Pete Hegseth’s Spiritual Advisor Says That Slave Trading Was Wrong But Not Slavery Part 3

This is the third article on Rev. Doug Wilson, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spiritual advisor. Rev. Wilson is the head of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). I also wrote an article on why the Union war effort was an attack on Christianity.

Douglas Wilson authored a book on the Civil War and the Emancipation of African Americans called On Southern Slavery As It Was in 1995. Some of Hegseth’s views on honoring the Confederacy may have come from this prominent religious figure.

Wilson defends slavery in the South even though he admits that it did not follow Biblical because while the institution may have been flawed, both the slaveowners and the enslaved African Americans endeavored to follow scripture. Wilson writes:

“When we ask the question whether slavery in the South was a biblical slavery, the answer must consequently be yes and no. Was the South a nation in covenant with the Lord Jesus Christ? Had it undertaken formally to conform all its laws, including its laws on slavery, to the laws of Scripture? The answer is clearly [n]o: the South was not a Christian utopia. If, however, we ask whether the South contained many conscientious Christians, both slave-owning and enslaved, who endeavored to follow the requirements of Scripture set down in the New Testament for believers in slaveholding societies, then the answer is yes…” [p.16-17]

The slaves, according to Wilson, were bound to honor their white masters under scriptural obligation.

For the slave owner, the Bible was clear according to Wilson, even though the nascent Abolitionist movement tried to distort the Word of God:

“The abolitionists maintained that slaveowning was inherently immoral under any circumstance. But in this matter, the Christians who owned slaves in the South were on firm scriptural ground. May a Christian own slaves, even when this makes him a part of a larger pagan system which is not fully scriptural, or perhaps not scriptural at all? Provided he owns them in conformity to Christ’s laws for such situations, the Bible is clear that Christians may own slaves.” [p. 16-17]

Wilson says that one aspect of slavery which was clearly forbidden by the Lord was capturing people and turning them into slaves and then trading them for money. Wilson writes:

“The most plausible argument against slavery comes from the acknowledged wickedness of the slave trade. For example, Gary DeMar has recently argued that because the Bible prohibits man-stealing (Ex. 21:16; 1 Tim. 1:10), Christians could not consistently participate at any point in a process that resulted from the man-stealing. “He who kidnaps a man and sells him, or if he is found in his hand, shall surely be put to death” (Ex. 21:16).*”

While Wilson condemns this aspect of slavery as sinful, he says that it was carried on by Northerners, not, for the most part, by Southerners. Wilson also disclaims the Southern whites involvement in the slave trade because they made it profitable by buying slaves. He uses Reverend R.L. Dabney, Stonewall Jackson’s minister, as an example of how owning slaves does not make Southern whites responsible for the slave trade:

Before discussing whether slave-owning in itself constitutes an indirect support of this capital offense, we should first ask if believers in the South engaged in direct opposition to this evil. Here, the answer is clearly in the affirmative. R.L. Dabney, in his Defense of Virginia and the South, begins his chapter on the slave trade with these words: “This iniquitous traffick . . .** The duty of southern Christians was clear—they had to oppose the slave trade. They did so, . fervently and zealously. Dabney’s vehement attack on the slave trade was representative of many others.

Were they hypocrites in this opposition because they raised the cry against the slave trade while indirectly supporting that trade by owning slaves? Not at all. The Bible defines hypocrisy. Remember that in ancient Rome the acquisition of slaves was not according to the law of God either. A Christian slave owner in that system, like Philemon, was duty-bound to oppose those features of that society, and at the same time was required to treat his slaves in a gracious and thoughtful manner. He was not required to release his individual slaves because of the general societal disobedience. He was not even required to release his slaves if they came into the Christian faith (1 Tim. 6:1-4). At the same time he should have acknowledged that his believing slaves were now Christ’s freemen, and they should take any opportunity for freedom provided for them (1 Cor. 7:20).

Secondly, we must also remember that the consequences and ramifications of the African slave trade went far beyond the situation described in Exodus 21. In that situation, when the kidnapper was discovered, he would be tried and executed, and the one kidnapped would be restored to his home. The issues were simple and clear. With the slave trade, the vast majority of the slaves had already been enslaved in Africa by other blacks. They were then taken down to the coast and sold to the traders. The traders transported them, usually under wicked conditions, to those places where a market did exist for their labor, but where the civil leaders had repeatedly and consistently tried to stop the slave traders.° One of those places, Virginia, had attempted on no less than twenty-eight occasions to arrest the slave trade, but was stopped by higher (non-Southern) authorities. If the slaves were not sold in the South, they were taken on to Haiti and Brazil, where the condition and treatment of slaves was simply horrendous. The restoration of these slaves to their former condition was a physical impossibility. Now, under these conditions, was it a sin for a Christian to purchase such a slave, knowing that he would take him home and treat him the way the Bible requires? If he did not do so, nothing would be done to improve the slave’s condition, and much could happen that would make it worse. The slaves were not stolen cars; they were human beings—and the many Christians who treated them lawfully were in no way disobedient. [p. 19]

So, in other words, the sin was with the Northern shipping interests who maintained the slave trade, and Blacks in Africa who participated in the kidnapping, not with the slave owners. An African American was enslaved by Northern merchants. The slaveowner, on the other hand, was following Biblical law in accepting the slave into his household and preventing the African Americans from living in sin. The white Southerners also kept African slaves from being sold to ungodly owners in the Caribbean where their physical and moral abuse would have broken them.

Wilson says that Southerners tried to stop the slave trading:

“The requirements for godly treatment of slaves by individual masters is clearly laid out in the Bible. The requirements for a godly prohibition of man-stealing on the part of the civil magistrate is also required in the Bible. On both counts, southern Christians distinguished themselves in carefully seeking to implement both requirements. Their personal treatment of slaves is indicated in the rest of this booklet. Their political agitation for a godly abolition of the slave trade was equally notable. Virginia was the first commonwealth in the world to outlaw the practice, and this after many previous unsuccessful attempts. Dabney said it well. “Virginia has the honour of being the first Commonwealth on earth to declare against the African slave trade, and to make it a penal offense. Her action antedates by thirty years ‘the much bepraised legislation of the British parliament, and by ten years the earliest movement of Massachusetts on the subject…”

Wilson contrasts Southern slavery with Northern slave trading: