Has Christianity Contributed to Racism and the Oppression of People of Color? (1/5)
I work for a campus ministry at the University of Louisville called Ignite the Ville and if you know anything about Ignite, you know we are always looking to engage new students. One way we do this is by tabling. Almost every Tuesday and Thursday you can find us on campus interacting with students around a six-foot, fold-out table hidden under a long black table cloth sporting our logo.
When we table, students come up for all kinds of reasons. Some involved with our ministry already come by to say “hi.” Many are just curious or hoping to grab a quick snack between classes (our table comes well-stocked with a variety of chips, GoGo Squeez applesauce packets, and CapriSuns). Others looking for a campus ministry are eager to take one of our print pieces. But every once in a while, a student comes up wanting to discuss an objection they have with Christianity.
One such encounter happened last October. As my colleague, Natalee, tells the story, this student originally came up to the table interested in the snacks. As Ignite staff began to engage her, she peppered them with questions about Bible passages she felt condoned immoral behavior, such as the oppression of people groups and the owning of slaves.
During her questioning, she revealed she had grown up in an evangelical home but had since turned away from the faith having become more familiar with the Laws of the Old Testament. For her, those laws could only have come from an immoral God—that is, if they came from God at all. In her view, Christianity was built on a book that only contributed to the problem of racism and oppression and what the Bible had to say about slavery was the proof. She wanted no part of it.
This student is not the only one claiming that Christianity is responsible for oppression and slavery. In a recent dialogue between Sam Harris and Ben Shapiro, Harris, an American neuroscientist and atheist, asserted:
“It is just an inconvenient fact that slavery is endorsed in the Bible. It is explicitly endorsed in the Old Testament and it's certainly not repudiated in the New… There is no place in the Bible where you can get a truly compelling case against slavery…” [1]
What should Christians make of these claims? Does the God of the Bible have more in common with the white supremacist slave-owner of the antebellum South than the average Christian would like to admit?
Two lines of argument are often given to support the claim that Christianity has contributed to the problem of racism and the oppression of people of color:
Christianity has contributed to racism and the oppression of people of color because Christianity’s book, the Bible, condones slavery.
Christianity has contributed to racism and the oppression of people of color because many white American Christians possessed slaves in the antebellum South and used the Bible to justify it.
My hope over the next several blogs is to test these claims against the Bible, the history of the church, and the history of redemption. Over the next several blogs we will cover:
Slavery and the Old Testament
Slavery and the New Testament
Slavery and the Church
Slavery and the History of Redemption
One challenge facing us has to do with the cultural and historical gap between modern westerners and the writers of these ancient texts. These texts spoke to cultures in which slavery was a given and, at least in some cases, relied on as a safety net in a world absent of modern social programs. In addition, the type of slavery found in the ancient world differed from the New World’s race-based chattel slavery we are most familiar with. For these reasons, it is wise for the modern critic to step back and assess these texts on their own terms and against their own cultural and historical background before making the kinds of sweeping statements Sam Harris made to Ben Shapiro from the comfort of an armchair.[2]
As we explore these topics, you will notice that the writers of the Old and New Testaments had a complex relationship to slavery. Nowhere in the Bible do we find a defense of the institution; but the Bible never presents a sustained argument against the institution either. How can we know with confidence what the God of the Bible truly thinks about slavery given this situation?
In the last installation of this series of blogs, we will seek to situate slavery in the context of the story of redemption and see if that might not give us insight into how God himself thinks about it. My hope is that taking the time to think about slavery from each of these angles will help Christians meaningfully engage students and others at tabling events and elsewhere.
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[1] Does The Bible Endorse Slavery?
[2] Copan voices a similar word of caution in Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster: Making Sense of the Old Testament God (Grand Rapids: BakerBooks, 2011), 139.