important for Christians to be able to say this clearly: American slavery is clearly condemned by the Bible, without equivocation or qualification. The Bible is a perfect book in the sense that it contains all that is necessary for life and godliness, and this includes all of the ethical information needed to navigate the cultural complexities of this world in a way that honors both Christ and the image of God in man. The Bible does not condone American slavery and it certainly does not regulate it. It forbids it.

This week I’ll lay out the biblical evidence for this claim. At the encouragement of some of my professors at The Master’s Seminary, I wrote this series for a journal back in 2004. That publication decided not to run it, because the editor said, “nobody would disagree with you; there is just nobody that thinks slavery was actually biblical.” Then in 2011, the first year of TheCripplegate, I thought about running it here. But again I refrained, because others told me the same thing, and it struck me that I was arguing with the wind.

But in the last few weeks I have encountered more and more people who are saying (some even publicly) that the Bible is silent on the ownership and sale of human life; I even read one pastor who said, speaking of George Whitfield, “The Bible doesn’t condemn slavery, but it does regulate it.”

So this week, I’ll lay out my case.

Tomorrow I’ll write about how slavery in the OT was fundamentally different than American slavery, thus it is not correct to see Levitical Law as regulating our slave trade. Thursday I’ll write about 1 Timothy 1:10, and show how Paul proclaimed that those who are involved with the enterprise of trafficking in human life are outside of the gospel. Then Friday I’ll examine the letter to Philemon, and see what we can learn from that.

To keep people from making objections that will be answered in later posts, comments will be closed this week. You can always find me on Twitter, or by replying to one of the Cripplegate emails you get every day (you are subscribed right?–if not, go to the top of this page). I trust this week’s posts will be a helpful resource for you on this issue.