Doug Wilson Says ‘The Christians Who Owned Slaves In The South Were On Firm Scriptural Ground’

Christians who owned slaves were on firm scriptural ground

“The radical abolitionists maintained that slave-owning was inherently immoral under any circumstance. But in this matter, the Christians who owned slaves in the South were on firm scriptural ground. May a Christian own slaves, even when this makes him a part of a larger pagan system which is not fully scriptural, or perhaps not scriptural at all? Provided he owns them in conformity to Christ’s laws governing such situations, the Bible is clear that under such conditions Christians may own slaves…”¹ — Doug Wilson

“. . .on the slavery issue the drums of war were being beaten by the abolitionists, who were in turn driven by a zealous hatred of the Word… .to the extent that slavery was an issue, the radical abolitionists were in conflict with the teaching of the New Testament.”² — Doug Wilson

“When the Confederate States of America surrendered at Appomatox [sic], the last nation of the older order fell. So, because historians like to have set dates on which to hang their hats, we may say the first Christendom died there, in 1865. The American South was the last nation of the first Christendom.”³ — Doug Wilson

OPINION: As a self-described “paleo-Confederate”⁴ Doug has argued for years that American slavery was far more “humane”⁵ and “benign”⁶ than we have been led to believe and that Southern enslavers were predominantly godly, whereas abolitionists were primarily “driven by a zealous hatred of the Word of God.”⁷ It is not surprising that his views on the subject have sparked major controversy both locally and globally, drawing accusations of racism as well as charges of historical revisionism for his often benevolent portrayal of the American South and slavery.⁸ While Doug has stated “. . .the severe judgment that befell the South from the hand of God was true justice in part because of how the South had treated her slaves”⁹ he seems to contradict himself (once again) when he writes “. . .the South was right on all the essential constitutional and cultural issues surrounding the war”¹⁰ and “the Christians who owned slaves in the South were on firm scriptural ground.”¹¹

There are many problems with Doug’s teaching on the Confederacy and American slavery, but here I will focus on just two.

First, the South was not on firm scriptural ground in regard to enslaving people because the institution was racist at its core.¹² The very government Doug touts as “the last nation of the first Christendom”¹³ was, in the words of Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens,¹⁴ founded: “. . .upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery—subordination to the superior race—is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”¹⁵

Even Doug admits that Southern slavery was built on racist beliefs,¹⁶ yet he fails to see how this renders the system scripturally indefensible. While the existence of a race-based system of slavery does not necessarily prove every individual enslaver was racist, it remains that participating in a structure built on a racial hierarchy is incompatible with God’s Word.¹⁷ Claiming that enslavers were “on firm scriptural ground”¹⁸ overlooks a key reality: New Testament–era slavery was vastly different from the institution practiced in America. As William Mounce writes: “. . .the slavery of Paul’s day had many startling differences from that practiced in America. In Paul’s day it was not racially based but resulted from war, poverty, and other social circumstances. It was not unusual to find people voluntarily submitting to slavery in exchange for economic security.”¹⁹ Doug’s claim ignores the teaching of God’s Word regarding impartiality (Romans 2:11; Acts 10:34–35), the command to love one’s neighbor as oneself (Mark 12:31) and the reality that all humans are created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26-27). The American South’s institution perpetuated inescapable servitude for those born with a certain color of skin, thereby subverting the clear biblical teaching that all human beings bear the image of God and are, therefore, equal. The words of Frederick Douglass, a man born into slavery,²⁰ stand as a prophetic indictment of Doug’s view of Southern Christianity “I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity.”²¹

No human deserves to be enslaved simply because of their race. But this was the argument of many who were pro-slavery around the time of the Civil War.²² As Mark Knoll writes: “No biblical warrant existed for the assumption that slavery could only mean black slavery except the often refuted application of the ‘curse of Ham’ that, according to Genesis, chapter 9, doomed Ham’s progeny, Canaan, to servitude. Rather, it was acceptance of black racial inferiority that supplied the missing term to many of the arguments that defended American slavery by appeal to Scripture.”²³ Yet Doug Wilson essentially affirms this debunked racialized interpretation when he writes in 2025: “Whites of European descent are functioning in a culture that has been dominated by the gospel for 15 centuries. God did in fact enlarge Japheth (Gen. 9:27), and all of it has been unmerited grace. At the same time, African blacks are functioning in a culture that has been affected by the gospel for only 1 or 2 centuries.”²⁴ Wilson tries to cushion this racial interpretation by attributing it to “unmerited grace,” but his framing still reflects the racialized reading of Genesis 9 used in the South to justify slavery. By associating Japheth with white Europeans and implying that black Africans remain culturally and spiritually inferior, he mirrors the old Southern pro-slavery narrative—one that cast white people as Japheth’s descendants and black people as Ham’s cursed descendants, doomed to “perpetual servitude” by divine decree because of Noah’s prophecy.²⁵ But contrary to Doug’s assertion, the South was nowhere near “firm scriptural ground”²⁶ when it came to slavery, because only those deemed racially inferior were enslaved. The entire system was therefore inherently racist and stood in direct violation of God’s Word (Genesis 1:26–27; John 13:34; Galatians 3:28; Ephesians 2:14; James 2:9).

The second significant problem with Doug’s teaching regarding the “firm scriptural ground” of Christian enslavers in the South is in regard to the Bible’s unequivocal prohibition on kidnapping in 1 Timothy 1:10. The Greek word ἀνδραποδισταῖς (andrapodistes) can be translated as “enslavers” and “refers specifically to someone involved in slave trading, ‘one who acquires pers. for use by others, slave-dealer, kidnapper.’”²⁷ The scriptural basis for Paul’s statement that kidnapping or manstealing is contrary to God’s law is found in Exodus 21:16 “He who kidnaps a man, whether he sells him or he is found in his possession, shall surely be put to death” (NASB95). And while Doug admits that the whole of American slavery was based on the wicked slave trade,²⁸ he denies that someone purchasing a slave in this system incurred any guilt.²⁹

Doug states plainly: “But if our churches had existed in the antebellum South, and a godly slave owner who treated his slaves with kindness sought membership, I could not refuse him without seeking to be holier than Christ. Such a desire would be wicked, and this wickedness was at the heart of the radical abolitionist dogma.”³⁰ However, as Denny Burk notes: “…Exodus 21:16 says that both the kidnapping and the enslavement are punishable by death. And this is the background for Paul’s own thinking about the matter in 1 Timothy. The entire system of Southern slavery was based on kidnapping persons from Africa. The slave-traders stuffed these Africans into ship holds, where they suffered and died by the thousands. That slave trade was an abomination. And it is fallacious to suggest that the enslavers were not morally implicated in the slave trade. One cannot defend those who participated in the slave trade, nor can one defend those slave owners who created the market for manstealing.”³¹ I would add that it is equally fallacious to argue, as Doug does,³² that Christian enslavers bore no guilt if they merely inherited the results of manstealing—whether by purchasing slaves born into bondage or by claiming they provided more humane treatment than others. Such reasoning seeks to sidestep moral responsibility by appealing to secondary circumstances while ignoring the fact that the entire system was built on a foundation explicitly condemned by God.

Thabiti Anyabwile rightly responds: “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.”³³

Doug has once again shown himself not to be one who rightly divides the Word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15), but instead, seeks to conform God’s Word to his own ideals, seeking to hold up the Confederate South as “the last nation of the first Christendom”³⁴ in order to seemingly bolster his own view of post-millennial “Christendom”³⁵—as an illustration of how a nation imperfectly transitions from “pagan autonomy to one in full submission to the Lordship of Christ”³⁶ in the process of being discipled.³⁷ Such claims do not come from a careful study of God’s Word. Instead, they stir up unnecessary controversy and foster division. Worse still, his teaching has provided theological cover for modern expressions of Christian Nationalism, where racist ideas have taken root under the guise of historical vindication and cultural restoration.³⁸ And as such, Doug is not a man to be held in high regard, but rather one to be avoided (Titus 3:9–11).

My prayer is that Doug would humbly come to see the great harm he has done to the name of Christ among nonbelievers by defending the idea that Christians in the Confederate South were right to enslave people. I also pray he would recognize the damage this teaching has caused to the descendants of those who suffered under that system. May he repent of providing moral cover to a wicked institution built on racial oppression, and instead proclaim the full, unadulterated Word of God.

Want More Context?

Here are some links to other blogs and podcasts dealing with this and other issues in more depth:

Slavery and the Bible: The Perspective of This Abolitionist by Thabiti Anyabwile https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/slavery-and-the-bible-the-perspective-of-this-abolitionist/ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/illustrating-racial-insensitivity-in-black-and-tan/ https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/a-black-and-tan-round-up/ and his podcast interview regarding his interaction with Doug on the matter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TArga93QegY

The Bible Condemns American Slavery by Jesse Johnson³⁹ https://thecripplegate.com/the-bible-condemns-american-slavery/

And Did Paul Endorse Slavery? By Denny Burk
https://www.crossway.org/articles/did-paul-endorse-slavery-1-timothy-6/

https://faithroot.com/2021/04/23/douglas-wilson-on-slavery-and-racism/

https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2006/idaho-pastor-hard-liner-exception-or-two

https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/how-and-why-did-some-christians-defend-slavery/

https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/07/doug-wilson-slavery-as-it-was.html

Footnotes

Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 926, Kindle Edition. ↩
Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 853, Kindle Edition. ↩
Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth, Canon Press, 1998, loc. 1914. ↩
“I am not a neo-Confederate; I am a paleo-Confederate” (Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 306, Kindle Edition). The fact that he uses this term to describe himself shows in my view that he is at least racially insensitive, if not racist: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/illustrating-racial-insensitivity-in-black-and-tan/ Doug has explained what he means by the term in a video interview: “Paleo-confederate was a phrase that I used or appropriated to distinguish myself from neo-Confederate. A neo-Confederate, in the common parlance, is someone who is still fighting the war. . .and by the war I mean the late unpleasantness, the war of 1861 to 1865… .So neo-Confederates want a. . .do-over at Gettysburg, they want to continue the same fight, and politically they can’t continue the same flight, history matters, we’re downstream from that point. So I use the term paleo-Confederate to not surrender the principals that were involved in that fight while recognizing that defending those principals in a modern context is going to look different. . .the terrain has changed, the circumstances have changed… .a paleo-confederate. . .says, look, the South had a point on the constitutional matters surrounding the war, the Constitution meant something, and historically something shifted in American polity as a result of that war… .A paleo-Confederate says look, I think that Lincoln was a centralizer, I think that the postwar amendments to the Constitution inverted the meaning of the Constitution. Before the war the Constitution placed restrictions on the power of the federal government, after the war those amendments became means by which the federal government suppressed the power of the states” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y0fTaMBESs). ↩
“This means that the system of slave-holding in the South was far more humane than that of ancient Rome, although it still fell short of the biblical requirements for it. Were there many unbelieving slave-owners who treated their slaves unjustly? No doubt. Nevertheless, the Scriptures teach how to go about addressing this kind of thing. 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” (Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 914, Kindle Edition). But here Doug ignores the vast evidence to the contrary: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11544 https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/weld/weld.html https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/douglass/douglass.html It also should not be lost that Doug along with Steve Wilkins published a pamphlet entitled Southern Slavery As It Was (SEE LINK TO FOOTNOTE 8) which is a direct attack on the veracity of the book Southern Slavery As It Is published in 1839 which contains documentation of the horrible mistreatment of American slaves (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/weld/weld.html). ↩
“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” (Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 297, Kindle Edition). ↩
Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 853, Kindle Edition.
I believe Doug’s statement here to be a gross misrepresentation of historical reality, as Thabiti Anyabwile points out: “. . .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. . .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” (https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/does-the-driving-logic-of-black-and-tan-hold-up/). ↩
In 1996 Doug co-wrote a booklet entitled Southern Slavery As It Was, which contained statements such as: “Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.” Doug did not directly recant anything until 2020 though given multiple opportunities: https://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/ngier/wilsononslavery.htm. In 2004 Doug wrote: “As some may recall, a booklet that I cowrote with Steve Wilkins entitled Southern Slavery As It Was was at the center of quite a hubbub last February. What some may not realize is that Canon Press pulled the title from their inventory around the time of that controversy. This was not because we were at all embarrassed by the thesis of the booklet, but rather because someone had informed us that there were some real problems with the citations and footnotes.” https://web.archive.org/web/20240521161742/https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s7-engaging-the-culture/plagiarism-aye.html (Note: It was actually because of plagiarism: https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/plagiarism-it/ and https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2019/03/stub-doug-wilson-and-plagiarism.html). In 2020, he broadly stated: “Would I want to recast or disavow or explain or contextualize or modify certain views expressed as excerpted from SSAIW? The short answer is yes, I would.” But he did not specifically state what he would recast, disavow or explain. https://web.archive.org/web/20240521005533/https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s7-engaging-the-culture/not-that-simple-2.html. He did assert in that same post that his views in Black & Tan (written in 2005 and still in print today) are his current views, and there he continues to advocate for a revisionist view of American slavery and also makes “abolitionists” out to be the real enemy: “Slavery was far more benign in practice than it was made to appear in the literature of the abolitionists” (Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 287, Kindle Edition.) Such views are not only historically inaccurate (https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/weld/menu.html), they are unbiblical (https://thecripplegate.com/the-bible-condemns-american-slavery/).
Doug’s position is in line with the “Lost Cause” – viewed by most historians as a myth (https://www.britannica.com/topic/Lost-Cause and https://youtu.be/XP0_wnaW-a0?si=mk_Jd3aFUALR5Mt4). For more on the controversies over the years:
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/illustrating-racial-insensitivity-in-black-and-tan/
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/a-black-and-tan-round-up/ https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2006/idaho-pastor-hard-liner-exception-or-two
https://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2015/07/doug-wilson-exchange-with-thabiti-anyabwile.html
https://www.lambsreign.com/blog/southern-slavery-gets-another-moscow-whitewashing
https://www.npr.org/2024/07/02/1250560532/doug-wilson-church-bible-slavery-controversy
https://medium.com/interfaith-now/someone-please-make-douglas-wilson-shut-up-b7956f07acfb ↩
Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 869, Kindle Edition. But Doug muddles the matter when he agrees with R. L. Dabney and compares the North with wicked Assyria: “This understanding in no way vindicated the sins of the North, for God had once used the wickedness of Assyria to humiliate a backslidden Israel. Our sovereign God draws straight with crooked lines” (Ibid., loc. 327). Doug seems to see no redeeming qualities in the Northern position of abolition, but chooses instead to see them as wicked and only a tool that God used to punish the South, and in doing so, the North bears guilt as the Assyrians did when they were used by God to punish Israel (Isaiah 10:5–12). ↩
Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 377, Kindle Edition. Yet Doug seems to contradict himself when he writes, “I am certainly not wishing for a return to slavery. I am profoundly grateful that chattel slavery no longer exists in our nation. Let there be no mistake here–the logic of the Christian gospel is contradictory to the institution of slavery generally, and as the gospel of salvation progresses through history, one of the necessary results is the gradual eradication of all slavery. Jesus Christ really is the ultimate Jubilee” (Ibid. loc. 824). ↩
Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 926, Kindle Edition. ↩
“Paul’s refusal to condemn slavery has often been exploited by those who would use the text to argue for slavery. This is amply illustrated by antebellum writings in the American South. General arguments for the perpetuation of slavery included: (1) slaves do not have souls; (2) African slaves are suffering from the curse on Ham (Gen 9:25); (3) Scripture does not prohibit slavery; (4) God ordains slavery, like marriage, and problems exist only because of poor administration; (5) slavery, along with the institutionalized church, is one of the stabilizing influences on society; and (6) owning slaves does not violate the spirit of the gospel” (William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, vol. 46, Word Biblical Commentary Word Incorporated, 2000, p. 330–331).
“Protestants well schooled in reading the Scriptures for themselves also knew of many other relevant texts, among which the following were most important: Genesis 9:25–27: ‘And he [God] said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren. And he said, Blessed be the Lord God of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant. God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem; and Canaan shall be his servant.’ (For the sin of Ham, who exposed his father Noah’s nakedness, Ham’s descendants through his son Canaan were to be owned as slaves by descendants of Noah’s two other sons)” (Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, University of North Carolina Press, 2006, p. 34, Kindle Edition). Racist means “of, relating to, or characterized by the systemic oppression of a racial group to the social, economic, and political advantage of another” (https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/racist). ↩
Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth, Canon Press, 1998, loc. 1914. ↩
Stephens was a “lifelong” member of the Washington Presbyterian Church: https://web.archive.org/web/20200715041654/https://www.georgiahistory.com/ghmi_marker_updated/washington-presbyterian-church/ ↩
https://web.archive.org/web/20250403100416/https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech See also documentation of the racist ideals of the President of the Confederation, Jefferson Davis: https://www.aaihs.org/an-intellectual-history-of-a-book-title/ ↩
“But here is the difficulty—we know how to ‘reject’ such forms of racism in our modern and sentimental way. We know how to throw racism off the egalitarian train. But how do we deal with this problem in Christendom? The Old South was a nation in that old order of Christendom, and they did not deal with it. Why didn’t they? And if we learn from them on subjects like culture, order, hierarchy, honor, and agrarianism, will this mean that we (inevitably) must buy into racist assumptions? Certainly not, and working through these issues is one of the reasons for this book” (Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 376, Kindle Edition). ↩
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/kevin-deyoung/10-reasons-racism-sin/ ↩
Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 926, Kindle Edition. ↩
William D. Mounce, Pastoral Epistles, vol. 46, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 2000), 331. ↩
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frederick-Douglass ↩
Frederick Douglass, and William Lloyd Garrison, Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, Webb and Chapman, 1846, p. 118. Online at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23 ↩
Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, University of North Carolina Press, 2006, p. 2, 42, 55, Kindle Edition ↩
Mark A. Noll, The Civil War as a Theological Crisis, University of North Carolina Press, 2006, p. 56, Kindle Edition ↩
https://web.archive.org/web/20250219143554/https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/books/iq-and-the-flynn-effect.html In the same article (published in 2025) Doug also errantly asserts that “… African blacks are functioning in a culture that has been affected by the gospel for only 1 or 2 centuries.” But the reality is: “a significant number of the Church Fathers were African. Tertullian and Cyprian wrote from Carthage (modern-day Tunisia); Origen from Alexandria, Egypt; and Augustine from Hippo Regis (now Annaba, Algeria).” https://web.archive.org/web/20250216113125/https://africa.thegospelcoalition.org/article/african-christianity-thrived-long-before-white-men-arrived/ See also: https://web.archive.org/web/20250114104032/https://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/africa/features/storyofafrica/index_section8.shtml ↩
“Benjamin M. Palmer (1818–1902), pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans and Mississippi’s pre-eminent clergyman during the Civil War, raged in sermon after sermon that Noah’s curse was a prophetic blueprint of the destinies of the ‘white’, ‘black’ and ‘red’ races. While the white descendants of Shem and Japhet (Noah’s elder sons) would flourish and succeed, Palmer asserted that ‘[u]pon Ham was pronounced the doom of perpetual servitude…’” — Paul Ham (https://theconversation.com/the-curse-of-ham-how-people-of-faith-used-a-story-in-genesis-to-justify-slavery-225212).
“In 1862, Joseph C. Addington applied this apperception of racial gradation to the destiny and character of Noah’s sons, writing that ‘the White or Japhetic race is first in position. The Red or Shemitic Race, is second… .The Black or Hamitic race, is last in position…’” (Stephen R. Haynes, *Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery, *Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 88, Kindle Edition).
Pastor Patrick Mell (1814–1888) wrote: “From Ham were descended the nations that occupied the land of Canaan and those that now constitute the African or Negro race. Their inheritance, according to prophecy, has been and will continue to be slavery. . .so long as we have the Bible. . .we expect to maintain it” (Patrick H. Mell, Slavery: A Treatise Showing That Slavery Is neither a Moral, Political, nor Social Evil, Benjamin Brantly, 1844, p. 15).
Also: “During the heyday of slavery in America, a racial understanding of Genesis 9–11 was so much a part of cultural common sense that defensive arguments were no longer required. The significance of Noah’s curse in American slavery debates cannot be appreciated until we grasp the way Genesis 9 provided the implied racial context that other biblical arguments lacked…The curse became indispensable precisely because, according to culturally sanctioned views of the Bible, history, and society, it could be regarded as providing the justification for black enslavement missing from other biblical texts” (Stephen R. Haynes, *Noah’s Curse: The Biblical Justification of American Slavery, *Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 11, Kindle Edition). See also: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/damn-curse-ham/ ↑ ↩
Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 926, Kindle Edition. ↩
“The term translated ‘enslavers’ (andrapodistais) appears only once in biblical Greek. This term is also a compound, bringing together the terms ‘man’ (anēr) and ‘bind/tie feet’ (podizō). The term refers to someone who forcibly and coercively binds/ties the feet of men. An etymological rendering might be ‘man-binder.’ The King James Version comes close to this rendering with ‘menstealers.’ In actual usage, however, the term refers specifically to someone involved in slave trading, ‘one who acquires pers. for use by others, slave-dealer, kidnapper’ (BDAG, s.v. ἀνδραποδιστής, italics original)” (Denny Burk, “1 Timothy,” in Ephesians–Philemon, ed. Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, vol. XI, ESV Expository Commentary, Crossway, 2018, p. 384). ↩
“Having said all this, I want to grant that a very plausible argument against slavery comes from the acknowledged wickedness of the slave trade” (Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 942, Kindle Edition). ↩
“Were they hypocrites in this opposition because they raised the cry against the slave trade while indirectly supporting that trade by owning slaves? Not at all. The Bible defines hypocrisy. Remember that in ancient Rome the acquisition of slaves was not according to the law of God either” (Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 942, Kindle Edition). ↩
Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 942, Kindle Edition. ↩
Denny Burk, “1 Timothy,” in Ephesians–Philemon, ed. Iain M. Duguid, James M. Hamilton Jr., and Jay Sklar, vol. XI, ESV Expository Commentary, Crossway, 2018, p. 441–442. ↩
“We also need to recall many of the slaves in the South were descendants of men and women who had been brought over generations before, complicating an already complicated picture” (Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 987, Kindle Edition). ↩
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/thabiti-anyabwile/slavery-and-the-bible-the-perspective-of-this-abolitionist/ ↩
Douglas Wilson, Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth, Canon Press, 1998, loc. 1914. ↩
https://www.9marks.org/review/book-review-empires-of-dirt-by-douglas-wilson/ ↩
“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” (Douglas Wilson, Black & Tan: A Collection of Essays and Excursions on Slavery, Culture War, and Scripture in America, Canon Press, 2005, loc. 912, Kindle Edition). ↩
Also an error of Doug’s post-millenial theology, the thinking that nations (rather than the individuals in those nations) can be discipled and that this is what Jesus commanded in the Great Commission. See: https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justin-taylor/what-does-the-great-commission-mean-when-it-says-to-disciple-a-nation/ ↩
https://web.archive.org/web/20250422211837/https://buckscountybeacon.com/2024/07/the-theology-behind-the-christian-nationalist-view-on-immigration/
https://heidelblog.net/2024/12/the-failure-of-the-antioch-declaration/
https://churchleaders.com/news/457480-calvinist-activist-warns-that-white-nationalism-is-invading-reformed-churches-rns.html
https://baptistnews.com/article/antioch-declaration-exposes-a-rift-among-neo-calvinists/ ↑ ↩
Jesse Johnson are alumni of the same seminary and his articles on the unbiblical nature of American slavery were the first time I remember hearing about Doug Wilson. ↩

Doug Wilson Says ‘The Christians Who Owned Slaves In The South Were On Firm Scriptural Ground’

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