Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races because it was Biblical.
Quote:Pastor Douglas Wilson Argues That Opposing Slavery Is a Slippery Slope to LGBTQ+ Inclusion
In his defense of “biblical slavery,” Wilson then recalled a televised debate between Moral Majority leader Jerry Falwell Sr. and a progressive Episcopal bishop. Wilson said that Falwell “was doing good Christian work in rejecting homosexuality” but then was questioned about the fact that “the Bible allows for slavery.”
Wilson argued that Falwell ought to have said, “Yes, it does. What’s your point?” However, what Falwell argued instead was “something like ‘that was then, and this is now.’”
“I hope you can see the problem right off. Why do evangelicals get to play the ‘that-was-then-this-is-now’ game, and the gay boys don’t get to?” said Wilson. “This is a different world now, in which that kind of slavery is unthinkable. Well, yeah, but among the Episcopalians of Newark they believe it to be unthinkable to proscribe two dudes from getting it on.”
Wilson said that after watching that exchange, he resolved never “to let myself get maneuvered into waffling or backfilling about anything that the Bible plainly teaches—however roughly it treats our modern sensibilities.”
Wilson argued that evangelicals have been led by “professionally timid leaders” to “treat the Bible as a figurehead,” explaining that while many evangelicals are favorable to the idea of having the 10 Commandments posted in public spaces, those same evangelicals overlook the fact that two of the commandments mention slaves. In the command about Sabbath rest, the biblical text explicates that slaves will cease from labor on the seventh day, and in the command about covetousness, God’s people are specifically told not to covet their neighbors’ slaves.
Wilson went on to advocate for “biblical absolutism,” arguing that just as Philemon was within his rights in the first century to own slaves so long as “he followed the biblical instructions and was careful to treat his slaves with equity,” had Philemon lived in the antebellum American South, he “could own slaves, treat them biblically, and walk with God.”
Wilson argued that “Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.”
https://churchleaders.com/news/2208977-d...usion.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
