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CONSTITUTION The founding of the American Republic has been hailed as one of history's greatest achievements in the advancement of human dignity. The first ten amendments of the Constitution of the United States, known as the Bill of Rights, for the first time in a written constitution protected the individual from the deprivation of his most basic human rights by a tyrannous government. But there was a class of humans whose rights and interests were deliberately and glaringly omitted from the protection of the American Constitution: Negro slaves. How can we understand a document which both recognized and guaranteed man's most basic human rights, but which at the same time also perpetuated and aggravated one of the worst human rights atrocities in modern history? |
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HISTORY When Kenneth Stampp titled his famous work on Southern slavery The Peculiar Institution, he referred to a description of slavery attributed to Southerners themselves. Slavery was peculiar even to Southerners for reasons with which we all are familiar. It was a system of bondage in the land of freedom. It institutionalized subservience to power in a nation that had rebelled against such subservience. It denied personal sovereignty to a class of people under a Constitution grounded in the principle of personal sovereignty. Slavery was peculiar to Southerners as well because slavery was peculiar to the South. As much as they had to rationalize it publicly and privately, and regardless of whether it was a necessary evil, an "organic sin," or a positive good, slavery was in Southern conception a Southern institution. Steven Wilkins and Douglas Wilson in 1996 published Slavery As It Was to defend aspects of that Southern. This work demands a response because it was written as a guide for the use of the Bible, and because of the peculiar reconstruction of history the authors make to idealize the peculiar institution. |
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RESPONSE
Since its publication in 1996, the booklet Southern Slavery As t Was by Steve Wilkins and Douglas Wilson(1) has circulated without critical review or response. The authors are both leaders in existing ministries. Wilkins is the pastor of Auburn Avenue Presbyterian Church in Monroe, Louisiana, as well as the founder of The Southern Heritage Society, and a member of The League of the South's board of directors. Wilson is the pastor of Christ's Community in Moscow, Idaho, and a noted author and speaker. According to Wilkins and Wilson, the true meaning of the Civil War and the "various biblical and constitutional arguments that swirled around that controversy"(2) can be grasped only when we are delivered from believing that "[s]lavery is…such a wicked practice that it alone is sufficient to answer the question of which side was right in that unfortunate war."(3) |
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THEOLOGY People who believe in the truthfulness and reliability of the Bible can be confused by its teaching on slavery. A recent example is found in Southern Slavery as it Was, by Steve Wilkins and Douglas Wilson, who argue that since the Bible regulates slavery, then "Christians who owned slaves in the [American] South were on firm scriptural ground."1 According to these authors "[t]he Bible permits Christians to own slaves provided they are treated well,"2 and slavery is a "wonderful issue upon which to practice"3 submission to the Bible. |
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WILKINS When men having position within the Church of the Lord Jesus Christ make exegetical or historical claims which are likely to harden hearts toward the Gospel, it behooves His servants to examine those claims carefully. Upon such examination, should the claims appear to be warranted, they should be affirmed, while demonstrating how the Gospel is true nevertheless. However, if the claims appear not to be true, their falsity should be made least as public as the claims themselves were made to be. |
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Articles and Essays 
