S. Donald Fortson, IIII, Professor of Church History, Reformed Theological Seminary
One approach of gay-affirming scholarship has been to claim
the church has modified its interpretations over the centuries. This
includes not only change in views and practice from the Old Testament to
the New Testament but also modifications in Biblical interpretation
during the Christian centuries. Presbyterian theologian Jack Rogers
asserts, “Christian people for centuries assumed that their Bibles
condoned slavery and the subordination of women to men. Yet, over time
and often reluctantly, people came to follow the Holy Spirit’s leading
to accept people of African origin and women as full and equal members
of the church … the Holy Spirit is once again working to change our
church – making us restless, challenging us to give up culturally
conditioned prejudices against people of homosexual orientation.” (1)
This supposed parallel between Christians in the past using
the Bible to justify slavery and the contemporary Church using
Scripture to condemn homosexuality is both misleading and confused in
its account of church history. Historically, there is no connection
between Christian attitudes towards slavery and homosexuality. But,
there does appear to be a historical resemblance between present-day
attempts to re-interpret the Bible to support homosexuality and past
misuse of the Bible in order to prop up race-based slavery. In both
cases Biblical teaching has been co-opted to support a
politically-popular position enabling Christians to comfortably fit into
the cultural values of their times.
Slavery was a reality of life in the ancient Mediterranean
world including the Greco-Roman period when Christianity emerged. It was
regulated in Old Testament Israel and within the New Testament
community. In ancient cultures persons were forced into lifelong
servitude as spoils of war or became slaves due to debts that had to be
repaid. Ancient slavery was not limited to one’s racial identity nor did
it always involve kidnapping to force people into servitude. Slaves
were bought and sold in the ancient world.
Christ’s apostles attempted to regulate slavery among
believers according to ethical principles consistent with Christian
faith. The apostles gave no explicit directives for all Christians to
immediately free slaves, however, the implications of the Christian
message pointed to the equality of all men and women before God. The
book of Philemon bears witness to the continuing reality of slavery
among converts to Christianity. Paul exhorted believing slave owner
Philemon to treat his slave Onesimus, who was also a convert, as a
Christian brother (Philemon:1:16). To the church at Colossae, Paul
wrote, “Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that
you also have a Master in heaven.” (Col. 4:1). These were radical ideas
for the first-century Roman world. One observes these same themes in the
writings of the Church Fathers who continued to challenge the
slave-holding Christian empire to live out the gospel implications of
equality of all human beings. (2)
The New Testament unmistakably affirms the essential
equality of all men and women, “for in Christ Jesus you are all children
of God by faith” (Gal. 3:26). Due to this new reality, “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). Part of the apostolic ministry was to break down old
existing relational barriers among Christians and one such barrier was
master/slave relations which now must reflect the new reality of oneness
in Christ. The New Testament also reaffirmed the Old Testament
prohibition of man-stealing and selling (Ex.21:16). In the list of those
who live “contrary to the sound teaching that conforms to the glorious
gospel of the blessed God” one finds these sinners: “murderers,
fornicators, sodomites, slave traders, liars, perjurers.” (1 Tim. 1:10).
It is ironic that some want to support homosexuality with appeals to
Biblical support for slavery when this text in fact places them side by
side as sinful.
Slavery in the New World was of a different nature than
much of slavery as practiced in the ancient world; not so much in terms
of its cruelty, slavery in ancient times could be brutal. The primary
difference had to do with the way slaves were brought to the Americas
and the exclusive racial identity of the slaves themselves. Anyone in
the ancient world could be a slave; one’s racial identity was not the
key factor in ancient times. By contrast, only black slaves from Africa
were sold by fellow Africans or kidnapped by slave traders and brought
across the Atlantic to make a profit.
In the colonial era Christians spoke out against the slave
trade, and it was outlawed in the United States by 1808 which was an
implicit acknowledgement that American slavery was inherently wicked.
The long journey to the final abolition of slavery in American is a
well-known story; it is also well known that many leaders of the
19th-century abolitionist movement were Christians. Understanding that
racial slavery as it was practiced in United States violated basic
Biblical standards of conduct, Christians were consistently outspoken
opponents of the evil institution of slavery.
The Christian influence in America was so strong in the
early 19th century that even in the South the majority of the population
and Southern legislatures were moving toward the amelioration and final
abolition of slavery. (3) Beginning in the 1830s things changed –
anti-Southern rhetoric escalated, abolitionist violence and burgeoning
threats to the slave economy pushed some southern Christians to change
their tunes. Where previously there had been more unanimity among
Christians North and South that American slavery was inconsistent with
the principles of the Gospel, some in the South began to push for
maintaining the slave system by interpreting the Bible as supportive of
American racial slavery.(4) Multitudes of Christians found this
reversal of views deplorable and continued their support for
emancipation.
One cause for this variation of interpretation on the
slavery question had to do with understanding the Biblical material.
While the New Testament appears on the surface to support all forms of
slavery, in fact, the apostles were only concerned with regulating this
social relation among Christians as it existed in the Roman world. They
certainly were not offering an apology for the legitimacy of perpetual
slavery. A careful understanding of the differences between the first
century and the America context makes it clear that the Bible cannot
legitimately be utilized to support race-based slavery of those
kidnapped or sold into bondage against their wills; the Bible firmly
denounces slave-trading and treating others as inferiors based upon
race.
The story of Christianity and American slavery is an
entirely different situation from the unequivocal Christian condemnation
of homosexuality for two millennia. Where some in the past manipulated
Biblical teaching on slavery to fit the American context, many
Christians rejected this innovation. Homosexuality has never had any
historic advocates in the Church. Homosexuality, like slavery, was
common in the ancient world, but the apostles never countenanced trying
to regulate homosexual practice but comprehensively repudiated
homosexuality at every turn. There is not a shred of Biblical material
that can be garnered to support any form of homosexual practice.
What actually happened in the 19th-century American South was a
bowing to social pressure to re-interpret the Bible in ways that
supported race-based slavery. As a society, the South viewed itself as
suffering injustice at the hands of a self-righteous North. This
cultural ethos put enormous pressure on all southern Christians to
conform to the norms of their culture. A similar pattern is being
observed in American churches today that are succumbing to cultural
demands to re-interpret the Bible to support homosexuality. The
hermeneutical twists used to discredit the clear teaching of Holy
Scripture on homosexuality is evidence of a desperate frenzy to
re-interpret Christianity in order to make it palatable to the
homosexual community. The current revisionist approach to the Bible and
homosexuality is just as odious as the older attempts to support
race-based slavery with Scripture.
Sources:
(1) Jack Rogers,
Jesus, the Bible, and Homosexuality: Explode the Myths, Heal the Church.
2nd edition (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 2009), 58.
Methodist New Testament scholar Richard Hays rejects this theory of
coupling homosexuality, subordination of women and slavery. Hays
observes: “Though only a few Biblical texts speak of homoerotic
activity, all of them express unqualified disapproval. In this respect,
the issue of homosexuality differs significantly from matters such as
slavery or the subordination of women, concerning which the Bible
contains internal tensions and counterposed witnesses.” Richard B. Hays,
“Awaiting the Redemption of our Bodies” in
Homosexuality in the Church, ed. Jeffrey S. Siker (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1994), 9,10. See also chapter 16 “Homosexuality” in Hays’ book:
The Moral Vision of the New Testament: A Contemporary Introduction to New Testament Ethics (NY: Harper Collins, 1996).
(2) For a brief survey of the Church Fathers on slavery, see Jennifer A. Glancy,
Slavery as a Moral Problem in the Early Church and Today.
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011); her discussion of St. Basil’s
opposition to Christian slave holding is particularly noteworthy. See
also Glancy’s New Testament study,
Slavery and Early Christianity (NY: Oxford University Press, 2002).
(3) See Alice Dana Adams,
The Neglected Period of Anti-Slavery in America,
1801-1831 (Williamston, MA: Corner House Publishers, 1973). Adams
documents from the primary sources the prevalence of anti-slavery
attitudes in the South prior to the 1830s.
(4) See Mark Noll’s
The Civil War as a Theological Crisis
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Noll
demonstrates from historical texts how nineteenth-century Southern
Christians became tangled in the web of race-based slavery and then
re-interpreted Scripture to support their racial prejudice.
