A few years ago, while writing a series of lessons for Bible classes at the Sherrod Ave. Church of Christ, I drafted an essay on race relations within the Restoration Movement. This is not my area of expertise, and I have relied heavily on some of the recent scholarship on this issue, which continues to expand. I found especially helpful the published dissertation of Barclay Key and the survey history by Edward Robinson. There’s also a chapter on the topic in the wonderful history of churches of Christ by Richard Hughes, and in its updated form by James Gorman.
The essay I wrote has a lot of footnotes, which I don’t want to reproduce here. Maybe someday I’ll publish it in full in some other form. But for now, this is the most public that I have made it. But the typical length of a Substack post requires that I break up the essay into two parts.
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By the way, about a year before I wrote this essay, I preached a sermon on race relations. (Here’s the video of that day’s worship service; the sermon starts at about the 21 min. mark). It was early June 2020, and you may remember what was happening at that time. If you click the link to the video, you’ll notice that I’m not preaching to a live audience but in a studio; such were the times. I had not planned on preaching on race relations, but events overtook me, and I thought I needed to say something on the topic. I’m sure that sermon could be improved in all kinds of ways, but the one comment I made that sticks in my mind as completely stupid is when I said—more-or-less off the cuff (and that was the problem)—that the Bible doesn’t really address this issue head on. That statement is wrong, comically wrong, absurdly wrong. Like Whoopi Goldberg, I was thinking about racism based on skin color, and I think it is fair to say that the Bible doesn’t address that particular topic head on. (There might be a hint in that direction; see below.) But the Bible has a great deal to say about racial prejudice (or something close to racial prejudice), and much of the New Testament is taken up with this issue in terms of Jews and Gentiles. This essay is part of my penance.
From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth. (Acts 17:26)
In 1907, a young Black girl attended the (mostly white) church of Christ in Bellwood, Tennessee, near Lebanon. Not all of the members were happy about her presence, particularly since there was a Black congregation that met not far away. Why doesn’t she just meet with her own kind, they wondered? One of the members (S. E. Harris), ostensibly concerned about the division resulting from this situation, wrote to E. A. Elam (biographical sketch), a teacher at the Nashville Bible School and the girl’s guardian, encouraging Elam to send the girl to the Black congregation rather than the white one.
Elam was not having it. Against Harris’ suggestion that the girl’s presence was causing division, Elam retorted: “Those members who have taken up this matter and keep it agitated are doing a very great wrong in that they are dividing the church and sinning against the innocent and helpless. Instead of keeping this matter continually stirred up, all should endeavor to quiet it and to preserve the peace of the church” (Gospel Advocate, July 4, 1907). Harris did not help his case, certainly not from a twenty-first century perspective, when he replied that those objecting to the girl’s presence want her to worship God, but just to do so somewhere else, because “they just do not want their children associating with her in the capacity of worshiping God.”
Churches of Christ have had their share of racial prejudice, their share of people like S.E. Harris wanting to preserve “unity” by instituting division, their share of the “white moderate” that Martin Luther King complained about so bitterly in his iconic Letter from a Birmingham Jail (1963; wikipedia; text of the letter; pdf). Churches of Christ have also had their share of leaders like E. A. Elam, willing to stand against the dominant culture of their time in insisting on the principles of the gospel, in regard to the basic equality of all human beings, regardless of race. If the Restoration Movement has encouraged this insight into the unity in Christ brought about by the gospel (Gal 3:28), it probably is related both to the origins of the movement as a unity movement and to the call for Christians to abandon their human opinions and stand on the Bible alone.
On the other hand, the history of churches of Christ seems to reveal that the twentieth century saw a hardening of racial divisions in the movement, so that by the time that the Civil Rights movement made constant headlines in the 1960s, the dominant strain of churches of Christ typically ignored the issue altogether. The twentieth century also saw Black members of the churches of Christ finding various ways to do the work of God in a society and in a religious context that often provided them limited opportunities. While some of them focused more on eternal matters than civil rights (e.g., Marshall Keeble), others saw the two as indistinguishable and pushed back on what they considered the racism around them (e.g., S. R. Cassius, R. N. Hogan).
When it comes to race issues, our history is not all bad, but it’s not all good, either. Looking back at what we’ve done right and wrong might help us move forward with open minds and hearts on this issue that continues to cause so much turmoil.
The Bible against Racism
The Bible is not a fan of racism. That statement will come as some surprise to overt racists, who often use the Bible to undergird their ideology. Particularly popular in American history as a defense for institutionalized racism and even the enslavement of Africans has been the so-called “Curse of Ham” passage (Gen 9:20–27), a passage that supposedly shows that God curses black Africans (the descendants of Ham) to eternal slavery. According to historian Barclay Key, George Benson (wikipedia), president of Harding College, “taught that blacks were ‘under the curse of Ham’” in classes on the Pentateuch in the 1950s. But, of course, the passage in Genesis says no such thing; in fact, there is no “curse of Ham” passage known to the Bible. The cited passage is, in fact, a “curse of Canaan” passage, and Canaan has nothing to do with black Africans. The passage was intentionally misrepresented by pro-slavery apologists as a justification for their own cruelty.
The Bible’s presentation of the issue of slavery is actually quite complicated. It is true that there is no outright biblical condemnation of slavery, just as there was no abolitionist movement at all until the early eighteenth century in America and Europe. (For a brief introduction to the difficulties of the study of slavery in the Bible, see my chapter here; pdf here.) At any rate, whatever the Bible says about slavery, it certainly does not justify racism—far from it. (Slavery in the ancient world was not based on race, as it became in America.)
While the Bible says very little about anti-Black racism, one of the major themes of the New Testament is the overcoming of racism (or, at least, prejudice) between Jews and others. That must be at least part of the point of the Good Samaritan parable (Luke 10:25–37). It’s a big part of the Cornelius story (Acts 10). And it’s the main thing Paul wants to stress in Ephesians 2.
But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. (Eph 2:13–14)
In fact, a big part of Paul’s ministry is trying to convince people from different races that they are one in Christ, that they are brothers and sisters, a part of God’s family, and any distinctions that used to separate them are at best irrelevant, and at worst contrary to Christianity. Isn’t that why he’s so adamant in his letter to the Galatians that Gentile Christians should feel no need to receive circumcision, as if being in Christ is not good enough? It’s not only that they doubt the efficacy of Christ, but that they doubt Christ’s efficacy specifically toward people who are not Jews—so becoming a Jew by circumcision is the way to approach God. Nonsense! declares Paul.
There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. (Gal 3:28)
For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (1 Cor 12:13).
In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all! (Col 3:11)
A large part of Paul’s argument in Romans is that Jews and Gentiles are all in the same boat—the sin boat—and all, when saved by Jesus, become a part of the same tree, whether they are grafted in or are natural branches (Rom 11:17–24).
The Bible does not say much about anti-Black racism, but maybe it doesn’t say nothing, either. One verse of the New Testament mentions Ethiopia (Acts 8:27), the Greek term used in the ancient world most commonly to designate the area where Black Africans lived. Acts mentions the eunuch from Ethiopia not to highlight his race but to highlight his faithful response to the gospel. Apparently his race was not a concern of Philip the evangelist or of the story Luke wanted to tell.
From the beginning of the Bible to its end, the Bible stands opposed to racism. In the very first chapter, humanity is presented as made in the image of God (Gen 1:26–27), all of humanity, “red and yellow, black and white.” From one ancestor, all nations descend (cf. Acts 17:26)—a verse often quoted in these discussions, including in one of the earliest anti-slavery tracts published in America, The Selling of Joseph: A Memorial, by Samuel Sewall (1700, here). And John’s vision in Revelation includes the scene in heaven when all nations and tribes and peoples and tongues worship together (Rev 7:9).
The Stone-Campbell Movement and Slavery
For a short time (less than a year), Barton Stone owned two slaves, Ned and Lucy. He inherited them from his mother, but in January 1801, he filed the paperwork for their manumission. In his biography, Stone wrote: “I had emancipated my slaves from a sense of right, choosing poverty with a good conscience, in preference to all the treasures of the world. This revival [the Second Great Awakening] cut the bonds of many poor slaves; and this argument speaks volumes in favor of the work. For of what avail is a religion of decency and order, without righteousness?”
Stone was not the only member of his movement that considered emancipation of slaves to be an element of basic righteousness. Around 1810, Joseph Thomas visited the Stone churches of Kentucky and was impressed by their stance on slavery.
The christian companies in this settlement and about Cane Ridge have been large; but within a few years, many of them, who held black people as slaves, emancipated them, and have moved to the state of Ohio.
I will observe that the christians of these parts abhor the idea of slavery, and some of them have almost tho’t that they who hold to slavery cannot be a christian.
Stone was a committed abolitionist, though he did not—at least in 1808—want to bar slaveholders from church membership, and he supported the effort for slave colonization in Liberia. He thought slavery clearly sinful—whether specifically American slavery or, perhaps, every form of slavery. It was the failure of the American government to abolish slavery that played a major role in Stone’s renouncing political involvement in the last decade of his life.
Alexander Campbell also owned slaves as a result of an inheritance from his wife’s family, and he also emancipated them. Campbell’s views on slavery were, perhaps, somewhat more complicated than those of Stone. To interpret Campbell’s position sympathetically, we could say that he was more involved in politics than Stone, and he had a concern not simply to criticize slaveholders but to convince them, to persuade them to favor manumission, and that in order to achieve this goal Campbell presented himself as what he thought would appear to them as reasonable (not what slaveholders would consider a radical abolitionist) and he emphasized how holding people in slavery was bad for the slaveholder and his family and was economically disadvantageous. He was not the only one to make such arguments, that slavery was bad for the slaveholder. The escaped slave Harriet Jacobs wrote: “I can testify, from my own experience and observation, that slavery is a curse to the whites as well as to the blacks.”
In 1829, Alexander Campbell was selected as a delegate from Brooke County, Virginia to the state’s constitutional convention (wikipedia), where he proposed an article calling for the gradual elimination of slavery. The article was defeated. “The one concession Campbell and his fellow backcountry citizens achieved was that slavery would not be mentioned in the Virginia Constitution at all, making it possible for future state legislatures to deal with it by law rather than by constitutional amendment” (Foster).
The next year, Campbell started publishing the Millennial Harbinger. On the front page of the first issue, he announced the main goals of the new paper, among which was: “5. Disquisitions upon the treatment of African slaves, as preparatory to their emancipation, and exaltation from their present degraded condition.”
And Campbell routinely denounced state laws prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read. “What! dare not enlighten their minds! How fearful of the influence of knowledge! This point is conceded without debate, that to the safety and advantage of the whites the ignorance of the blacks is essential. And yet we blame them for being stupid!” This attitude Alexander learned from his father. In early years, Thomas Campbell made himself the object of a reprimand when he broke Kentucky’s laws against teaching slaves. At that time, the elder Campbell responded to the uproar: “Can the Word of God be thus bound and the proclamation of the gospel be thus fettered in a Christian land? Is it possible for me to remain in a place, where, under any circumstances, I am forbidden to preach a crucified Savior to my perishing fellow beings?”
In 1849, Kentucky was planning their own constitutional convention (wikipedia), and Alexander Campbell decided to try once again to persuade a state to prohibit slavery. He issued “A Tract for the People of Kentucky” aimed at convincing slaveholders of “the importance of seizing the present opportunity of ridding Kentucky of this great political misfortune,” i.e., slavery. To that end, Campbell argued that slavery was bad for the slaveholder.
The law that binds the slave binds the master, as the law that binds the husband binds the wife. The Christian master has duties to perform to his slave for which he is held bound to the State; but higher duties than these, for the performance of which, he is held more firmly bound to him who sits upon the throne of eternal judgment; before, whom the master and the slave stand upon a perfect level.
Now, the great question is, what are those duties which Christianity enjoins? Good and comfortable food and raiment, and necessary medicine! This is due to your ox and your ass,—and if you defraud them God will hear their cry and punish you. But is this all? Does the law of Christ demand no more from a Christian master, for his slave, than food, raiment and medicine, comfortable lodgings, reasonable labor,—no more?—! Yes. He is “to render to him whatever is just and equal” [Col. 4:1]. He is to teach, instruct and evangelize him by all the means in his power. He is just to do for him as his slave what he would have his slave do for him, were he himself to become the slave and his servant the master.
Such a change would open his eyes more than a volume. He would now no longer “see visions and dream dreams.” He would commune with realities. He would think ten times about the soul and once about the body. He would now no longer look upon the slave and his mule as consubstantial, co-equal and co-eternal. He would ask more than green corn and dry—in their season. He would ask more than a blanket and a bed, a cabin and a fire. He would ask for more than calomel, a lancet and a skillful doctor, when sick. He would ask for the bread and water of life, and for the physician of souls, and not to give him these he would regard as an unpardonable sin. But this is not all. His mind must be cultivated and elevated to the conception of things spiritual, divine and eternal. This calls for much teaching, either on the part of the masters or some one else. And the law, wherever it exists, that inhibits the slave from going to a common school, only obliges his Chrisitan master to open for him a private school in his own house or on his own premises. He must then become school master himself or find a substitute on the peril of renounced allegiance to Jesus Christ. It was such reasoning as this, and not the absolute scriptural unlawfulness of Slavery, that constrained me to emancipate and set free from Slavery, not my slaves only, but myself. I hesitate not to add that emancipation was much more enjoyed by me than by them; and hence, from that day till now the emancipation of masters is full as much an object near to my heart as the emancipation of slaves. But, alas! masters sometimes, as well as slaves, hug the chains that enslave them. (pp. 248–49)
There are elements of this discourse that would be faulted from a twenty-first century perspective, but I find it remarkable that in 1849, writing from Virginia, Campbell was willing to say that a master should treat the slave as he would be treated by the slave (the Golden Rule, Matt 7:12), that the master should imagine the situation that the slave and master switch places, and that if the master did not provide education for his slave, even in states where such education was illegal, that the master had thereby “renounced allegiance to Jesus Christ.” This was a matter of salvation, according to Campbell.
Contrast this attitude articulated by Campbell with the one attributed by Harriet Jacobs to her former master’s wife: “My mistress had taught me the precepts of God’s Word: ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.’ But I was her slave, and I suppose she did not recognize me as her neighbor.”
That is not to say that the views of Stone and Campbell were representative of those of the movement as a whole. According to scholar Edward Robinson, “Members of the Stone-Campbell Movement owned 101,000 black people.” One early Stone-Campbell scholar, James Shannon, one-time professor of ancient languages and university president, was an ardent defender of slavery (see his 1849 speech and his 1855 speech). He even worked against Campbell to enshrine protections for slaveholders in the Kentucky constitution. Moreover, Alexander Campbell urged slaves to obey their masters and encouraged his readers to comply with the Fugitive Slave Law, probably feeling bound by the New Testament in these areas.
Soon bloodshed would erupt, making all such arguments moot and forging a society presenting new opportunities to display the character of Christ toward people made in God’s image. How did churches of Christ respond to this new environment and these new opportunities?
Next time.
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