Evangelicals are in favor of slavery

John MacArthur preaches his religion’s white supremacy

Slavery is bad…right? It might seem any Christian would agree. But in a sermon given by John MacArthur back in 2001, noticed only recently, he takes a different view.

It started when Sharon Autenrieth, an assistant Methodist pastor and “social justice warrior” in Illinois, found herself reading a MacArthur sermon, and noticed he was defending slavery.

John MacArthur is no stranger to offensive remarks.

It’s kind of why he’s the leader of the Evangelical world. But to say Africans are “servile” by nature, and “doomed to perpetual slavery”—was next level.

In the 2001 sermon, “History in the New World,” he claims the Bible lays out a racial hierarchy via the sons of Noah. Africans descend from Ham, Noah’s son, whose son Canaan was cursed—so slavery is okay.

If all that seems a whirlwind of crazy, it’s very familiar within the religion. It’s the old “curse of Ham” interpretation—the one that undergirded slavery in the American South.

Sharon Autenrieth tweeted about it, and outrage ensued. Many commented, like religion scholar Samuel Perry, who added:

“Wow. Just one of the most famous contemporary evangelical radio preachers and authors promoting the curse of Ham like it was 1850.”

That alerted Rick Pidcock, a poet, musician, stay-at-home father, and Christian journalist.

He went to look over John MacArthur’s long record of praising slavery. In a post at Baptist News, he got into the details of the 2001 sermon. But there was also a 2010 Q&A session in which MacArthur discussed Ham’s progeny as “a more servile people” who “wound up in Africa.”

Then there was a 2012 chat where MacArthur allowed that slavery had ‘abuses’. But it was the same, he allowed, in marriage, childrearing, or any other human institution.

MacArthur concludes:

“Slavery is not objectionable if you have the right master. It’s the perfect scenario.”

The Bible is not racist in any way.

There are many African characters in the Bible who seem to be valued as the highest levels of spiritual seekers, like the Queen of Sheba or the Ethiopian Eunuch. Indeed, Jesus points to the Queen of Sheba as setting the standard for spirituality in all humanity (cf. Mt 12:42; Lk 11:31).

But when setting out to defend the Atlantic Slave Trade, many Christians devised a “biblical” interpretation of a puzzling story in Genesis 9:24–27. This was the famous “curse of Ham” passage. Noah puts a curse on his grandson for reasons that are unclear.

Ham is not said to be African, dark-skinned, etc. The curse is pronounced by Noah, not God, and is never said to define an entire race. But Christianity became convinced this was God’s decision to designate Africans as subordinate to Europeans.

White Christians kept the “Curse of Ham” talk going after the Civil War.

We see it on view in innumerable Evangelical Christian texts, like the Scofield Study Bible. There was regular support for “scientific racism.”

Growing up Evangelical, I didn’t hear the “curse of Ham” talked about, and I thought it was some odd, discredited view, a bizarre artifact of the past.

I only realized later that the ‘curse of Ham’ and a racist reading of the Bible were operating all along. They might not talk much about it openly, but that doesn’t mean they disagree with it.

MacArthur has been a lifelong white supremacist.

He went to Bob Jones University from 1957 to 1959, when the school was white-only. He has a bizarre reading of the ‘Tower of Babel’ episode as being the origins of the many races of humanity. The assumption here is that the “godly” people or Noah’s line are white, and that Christianity descends from it.

MacArthur is openly dismissive of non-Western and especially Africans, holding them out as unthinking ‘savages’. As Pidcock writes:

“He spoke of ‘pygmies in Africa’ and ‘primitive people’ that ‘have painted their faces with some kind of plant — these people that run around stabbing pigs in the jungle naked.’”

And John MacArthur believes in slavery.

The ‘curse of Ham’ was never lifted. So he concludes that African people “are doomed to perpetual slavery because they followed the moral turpitude of their ancestors, Ham and Canaan.”

This is, again, not some eccentric view confined to him. It’s printed without objection in his well-known guide, The MacArthur New Testament Commentary. As he puts it:

“Although slavery was carefully regulated under Mosaic law, neither the Old nor New Testaments condemns slavery as such. Social strata are recognized and even designed by God for man’s good. Some people will be served, and some will serve others. New Testament teaching does not focus on reforming and restructuring human systems.”

MacArthur is saying that the races are to be hierarchically stacked, and that the slavery of African people is “good” and God’s will.

As the comments came to light on social media, many denounced them.

Michael F. Bird, the Anglican Bible scholar, writes:

“What MacArthur shockingly does is rehearse the 19th-century pro-slavery arguments made in the Antebellum South.”

But Evangelicals themselves seem unperturbed. You might hear it in the silence? They agreed with him. 🔶