Disclaimer: I have known Dwight McKissic as a friend for more than a decade. I was introduced to Tom Nettles in a coffee shop by a friend who was having a conversation with him. He and I do not know each other personally.
Last fall, pastor Dwight McKissic’s open letter to Al Mohler and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary trustees was published. McKissic’s letter pled for the names of the seminary Founders, all of whom were proponents of American chattel slavery, to be removed from seminary buildings they adorn along with “any memorabilia” concerning them. McKissic wrote,
By allowing the names of the founders to continue to be plastered on walls and memorialized publicly as men of high moral character, you are in effect upholding their legacy of being theological and practical proponents and defenders of White Supremacy and Black inferiority.
Baptist theologian and longtime seminary professor Tom Nettles published a rebuttal to McKissic. Entitled Removing Names: Deep Cleaning?, he reframes McKissic’s concerns, saying it requires charges of heresy. McKissic never uses the words heresy or heretic. Regardless, Nettles divines they are necessary, then mounts his counterattack on a point McKissic never makes.
Because they were antebellum slave owners, and thus, ostensibly, post-bellum white supremacists, it naturally follows that they were heretics. They were lawless, so the reasoning goes, and, therefore, godless, and thus necessarily heretical, because they thrived on another generation’s and another culture’s man-stealing. (emphasis mine)
We will leave aside momentarily Nettles’ insertion of heresy into the debate, and that the men at the fulcrum of this debate were both antebellum slave owners and white supremacist heretics (a fact shaded by his use of “ostensibly”), to first consider whether they thrived on “another generation’s and another culture’s man-stealing.” We will return to the former.
The latter is a factual misrepresentation so far beyond the pale one can barely see the plantation. The Founders of Southern Seminary did not participate and thrive in another generation’s man-stealing; they owned slaves. It was their generation, not merely that of their parents and grandparents that built personal worth and reputations on the stolen labor of enslaved persons who themselves were direct descendants of those who had been stolen.
Equally erroneous, it was not merely “another culture’s man-stealing.” This non-specific reference could mean countries in Africa where inhabitants were sold to slavers for the hellish Middle Passage to American slave markets. But man-stealing was the foundation upon which the entire American slavery enterprise was built and continued even after importing humans from abroad for enslavement was banned. As I noted elsewhere:
Even after the importation of Africans for American slavery halted in 1808, intra-state slave trading kept the doctrine of demons alive for nearly 6 more decades. It was perfectly legal to buy and sell enslaved black Americans to force breeding for the purpose of selling the children to other plantations, to inherit slaves as property, or sell for cash. The institution of slavery in the South was built on and sustained by slave trading, men-stealing.
At the time of the first federal census in 1790, there were 697,897 enslaved people in the United States, products of both the trade and American birth. By 1810, two years after the international trade was outlawed, there were 1,191,354, and by the brink of the Civil War there were 3,953,760 people reckoned as slaves (American Slavery: 1619–1877, Kolchin, p 93). No original victims of the slave trade were yet living in America when Southern Seminary’s slavers were enjoying the fruit of stolen labor. Enough time lapsed between 1808 and the founding of the SBC in 1845—and that of Southern Seminary in 1859—for two generations of black Americans to be born into slavery, a fact born-out by the census records. It was this system of oppression they perpetuated by participation, but Nettles registers faint condemnation of it.
One simply cannot make a good-faith, historically accurate argument that slavers like James Boyce, John Broadus, Basil Manly, and William Willams were separate and distinct from other slaveholding cultures and times when in fact they themselves were the warp and woof of both.
But, heretics?
But, does it naturally follow that they were heretics, a charge Nettles denies? Some examples of heresy, according to John MacArthur, are self-centeredness, rejection of Apostolic teaching, and being inhospitable to the brethren. He further calls suppressing and opposing Apostolic doctrine “the most pernicious kind of heresy.” Were slavers then—even pastors, theologians, and Founders of seminaries—heretics? Former slave Sojourner Truth would say yes:
And what is that religion that sanctions, even by its silence, all that is embraced in the ‘Peculiar Institution’? If there can be any thing more diametrically opposed to the religion of Jesus, than the working of this soul-killing system—which is as truly sanctioned by the religion of America as are her minsters and churches—we wish to be shown where it can be found. (emphasis mine)
I’m open to examples of non-heretical religions “diametrically opposed” to that of Jesus, but am not holding my breath.
Nor did Frederick Douglass see the Founders’ theology as genuinely Christian:
What I have said respecting and against religion, I mean strictly to apply to the slaveholding religion of this land, and with no possible reference to Christianity proper; for, between the Christianity of this land, and the Christianity of Christ, I recognize the widest possible difference—so wide, that to receive the one as good, pure, and holy, is of necessity to reject the other as bad, corrupt, and wicked. To be the friend of the one, is of necessity to be the enemy of the other. I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one, for calling the religion of this land Christianity. I look upon it as the climax of all misnomers, the boldest of all frauds, and the grossest of all libels. (emphasis added)
The Founders were heretics, at the very least, in their biblical anthropology. They denied brotherly affection to believing African Americans including slaves, approved of their bondage and forced labor, rejected Apostolic teaching of the imago Dei, and had a galloping self-centeredness in relation to those of African decent. John Broadus recommended against an Indian student if he had “Negro blood” in him.
Nettles continues:
Together, we agree that the Bible reprobates man-stealing (1 Timothy 1:10; Exodus 21:16). We also would agree that freedom is superior as a temporal condition to slavery and should be achieved when a lawful opportunity arises (1 Corinthians 7:21). We also would agree with Broadus, with awe-inspiring wonder at God’s providence, that the Civil War, even at the cost of a half-million lives, determined that America was a place where a lawful path to productive freedom was open to all persons.
In his Second Inaugural address, President Abraham Lincoln framed slavery as an “offense” produced by “the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil” enforced through “blood drawn with the lash” positioning God’s judgment as the true and righteous result. “Father Abraham” provides a more thoroughgoing biblical assessment than Broadus’s “awe-inspiring wonder at God’s providence,” a description as readily applicable to a starry night or a fresh cucumber salad.
Nettles allows that slaves might seek freedom “when a lawful opportunity arises,” an addition to Paul’s counsel to slaves in Corinth. But American slavery was built on and sustained by unrighteous laws, laws as unrighteous as those of the Third Reich against European Jewry. The diseased heart of the Confederacy was legislated white supremacy undergirded by corrupted Christianity; it was thus in the Secession Articles, laws, and sermons. Any “laws” establishing and regulating American slavery were by definition unrighteous, ungodly, unholy, and invalid. Would Nettles argue that slaves who violated the law by escaping to the New York or Canada were in sin? If so, how does he oppose slavery at all? Are we to believe the straight-up reading of “If you can become free, by all means take the opportunity” was sin? If American POWs can escape if an opportunity presents itself, why not slaves who are non-combatants in a sustained war against their spirits, souls, and bodies?
If enslavers could force a reading of Mosaic laws onto 19th century, New Covenant cotton fields, then surely a Christian slave reading Paul’s words was not obligated to heed those of Jeff Davis. The Christian operators of the Underground Railroad found no contradiction between following Jesus and helping slaves escape, as Southern pastors were abusing Philemon to guilt enslaved people not to flee. If Nettles wants to pit “when a lawful opportunity arises” against God’s servant Harriet Tubman, give me Tubman or give me death.
Sam Sharpe was a slave and Baptist deacon in Jamaica who lead a revolt in 1831. Historian Liam Hogan notes:
Before his execution he spoke of how he learned from his bible [sic] that “Whites had no more right to hold black people in slavery, than black people had to make white people slaves.”
What makes Nettles right and Sharpe wrong? Only a predisposition to a certain theology. A better question is, “Why believe Nettles is right instead of wrong?” There is no reason.
Former slaves heartily disagree with slaver theology.
Dr. Nettles continues,
We also, as believers in biblical infallibility and in the revelatory ministry of the apostles would see a clear pattern of relationship between slave and master in both the Petrine and the Pauline material. Slaves were to do their service gladly to their masters, even to those who were harsh, embracing the opportunity for sanctification and for emulation of Christ. They were to consider that their work transcended a merely earthly task and was done as unto the Lord. In their faithful service, considering their master as worthy of “all honor,” they would adorn gospel doctrine. Slaves should serve believing masters with good will toward the prospering and well-being of the master. The bond-servant would be rewarded by God for faithful service or would be judged by him impartially for wrongdoing.
Nettles’ use of the obedience scriptures is precisely what antebellum slavers did to reinforce the slaver’s power over the enslaved. Their’s was a truncated Christianity that offered the enslaved freedom in the sweet by-and-by, but forced the impossible situation of trying to obey two irreconcilable masters in the shackled here and now. Thus, Nettles attempts to condemn slavery whilst defending the warped theology that supported the entire enterprise.
Throughout his response, Nettles equates without explanation or clarification Roman slavery and American chattel slavery. Roman slavery was closer to the slavery of the Old Testament, neither of which is parallel to the American system. Tim Keller clarifies:
Older forms of indentured servanthood and the bond-service of biblical times had often been harsh, but Christian abolitionists concluded that race-based, life-long chattel slavery, established through kidnapping, could not be squared with biblical teaching either in the Old Testament or the New. (The Reason for God, p 63)
British believer Thomas Clarkson objected to slavery based on the order of creation:
We cannot suppose therefore that God has made an order of beings, with such mental qualities and powers, for the sole purpose of being used as beasts, or instruments of labour.
It appears first, that liberty is a natural, and government an adventitious right, because all men were originally free. (Thomas Clarkson and Ottobah Cugoano: Essays on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species)
Former slave Ottobah Cugoano, a follower of Jesus, damns the very form of Christianity Southern’s founders defended:
In a Christian era, in a land [England] where Christianity is planted, where every one might expect to behold the flourishing growth of every virtue, extending their harmonious branches with universal philanthropy wherever they came; but, on the contrary, almost nothing else is to be seen abroad but the bramble of ruffians, barbarians and slave-holders, grown up to a powerful luxuriance in wickedness. I cannot but wish, for the honor of Christianity, that the bramble grown up amongst them, was known to the heathen nations by a different name, for sure the depredators, robbers and ensnarers of men can never be Christians, but ought to be held as the abhorence of all men, and the abomination of all mankind. (Thoughts and Sentiments on the Evil of Slavery, emphasis added)
Nettles asks whether Boyce, Broadus, Manly, and Williams can truly be considered heretics; Cugoano asserts such men were an affront to actual Christianity and should not be considered Christians.
Assuredly, God will judge.
Which gospel?
In his follow-up defense of Southern’s Founders, Nettles writes:
This disposition is not a defense of slavery as an absolute, but, in light of its engrafting into a society, a necessary orientation to it. Boyce published an appeal that no manager of a plantation or owner of slaves ‘should rest satisfied until he has taken the means either to provide an instructor for his negros or has contrived a means to instruct them himself. Who can estimate the worth of even a partial acquaintance with the Bible? Who knows what effect for eternity the knowledge of the plan of salvation may have? A soul saved is worth all the labor, all the toil, all the expense, which is now expended for the whole South in Missions among the blacks. Of how much more value is the salvation of thousands?
But which gospel were they taught? Into what religion were they instructed? Into what salvation were they invited?
In a familiar passage, Douglass has an appraisal of such men:
We have men sold to build churches, women sold to support the gospel, and babes sold to purchase Bibles for the poor heathen! all for the glory of God and the good of souls! The slave auctioneer’s bell and the church-going bell chime in with each other, and the bitter cries of the heart-broken slave are drowned in the religious shouts of his pious master…The dealers in the bodies and souls of men erect their stand in the presence of the pulpit, and they mutually help each other. The dealer gives his blood-stained gold to support the pulpit, and the pulpit, in return, covers his infernal business with the garb of Christianity. Here we have religion and robbery the allies of each other—devils dressed in angels’ robes, and hell presenting the semblance of paradise.
Freeborn North Carolinian David Walker, writing in his Appeal, says of such professing Christians:
Have they not, after having reduced us to the deplorable condition of slaves under their feet, held us up as descending originally from the tribes of Monkeys or Orang-Ourtangs? O! my God!…[A]nother law has passed…in Virginia to prohibit all persons of color, (free and slave) from learning to read or write, and even to hinder them from meeting together in order to worship our Maker!!!!!!…But glory, honour and praise to Heaven’s King, that the sons and daughters of Africa, will, I spite of all the opposition of their enemies, stand forth in dignity and glory that is granted by the Lord to his creature man. (Walker’s Appeal, In Four Articles, quoted in African American Readings of Paul, Lisa M. Bowens, pp. 99–100)
Douglass and Walker are not alone. Others addressed the falsity of white supremacy theology and treatment of some slave preachers:
Lucretia Alexander explained what slaves did when they grew tired of the white folks’ preacher: “The preacher came and…he’d just say, ‘Serve your masters. Don’t steal your master’s turkey. Don’t steal your master’s chickens. Don’t steal your master’s hawgs. Don’t steal your master’s meat. Do whatsomever your master tells you to do.’ Same old thing all the time…Sometimes they would…want a real meetin’ with some real preachin’…They used to sing their songs in a whisper and pray in a whisper.” Slaves faced severe punishment if caught attending secret prayer meetings.
Moses Grandy reported that his brother-in-law Isaac, a slave preacher, “was flogged, and his back pickled” for preaching at a clandestine service in the woods. His listeners were flogged and “forced to tell who else was there.”
The enslaved were not impressed by or eager to hear slavery-supporting preachers who feigned concern for their souls while abusing their bodies, desecrating their wives, dividing their families, and disallowing them into their churches. Nor was white supremacy Christianity the embodiment of a full gospel. It was this very racial superiority and accompanying segregation, after all, that the Founders embraced and enforced that required separate religious instruction in the first place. Their slaves were not allowed in their churches, so, hiring outside instructors was their solution—what Nettles terms a “necessary orientation.”
It was not due to the white enslavers gospel that enslaved black Americans came to faith in Jesus, but in spite of it. God raised up preachers who proclaimed the whole counsel of the Word to all people in contradistinction to those who abused the Word in support of white supremacy.
Equally problematic is the description of Boyce as providing a “necessary orientation” due to chattel slavery’s “engrafting into [Southern] society.” This is a startlingly flat interpretation of history. The Christianity of the Confederacy was not the newly birthed church in AD 33, a flea on an elephant to the Roman Empire’s massive presence. Slavery was foundational to the Confederacy, not a heretical olive branch grafted onto an otherwise righteous society. The early church over time abolished slavery; the Confederacy declared the enslavement of Africans to God-ordered, and for the benefit of White society codified it, then enforced it with ruthless violence.
Pitting the physical welfare of the slaves against their eternal souls, or worse yet, the eternal welfare of “the heathen,” is theological slight-of-hand. There was no need for the division. At any moment in their history, Southern Christians could have embraced the gospel, risen up of their own accord and dismantled slavery, outlawed the plantation system, run Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephens out of town on rails, freed every enslaved black American, welcomed them into their business circles, churches and theological institutions, and been a gospelized city set on a hill. But, they did not. They chose, with very few exceptions, to secure white domination and oppress black people. That’s why no amount of theological presentism can rehabilitate the Founders defective beliefs about humanity. As former slave turned Presbyterian pastor James Pennington wrote in his autobiography:
Especially have I felt anxious to save professing Christians, and my brethren in the ministry, from falling into a great mistake. My feelings are always outraged when I hear them speak of “kind masters,”—”Christian masters,”—”the modest form of slavery,”—”well fed and clothed slaves,” as extenuations of slavery; I am satisfied they either mean to pervert the truth, or they do not know what they say. The being of slavery, its soul and body, lives and moves in the chattel principle, the property principle, the bill of sale principle; the cart-whip, starvation, and nakedness, are its inevitable consequences. (African American Readings of Paul, Lisa M. Bowens, pg. 143)
Southern Seminary’s Founders could have called for emancipating Southern slaves, but failed to do so. They could have led a Southern-based Christian abolition movement based on the imago Dei in all people, but failed to do so. They could have opened Southern Baptist Theological Seminary to African American preachers, but failed to do so. Instructed in the gospel by both sermon and books, the Founders could have repented their sin. But, setting aside Apostolic doctrine and love for the brethren, the Founders chose instead the system that abused them.
Heresy indeed.
The closest Nettles comes to condemning the Founders’ slaveholding is near then end when he characterizes their slaveholding as “supposed wrongdoing” while denying it was “real heresy.”
How ironic that we would consider their supposed wrongdoing as having such residual effects that we would reprobate them as heretics, while forgetting the residual effects of living orthodoxy that was the means of converting sinners and reclaimed a school and a convention from real heresy.
There are no words strong enough to condemn what the Founders did, willingly and knowingly supporting and participating in American chattel slavery. They cannot claim lack of access to God’s eternal truth nor are they excused by “men of our times” arguments when men and women of their times were preaching the unvarnished truth of slavery’s poison. Their salvation I cannot judge, but as to whether they embraced and propagated the damnable heresy of white supremacy, there is no doubt. While Dwight McKissic did not himself use the word heretic to describe them, when it comes to their theology of humanity and race, heresy is the shoe that fits.
fides quaerens intellectum
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