The Bible Challenge: Religious Implications of Slavery

It is no secret that Christianity was the most powerful driving force behind the seismic wave that was American abolitionism, but ironically, it was also one of the biggest supporting forces for its arch enemy: the institution of American slavery. Slaveholders, who referred to themselves as Christian, argued that the Bible from cover to cover endorsed slavery. The most accessible original sources were the collection of essays in the book Cotton is King and Pro-Slavery Arguments. 

Their five pronged argument was as follows: the Curse of Ham was the divine initiation of slavery; all the patriarchs had slaves and were considered blessed by God; the moral Law sanctioned and regulated slavery; Jesus accepted slavery; the Apostles accepted slavery. The Curse of Ham comes from the Biblical story in which Ham, the youngest son of Noah, is cursed by his father to have a bloodline of servants that will serve his brothers. Slaveholders described Ham as black and his descendants as Africans to justify chattel slavery as divinely inspired. Southerners would then go on to argue that God must endorse slavery if the patriarchs of his people owned slaves and if slavery was sanctioned in his own moral law, often quoting Leviticus 25:44-46. Though they could not find much say from Jesus on the matter, they interpreted his silence on the issue as support. Finally, they used passages like Ephesians 6:5-7 to argue that apostles supported the institution of slavery as well.

As evidenced in the previous paragraph, proponents of slavery frequently cited scripture to support their arguments. Such an approach was widely popular among proponents of slavery due to the status of the bible as the word of God. Consequently, the biblical counter argument to slavery required a greater degree of complexity, extending interpretation of the bible beyond individual verses. Thus, many abolitionist preachers, theologians, and pastors, adopted a holistic interpretation of the bible, emphasizing the overall message of the text. Jonathan Blanchard–a popular abolitionist during the antebellum era– argued for abolition and condemned the institution of slavery as intrinsically “anti-Christian.” At the basis of Blanchard's position was the biblical idea of “one blood-ism” which he felt alluded to the inherent equality of mankind. 

Other more radical Christians, such as William Lloyd Garrison, elected to entirely disregard biblical scriptures that expressed a permissible attitude toward slavery. Although Garrison still expressed his belief in God, he refused to acknowledge the bible as a direct reflection of God’s values; those that shared such an argument reasoned that God represented morality, symbolism that would juxtapose a pro-slavery ideology. 

From a separate angle, many anti-slavery Christians argued that slavery in the antebellum period varied from biblical slavery in a myriad of significant ways. The two most popular competitive arguments asserted that southern slavery broke up families–a violation of the commandments– and prohibited the possibility of freedom–a transgression against the old testament. While the complexity of the Christian anti-slavery argument far exceeded that of the anti-slavery argument, all Christian abolitionists expressed a gestalt interpretation of the bible. 

In all, the bible served as a repository of religious rationale that was manipulated to serve slavery and anti-slavery sentiments alike. In a similar fashion to the Compromise of 1850, the holy bible failed to decisively settle American debate over slavery. As a result, the nation experienced a “theological crisis” which played an important role in the escalation of tension which would lead to the civil war in 1863.