Today is Confederate Heroes Day in Texas; its juxtaposition with Martin Luther King, Jr. Day offends some. In fairness, Heroes Day was inaugurated in 1931, when King was two. Many southerners once viewed Confederate soldiers not only as courageous patriots but as Christian knights defending a culture endorsed by the Scripture.
Evangelicals, northern and southern, quoted the Bible. But the pro-slavery side could muster more “proof texts” than the abolitionists. In time, evangelical abolitionists recognized we must differentiate behaviors and social structures the Bible prescribes and those the Bible simply describes. God does not necessarily approve the latter; so references to slavery usually regulated rather than condoned the practice.
Taking the Bible seriously involves reading the Bible thoughtfully.
I doubt any southern evangelicals today would insist the Bible endorses slavery. Many might even question the wisdom of keeping a holiday like Confederate Heroes Day on the calendar. I lived in Texas for almost two decades and never heard of the holiday. It should be allowed to slip into the mists of best-forgotten history.
But its lessons for reading the Bible thoughtfully need to be remembered. In interpreting and applying the Bible we must consider the context of the passage and the author’s intent.
It is unlikely Paul—who belonged to a people who had once been slaves—endorsed slavery. He may be thought of as writing for the interim; we can imagine him looking ahead to a time when slavery was no more. Clearly he felt slavery limited human potential. Thus, he told Christian slaves to take the opportunity to be free should it arise (I Corinthians 7:21). Yet, he recognized an enslaved believer could still experience God’s grace and goodness, even in a less than ideal situation.
If Paul opposed slavery, why didn’t he say more? Telling Christian slaves to revolt would have seen thousands slaughtered; commanding Christian slave-owners to release their slaves might have led to resentment. Telling the Christian slave-owner Philemon to treat his former runaway slave Onesimus as as brother laid a foundation for a new attitude that would make Christian endorsement of slavery a contradiction. This, combined with the declaration of spiritual equality found in Galatians 3:28, should have been enough to make any Christian take up the abolitionist cause. Yet, southern evangelicals defended slavery, even to the point of laying down their lives.
To understand how this can be requires recognizing the power of cultural pressure. The South thrived on slavery, slavery allowed slave-owners to imagine themselves morally and intellectually superior; it was hard to trump these factors. To justify slavery, southern evangelicals used “proof texts” and ignored the implications of the good news brought by the One who came to set men and women free.
Again, had those Christians made a thoughtful difference between what the Bible commends and what the Bible reports (and tries to regulate), there might have been no Civil War; slavery might have never received tacit Christian approval.
Keeping the distinction between prescriptive and descriptive passages can help us in dealing with other matters. For example, consider what was said to Eve after she and Adam fell. God predicted there would be hostility between men and women, a constant struggle for the upper hand. Did God intend this for the crown of creation? No. Instead, God seems to be predicting what would happen, not what should happen. As Christians we should strive to live as God intended, showing in our lives the transformation wrought by Christ.
