The Gospel Coalition

Some of you have been following the series of email exchanges Doug Wilson and I have been having regarding his book Black and Tan. In my last post I attempted to define “racial insensitivity” and then to cite instances in Black and Tan where I thought Wilson was guilty of that charge.

In one of my citations, I made reference to Wilson cataloging a list of the sins of Black people while not mentioning in comparable ways the sins of White people. I attempted to parody Wilson’s comments with a list of “White sins.” In context, I simply wanted to illustrate what I found insensitive in Wilson’s comments by reversing them. In my list I made mention of Trayvon Martin being killed for “walking while Black.”

A couple of gracious and thoughtful readers wrote to let me know that they were at least caught off guard by the reference to Martin and some were offended. They felt the reference injected race in an unhelpful way and rushed to judgment in the Martin case. It’s plain to me that these persons were coming to the blog to be edified and with that remark were instead hurt. It’s also plain to me that my comments lost me my argument. Rather than illumine the point at hand, the remark clouded the judgment and hearts of some.

This was not a case where only one person felt injured. At least three others responded similarly. So I’m left to conclude that these persons were not being “too sensitive” and to wonder if others might have been wounded but did not reply.

In failing to make it clear that I was putting forth a parody of Wilson’s writing, I replicated not only Wilson’s error but also the harm. I am truly sorry for that and I ask my readers’ forgiveness. I am completely willing to accept whatever consequences come as a result of my words, including the loss of esteem, respect, or support my words deserve. I fully understand if that line costs me the point I was trying to make in that section or costs me your empathy as a reader. I will have earned those losses.

Rather than retract the statement and pretend as though I had said nothing offensive, at the counsel of the readers, I have left the comment in with an asterisk directing future readers to this apology and a similar apology in the comments thread. Going forward, I will endeavor to write more carefully. I will attempt to consider the reactions, feelings, and perspectives of others even when I’m trying to challenge and provoke thinking. It’s fitting that I should take care to do so since that’s what I’m arguing needs to be done for me and others.

Again, I hope that those who read that post can find the spirit’s strength to forgive my carelessness with words. The Lord be gracious to you this Good Friday,

Thabiti

Doug Wilson and I have been at this exchange for about two weeks now. Much has been said and much more could be discussed. But, alas, we have to bring things to an end at some point. For my part, this post will be my last comment on Black and Tan. I’m guessing Wilson will want to reply to the substance of this post, then perhaps we’ll end with some form of a summary comment.

Since the publication of Southern Slavery as It Was and Black and Tan, many readers have charged Wilson with either “racism” or being “racially insensitive.” Most would regard those charges as serious. I do, too. We live in a day where it’s no longer socially acceptable to be a racist or racially insensitive. It was perfectly fine—even expected—for certain persons to be racist and racially-motivated during the period we’ve been discussing (the 1800s). But much has changed, including the hearts of many people and the social standards by which we live with one another. Because of those changes and to protect those advances, we now also live at a time when such charges need to be proven, or at least an effort to do so ought to be made.

In this post, I want to lay out a few thoughts about Black and Tan and what I regard to be its racial insensitivity. I think I owe this to Wilson and to any reader who read my allusion to these issues in my very first post. I need to be accountable for the words I speak and I find this medium a sometimes effective place for receiving admonishment and accountability. So we begin….

What Is “Racial Insensitivity”?

Some commenters have suggested that the charge of “racial insensitivity” is little more than being overly sensitive. They’ve equated racial insensitivity with hurt feelings, implying or stating that the person with hurt feelings simply needs to “grow up” and be “adult” about such things. While I’m sure some people do need to grow up, please forgive me for saying that such counter-responses are themselves immature and have sometimes been evidence of the insensitivity in question.

It seems to me that discussions of this sort require definitions, lest we descend in a spiral of allegations, dismissals, and counter-allegations. Such definitions are notoriously difficult. Is “racial insensitivity” one of those things, like beauty, that’s forever imprisoned in the eyes of the beholder? Or can different eyes see it and all know it when they do? Or is it the opposite of beauty—can we define it but not know it when we see it? We need a working proposal?

We all have some sense of what we mean by “racial,” even though that term itself introduces ambiguity. For our purposes, let’s just assume a “man on the street” definition of “race.” The trickier term is “insensitive.” A Webster’s Dictionary definition for “insensitive” is “not responsive or susceptible” or “lacking feeling or tact.” Some synonyms include: compassionless, hard- or cold-hearted, heartless, inhumane, pachydermatous (my favorite!), pitiless, remorseless, and ruthless. Antonyms include: charitable, compassionate, humane, kindhearted, sympathetic, tender, warm, and warm-hearted.

At the level of word meaning, “racial insensitivity” involves being unresponsive or lacking in feeling or tact toward people of different races or issues associated with race. I would suggest it’s a certain inability or unwillingness to sense and lovingly consider the concerns, feelings, and perspectives of others across racial lines.

Who Gets to Decide What Is “Racially Insensitive”?

Of course, offering a definition only gets us started. We need to also offer some thoughts about how we know racial insensitivity has occurred. In a world where charges are made and denied, who gets the final say-so?

Here’s where being dismissive of other people’s feelings—not to mention their statements, perspectives, cultures and the like—actually becomes a big deal. Insensitivity is fraught with feeling, and usually the lead indicator that something insensitive has happened will be one emotion or another. The emotion could be bitterness, like the wife whose dinner lies cold waiting on a husband who for the thousandth time has broken his promise to be home for dinner. Or, it could be deep sadness, like the man told his wife has been unfaithful. A thousand examples could be imagined. But you get the point. Insensitivity provokes feeling, and if we’re dismissive of that feeling or insensitive toward it we’ll only compound the problems we have across racial lines.

So, who gets to decide? I don’t know if they get the final word, but the person so hurt should at least have the first word. And the person doing the hurting should really stop and listen for what they missed. That listening turns out to be crucial because the nature of insensitivity is that it fails to sense something. When we’re insensitive we have a blind spot, at least. At worst, we’re knowingly and intentionally trying to cut and hurt. In either case, we’ll never properly fix the hurt or help the hurting feel differently or address our own heart issues (out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, right?) if we continue tone-deaf to that leading indicator—the other person’s feelings.

How Does Racial Insensitivity Affect Us?

Bulls in china shops really do cause a lot of damage. Scripture warns us repeatedly about the deadly destruction of our tongues.  So, it should be obvious that such insensitivity affects us deeply. The effects range from hurt feelings, to broken relationships, discord among brothers, hardened hearts, mistrust, and significant sins against each other.

In the context of race relations, both inside and outside the church, we’ve paid a tremendously high cost for our racial insensitivity. We continue, by and large, to worship the same Savior in different churches. We continue to suspect and mistrust one another. We continue to make the same cross-cultural gaffes and we continue to avoid seeking forgiveness and understanding for those gaffes. Some continue to hate. Some continue to pretend ignorance of deep hurts, and some others just want to “get past it all.” Many continue to cry out, “How long?” but they’re addressing the racial other, not the Lord. There are the costs in missed opportunities for friendship, worship, mission and partnership. The stakes are really quite high and the effects are difficult to number and assess. This is why willful ignorance ranks among the most significant contaminates in cross-cultural or inter-ethnic relationships.

What Ought to Be Done When Racial Insensitivity Occurs?

We should apply the Bible. We should go to our brothers and show them their faults. If he hears us (there’s that listening thing again), then we have won our brother over. If he will not hear us, we should take two or three witnesses with us who can establish every fact of the matter. And if we’re in the same church, we may just get to the point of having to tell the entire church. It seems the Master’s instructions in Matthew 18:15-17 apply pretty specifically to the personal offense of racial insensitivity.

Or, perhaps we would be wise to consider Titus 3:10. We should warn the divisive person once. We should warn them a second time. And if the behavior isn’t repented of after the second warning, we should have nothing to do with them. We regard them as brothers, but we can’t have meaningful fellowship with someone who continues to wound and sin without acknowledgement of the hurt they’ve caused.

All of this suggests to us that charges of “racial insensitivity” ought not be made lightly and they ought not be treated lightly. The fellowship and witness of our Lord’s church is at stake. Which brings us to our key question for this post.

Is Black and Tan Racially Insensitive?

Before we answer that question, let me remind us of a couple things stated in earlier posts. Wilson makes it clear repeatedly that he abominates and disavows racism, racial vainglory and white supremacy. He does not write anywhere in the book that one race is superior to another. Instead, he offers a rather sound biblical anthropology that emphasizes our common descent from Adam, our close cousinage biologically, and our common need for the Savior because of our common problem of sin. I think it’s important to hear him at these points and to take him at his word about these things even as (especially as) we take issue with his words at other places.

I am not here leveling a charge of “racism” against Wilson. But I do want to enter a charge of “racial insensitivity.” In my mind, racism is related to racial insensitivity the way criminal cases are related to civil cases. The former (racism, criminal cases) require higher levels of proof to substantiate. The latter require a lower threshold, some indication that damages have occurred, even sometimes when a person has been acquitted in a criminal case. Think O.J. Simpson’s criminal acquittal for the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and his subsequent civil conviction in a suit brought by her family.

With that in mind, I want to quote a series of things from Black and Tan and offer very brief explanations for why I think they’re racially insensitive or what I think Wilson fails to sense in these comments. Some of these illustrations will be more minor and some more serious. The point is to demonstrate something of the range of statements that might leave an honest reader offended and hurt by such remarks.

A Benign Slavery Ended Wrongly

“It was the contention of this booklet [Slavery as It Was] that the way in which slavery ended has had ongoing deleterious consequences for modern Christians in our current culture wars, and that slavery was far more benign in practice than it was made to appear in the literature of the abolitionists” (p. 14).

This, the central premise of the book, fails to sense how horrific an experience slavery was for African Americans. It fails to take into account, that though removed from chattel slavery by 150 years, African Americans consider the 350 year slave experience foundational to their condition here and we regard the 100 years or so of Jim Crow segregation a modified continuance of systematic oppression based on race. This quote fails to recognize that the abolitionists are the heroes to African Americans, not the villains. To repeat this premise throughout the book without ever showing consideration for how African Americans view that history or hear these words is an instance of racial insensitivity, in my opinion.

Labels Like “Paleo-Confederate”

“I’m a paleo-Confederate” (p. 15).

Wilson works hard to distinguish himself from “neo-Confederates” and to define what he means by “paleo-Confederate.” But “Confederate” hits the black ear with cuffed hands and leaves the listener shell shocked and momentarily disoriented. I don’t want to argue that Wilson shouldn’t use this label for himself. But I think if he continues to do so, he should offer a definition without the wordplay and “snark” of Black and Tan. The label “Confederate” has a lot of negative connotations. Wilson appears insensitive to the fact that for African Americans “Confederate” connotes white subjugation of Blacks and conjures nightmares related to lynchings, segregation, cross burnings, and the like. Rightly or wrongly, to embrace the label is to embrace the connotations. A lot of those associations, which Wilson seems to understand (p. 15), have to do with racism and racist attitudes. It then becomes insensitive to take on the label without plainly, tactfully, and sympathetically defining and distinguishing what is meant or not meant for those you don’t want to offend. As it is, that label and its proud use feels like a giant defiant finger in the eye.

The Inferiority of Black Culture

“Both Northerners and Southerners were misled by the obvious inferiority of black culture at that time, which had nothing to do with whether blacks bore the image of God in man, and everything to do with whether the gospel had yet had an opportunity to do its work within black culture” (p.18).

“All men exhibit the image of God equally, but all cultures are not equal. As we look at all the tribes of men, we see some that have landed a man on the moon, and some that have not yet worked out the concept of the wheel. We have some with one whole row in the supermarket dedicated to shampoo, while in another tribe hair is washed with cow urine” (p. 33).

Now, I need to hasten to add context to these words before I explain why I think they’re racially and culturally insensitive. In both places, Wilson denies that the relative superiority/inferiority of cultures has anything to do with race or racial differences. He attributes differences to the effect of the gospel in cultures. Some have received the gospel and been aided and changed by it, while others have not. He argues that racists make the misstep of attributing the “obvious differences” to race, but he does not. That’s important context. Leaving these quotes to stand alone would misrepresent his actual argument.

But what of his actual argument? I find it offensive on at least three grounds. First, he binds the gospel up with spurious assessments of cultures. He means to adorn the gospel (I get that) but as a Christian I think he effectively tarnishes the gospel by associating it with claims and perspectives the biblical writers nowhere make. There’s an implicit civilizationism here that needs to be detangled and questioned for the sake of the Good News.

Second, Wilson writes about the “obvious inferiority of black culture” with seemingly no understanding or acknowledgement of how the Southern culture he’s defending actually actively guaranteed black underdevelopment! With one broad stroke he lumps all of “black culture” (as if there’s only one) into one bag and deems it inferior to (I presume) “White culture” improved by the gospel. He does that while failing to mention that the supposedly gospel-enlightened white culture has its boot on the necks of people in the “inferior” black culture. His comments fail to sense this incongruity and it fails to acknowledge that a black culture of both resistance to inhumanity and promotion of everyone’s humanity—whites included—was well under way. One might argue that a culture of such tolerance, patience, and humanity is superior to one lacking those traits, no matter it’s economic and technological state.

Third, these comments fail to be sensitive to the fact that this very notion of cultural superiority has led to imperialistic abuses in the name of “civilization” all over the world. It was one justification for European colonization and a host of resultant crimes against others. It was justification, as Wilson notes (p. 34), for the racist attitude and actions of others.

These comments are racially and culturally insensitive to a host of things. In fact, shortly after the last quote, Wilson reveals an indifference that probably contributed to the tone and insensitivity of Black and Tan. “For those who do not want to listen to the argument, I have nothing more to say. For some, the mere denial of egalitarianism is enough to brand one as a racist forever, and since I am interested in taunting egalitarianism every chance I get, I have little hope of gaining there favor” (p. 34). Wilson seems to be digging in. I suspect that attitude, while aimed at his detractors at the time, creates a blind spot for Wilson when it comes to perceiving how his words wound others not in his immediate view. In stoning himself against those who call him “racist,” he may in fact have made himself insensitive to a ton of other people as well.

Little Black Sambo

In a more autobiographical section of the book, Wilson recalls a high school town meeting to discuss racial harmony.  He was a student on that panel and recalls that, “One of my co-panelists was aggrieved over the book Little Black Sambo. But Sambo was not an African American; he was from the subcontinent. And besides, as I recall saying that evening, I had nothing but the highest respect for Sambo. If anyone asked me to turn tigers into butter for my pancakes, I confess that I would be entirely nonplussed” (p. 24).

Honestly, I staggered over the racial insensitivity in these comments. Not only that, I couldn’t fathom how these comments served any real purpose in understanding one another. I suppose most readers will know that Sambo came to be a very hurtful racial trope and image. It’s a racial slur and Sambo iconography, like the “Mammy” figures once so prevalent, exaggerate and transmogrify racial features so much that many African Americans still have deep visceral reactions to them. They’ve been such a potent tool of hatred, oppression and misrepresentation that I simply can’t fathom why Wilson would (a) miss his co-panelists grief over the book and the racial insensitivity associated with it and (b) trivialize the entire matter with comments about butter for pancakes. If you want to know what racial insensitivity looks like, it looks like this anecdote. With all Wilson’s learning and reflection on these issues, it’s difficult for me not to think this anecdote isn’t an example of that racial insensitivity born of willful ignorance.

More Skilled at Confessing the Supposed Sins of Black People

“None of us is clean in himself. So do whites need to seek and receive forgiveness for their treatment of the black man? Absolutely. But blacks also need the cleansing blood of Christ—some of it for treatment of fellow blacks, some for responding to white hatred with hatred, some of it for taking mistreatment of a great-grandfather as a license for crime, and so on. We are, all of us, sinners. And it is not fitting for a sinner to look sideways at someone else and say, ‘Well, I’m less of a sinner than you’” (pp. 29-30).

Reading this I was left wondering, Why is Wilson so expert at confessing Black people’s sins and so slight and general in confessing the sins of white people in a book partially about slavery? He’s certainly correct to say we all need forgiveness. But that’s not all he says. He goes on to identify a few instances of sin that Blacks need to be cleansed of. The net effect is that Black people come off looking like the bad guys in a book about slavery! Again, all of this without attending in any way to the causative factors of white oppression. Instead, he imagines some black people justifying their crime by referring to a great-grandfather’s mistreatment. The section reads like a chastisement of Black people. I don’t doubt that some people need chastisement. But the question is whether Wilson displays any sensitivity in making these comments. I don’t think so. He seems to conveniently forget that whites commit crimes against whites; whites claim Twinkies made them kill their parents;  and whites have used the “mistreatment” of other whites as grounds for their mistreatment of blacks. Do we remember Emmet Till who supposedly offended a white woman, or Rosewood, or even Trayvon Martin whose offense was walking while Black*? Wilson’s comments here lack tact, compassion, and charity. They are, in a phrase, “racially insensitive.”

On Black Lives and the Implied Charge of Black Indifference to Abortion

Finally, I find it insensitive toward black life that Wilson and many commenters continually bring up black lives in abortion in this discussion but refuse to countenance the cost of black lives in the antebellum South. For instance, Wilson writes: “Who cannot lament the damage to both white and black that has occurred as a consequence of the way in which slavery was abolished? I am forced to say that, in many ways, the remedy which has been applied has resulted in problems that are every bit as bad as the original disease ever was. Christians who doubt this should consider whether it was safer to be a black child in the womb in 1858 or in 2005″ (p. 60).

I don’t get the sense from the overall tone of the book that Wilson was truly “forced” to write these things. One gets the sense that he took a kind of delight in saying them. And I can’t help but see the omissions and blind spots that make these comments insensitive. We’re frequently told of the over 600,000 lives lost in the Civil War but not once do I recall a mention of the 4-5 times that number of lives lost in the Middle Passage and Southern slavery up to the war. It strikes me as at least inconsistent and at worst opportunistic to emphasize one’s concern for black lives today while writing in a manner that suggests indifference to black lives then.

Moreover, many of these comments insinuate that Black people themselves are callously disinterested in Black life today. Case in point: This paragraph from Wilson’s initial post struck me as tremendously insensitive about men he does not know (at least he does not know me):

The blood of Jesus also makes it possible for the white liberal to repent of his exasperating and cloying insistence on a soft bigotry of low expectations, coupled with his destructive subsidies of all the wrong things in the black community. But the blood of Jesus makes it possible for the liberal to repent of Margaret Sanger’s war on black children in utero. In addition, it requires that he repent of celebrating, and giving awards to, those rap thugs who want to teach America’s next generation to think of black women as bitches and ho’s who are supposed to be beneath contempt. In the face of this demolition job being run on the black family by progressivism, with black children killed by the million, and black women publicly degraded by black men, and other black men standing by letting them, let’s get out there and rebuke the three remaining people who think that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man. Way to keep the priorities straight.

Brothers, I don’t have a problem with you standing up for and protecting your people. I do have a problem with your failure to do so.

Ouch! Whoa! All this from a blog post and a tweet. I don’t know how “the soft bigotry of low expectations” or liberal support of “destructive subsidies of all the wrong things in the black community” came into all of this. But it sounds to me like so much racially-loaded and insensitive speak. I’ve never given awards to “rap thugs” and I don’t use the language Wilson felt free to use in description of black women. And I don’t regard myself as “standing by” while such treatment goes on or children are killed. Nor do I think any of Wilson imaginings in these paragraphs amount to my failure to stand up for and protect my people. They’re his imagination and racially insensitive ones at that.

To be frank, I think Wilson should retract statements made in Black and Tan and really should apologize for the comments made in his post, “With a Bit of Menthol.” These comments are well beyond the lines drawn for us by our Lord in His word.

Conclusion

There are other examples I thought to provide. But this has gone on far longer than I’d hoped or planned. I wish I could write these things more succinctly. On second thought, I wish I didn’t have to write these things at all. I wish racially insensitive comments were not a part of Black and Tan, or a part of any internet exchanges between brothers. But, such comments are and we have to try to charitably work through them. I pray this post has made even incremental progress to that end. Racial insensitivity (and racism) is real. The hurt it causes is real. The loss to the church and its witness is real. But real, too, is the power of the Holy Spirit, the hope of the gospel, and the indwelling of Christ which can lift us above these thins by actually resolving them and reconciling. May the Lord be pleased to grant us such victory with one another and not over one another.

———

* A couple of readers of this post found this reference to Trayvon Martin insensitive. I take their point and have offered an apology in the comments thread and separately in this post. I asked their counsel as to whether to leave the comment in the post or delete it. Those who replied suggested leaving it in the post with this kind of notation. Again, I offer a sincere apology for using a reference that would cause confusion, consternation, doubt, or anger for any reader. In an effort to argue for sensitivity in our communication about volatile issues, I certainly do not want to be insensitive in the process. May the Lord be gracious to us all.

In my last post regarding the historical outlook of Black and Tan, I included a post-script which I’d hoped would encourage us all to step back from “our” narratives to more fully consider the perspectives of others. I was contending that we live in a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-everything world. I think that’s irrefutable.

Today, Wilson responded with another very charitable engagement with my critique of Black and Tan‘s view of history and a push-back regarding my post-script.

Not responding to every response has helped Wilson and I keep the conversation moving and prevented us from being bogged down into very fine details. Those details are relevant but probably don’t fit a blog format very well. That’s why we have books with footnotes and the like. So, I don’t intend this to get us down into the thicket of historical detail or twist us in the brier of “he said-she said.” But I do want to attempt a quick reply to Wilson’s latest post with the hope of mutual understanding and charitable iron-sharpening.

Like Wilson, I have found every post in this back-and-forth to meet the requirements of Ephesians 4:29 and the Bible’s call for charity between brothers who disagree. I’m grateful–deeply grateful–for Wilson’s spirit in all of this because we’ve all seen our share of internet exchanges that fail to meet the tests of Scripture. So, Doug, “thank you” again for being willing to engage and for staking out your positions with a concern for truth and grace. I would have left comments like this on your blog several times by now but for some reason I can’t get the comment feature to work even though I’m registered. Oh well, on to my reply.

Critique 1: Black and Tan is not history.

Wilson concedes this point, but adds in his defense: “First, Thabiti is quite right that B&T is not, and was not intended to be, a work of history proper. I agree that my book is more a statement of an historical outlook than it is a foundation for that historical outlook. This approach has its limitations, but they need not be crippling limitations.” He then goes on to mention Genovese’s helpful comments on the manuscript and commendation of Wilson’s grasp of the intersection between American slavery and Christian theology.

Actually, I do think the book’s weaknesses here are “crippling.” The book doesn’t merely assert that “slavery was not that bad,” it goes on to argue that relationships between slaves and their owners were really quite good and to assert the outstanding Christian character of the South. Those assertions, it seems to me, are critical for the book’s analogy to abortion and our contemporary responses to abortion to hold. For if American chattel slavery fails to display the more benign character Wilson holds, the entire thing becomes a house of cards. Consequently, for such a dramatically revised view of the history to “stick” most thoughtful readers will require documentation well beyond the brief citations of a couple secondary works. Moreover, Genovese’s commendation doesn’t bolster the book’s argument, nor should we take it as a golden seal of approval. The Decline of African-American Theology boasts an endorsement from Dr. Dwight N. Hopkins, widely regarded as a leader in Black Liberation Theology and heir-apparent to James Cone. He says, “Thabiti Anyabwile builds on rich religious scholarship for the black church in the U.S.A.” I’m grateful for his endorsement and taking the time to read the book. But, judging from the differences between Dr. Hopkins’ emphasis and my own, that comment can hardly be interpreted as an unqualified endorsement of the book. Likewise, we don’t want to make too much of Genovese’s endorsement of Black and Tan, especially if said endorsement is being offered as a substitute for historical groundwork.

Critique 2: Black and Tan attempts a revision of history.

Here, I argued that Wilson needed to provide a lot of historical evidence if he was going to overturn the well-established narrative about American chattel slavery’s dehumanizing nature. To which Wilson replied, “Thabiti points to the “massive claim” that slavery was more benign than the literature of the abolitionists indicated. But I believe that this point really was established by Fogel and Engerman, and I cited them as having made it.”

I’d simply say that citing one source is nowhere near sufficient for substantiating the historical outlook Wilson maintains in Black and Tan. I suspect that if a student of Wilson’s attempted to counter the Southern conservative intellectual tradition’s narrative regarding, say, state’s rights, Wilson would require more than a reference to a Lincoln biographer writing 150 years later. Citing one source–a source very much debated–simply doesn’t hold muster when it comes to making a case on the magnitude that Black and Tan assumes.

Critique #3: Black and Tan needed to interact with a wider range of sources and opinions.

On this critique Wilson writes, “I think this is an entirely reasonable point. I have no objection to doing something like that….” He sees himself as doing that now, by which I take him to refer to these exchanges. He believes having done this “would have made Black and Tan a better book.” I agree, and I’m glad we agree. I hope that some future work from Wilson might attempt to remedy this omission and that he might especially use source material left by slaves themselves. Throughout Black and Tan I kept wondering, “But why doesn’t he include some statements from Black people themselves regarding what slavery was like?” Some good general introductions would be Mellon’s Bullwhip Days and Johnson’s, God Struck Me Dead. Both include first-hand narratives from the perspective of slaves in the twilight of the institution, and the conversion testimonies in God Struck Me Dead have useful glimpses into the slave’s perspective on that intersection of slavery and Christian theology. Including material of this sort would not only make Black and Tan a better book, it would make Black and Tan a different book.

Critique #4: Post-Mill assumptions make Black and Tan’s judgment of Southern history too optimistic

That was my contention, which I did not develop. I had in mind comments like: “The discipleship of the nations is a process. This means that the South was (along with all other nations) in transition from a state of pagan autonomy to one of full submission to the Lordship of Christ. Christian influence in the South was considerable and extensive, but the laws of the South still fell short of the biblical pattern. In spite of this, the Christian influence on antebellum Southern culture surpassed most other nations in the world of that time” (pp. 51-52).

Wilson writes in his post today that “postmill thinking doesn’t require us to believe that the past was altogether rosy. There are many historical hellholes that I believe were genuine hellholes, and this is not in tension with my postmillennialism at all.” I agree that post-mill thinking doesn’t require a unilaterally rosy view of the past. But I think Wilson’s view of the South falls far closer to “rosy” than “hellhole.” I suspect that assuming the possibility of something called a “Christian nation” and “the discipleship of nations” and a national “full submission to the Lordship of Christ” has a lot to do with post-mill understandings. If so, I think it’s corrupting Wilson’s view of the South precisely by making him too optimistic about its character and past. Without a fuller articulation of the historical evidence and/or how his post-mill views play into all this, I’m at least left guessing that’s the way his millennial views are at work.

The Post-Script on Multicultural Realities and Perspectives

Finally, in his critique of my post-script, Wilson wrote in part:

I would want us to be careful to distinguish multicultural realities, which are characteristic of our triune God’s creativity, and multiculturalism, which is a false and very postmodern way of refusing to privilege any historical narrative whatever. But such a refusal, in order to be workable at all, would have to include the scriptural narrative of creation, fall, flood, exile, return, not to mention the death and resurrection of the Messiah. Postmodernists don’t like any metanarrative – and the Bible is the biggest hegemon of them all. But then, after postmodernism has rejected all hegemonic stories, it keels over and points all four hooves toward the sky, and quietly decomposes into the future of every form of relativism.

I am as much concerned about the next hegemon as I am about the last one, and my concerns about the last one are largely wrapped up in wanting to learn the appropriate lessons so that we might not get ourselves a tyrant for the next one. In order to do this we have to assert that while we don’t have automatic access to a God’s-eye-view of history, there nevertheless is a God, and therefore there is a God’s-eye-view of history. He has given us a good portion of an inspired history in Scripture so that we might learn how to imitate it, and we should do our best to do exactly that. As we do our best, we know that we are fallible and so we should always be open to correction. We should do history with a confident humility, and a humble confidence.

Okay, now it’s time for me to say, “I’m not that kind of multiculturalist” in the same way that Wilson might say, “I’m not that kind of ‘Confederate’ or ‘neo-Confederate’.” That is to say, in conversations like this we always face the danger of not defining terms or pausing to know what the other guys means when they say ‘x’.

I completely agree with Wilson that there is a comprehensive, infallible, exhaustive meta-narrative. It is God’s metanarrative. Our Lord knows all, sees all, ordains all, and governs all. He comprehends the ends from the beginning, and I shout with the sacred writer, “Let God be true and every man a liar!” I want to ratify, endorse, sign off on, and cheer the call to “do history with a confident humility, and a humble confidence.” That’s well-stated, in typical Wilson fashion.

However, I think ethnic minorities and White evangelicals use “multicultural” and “multiculturalism” in two entirely different ways. When almost every ethnic minority I’ve ever had the conversation with uses the term “multicultural” or “multiculturalism,” they’re simply talking about the inclusion of their persons and their perspectives in the broader story of America or whatever story is in view at the time. It’s a way of saying, “We’re here, too.” I can’t think of a single conversation where a person from an ethnic background used “multiculturalism” as a joust against meta-narrative. We use it to push back on hegemony and the assumed normative nature of White western ideals and values, but not against the very nature of truth or of God’s controlling narrative. So we bristle and, quite honestly, assume the worst when we hear our white brethren rail against “multiculturalism.” It sounds to us like an adamant argument against our inclusion in the discourse and the history–an exclusion which we have historically felt the brunt of.

But I’ve learned that most of my White evangelical brothers are usually referring to something else entirely when they talk about the “ism” of “multiculturalism.” They’re stiffening their backs to defend the idea of absolute truth against the kind of “postmodern relativity” Wilson mentions. They’re aware of the postmodern theorists who really do deny any overarching story one could call in any absolute sense “true.” They deny Francis Schaeffer’s notion of “true truth” and embrace the skepticism of Derrida, Foucault and others. I happily join my white brothers in the fight against such claims!

But postmodernism–whether an academic or man on the street variety–is not at all what I mean when I use the term “multicultural” or “multiculturalism.” When my White friends think “postmodernism” while I’m thinking “include me,” we’re having two different conversations drawing upon two different experience from our respective “worlds,” and we’re missing each other completely. One walks away thinking, That’s a white supremacist racist way of viewing me, history, etc. The other walks away thinking, I’m tired of these attempts to deny the truth and to overthrow what’s good about my history, culture, and people. In the vast majority of cases, both walk away with false conclusions because they haven’t understood the other’s use of the term or the underlying concerns.

And this use of “multiculturalism” in our back and forth, it seems to me, illustrates and proves the point of my post-script. Unless we make room to really listen to one another and hear what the other is saying and meaning we doom ourselves to disastrous results. Wilson writes near the end of his post, “while I believe that it is valuable to hear different multicultural perspectives of different groups, especially on a subject as convoluted as this one, we must do so in a way that clearly resists every form of relativism.” Amen. And, we must also do so in a way that clearly questions the centrality of our own experience.

This exchange regarding “multiculturalism” proves another point as well: Listening is hard, slow work. Even when we’ve worked as hard as Wilson has to hear me, or as hard as I’ve worked to hear Wilson, it’s still entirely possible to misfire at various points. Then we have to go back and listen all over again–perhaps suspecting ourselves and our assumptions a bit more. It’s hard, slow work, but I think it’s worth it.

During my days of touring college campuses to hear men like Molefi Asante, Yosef ben Jochanon, Ivan van Sertima, Naim Akbar, and Wade Nobles wax poetic about Africentrism, African history, and the need for a genuinely multicultural American society, it was commonplace to argue that history was his story (lower case ‘h’). So much of what makes it into print in the widely published and standard texts, we were told, was written from the vantage point of white western elites who knew little of the peoples and cultures of Africa. We studiously took our place in the narrative wars of history and counter-history. Not only is one man’s terrorist another man’s freedom fighter, but it turns out that one man’s conspiracy theorist is another man’s historian.

I’m reminded of all this reading many of the comments and responses in the threads to these posts on Black and Tan. Many have questioned Wilson’s history of the American South, and others have fired back with facts and quotes in defense of that view. Every quote is met with a counter-quote, and on it goes. It sometimes looks like the amateur historian’s version of the preacher’s weak proof text (which is sometimes really a pretext for an a priori position).

In an earlier post, I thought we might be able to skip any discussion of the underlying history involved. I thought that because Wilson and I hold very similar views of the biblical texts, their priority, and their implications. I was hoping for some progress on biblical grounds, since we both think that’s precisely the ground at stake and the ground upon which Christians should stand. But, it seems a few general remarks about history and about Black and Tan‘s history are warranted.

An Appreciation

Let me begin with an appreciation. I’m grateful for Wilson’s defense of the generalist historian. Wilson understands that there’s no way to be a good pastor without having at least a general grip on history—secular and redemptive. He writes, “Historical laymen should read broadly enough to make sure they are not reading some truncated account or other, but neither should they be embarrassed by the necessity of popularizing the material” (pp. 8-9). I agree with this sentiment entirely. I join with Wilson in both appreciating the necessary role specialists play while affirming that all us non-specialists have a stake and role in telling the story as well. After all, good history has to be our story too.

Some Concerns with Black and Tan‘s Approach to History

But having said that, the “history” assumed in Black and Tan does provoke a few concerns. These concerns need to be touched upon because our view of what happened shapes our view of who we are, what is, and what ought to be. Again, Wilson and I agree: If we get the past wrong we’re likely to get every subsequent thing wrong, also. So to avoid that domino effect, we need to give attention to historical method.

From my perspective, Black and Tan is lacking in four ways.

First, Black and Tan is not history. The book makes claims about history, but it’s not a presentation or exposition of history in any sense that I could recognize. Now, I realize that Black and Tan is in many ways Wilson’s apologetic for Slavery As It Was—a work I have not read but understand to have presented more history than Black and Tan. Perhaps Wilson allows himself the convenience of not restating the arguments of Slavery As It Was. But the consequence, as he puts it, is a book with “an ad-hoc, ragtaggy feel” (p. 119). In my reading, that “feel” is felt most where historical claims are in view.

It’s difficult to offer a critique of the history since there’s no clear substantive historical basis to the book. For example, Wilson writes that “it is necessary to get clear on the nature of American slavery, which was not what it’s abolitionist opponents claimed for it” (p. 4). But he doesn’t give us either a sustained critique of abolitionist claims or a sustained argument for a different view. That being the case, readers of the book who take seriously the book’s claims about the nature of Southern slavery or the South in general are at least going to have to do a lot of homework themselves or at worst be prone to making serious mistakes in understanding the who, why, and what of contemporary society. We have to be careful here. How can we with intellectual integrity take the premise of Slavery as It Was as true without its doing anything to overturn the eyewitness testimony in American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses, for example? I chuckled at the amazing similarity of the titles. Then I thought to myself, What makes one title more reliable than the other? Until Wilson offers a substantive history, I’m afraid the burden of proof rests with him against eyewitness testimony.

Second, Black and Tan attempts historical revision. Wilson knows that “History is storytelling” and “Faithful history is faithful storytelling” (p. 8). But he’s concerned that the storytelling regarding American slavery and the South haven’t been all that faithful. He knows that facts matter, that “we… read the story with our loyalties intact,” and “Humility is hard” (p. 9). Wilson rightly maintains that “Objectivity is a false god” (p. 10), that “Some historians sin through hagiography and others sin through debunking” (p. 11), that it’s possible that “after about a hundred years or so, [political correctness] turns into historical correctness” (p. 11), and that “Proud ignorance is no better than proud knowledge” (p. 12). I take this to mean Wilson understands how fraught with complexity and pitfalls writing and re-writing history can be.

But he contends that the established narrative about slavery and the Civil War needs revising at critical points lest we misunderstand ourselves and our present cultural battles. “Some of the things that we think are slam-dunk certainties will almost certainly turn out not to be” (p. 10). Central to the book’s thesis and Wilson’s logic is the notion that “antebellum slavery was the normal kind of sinful situation” rather than “Apocalyptic Evil” (p. 4). In defense of Slavery as It Was, Wilson writes, “It was the contention of this booklet that the way in which slavery ended has had ongoing deleterious consequences for modern Christians in our current culture wars, and that slavery was far more benign in practice than it was made to appear in the literature of the abolitionists” (p. 14; emphasis added). That’s a massive claim.

So the first thing we ought to ask as good readers is, “How does the author know that?” The first responsibility of any writer must be to make his or her case clear to the reader. As someone that’s written his own book attempting some historical revision, I think I know two things: (1) such revisions are needful and can be helpful, and (2) if you’re going to attempt revising a long-held historical narrative you’d better bring plenty of evidence to substantiate your claims!

The worst kind of revisionist history is the kind that claims without certifying. Because Black and Tan suffers in that way, it’s vulnerable to every “Southern” agenda that opportunistically makes use of such claims. If for no other reasons, I hope Wilson will significantly modify this book to protect himself from those agendas and to make real contributions to a rich and still contested history. That will require more than mere assertion; it’ll require argumentation from source material and without the entanglements that keep us from being heard.

Third, Black and Tan represents a biased retelling of history. Wilson rightly points out that we all “do history” from a vantage point and questions how completely “objective” we can be in writing history. But though we’re not omniscient and though our assumptions influence us—sometimes unwittingly—it’s another thing altogether to adopt a point-of-view so deeply that we only present those things that confirm our bias. I think Black and Tan fails in this way.

Wilson tells us from the start that “to grasp the central issues, it is necessary to be steeped in a particular intellectual tradition” (p. 5). He has “the Southern conservative intellectual tradition” in mind. He doesn’t tell us why we must be “steeped” in that tradition. Instead, Wilson notes a deep hostility among some critics of this tradition and suspects no amount of argumentation will get through to them. We all know critics like that, don’t we? But it seems, those critics notwithstanding, Wilson has perhaps put himself in the lamentable position of preaching only to the choir of the Southern conservative intellectual tradition. He may be putting the pertinent facts and events outside the “grasp” of people from other traditions. That bias significantly limits the usefulness of this book.

That biased perspective also significantly curtails the range of resources used in Black and Tan. I counted roughly 90-95 footnotes in the work. Only a handful of those referenced historical works actually focusing on the antebellum South or the Civil War. There were two books by Eugene Genovese, A Consuming Fire and The Southern Front. Fogel and Engerman’s Time on the Cross was cited along with Weaver’s Southern Tradition at Bay. Dabney receives a number of notations. Apart from Dabney, who ardently defended the South and slavery, Genovese receives the most frequent approving citations. Wilson describes Genovese as “a modern and sympathetic critic of the South” (p. 59). But what about other views of the South and slavery written either by Southerners or about them? We’re not treated to any other perspectives. Even when Black and Tan calls upon Black writers like Benjamin Quarles, it does so to document the fact that a “small handful” of Blacks fought for the South in the Civil War (p. 73). Anyone who knows Quarles’ work knows Quarles would be unsympathetic with Wilson’s premise and probably chagrined to see his book brought into this service.

I understand that Black and Tan was written amidst controversy and a lot of criticism and personal attack. I understand how that context could make a person pessimistic about his opponents giving him a fair shake. I simply wish the book would have engaged the histories and story-telling outside the Southern conservative intellectual tradition. Having failed to do that, Black and Tan simply affirms its a priori assumptions.

Fourth, the post-mil perspective of Black and Tan makes it too optimistic about the South’s history. Much has been said about this already. I won’t belabor the point except to say that given the first three limitations this final perspective surely corrupts Wilson’s reading of the South and its culture.

For these reasons we should not think of or use Black and Tan as resource on either the historical period in question or a helpful way to understand our present situation. Wilson writes early on in Black and Tan: “the fact that I am willing to teach on historical subjects does not mean that I somehow think I am infallible. I have been wrong on numerous points over the years—sometimes the mistake is mine, and sometimes a source leads me astray. The point of all this is simply to say that on such subjects I am always open to correction, and moreover I am eager for it” (p. 3). Thus far, Wilson has been nothing but gracious. We’ve found ourselves agreeing on a number of things along the way. I suspect we’ll find a good amount to disagree about regarding the actual history of the South and slavery. I hope, and have no reason to think otherwise, that he’ll be willing to consider these points about the history assumed in Black and Tan and make modifications at a number of points.

A Post-Script

History belongs to us all—not just the winners. Wilson and I agree about that. I want to end my critique of the “history” in Black and Tan at this point. I just want to say a few things about us all and our readings and conversations about history.

It’s imperative that we (by which I mean all people and Christian people, in particular) understand that we don’t share the same experience of the same events. If we’re going to grow in understanding one another, we’ll have to allow the other to tell their story with empathy for “their side.” I don’t begrudge Southerners telling their history and defending themselves at various points along the way. Likewise, other Southerners (for to be “Southern” is not one thing), African Americans, Northerners, etc. have other stories to tell about the same events. But much of the rhetoric in the comments thread hasn’t allowed the same courtesy to others. When that happens we fall prey to thinking there’s only one objective, infallible history—and usually we think it’s ours.

I’ve noted the occasional jab at “public school education” and textbooks used there. I’ve read the disdaining remarks about “multiculturalism” and “postmodern relativism.” These are the charges and labels used whenever some have contended that “there’s another side” to that told in Black and Tan or, more often, by those who seem to support the work.

Such rejections are problematic for a number of reasons. First, they reveal an unwillingness to deal with the world as it really is. We already live—like it or not—in a multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-everything world. We’ll either engage it fruitfully or bury ourselves under an avalanche of sentimental “histories” of bygone eras. Second, such rejections generally take for granted the normative nature of one’s own cultural and historical vantage point. This always leads to misunderstanding. Third, these rejections really serve a hegemonic purpose and refuse to admit as legitimate the counter-narratives caused by that hegemony. The 19^th century saw a lot of White Southern talk about “civilization” and the greatness of Western civilization. That talk is still with us. Many of those who take that view can’t fathom why African Americans, for example, talk much about African civilizations and the contributions of African Americans to our present “western” civilization. They don’t see (or refuse to see in some cases) how the “White Western civilization” narrative, which has historically disenfranchised and dehumanized Black people, necessitated a counter-narrative to correct the caricatures, misrepresentations, and racist viewpoints. In other words, we’re locked in this battle of telling and re-telling precisely because some people refuse to admit there are more people in the portrait than just those resembling themselves.

As W. Fitzhugh Brundage documents so insightfully in The Southern Past: A Clash of Race and Memory, the battle of competing narratives has been literally carved into the landscape of the South and has been encoded in racial memory. To come back to Wilson for a moment, he’s surely correct to contend that the effects of the Civil War live with us and the way the War ended slavery impacts our lives today. I just think it impacts us and our relationships across “racial” lines more than it does public policy. So, for my concluding post, I’ll comment on this issue of “racial insensitivity” and why I think it’s legitimate to point to Black and Tan as an example.

We’re soldiers in a war. We have orders from our Captain. We dare not involve ourselves in civilian affairs. We must please the One who enlists us (2 Tim. 2:4). What good soldier would set aside orders from his Commanding Officer in order to enjoy the pursuits of civilian pleasure? Leaving his post would most definitely imperil his company.

Consequently, we must be very careful about the entanglements we choose. We must be careful to discern the difference between biblical marching orders and matters important to the many civilians who live around us. That’s particularly true of the pastor, a kind of lieutenant to the Commanding Officer.

Doug Wilson has offered a response to my last post, a post which appealed for two things: (1) a more radical (in the old sense of the word, meaning at the root) application of the Bible’s command to love and (2) a continuance of Wilson’s charitable tone in our discussion in future discussions of race, slavery, the Bible, etc. On this second point, I opined that Wilson might be more effective at communicating his points and less encumbered by false perceptions of his views if he would disentangle his rather clear statements against slavery and racism from statements that seem to celebrate the Old South, defend slave owners, and minimize the negative aspects of slavery.

Wilson responded, in part, by saying he fears “the racial situation in America has gotten so inflamed, people like me are not allowed to treat issues in isolation. Writing Black & Tan was racially insensitive? But so is orthodox Trinitarian theology anywhere in the neighborhood of T.D. Jakes. If allowed to speak on racism in a vacuum, I think I would do fine. But we don’t live in vacuum; we live in this messy thing called history.”

His next paragraph illustrates the intertwining of his views of political history and slavery:

I have said before that I would have fought for the South, despite the convictions I hold on the ungodliness of racially-based chattel slavery. I would have done this for various reasons — for limited constitutional government, against the Whig/Republican drive toward centralized federal government, against the tax/tariff policies of the centralizers, etc. Someone might urge me, “Why don’t you just drop the whole issue? Slavery is gone, man.” Right, and I never would have fought to defend slavery as such. Right, slavery is gone, but the centralizers are still here. The anti-constitutionalists are still here. The federal government is still here, as arrogant as ever. All the taxes and then some are still here. The Bible is still here, and its description of homosexuality as an abomination is still here. Fifty million Americans, 30% or so of them black, would have been here if somebody hadn’t twisted the Constitution into a surgical device for dismembering babies, red and yellow, black and white.

By intertwining these things, Wilson does not mean to suggest he shrinks back from the responsibility to denounce racism. “Now I still think it is my obligation to be crystal clear on the racism issue — because I believe genuine racism is a gospel-threatening sin — but our public discourse in these troubled times is structured in such a way that it is virtually impossible to speak God’s truth in a number of areas without incurring spurious charges of racism.” He simply means he cannot make such denunciations without involving himself in a number of other contested issues he sees as related.

I’ve tried but I’ve been unable to understand why Wilson sees the denunciation of racism as inseparable from “this messy thing called history” and “a number of areas… incurring spurious charges of racism.” Scores of writers distinguish those two things nearly every day in everything from blog posts to articles and opinion pieces to book-length treatments of either subject. We can pick up tomes on race and racism that make no mention of whether the Civil War was a crisis in constitutional polity or any mention of the Old South. Likewise, we can read numerous pieces on the Civil War that focus little on race and racism. In short, these issues are not as intertwined as Wilson thinks them to be. At least not where I sit and according to the plethora of treatments that avoid such commingling of issues.

Moreover, choosing to entangle the issues hurts both causes—either a stalwart, unclouded denunciation of racism or a revision of the South’s history and perception in popular, political or academic discourse. When entangling these topics revisionists of Southern history hurt their cause by leaving themselves open to charges of racism while opponents of racism hurt their cause by hitching their arguments to Old South revisionism. Neither side gains an audience.

Our Entanglements Sometimes Keep Us from Asking and Answering Other Important Questions

The cost of blending these topics run quite high. When Wilson writes, “I would have fought for the South, despite the convictions I hold on the ungodliness of racially-based chattel slavery,” it seems to me he fails to ask a critical question required by love: What about the lives, rights, and futures of enslaved African Americans? Are not these lives as important as the constitutional issues at stake? Are not the constitutional issues important precisely because lives are at stake? What about the constitutional issues makes them more important than one’s personal convictions “on the ungodliness of racially-based chattel slavery”? Do these considerations really trump human life?

Writing “I would have fought for the South, despite the convictions I hold on the ungodliness of racially-based chattel slavery” (emphasis added) can only mean that one was willing to countenance and take action to secure the continuation of “ungodliness.” Would we oppose God in order to secure the civilian affairs of the Old South? If we take the War to be a judgment upon the nation, why with the advantage of history’s hindsight would we still be committed to a cause that God condemned in judgment?

I find here a great inconsistency and mismanagement of priorities. Surely human life must rank higher in importance than governments. Though governments are appointed by God, they are appointed to preserve justice and life (Rom. 13). It seems Wilson’s commitment to the cause of the Old South prevents him from asking or ranking African American life above constitutional disputes. I think that’s the wrong set of priorities for a gospel minister, an ambassador of Christ, and a citizen of the kingdom of heaven. It seems to me that those priorities entangle us with civilian affairs, and those entanglements cost us clearer vision, consistent application of the Scripture, and human life.

On Terrorists and Freedom Fighters

As I read Wilson’s last post and skimmed over sections of Black and Tan, I couldn’t help but think of the old adage, “One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighters.” Wilson, siding with the Old South, sees himself as fighting for the freedom of the Southern States to secede from the union and organize life under their own constitution. I can’t help but see that as an act that would have further terrorized enslaved African Americans. I couldn’t help but ponder why Wilson would preach 1 Tim. 6:2 to enslaved African Americans rather than 1 Cor. 7:21.

Then I thought of my heroes in the dispute—the many African Americans who escaped to fight for the North, freedmen and free-born men who invested their precious life to join the Union Army, men and women who led the Underground Railroad, or “radicals” who mounted insurrections as occasion permitted. For me (literally, for me) they were freedom fighters—some more radical than others. Meanwhile, for others they were terrorists.

There are forms of “radicalism” other than the John Brown Harper’s Ferry variety. I think of the radicalism of a Martin Luther King, Jr., who, without recourse to violence, lived out the most radical sacrifice the Bible calls us to make: to love. To love our God, to love our brothers, to love our enemies. He wrote an impassioned letter explaining “Why We Can’t Wait.” The clergypersons who wrote to King asking him to “be patient” no doubt had their cultural, social, and political reasons for attempting to slow King’s movement. But “radical” that he was, he could not wait. With a preacher’s eloquence and biblical texts, he called a country to love and to the freedom love demands. I’m glad he didn’t wait. Because he didn’t wait I can write publicly to disagree with a White man and not fear loss of life or have to flee the southern city in which I now sit. I’m glad all those who heard the call of love chose to disentangle themselves form the laws of the day and to actively resist in nonviolent protest so that we might have a greater measure of freedom and justice for all.

Perhaps this is where Wilson and I reach an impasse. But I have no doubt that were the shackle on the other foot, every White reader of this conversation would have been seeking their freedom rather than rushing to biblical texts that seemed to require their acquiescence. When the founding fathers of America thought their liberties were contracted in unfair taxation, they fought a war against their own crown government, though their lives weren’t in immediate peril or their bodies bound. They didn’t wait or choose to fight for the oppressor they knew to be in the wrong. And when White southerners thought their way of life was compromised in the mid-1800s, they too fought a war for their freedom. Wilson says he understands that “natural inclination.” I believe he does. I would simply ask and hope that he might fight for the right of everyone to feel and pursue the same impulse to freedom and dignity that he has.

Last week, Doug Wilson and I carried on an internet conversation about his book, Black and Tan, and about the Bible’s teaching regarding slavery. I began the exchange with an explanation for responding publicly rather than privately, then continued by first attempting to summarize Wilson’s views on race and slavery as I understood them in Black and Tan. I followed that post by attempting to engage the underlying logic of the book as I saw it. Wilson responded very graciously in a post that that centered the discussion on the difference between the formal authority of Scripture and actual lived obedience to it. The discussion continued with my treatment of the biblical texts regarding slavery, which included an argument for immediatism in abolishing slavery.

As you can imagine, or perhaps have experienced, such conversations across ethnic lines are potentially explosive. Feelings can run high. Tongues can run loose. Hearts can run away with us.

So I have been completely delighted to see the Lord’s blessings on our exchanges. It seems to me that Wilson has worked hard to be charitable at every point, to engage the substance of my critiques after first accurately summarizing them, and to respond with further insight and clarity. It’s been the best kind of conversation about the hardest kind of topic. What more could we hope for?

Well, we could hope for some agreement. And, by God’s grace, Doug’s last post, “Love Is Never Later,” commits to a significant amount of agreement regarding the Bible’s teaching on slavery. I was surprised to learn our exegetical approach was more or less identical. I’ll let Wilson summarize the points of agreement as he sees them:

I agree completely with his first point about the authority of the global texts. The Golden Rule, to do as you would be done by, is absolutely relevant in discussions of slavery. Not only is it relevant, it would be relevant in intensely practical and immediate ways.

I agree with his second point about Philemon also. In fact, the only thing I differ with in this section is his apparent assumption that we differ. Speaking of the release of Onesimus, Thabiti says: “It seems to me that Paul expects this ‘favor,’ his ‘appeal on the basis of love,’ to be granted immediately—not gradually as Wilson argues in Black and Tan.”

But I agree completely with Thabiti about the manumission of Onesimus. Given the strength of Paul’s argument, I believe Onesimus was set free immediately, or within a very short time.

I agree with his third point about Paul pushing in a particular direction (toward liberty) in his household code instruction. Paul is working in the same direction as the Spirit of God is working, and that is always in the direction of liberty. That is what the gospel does.

With regard to his last point about the prohibition of “man-stealing,” I agree with most of his point, but not all of it. I do agree that the prohibition of man-stealing (or man-trafficking) is not only in effect when an ocean is involved. I believe that running domestic slave marketplaces would not have been a lawful occupation for believers at that time, any more than being a maritime slave-trader would have been. But it is when you get out to the end of the road and to the simple fact of ownership that the issue gets more complicated. That is where and when I believe the household codes of the New Testament provide some boundaries and some instruction, in the context of love. So I say this agreeing with Thabiti that, everything else being equal, a Christian master was always and everywhere under the law of Christ to seek the best interest of his slaves, as though he were in their position.

I thought it good to let Wilson’s last post soak in over the weekend. There’s so much agreement here to appreciate. In fact, in reflecting on Wilson’s post it seems profitable to scrap posts on the potential differences we might have on the nature of Southern slavery and discussion of Wilson’s post-mil views of the South as a Christian nation.

I’m fully aware that discussants have varying views on how bad slavery was or how “Christian” the South was, especially in light of slavery. Suffice it to say that there were atrocities well beyond the atrocities some have been willing to admit, and there were kindnesses well beyond anything some others would admit. Most slaves were not on large plantations with ruthless overseers, but in households of four or so. Plantation life could be dull while households could be cruel. The everyday existence of slaves and owners could both confirm and violate every stereotype and expectation we might have. So while discussions of the nature of slavery have their place, given the agreements we’ve already reached about immediate abolition treating those topics would be straining at so many gnats. Instead, it seems profitable to move to the exceptions that Wilson mentions in his last post, which perhaps (?) illustrate one key point of remaining disagreement about the nature of slavery.

Wilson writes:

I think the word immediately might need to be qualified somewhat. What about a slave-owner who never bought or sold any slaves? He inherited the plantation, and everybody was already there. Or suppose he just had two slaves, both in their eighties? Or what if he, like Jefferson, would not sell a slave family unless the family itself approved of it? I agree that Paul heavily leans toward setting slaves free, but there are other times when he does make lesser appeals for the meantime. He urges masters, for example, to “forbear threatening” (Eph. 6:9). And he tells slaves who have masters who have not yet picked up on the compelling logic of Philemon to not despise them (1 Tim. 6:2).

So Thabiti and I have agreed on the need for immediate, practical obedience. But immediate obedience might not mean immediate manumission. Wherever it did mean that, Thabiti and I agree. But suppose I am a pastor in 1858, and a young man who is a fine Christian comes to me for counsel. He has just inherited the family plantation, owns 25 slaves as a result, is troubled by the situation, and wants to know what to do. My counsel would be designed to get him (and his slaves) out of that circumstance as quickly as possible — so long as it was consistent with the well-being of everyone. In other words, start implementing the law of Christ today. But because of the outside circumstances, the full process might take years — freeing the children when they were born, teaching literacy and productive trades, providing for the elderly, etc.

In these comments Wilson qualifies his sense of immediacy with a concern for the well-being of the slave to be freed and some attention to the particulars of a situation. I agree with Wilson that there may be situations where an instant manumission may not be practical—as in the case of very young children being freed without support, family, education, or trade.

Exceptions that Reveal the Rule

But, Wilson’s proposal raises a question for me that I think is pertinent in most of the exceptions Wilson imagines: Why not free the slave while at the same time providing for the now former slave’s needs anyway?

Excepting the case of very young children separated from natural parents, most of the people Wilson imagines could make their own decisions about their future and should be granted the right to do so with material support from their former owners. That support, I would argue, would have been part and parcel of the slave owner’s genuine repentance and indeed owed to the slave whose labor was never properly compensated.

If we agree that man-stealing is contrary to the gospel (1 Tim. 1:10) and that the system built upon it was likewise sinful, then it seems clear we must reject the very notion of one man owning another under those conditions. This is important because the most dehumanizing offense of American chattel slavery occurs at precisely this point. The abuses of body were one thing. But the abuses of human spirit, including the innate desire for liberty, were more significant crimes. That one man would constrict the liberty of another man at his whim and for his pleasure violates every natural inclination of humanity. Such bondage is contrary to even the natural spirit of liberty, the same animating spirit that prompted another war (some would say unjust) called the War of Independence, where already-free White men fought for even more freedom from an absentee government that had the gall to tax them without representation. If the spirit of liberty was alive and justified then, it seems we ought to allow that same spirit to thoroughly leaven our discussions of slavery’s end a hundred years later.

I realize we’re down into hypothetical exceptions at this point. And it’s not difficult for me to imagine that on many exceptions Wilson and I would likely be in complete agreement. But, even in these exceptional cases, I’m arguing for a recognition of the deeper principle: Unless a person sells himself into slavery (see Lev. 25, for example), no man has a right to own another man. Even in the exceptional cases of old age, very young age, disability, etc., we should apply this principle while simultaneously ameliorating the effects of enslavement as best as possible.

Why Do People Think Wilson Defends Slavery?

I’m pushing for this principle for another reason also. I’ve watched many people leaving comments vigorously contend that Wilson “defends slavery,” and I’ve watched Wilson vigorously deny the charge. He’s been just as consistent in denying the charge as people have been in making it. So we’re left wondering why so many readers of Black and Tan think he defends Southern slavery when he insists he does no such thing.

I think it has to do with this issue of working the call for immediate abolition down into the bone and marrow of our view of Southern slavery. When Wilson calls for a Southern “gradualism” and “reformation” rather than “revolution,” he appears to leave open the possibility of slavery’s continuance in the South. When he contends that slavery in the South wasn’t “Apocalyptic Evil” but “Normal Sin,” he appears to suggest that the continuance of slavery would be in the bounds of tolerance, the kind of normal indwelling sin that will be with us until we’re freed from these bodies of death. When Wilson expresses his appreciation for some Southern theologians who themselves defended slavery in ways Wilson does not, or exhorts “patience” as part of the remedy to the ordinary sins of slavery, he appears to side with the oppressors over the oppressed. When he argues the South was an advanced “Christian nation” and that it “has long carried the stigma of racism and bigotry,” he appears to defend and laud that nation and time despite the “abomination” (his word) called slavery.

Taken together, these minor points (I take them to be minor given his stated agreements above) take on a prominence in Black and Tan. Protests to the contrary fall flat because these sentiments, peppered throughout the book, occur with such regularity and rhetorical force the reader can be forgiven for thinking they’re actually a bigger part of Wilson’s thinking than perhaps they are.

It seems to me that Wilson’s firmer exegetical ground would be strengthened if it were unencumbered by statements that could reasonably be interpreted as defenses of American chattel slavery. His clear denunciations of racism and “racial vainglory” and white supremacy would be heard more clearly if they weren’t spoken in this din of potential counter messages.  Moreover, his pastoral concern for obedience to the Scripture when the Bible is most unpopular and Christians are most likely to be embarrassed or bullied (see this for a right now example) would be seen and valued for the prescient insight that it is. In short, the aspects of Wilson’s thinking that would be most helpful to the Church of our Lord are being drowned out by these uncertain trumpet sounds.

So much would be gained if Wilson dropped those points or restated them in a manner more consistent and proportional to his true views of slavery and its abolition. I don’t presume to tell him what is worth defending, explaining, or revising in this history. I really don’t. But, with the apostle Paul, I would appeal to Wilson on the basis of love for future writing that continues the kind of measured and charitable tone he has used in our exchanges. It would make a significant difference for the unity of the church and learning from one another when we differ on important but secondary matters.

In my previous post, I attempted to interact with what I saw as the underlying logic of Black and Tan. I argued that the logic of the book didn’t hold up because (a) Wilson’s assumption about departures from biblical authority didn’t prove true and (b) Wilson commits a genetic fallacy when he links the way slavery was ended (Civil War and Reconstruction) with the way contemporary culture wars are fought and resolved.

Wilson kindly replied to my first critique by first accurately and fairly summarizing my position, a gesture I appreciate and am encouraged by. I’m grateful he has shown both a willingness to interact publicly and privately as well as a willingness to engage the substance of this issue. In his reply to my first point about biblical authority, Wilson distinguished between formal authority and functional authority. He agreed with me that both sides showed a very high allegiance to formal authority, that is, they held a doctrinally high view of the Scriptures. But he thinks my critique of Black and Tan fails because the concern of Black and Tan was for functional authority, “a view of authority shown in obedience, and not just formal willingness to appeal to Scripture to justify what you already wanted to do.”

In my last post, I committed to picking up my critique with some comments about exegesis and application of the biblical texts pertinent to slavery. Wilson’s reply makes for a nice segue since we’re both truly concerned with actual obedience. When I argue that the North privileged different texts—and I agree with Wilson that theological arguments almost always feature this difference—I was not suggesting that such privileging was or should be acceptable as pretext for actual disobedience. To the contrary, I think many anti-slavery advocates were in fact obeying the texts they privileged which is what led them to their abolitionist position. How might that be? Let me attempt a brief exegesis of pertinent texts as an illustration.

Do We Swim Upstream or Downstream on the Issue of Slavery?

Wilson does attempt in Black and Tan to interpret and apply texts of Scripture beyond the household codes and their instructions to slaves and masters. He does, for example, argue from the creation account, the post-flood re-population of the earth, and Acts 17:26 that all men are men, created in God’s image, and cousins descended from the same parents. He also argues that we’re all even more closely related in our common fallenness in sin. That theological anthropology informs his rejection of racism, slavery based on race, and racial vainglory. But when we’ve put the household codes alongside the texts that give us our biblical anthropology, have we yet put all the relevant texts on the table?

We have not. To begin with the household codes, it seems to me, is to begin swimming too far down stream. To take the codes as (a) establishing the legitimacy or permissibility of Roman slavery and (b) authoritative in American chattel slavery, because of its relatively “better” condition than Roman slavery, assumes or overlooks far too much biblical text—biblical texts that abolitionists privileged in this discourse.

What texts am I speaking of? I would privilege all the biblical texts that command love for neighbor (Matt. 22:35-39), love for enemies (Matt. 5:43-48), and especially love for brothers and sisters in Christ. This, our Lord teaches us, is the second greatest commandment. All the Law and the Prophets hang upon this command and the command to love God above all (Matt. 22:40). Jesus teaches us that love is the distinguishing mark of true discipleship, a mark that should be so evident that the world will know we’re His disciples (John 13:34-35). The apostle John elevates love to almost a synonym for the gospel itself—”This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another.” He continues, “And this is his command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us” (1 John 3:11, 23). John tells us we have no right to regard ourselves as Christians apart from love for the brothers (1 Jn 4:20-21).

Now, lest someone think I’m trying to pull a fast one by pointing to a “general principle” to avoid more specific and toothier commands, let me hasten to point out that biblical love is a very fangy creature! It’s not mere sentiment devoid of action. Recall that love is a verb in 1 Corinthians 13. And the apostle John tells us, “Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth” (1 Jn 3:18). I am contending that the command to love should have been obeyed and it should have been the controlling command in the entire debate. I argue that for this reason: love is everywhere commanded and slaveholding is nowhere commanded. We must realize we are comparing a positive injunction against an arguable freedom. Before we insist on obedience to the household codes, which address a matter of Christian freedom (at best), we need to insist on obedience to the greatest commands, which are not a matter of Christian freedom but obligation to God—indeed evidence of whether or not we really know God.

What Does Obedience to the Command to Love Look Like in the Context of Slavery?

Well, how should the command to love be worked out by a Christian master? We have one place in scripture that specifically addresses the relationship between a known Christian slaveholder and a known Christian slave. Philemon.  We’ll come to the household codes in a moment. But consider how the apostle Paul addresses slavery and slaveholding in the one place where manumission is in view. He writes, first of all, to commend Philemon for the faith and love he shows all the saints—that’s the same apostolic wedding of genuine faith and love we saw in 1 John. Then Paul makes his move based on that affirmation.  ”Therefore, although in Christ I could be bold and order you to do what you ought to do, yet I appeal to you on the basis of love. I then, as Paul—an old man and now also a prisoner of Christ Jesus—I appeal to you for my son Onesismus, who became my son while I was in chains. Formerly he was useless to you, but now he has become useful both to you and to me” (vv. 8-11).

I emphasized the two portions in Paul’s words for this reason: I think Wilson is correct to argue that the gospel and the spirit of the gospel remains irremediably contrary to slavery and that the forcible end of slavery is not, from a Christian perspective, the best or first means to use. That, I think, is why Paul refuses to use even his legitimate apostolic authority to “order” Philemon. Moreover, I think Wilson and I agree that the “coercive” power of love is far more explosive, longer lasting, and attended with fewer (no?) side-effects than the use of force. Thus Paul’s appeal on the basis of love.

But—and this is no small “but”—I think Paul’s letter to Philemon exposes the serious and deadly flaw of Wilson’s sense of timing for the eradication of slavery and of Wilson’s seeming identification with the master class’s “right” to own slavers instead of identifying with the slave. Notice how Paul keeps rattling his own chains of imprisonment in Philemon’s ears. Paul identifies himself repeatedly as the prisoner, the bound man, the one without freedom. He could have identified himself as the man of authority, the apostle, the one with right to exert himself over others. He nowhere does. That, I think, is instructive for how Christians should engage discussions involving oppressors and the oppressed. We should normally be on the side of the oppressed in the fight for justice. And when Paul appeals to Philemon to treat Onesimus the way he would treat Paul, the implication is obvious—free him immediately. But we don’t have to rely on the implication; Paul states it in the text and that governs our sense of timing about how quickly love should work in manumission.

Consider verses 12-17, the heart of the letter: “I am sending him—who is my very heart—back to you. ¹³ I would have liked to keep him with me so that he could take your place in helping me while I am in chains for the gospel. ¹⁴ But I did not want to do anything without consent, so that any favor you do will be spontaneous and not forced. ¹⁵ Perhaps the reason he was separated from you for a little while was that you  might have him back for good—¹⁶ no longer as a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother. He is very dear to me but even dearer to you, both as a man and as a brother in the Lord. ¹⁷ So if you consider me a partner, welcome him as you would welcome me.”

It seems to me that Paul expects this “favor,” his “appeal on the basis of love,” to be granted immediately—not gradually as Wilson argues in Black and Tan. We don’t imagine that Philemon would receive to himself the apostle Paul as a slave (v. 17), but rather as a man and brother. Paul makes explicit—though gentle—his expectation—which he could have ordered—that Onesimus be “no longer a slave, but better than a slave, as a dear brother” (v. 16). Paul both frees Onesimus and elevates him in Philemon’s affections. Paul affirms Onesimus’ manhood and his brotherhood. Love—far from misty sentiment—governs this relationship by actively freeing Onesimus. This means that calls for immediate abolition of slavery were consistent with the gospel and with love. Whether the War was just is another matter, but at this point I only want to stress that immediatism was consistent obedience to the scripture. Wilson’s recommendation for a gradual approach does not seem consistent with gospel love. If he amended his position even at this one point it would mean a world of difference for how people hear his argument and perceive him.

I trust we see from Paul’s letter to Philemon the great dissimilarity between American chattel slavery and what Paul addressed, for American chattel slavery reduced Africans to 3/5 human and actively worked against the notion that the slaves’ conversion and baptism should mean their freedom (for a wonderful book-length treatment of this, see Rebecca Anne Goetz, The Baptism of Early Virginia: How Christianity Created Race). Paul maintains assumptions about the nature of man and the effect of conversion on master-slave relationships that are chalk and cheese, oil and water, night and day to the assumptions underpinning American slavery. Which brings us to…

The Household Codes and Their Application

Paul’s earliest statement on slavery and slaves comes in 1 Corinthians 7:21-24. This is an important passage because the overarching theme of 1 Corinthians 7-9 has to do with Christian liberty—the freedom to marry or not marry (chp 7), freedom in worship (chp 8), freedom and rights as an apostle (chp 9). Throughout the section Paul expresses a kind of ambivalence about the “situations” we find ourselves in when we’re called to Christ in salvation. He generally advocates staying in that situation and not letting it bother you, but he permits and encourages actions to change that situation especially when it serves the gospel and deepens our satisfaction in Christ. So he writes, “²⁰Each one should remain in the situation which he was in when God called him. ²¹ Were you a slave when you were called? Don’t let it trouble you—although if you can gain your freedom, do so. ²² For he who was a slave when he was called by the Lord is the Lord’s freedman; similarly, he who was a free man when he was called is Christ’s slave. ²³ You were bought at a price; do not become slaves of men. ²⁴ Brothers, each man, as responsible to God, should remain in the situation God called him to.”

It would be a mistake to conclude that Paul thinks enslavement itself is not troublesome. That’s not his meaning in verse 21. Rather, the person saved while enslaved should regard his or her relationship to Christ as the main thing, the identity changing thing—from slave to Lord’s freedman. In that sense, the slave should not be troubled by his station. It would also be a mistake to think that Paul believes that the slave should remain in that situation in perpetuity. He anticipates that misunderstanding and breaks his thought with “although if you can gain your freedom, do so.” Which is actually a more direct encouragement than anything Paul says about singles wanting to marry or the status of circumcised/uncircumcised. To them he never says “do so,” but to the slave he does. The apostle sees freedom as a positive good to be pursued.  This point seems to get lost in a lot of this discussion because Black and Tan sets up at least some forms of slaveholding as morally neutral. People go on to then argue for the rights of slaveholders against the right of slaves to pursue freedom. That does not seem to be the apostle’s perspective here. And that has some implications for how we read the household codes in tension with these other verses.

Wilson rightly exegetes the instructions given to masters and slaves in places like Eph. 6:5-9; Col. 3:22-4:1; and 1 Tim. 6:1-2—all written after Paul’s statements in 1 Corinthians 7.Though Paul calls the masters to treat their slaves in a respectful way and slaves to obey their masters—even wicked masters in 1 Tim. 6—his primary concern is not the maintenance of slaveholding as a system. In other words, in instructing Christians in their duties in whatever state they find themselves in when converted Paul is not also commending the system as a neutral or positive good. A Christian soldier should behave like a Christian even if his country sends him to fight in an atrocious war. A Christian accountant should behave like a Christian even if her multi-national company has questionable investments overseas. The Christian responsibility to submit or lead in those settings does not amount to an endorsement of the setting. We’ve seen in Philemon and 1 Corinthians that Paul expects freedom when freedom comes into view.

So, I think Wilson goes beyond what the household codes warrant when he infers from these passages that (a) slavery must have been permissible in the apostle’s mind as a “neutral” (keep in mind, Wilson does not argue that slavery was a positive good), (b) that we may safely assume that at least some of the masters and slaves addressed would have been in relationship with each other and in the same church (that’s just an assumption, an argument from the silence of the text), and (c) therefore the way slavery ended was in disobedience to these texts. We might respond: (a) Paul clearly encourages freedom; (b) We could just as readily assume that the masters and slaves in view were not related to one another; and, (c) These texts say nothing about the continuance of slavery as a system or anything about how slavery should be ended. None of these assumptions are necessary to the text.

That a Christian slaveholder could be a member in good standing in a church, as Wilson contends, doesn’t settle the issue. Surely he may have been a slaveholder when he was called to Christ (1 Cor. 7), but just as surely Paul would appeal to him/her on the basis of love to immediately free their slave and receive them as brothers in the Lord if they were Christians (Philemon).

Which brings me to one final point, briefly. When Paul writes in 1 Timothy 1:10 that “man stealing” or “slave trading” is “contrary to the sound doctrine that conforms to the glorious gospel of the blessed God,” I don’t think he means the Transatlantic stealing and shipping of slaves was wrong but the subsequent purchase, holding, breeding, and keeping of slaves was okay. I don’t think that text countenances a difference between trading and holding, and that’s key to Wilson’s view of the permissibility of slaveholding in the South. The Southern holding was a consequence of the stealing. To try and separate the two would be like a thief defending himself by saying, “Yes, I stole the money, but the poverty I left the family with is just something they have to endure.” That will never do. That thief, biblically speaking, is obligate to return what he stole and then some! That generations later there were people born into slavery who only knew slavery is immaterial. They were only in the country due to the trafficking of persons, which thus far everyone agrees was wrong. Righting that wrong, it seems to me, meant scrapping the entire system built on the wrong. If there were going to be a permissible system of slavery in the South—a Christian country as Wilson sees it—it needed to be built upon indenture, voluntary servanthood, usually premised on debt obligations or poverty and not race.

Conclusion

There’s more that needs to be said about the condition of slaves and their treatment, about the South as a Christian nation, and about State’s rights, and about Wilson’s post-mil views and how it affects the book’s argument. Perhaps a subsequent post will deal with some of those things. But the heart of the issue is whether we obey in practice all the texts of scripture. And that, I would argue, requires more than a simple application of the household codes. Without love we are clanging gongs. Without love we are nothing. We have to start with love and work it all the way down to the particulars.

In his epilogue, Wilson characterizes Black and Tan as “a collection of disparate elements organized around a set of common themes” which may feel “ad-hoc, ragtaggy” at places because the writing and rewriting occurred at various occasions (p. 119). In offering a response to Black and Tan, then, the first thing one must decide is what to respond to. The issues tend to be interlocked both conceptually and in the writing itself. Second, we need to consider in what order to reply. Again, as I excerpt and interact with various portions of the text, I hope with God’s help to be charitable and accurate. Having stated Wilson’s case in a manner Wilson himself judged accurate and fair, I want to offer some critique with those summations in mind.

As I see it, three basic aspects of the book need addressing: (1) the underlying logic guiding the entire book, (2) the exegetical case for slavery as a permissible institution, and (3) the historical claim that the South as a nation and the slavery it practiced was comparable to the Roman practice the apostle Paul addressed. As I see it, the book stands or falls with Wilson’s positions in these three areas. This is not to say that other areas of the book are unimportant, just that these issues “get to the heart of the matter” from my perspective. With God’s help, I would like to take up each issue in separate posts.

The Logic of Black and Tan

At a couple points in Black and Tan, Wilson outlines the driving logic of the book. On page 4 he writes:

If we want to understand the culture wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, we must come to grips with the culture wars of the nineteenth century. In order to do this, it is necessary to get clear on the nature of American slavery, which was not what its abolitionist opponents claimed for it. If it had been, it is hard to see how the biblical instructions could have been applicable–for example, I would not cite 1 Timothy 6:1-4 to a person trying to escape from a Nazi death camp. “Obey the authorities!” But if antebellum slavery was the normal kind of sinful situation that Christians have had to deal with regularly down through history (e.g., one comparable to what Paul, Philemon, and Onesimus had to address), then the instructions in 1 Timothy 6 make perfect sense. We need to learn that the antebellum situation was one of Normal Sin, not one of Apocalyptic Evil.

That our nation did not remove slavery in the way it ought to have been removed helps explain many of our nation’s problems in dealing with contemporary social evils. Those evils include abortion-on-demand, radical feminism, and rampant sodomy.

A few pages later, making reference to the underlying argument of Southern Slavery as It Was, an argument being restated in Black and Tan, Wilson contends:

It was the contention of this booklet that the way in which slavery ended has had ongoing deleterious consequences for modern Christians in our current culture wars, and that slavery was far more benign in practice than it was made to appear in the literature of the abolitionists. We were not trying to maintain that slavery in itself was a positive good, like food, air, or sunlight. Our central interest was in defending the integrity and applicability of the Scriptures to our current cultural controversies, and we affirmed that Christians who apologize for what the Bible teaches on slavery will soon be apologizing for what it teaches on marriage. We wrote as Christian apologists, but not the kind who apologize for being Christian (p. 14).

Obviously the approach Wilson takes, his driving argument, is bound up with the nature of Southern slavery. But for the moment, let me leave aside slavery’s nature for a future post so that we can give undivided attention to the logic itself.

Essentially, Wilson walks backwards from:

1. Our current cultural divisions over homosexuality, abortion, and feminism, to…

2. The Christians’ fidelity to and application of the Bible in such controversies (or lack thereof), to…

3. What he regards as a similar cultural conflict (slavery and the Civil War) that (a) featured the same crucial issue of the authority of Scripture and (b) in his opinion gave rise to an expanded federal government that arrests or opposes biblical resolutions for such problems.

Slavery gets a lot of air play, but it’s really a similarity heuristic for contemporary cultural engagement. Which brings us to my question….

Is This an Appropriate Strategy for Either Discussing Slavery or Informing Our Contemporary Battles?

Does this chain of reasoning really hold? Personally, I don’t think so. It fails on at least two grounds.

First, the authority of the Bible was not widely in question during the country’s long dispute over slavery and its end. There certainly were radical abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison who believed that “To discard a portion of scripture is not necessarily to reject the truth, but may be the highest evidence that one can give of his love of truth” (quoted in Noll, Civil War as a Theological Crisis, p. 32). Wilson is correct to note the historical instances and contemporary possibility of Christians losing their grip on the authority, sufficiency and reliability of the Bible. Indeed, Wilson’s concern for the rejection of the Bible was a concern among pro-slavery advocates in the Old South. But, in the Old South, according to historian Mark Noll, the rejection of the Bible by radical abolitionists like Garrison actually strengthened biblical adherence among mainstream observers in the North and South. Noll explains: “Heightened abolitionist attacks on slavery, slaveholders, and slave society angered those who were under assault. Especially when such attacks were expressed with the antibiblical rhetoric that William Lloyd Garrison employed, they deeply troubled religious believers of almost all sorts. By defining slaveholding as a basic evil, whatever the Bible might say about it, radical abolitionists frightened away from antislavery many moderates who had also grown troubled about America’s system of chattel bondage, but who were not willing to give up loyalty to Scripture” (Noll, Civil War, p. 36; emphasis added). The radicals who rejected the Bible hurt their own cause and strengthened the grip of those whose hands once loosely held the Bible.

We call people like Garrison “radicals” for a reason—they lie outside the mainstream opinion. In fact, the mainstream of both sides claimed to have the Bible’s authority on its side. Where Wilson sees a shrinking away from biblical authority in antebellum arguments over slavery, I see in the main a theological debate about precisely how to apply the Scripture—not whether. At least that seems to be the case among professing Christians on either side of the conflict. Pro-slavery advocates certainly marshaled whatever texts they could in support of the institution (see Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Mind of the Master Class: History and Faith in the Southern Slaveholders’ Worldview, especially part IV). But, not to be outdone, anti-slavery advocates garnered a full range of texts to make its case for abolition (see, for example, Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, chapter3, and Dillon, Slavery Attacked: Southern Slaves and Their Allies, 16:19-1865). That was especially the case among African Americans as early as the mid-1700s, when African Americans first began to publish. I’m thinking here of men like Lemuel Haynes and his “Liberty Further Extended,” for example, and even the recently discovered poem of Jupiter Hammon.

The purpose of this post isn’t to restate those arguments here. The purpose is simply to illustrate and substantiate the fact that the Bible’s authority was only being challenged in the small radical corners of the debate. At best what we might say is that the mainstream of each side privileged different biblical texts in their arsenal of arguments—pro-slavery advocates the plain sense statements in Pauline epistles and anti-slavery advocates the anti-racist texts of Scripture. But both sides made their appeal to the authority of the Bible. That being the case, it seems to me that Black and Tan fails to accurately portray the scope and effect of any anti-Bible sentiments of the time. If preserving the authority of scripture motivates Black and Tan, it seems to have chosen the wrong historical moment as an analogy for helping us in our day. At the very least, the book fails to give us a robust and nuanced treatment of various views of biblical authority.

Second, the Federal action to end slavery in 1865 can’t be causally connected to Federal actions today. Wilson argues that the North’s actions to end slavery, in contravention of State’s rights, laid the foundation for Federal over-reach in things like homosexual “marriage” and the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. He writes, “The point here was that the revolution that made it possible for the federal government to impose an atrocity like Roe v. Wade on the several states was a revolution that began in earnest in 1861″ (p. 64).

While people continue to argue about State’s rights and its place in the Civil War, what cannot be denied is that every party wishes to use Federal power to its benefit, even if the “use” is to limit that power. The simple fact that the national government took action seems a poor basis for drawing a dark line connecting slavery’s end and our current culture wars. After all, at various points along the country’s history Federal action achieved positive goods for society. I fully recognize Wilson disagrees, writing, “Because of the way slavery was ended, we are dealing with atrocious consequences down to the present” (p. 96) and “I am forced to say that, in many ways, the remedy which has been applied has resulted in problems that are every bit as bad as the original disease ever was” (p. 60). But if we’re honest, most evangelical Christians would be quite happy to see a decisive federal action to overturn Roe or to prohibit same-sex “marriage.” If I am correct in saying this, then what we’re really lamenting is seeing the power of the federal government wielded by the “wrong” hands, i.e., not our hands.

Rather than lamenting the use of Federal power, it seems to me we must evaluate the merit and outcome of the Federal action taken. For instance, Federal action against slavery and Federal action in Roe v. Wade differ in at least one critical way: Federal action to end slavery was justified, while Federal action to legalize abortion was not. One saved lives; the other destroys lives. One pursued justice; the other denies justice. One achieved freedom; the other perverts freedom. I’m suggesting we include the ends in our evaluation of the means, at least in part (there are other things that need to be considered in order to avoid being rabid Machiavellians).

In a South that had opportunity after secession to voluntarily reform or end the institution but didn’t, in a nation that had come to think it impossible to end slavery (see Miller, Arguing About Slavery: The Great Debate in the United States Senate), disenfranchised human beings had no recourse but Federal action. Insofar as government saved and improved millions of lives, it seems to me the action was warranted. That some nowadays want similar Federal action on issues contrary to a biblical position does not in itself impeach the actions taken in the Civil War. I think Wilson commits a genetic fallacy.

Conclusion

For at least these two reasons I think the inner logic driving Black and Tan does not work. I certainly share Wilson’s concern that Christians of every age learn to stand under the authority of the Bible and learn not to shrink back from difficult and unpopular parts when critics attack. But that’s only the first thing to learn. The second thing to learn is how to rightly interpret those difficult parts. If we argue about what the Bible teaches, we’re then having the right kind of argument. That there are two sides to the argument does not necessarily mean one side or the other has abandoned biblical authority. With that, we hope to turn to Black and Tan’s exegesis of biblical texts on the matter of slavery.

Well, it seems that slavery and things related is in the air these days. Yesterday a good friend sent me this link to an NPR interview. The interview features a short discussion with Cedrick May, assistant professor of English at University of Texas, Arlington, about the recent discovery of an unpublished poem written by Jupiter Hammon on slavery.

For those unfamiliar with Hammon, he is known as the father of African-American literature, being the first published. He was an evangelic Calvinistic Christian who lived his entire life as a slave. The discovered poem, unlike most of his work, focuses on slavery. In it, he defines slavery as a sin–a bold move in the latter half of the 1700s–and reckons it incompatible with genuine Christian witness.

The interview is brief. And like all his work, the poem is theologically rich and thoughtful. Check it out.

What is Cross?

Cross is a student missions conference…

• for worshipping the Lord Jesus Christ,
• who upholds the universe by the word of his power,
• has absolute authority over all the nations and peoples of earth,
• freely offers to all forgiveness of sins on the basis of his death and resurrection,
• summons all the peoples of earth to repent and believe in his name,
• and gives eternal joy in his presence to all who do.
• for centering on the gospel of God concerning the death and resurrection of his Son—the only message by which God saves from his own wrath those who hear and believe.
• for clarifying Christ’s saving mission to the unreached peoples of the world, providing solid, biblical foundations for that mission in doctrines of sovereign grace.
• for praying to the Lord of the harvest that he might send out laborers into his harvest.
• for emboldening thousands with biblical truth to embrace the mission and go to the peoples yet unreached.
• for sobering all with the prospect of inevitable suffering for the sake of Christ’s name.
• for connecting goers with persons and churches and agencies who will help equip and position them for maximum Gospel-spreading among the unreached peoples for the name of Christ.

and thus for…

• obeying the command of the Lord to make disciples of all nations,
• pressing with eagerness toward the coming of Christ,
• preparing for the Lord Jesus the reward of his suffering,
• relieving as much suffering as we can, especially eternal suffering,
• loving our neighbor by giving our lives for the greatest and longest good of the world,
• and fulfilling the purpose for which God created the world—that the earth would be full of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

Pastors and campus workers, you’re gonna want to bring your students here. Parents you’re going to want to invest in your sons and daughters this way. Check out the full conference information and join us December 27-30, 2013 in Louisville, KY for the glory of God and the salvation of the nations!