Southern Christianity and Slavery

Understanding the Biblical Foundations for Peace

Biblical Christianity pervaded the Old South perhaps as much as any society in history. Although authentic faith was by no means universal and nominal Christianity and lapsed moral standards were common enough, a genuine Christian faith and Christian worldview permeated and substantially influenced every level of society and almost every institution. In his comprehensive biography of Stonewall Jackson, Southern historian James I. Robertson Jr. emphasized that Jackson could not be understood without understanding his Christian perspective. Neither can the Old South, nor even the modern South, be fully understood without understanding the degree to which Christian faith and worldviews have pervaded its culture and society for more than two centuries.   

It should not be surprising then, that Confederate President Jefferson Davis, the man Confederate Postmaster General John H. Reagan later called “the most devout Christian I ever knew” and who was acknowledged throughout the South to be a man of sincere Christian confession, character, and conduct, concluded his February 18, 1861, first inaugural remarks in Montgomery, Alabama, with a humble appeal to divine guidance and protection:

“Reverently let us invoke the God of our fathers to guide and protect us….With the continuance of His favor ever gratefully acknowledged, we may hopefully look forward to success, to peace, and to prosperity.”

Two months later on April 29, Davis elaborated:

“We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any price save that of honor and independence; we ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the states with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be left alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms. This we must resist to the direst extremity.”

In the summer of 1861, one hundred prominent Southern ministers from various denominations signed a statement entitled “Address to Christians throughout the World.” In this document they stated why the vast majority of Southern ministers and Southern Christians supported the Southern cause as fully consistent with their commitment to Christ and his Church. 

However, before we look at this passionate statement, we must deal with some prevalent misunderstandings about the Union cause and what the Bible says about slavery.

I am not trying to make a case for slavery here, Slavery is an institution that limits human freedom and productivity and is fraught with potential of for human abuse. It also presents elevated dangers to the peace, stability, and wellbeing of any society. However, the conditions and abuses of slavery in the South tended to be greatly exaggerated by opportunistic media and radical abolitionist politicians throughout  the war and the 12 years of Reconstruction that followed. Under the strong influence of Christian teachings in the South, Southern slavery was generally much more benign than betrayed in modern media, which is more committed to virtue-signaling than truth.

Extensive research by Fogel and Engerman in 1974 and the Slave Narratives compiled by over 2,000 interviews of former slaves by the Roosevelt Administration from 1936 to 1938 indicate Southern slaves had significantly better nutrition, housing, and medical care than Northern industrial workers. Physical abuse was uncommon and unlawful. Over 80 percents of former slaves interviewed by Federal Government scholars had a favorable opinion of their masters.

The dominant false narrative about the Union cause is that it was to free the slaves. The Republican Platform of 1860 does not propose to free any slaves in the United States. The Republicans, the dominant political party of the North, simply wanted to restrict slavery to Southern and Border states.  Furthermore, in his Inaugural Address on March 2, 1861, President Abraham Lincoln endorsed the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which would have guaranteed slavery to the South as a permanent American institution unremovable from the Constitution. Moreover, the Northern Congress passed a Resolution on July 22, 1861, stating specifically that preserving the Union and maintaining their interpretation of the Supremacy of the Constitution and not interfering with slavery were the purposes of the war. What they wanted most was higher tariffs, which the South strongly resisted. The Morrill Tariff, passed March 4, 1861, raised import taxes 67 percent. The cotton-producing states were already paying over 83 percent of the tariff burden, which was 95 percent of Federal tax revenues. Import taxes are also extremely damaging to exporters. In 1860, the South accounted for 82 percent of national exports, predominantly cotton. The cotton-states had no bearable choice but secession

The next thing to understand is that while freedom was generally preferable to slavery in Biblical times, the Bible regulates the treatment of slaves rather than condemning slavery as an institution or means of employment.   

In Genesis 14:14, we learn that Abraham had 318  able and trusted male bondservants, who were considered part of his household. A “bondservant” the nicer King James translation of bondslave, may have been treated like family, but their legal status was slave.

The Book of Leviticus may be a shocker to Christians who assume the modern framing of slavery as the ultimate evil.   Leviticus 25 has numerous verses on regulating slavery, but Leviticus 25: 44-46 is sufficient for a general understanding:

 ^“As for your male and female slaves whom you may have; you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property.  You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers, the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly.”

The New Testament letters of Paul and Peter, however, give the clearest instructions on how Christians should deal with slavery issues.

First Timothy contains a warning for those who are obsessed with drumming up grievances about slavery and ethnic-identity politics. The first Bishop of Ephesus, Timothy, had encountered some controversy in his young church, because among its members were both masters and slaves. Evidently, someone in the church was using the issue to stir up enmity. In a letter to his protégé, the Apostle Paul writes with divinely inspired authority addressing the issue:

1 Timothy 6:1-5, English Standard Version (ESV):

“Let all who are under a yoke as slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honor, so that the name of God and the teaching may not be reviled. Those who have believing masters must not be disrespectful on the ground that they are brothers; rather they must serve all the better since those who benefit by their good service are believers and beloved. Teach and urge these things. If anyone teaches a different doctrine and does not agree with the sound words of our Lord Jesus Christ and the teaching that accords with godliness,  he is puffed up with conceit and understands nothing. He has an unhealthy craving for controversy and for quarrels about words, which produce envy, dissension, slander, evil suspicions, and constant friction among people who are depraved in mind and deprived of the truth, imagining that godliness is a means of gain.”

The King James version adds to the end of verse 5: “from such withdraw thyself.”  

Paul also elaborates on the proper conduct and relationships between masters and slaves in his general letter to the Ephesian Church, Ephesians 6: 5-9

“Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ,  not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man,  knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free. Masters, do the same to them, and stop your threatening, knowing that he who is both their master and yours is in heaven, and that there is no partiality with him.”

There are many dozens of Biblical verses that regulate the practice of slavery or mention it casually, as the bondservants in the Tenth Commandment.  Peter also comments on the harder Christian virtues to cultivate in 1 Peter 2: 18-19:

 “Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. For it is commendable if someone bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because they are conscious of God.”

Now you are ready to understand and perhaps appreciate some of paragraphs of 100 Southern ministers to the world in the summer of 1861”

“The war is forced upon us.   We have always desired peace.  After a conflict of opinions between the North and the South, in Church and State, of more than thirty years, growing more bitter and painful daily, we withdrew from them to secure peace—they sent troops to compel us into re-union! Our proposition was peaceable separation, saying, ‘We are actually divided, our nominal union is only a platform of strife.’ Their answer was a call for troops to force submission to a government whose character, in the judgment of the South, has been sacrificed to sectionalism.”

“We are aware that in respect to the moral aspects of the question of slavery, we differ from those who conceive of emancipation as a measure of benevolence, and on that account we suffer much reproach which we are conscious of not deserving.”

“With all the facts of the system of slavery before us, as eye witnesses and ministers of the        word, having had perfect understanding of all things on this subject of which we speak, we may surely claim respect for our opinions and statements.”

“Most of us have grown up from childhood among the slaves; all of us have preached to and taught them the word of life; have administered to them the ordinances of the Christian Church; sincerely love them as souls for whom Christ died; we go among them freely and know them in health and sickness, in labor and rest, from infancy to old age.  We are familiar with their physical and moral condition, and alive to all their interests, and we testify in the sight of God, that the relation of master and slave among us, however we may deplore abuses in this, as in other relations of mankind, is not incompatible with our holy Christianity, and that the presence of the African in our land is an occasion of gratitude on their behalf, before God; seeing that thereby Divine Providence has brought them where missionaries of the Cross may freely proclaim to them the word of salvation, and the work is not interrupted by agitating fanaticism. The South has done more than any people on earth for the Christianization of the African race.  The condition of slaves here is not wretched, as Northern fictions would have men believe, but prosperous and happy, and would have been yet more so but for the mistaken zeal of abolitionists.  Can emancipation obtain for them a better portion?  The practicable plan for benefiting the African race must be the providential plan—the scriptural plan. We adopt that plan in the South, and while the State should seek by wholesome legislation to regard the interests of master and slave, we as ministers would preach the word to both as we are commanded of God.  This war has not benefited the slaves. Those that have been encouraged or compelled to leave their masters have gone, and we aver can go, to no state of society that offers them any better things than they have at home, either in respect to their temporal or eternal welfare.”

“We regard abolitionism as an interference with the plans of Divine Providence. It has not the sign of the Lord’s blessing.  It is a fanaticism which puts forth no good fruit; instead of blessing, it has brought forth cursing; instead of love, hatred; instead of life, death—bitterness and sorrow and pain and infidelity and moral degeneracy follow its labors We remember how the Apostle has taught the minister of Jesus upon this subject, saying, strife, railings, evil surmisings, heresies, disputing of men of corrupt minds and destitute of the truth, supposing that gain is godliness; from such withdraw thyself’ This is what we teach.”

“The Christians of the South, we claim, are pious, intelligent, and liberal.  Their pastoral and missionary work have claims of peculiar interests. There are hundreds of thousands here, both white and colored, who are not strangers to the blood that bought them.  We rejoice that the great Head of the Church has not despised us. We desire as much as in us lieth to live peaceably with all men, and though reviled, to revile not again.”

“Our soldiers were before the war our fellow-citizens, and many of them are of the household of faith, who have carried to the camp so much of the leaven of Christianity that amid all the demoralizing influence of army life the good work of salvation has gone forward there.”

“Our President, some of our most influential statesmen, our Commanding General, and an unusual proportion of the principal Generals, as well as scores of other officers, are prominent, and we believe consistent members of the Church.  Thousands of our soldiers are men of prayer.”

“In conclusion, we ask for ourselves, our churches, our country, the devout prayers of all God’s people—‘the will of the Lord be done.”

The continuous virtue-signaling and cancel-culture strife surrounding slavery in American history are born of ignorance and rebellion against God. From such we should withdraw. The wisdom of Scripture is the road to peace.