Topic
What Doug Wilson says about slavery and race
In 1996 Douglas Wilson co-wrote Southern Slavery, As It Was, a booklet making the case that American slavery has been unfairly maligned. He has been defending it ever since, in Black & Tan and on his blog, with the stamina of a man who has never once wondered if he might be wrong. His statements on slavery, the Confederacy and race, in his own words.
Good Christians Can Own Slaves
The reason why many Christians will be tempted to dismiss the arguments presented here is that I am saying (out loud) that a godly man in 1850 could have been a slave owner. But this “inflammatory” position is the very point upon which the Bible speaks most directly, again and again. In other words, more people will struggle with what I am saying at the point where the Bible speaks most clearly. There is no exegetical vagueness here. Not only is the Bible not politically correct in modern eyes, it was not politically correct one hundred and fifty years ago.
The issue is whether a Christian man could have lawfully owned a slave in 1850 America without being necessarily guilty of a moral outrage. Was slave ownership malum in se, an evil in itself? The answer to that question, for anyone who believes the Bible, is that it was possible for a godly man to own slaves, provided he treated them exactly as the Scripture required.
Bare minimum honesty requires Christians, if they say ‘I’m with the Bible all the way,’ well, we have to say according to the Bible, a man could be a responsible Christian and a slave owner and not be in sin simply because he was in that relationship... So it’s possible for a slave owner to be a good Christian and have a Christian slave and treat him right. That’s possible, which ardent abolitionists denied. So I would affirm the slave owners in the South had the better part of the argument there.
Our humanistic and democratic culture regards slavery in itself as a monstrous evil, malum in se, and it acts as though this were self-evidently true. The Bible permits Christians in slave-owning cultures to own slaves, provided they are treated well. You are a Christian. Whom do you believe?
Today if an abortionist sought membership at my church, he would be refused unless he repented and abandoned his murderous practice. But if our churches had existed in the antebellum South, and a godly slave owner who treated his slaves with kindness sought membership, I could not refuse him without seeking to be holier than Christ. Such a desire would be wicked, and this wickedness was at the heart of the radical abolitionist dogma.
My actual views on slavery are to be found in my book Black and Tan, and in my forthcoming commentary on Philemon. That commentary is entitled Slow Abolition, Paul's Letter to a Slave Master.
Systemic Racism and “White Privilege” Are Not Sins, and DEI Coordinators Are Equivalent to Slave Owners
Their names would be things like racism or misogyny or anti-Semitism. But for us to use such nouns in the memorial would be to use words that are left-coded... I mean, after all, if sexism as they define it is a sin, then the Bible is sinful... So if someone were to ask a CREC minister if he believed racism to be a sin, an appropriate response should be, ‘How are you defining racism?’ If the person says, you know, ethnic hatred—hating someone simply because he is a Black or a Jew—then the answer would be yes. But if the answer came back as, you know, the systemic structures that support white privilege, then the answer would be no. That kind of racism is not sin.
Rich people are not the same as poor people. Men are not the same as women. Majority populations are not the same as minority populations. And wanting them to be the same in terms of equality of outcome is setting the stage for tyranny, which is a sin... What do you mean by white supremacy? What is it? Is it white privilege? Privilege is just another name for blessed. Someone who has more money than another person is more privileged than the other person. Is it a sin? No, it’s only a sin if you’re an egalitarian.
Christ died so that foul racists and evil woketards might both be forgiven and united in the new race. Grace is offered to slave owners and DEI coordinators, but I repeat myself. The feminist ministrix is invited right alongside the chauvinist blowhard.
It’s Important for Christians to Defend Slavery
On another occasion, a Christian man was handing out tracts at a gay and lesbian dance. Those attending the dance did not appear to be pleased with this, and someone apparently called a liberal Methodist pastor to come and deal with him. The minister came down, and in the course of the discussion, the Christian man said that Leviticus condemns homosexuality as an abomination. The liberal pastor responded by saying, “Yes, but the Old Testament allowed for slavery.” The Christian responded by saying, “Yes, it certainly did. So what’s your point?” If those who hate the Word of God can succeed in getting Christians to be embarrassed by any portion of the Word of God, then that portion will continually be employed as a battering ram against the godly principles that are currently under attack. In our day, three of the principal issues are abortion, feminism, and sodomy. If we respond to the “embarrassing parts” of Scripture by saying, “That was then, this is now,” we will quickly discover that unembarrassed progressives can play that game even more effectively than embarrassed conservatives can.4 Paul prohibited eldership to women? That was then, this is now. Moses condemned sodomy? That was then, this is now.
[Cenk Uygur: “So why bother going back and defending slave owners?”] That’s a great question. This goes back to what I said earlier where I said I’m a Bible guy. So if I’m being interviewed in a situation like this and I’m telling you I believe that same-sex unions are sinful and we ought not to recognize them, and you say, ‘How come?’ And I say, ‘Well, in Leviticus it says it’s an abomination...’ And then you say, ‘Well, you’re citing the Bible, but the Bible allows for slavery...’ I don’t want to be the kind of Christian who says, ‘Well, I can play the that-was-then, this-is-now game, but homosexuals don’t get to play that game.’ If I start messing around with the Bible to make it say what I wish it would have said, then the homosexuals get to do the same thing.
Slavery Wasn’t That Bad
The “peculiar institution” of slavery was not perfect or sinless, but the reality was a far cry from the horrific descriptions given to us in modern histories, which are often nothing more than a hackneyed reworking of abolitionist propaganda. […] Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence. There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world.
The [Works Progress Administration] Narratives consistently portray an amazingly benign picture of Southern plantation life. Affection for former masters and mistresses is expressed in terms of unmistakable devotion. Testimony to the good treatment, kindness, and gentleness of many so-called “heartless slave holders” abounds. Many of the old slaves express a wistful desire to be back at the plantation. Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care.
[Cenk Uygur: "Do you get why if you're an African-American in this country this talk of like, were some of the slave owners not so bad, is deeply disconcerting?"] No. [Cenk Uygur: "...can you not see how that would trouble people?"] I can understand why it's happening, but as a pastor, I've done a lot of marriage counseling over the years and I've seen marriages that are frankly a helicopter crash... But the fact remains that some marriages are not like that, right? So the issue is I want to say that evil slave owners were evil... There's no argument for me about all the awful stuff. I'm simply saying it was not awful stuff across the board.
The high consumption of meat, sweet potatoes, and peas made the slave diet not only adequate, but it actually exceeded modern recommended daily levels of the chief nutrients. […] Many slaves had far better clothes than poor whites. […] Comments of observers suggest that the most typical slave houses of the late antebellum period were cabins about eighteen by twenty feet. […] Such housing may sound mean by modern standards but actually compared well with the homes of free workers in the ante bellum era. […] The medical care was good. Generally, the slaves received the same medical care the family received.
Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since. Whatever its failures, slavery produced in the South a degree of mutual affection between the races which will never be achieved through any federally-mandated efforts.
[Pamela Brown: “Do you still believe what you said back in the ’90s, that there’s a mutual affection between master and slave?”] Yeah. Well, yes, it depends on which master and which slave you’re talking about. Slavery was overseen and conducted by fallen human beings, and there were horrendous abuses. And there were also people who owned slaves who were decent human beings and didn’t mistreat them.
There were other descriptions of slavery times from former slaves where they looked back on that time wistfully, they loved their masters, they had a great relationship, and that quote, I would apply to relationships like that.
The Black Family Was At Its Strongest Under Slavery
The husband was the head of the house and there was a strong familial bond between family members. This kind of bond is not the product of widespread promiscuity. One could argue that the black family has never been stronger than it was under slavery. It was certainly stronger under the southern slave system that it is today under our modern destructive welfare state.
[Pamela Brown: “Do you still believe what you said back in the ’90s, that there’s a mutual affection between master and slave?”] Yeah. Well, yes, it depends on which master and which slave you’re talking about. Slavery was overseen and conducted by fallen human beings, and there were horrendous abuses. And there were also people who owned slaves who were decent human beings and didn’t mistreat them.
Bare minimum honesty requires Christians, if they say ‘I’m with the Bible all the way,’ well, we have to say according to the Bible, a man could be a responsible Christian and a slave owner and not be in sin simply because he was in that relationship... So it’s possible for a slave owner to be a good Christian and have a Christian slave and treat him right. That’s possible, which ardent abolitionists denied. So I would affirm the slave owners in the South had the better part of the argument there... When we’re talking about things like slavery, it would be better for a Black American to be conceived in Charleston in 1855 than in Baltimore in 2025. Your odds are better. Your chances are better.
From a Christian vantage point, we are making these points in a culture that has to date legally dismembered 60 million Americans by abortion. And so when we’re talking about things like slavery, it would be better for a Black American to be conceived in Charleston in 1855 than in Baltimore in 2025. Your odds are better. Your chances are better.
The Way Slavery Was Abolished Was Worse Than Slavery Itself
None need lament the passing of slavery. But who cannot but lament the damage to both white and black that has occurred as a consequence of the way it was abolished? We are forced to say that, in many ways, the remedy which has been applied has been far worse than the disease ever was. The issue of slavery was used to provoke a revolution in 1861. That revolution has continued to this day, and slavery has increased in our land as a result.
I do believe that the Bible back then is authoritative and we should implement it today. But that doesn't mean that we're asking for a redo at Gettysburg. What it means is if you inherit a slaveowning system, you should eradicate it the biblical way and not the bloody way that we did.
Jews Have an Outsized Influence in Certain Bad Areas, Like Hollywood and Pornography
But the argument is this, I believe the Jews as an ethnic grouping are a high-performance people, right? My son is going to be a doctor, a lawyer, or a banker. You know, so they're high-performing people. And that means that when they go to the dark side, they rise to the top. And when they go into productive pursuits, they win Nobel Prizes, right? So, if they go into the entertainment industry, which many of them have, they rise to positions of prominence and power in the entertainment industry... and that industry is largely corrupt according to our lights... So, I'm willing to say, yeah, I am more than willing to say the Jews have an outsized influence in certain bad areas. But only if you acknowledge that they have an outsized contribution in things that benefit us all.
Transcribed from the video’s automatic captions. Watch the clip to hear it for yourself.
Black People Looking for Equality are Just Envious
When someone says that it is injustice for a white man to make more money than a black man, that is simply the voice of egalitarian envy [...] The way they talk about white privilege is envious and sinful.
What we have been seeing in our American streets over the last few years is an intersectional mash-up. It has been the meeting place where stupidity, envy, hatred, ignorance, and folly have all met up to do a little showing off. They all wanted to do a little flexing for the orc-girls. […] We are talking about the ache of fatherlessness, meeting up with a generation that was drugged instead of educated, meeting up with white guilt and envy, meeting up with black shame and envy, meeting up with suffocating paternalism from the state, meeting up with overweening incompetence from the state, and all conspiring to fill the room with fumes, there to await the death of George Floyd.
Jesus Used a Racial Insult, Which Wilson Paraphrases With the N-Word
Jesus was not above using ethnic humor to make His point either. […] Put in terms that we might be more familiar with, Jesus was white, and the disciples were white, and this black woman comes up seeking healing for her daughter. She gets ignored. The disciples ask Jesus to send her off. She comes up and beseeches Christ for healing. It's not right, He says, to give perfectly good white folk food to "niggers." Disciples mentally cheer. But she sees the look in His eye, and the inverted commas around the epithet, and answers in kind. He relents, which was His intent all along, and heals the woman's daughter. If this understanding is right, then Jesus was using a racial insult to make a point. If it is not correct, then He was simply using a racial insult. In either case, His language is more than a little rough.
Wilson Uses the N-Word, Because He Believes Jesus Used a Similar Racially-Charged Insult
Jesus was not above using ethnic humor to make His point either. […] Put in terms that we might be more familiar with, Jesus was white, and the disciples were white, and this black woman comes up seeking healing for her daughter. She gets ignored. The disciples ask Jesus to send her off. She comes up and beseeches Christ for healing. It's not right, He says, to give perfectly good white folk food to "niggers." Disciples mentally cheer. But she sees the look in His eye, and the inverted commas around the epithet, and answers in kind. He relents, which was His intent all along, and heals the woman's daughter. If this understanding is right, then Jesus was using a racial insult to make a point. If it is not correct, then He was simply using a racial insult. In either case, His language is more than a little rough.
European Culture Is Superior to African Culture
Picture a kid in the seventh grade looking down on those woefully benighted fifth-graders. His knowledge is vaster, his sophistication sleeker, his skateboard wider, his pride complete. Now think of Europeans and Africans. [...] All men exhibit the image of God equally, but all cultures are not equal. As we look at all the tribes of men, we see some that have landed a man on the moon, and some that have not yet worked out the concept of the wheel. We have some with one whole row in the supermarket dedicated to shampoo, while in another tribe hair is washed in cow urine. We have orchestras playing The Brandenburg Concertos compared to someone beating on a hollow log with a couple of sticks.
And as for those first slaves: their descendants, while still sometimes held down by their own sins and residual paganism, not to mention the sins of others against them, have been blessed by being part of this culture. This is why a secular approach to racial reconciliation will always be doomed. Throughout our history, God has brought many blessings to the blacks as well, at the center of which was access to the gospel. The tragedy of pagan Africa was more significant than the tragedy of Southern slavery.
Most Slaves Gladly Supported the Confederacy
[I]t is not surprising that most southern blacks (both free and slave) supported the Southern war effort…. [M]any Southern blacks supported the South because of long established bonds of affection and trust that had been forged over generations with their white masters and friends. They gladly supported the war effort with food, labor, and sometimes fighting. Their loyalty to the principles of the South rivaled and was sometimes even greater than that of some whites.
The fact that there were very few slave uprisings in the South further confirms the fact that slaves were well-treated and often had a deep loyalty to, and affection for, their masters.
The Confederate States of America lasted as long as it did, against overwhelming odds, in part because of the great contribution made by many loyal Confederate blacks to her war effort. This contribution is probably one of the greatest untold stories in the annals of our nation’s history. Not only was it a “finest hour,” to use Churchill’s phrase, it was an hour which white America generally refuses to acknowledge—to this day.
Slave Owners Rarely Raped Their Slaves
Didn’t sexual exploitation undermine and destroy the black family? Critics of the South have consistently answered in the affirmative. They accuse slave owners and overseers of turning plantations into personal harems. Again, unfortunately for the thesis, the evidence on which these assumptions and conclusions are based is extremely limited. Such arguments overlook the real and potentially large costs that confronted masters and overseers who sought sexual pleasures in the slave quarters. It would have been much easier, and less risky, for owners of large plantations to keep a mistress in town than to risk the possibility of the destruction of his own family by taking up with a slave woman. For the overseer, the cost of sexual episodes in the slave quarters, once discovered, was often his job. Nor would he find it easy to obtain employment elsewhere as an overseer, since not many masters would be willing to employ as their manager a man who was known to lack self-control on so vital an issue. Further, to imply that black men would be indifferent to the sexual abuse of their women is to imply that they were somehow less manly than other men who would be indignant over such abuse. This common assumption about slave men is not only unrealistic and unsubstantiated but an insult to their humanity and patently racist.
Young White Men Are the Real Unprotected Class and Face Discrimination
I grant that the establishment is arrayed against you. I agree with Jeremy Carl that you are the unprotected class. I understand that their malicious bigotry is real. I know that they have closed and bolted multiple doors against you. I know that you've been made to sit through insolent workshops instructing everybody else about your toxicity. I get the fact that you've watched DEI nincompoops get vaulted past you into high positions.
Now, the two things you said that Fuentes says that are true, the discrimination against white men. [Tucker Carlson: "Yeah."] Jeremy Carl wrote a magnificent book, The Unprotected Class, arguing that very point and went from the front cover to the back cover without ever once tracking in what Nick Fuentes tracks in. So it's like Nick Fuentes has got a good point on his left shoe, but he stepped in dog [doo?] in his right shoe.
Transcribed from the video’s automatic captions. Words in [brackets?] are our best reading of unclear audio. Watch the clip to hear it for yourself.
Indigenous and Non-Western Peoples Are Held Down by “Resilient Pagan Practices,” and Mocking Stolen Native Land Is Patriotic
Those who recoil from an ordinary and humane patriotism, as is common on the left, try to pretend that there have been no blessings at all—and thus they don’t have to worry about stewardship of blessings either. If everything we have was stolen from Indians in order to rape the land, then it doesn’t make sense to think of our responsibilities in terms of stewardship.
This is what life outside of Christ is normally like—red and yellow, black and white—and even when the gospel of Christ comes to a people, it can often take centuries to get them to knock off some of their more resilient pagan practices. For example, how long did it take Europeans to get rid of polygamy? And at the headwaters of the slave trade to America there were blacks going to war with other blacks, enslaving their brothers, taking them down to the coast, and selling them.
‘You see, the reason we cannot allow you to publish editorials that are critical of our august leaders in Congress is that we are afraid your views might lead to a drastic increase in sickle cell anemia in our African American communities. Which is why your impudent request to publish those editorials has to be seen as profoundly racist.’ But the reason it cannot be racist, to borrow a page from Titania McGrath, is that I identify as a white person of color.
White Pastors Should Never Apologize for Being White
So while numerous pastors and elders were busy trying to find some parishioner of color, so that they might grovel and apologize to that hapless person for their insufferable whiteness, thus giving the watching world a major exhibit of their insufferable whiteness, at that very same moment the aspiring techno-lords of the earth were running around our new cyber-dungeons, clanging all the doors shut, and trying to make as big a racket while doing it as they could. […] While there is not a one-to-one correlation, and we do rejoice over the exceptions, woke churches and the cowed, battened down churches have a great deal of overlap. The more likely a pastor is to apologize for being white, the more likely it is that he will do so while wearing his mask of docile compliance. You know, he needed something to hide the whiteness.
Abolishing Slavery Led to Abortion and Same-Sex Marriage
We need to learn that the antebellum situation was one of Normal Sin, not one of Apocalyptic Evil. That our nation did not remove slavery in the way it ought to have been removed helps to explain many of our nation’s problems in dealing with contemporary social evils. Those evils include abortion-on-demand, radical feminism, and rampant sodomy. In the pursuit of our constitutional rights, we have legally executed over forty million unborn children in this nation, and we are about to be oppressed with sodomite marriage. We have done this under the “protections” of the Constitution. When in our history did we take the wrong turn that allowed the Constitution to be abused in this grotesque fashion? Christians need to learn to argue that the events resulting in the cataclysm of 1861–1865 had something to do with it, which I believe is incontrovertible.
Mocks Afrocentrist History With a Made-Up African Name, “Kwandi Kweebe”
Advocacy history in its “Afrocentrist” guise says that blacks taught Socrates everything he knew, blacks built the pyramids, and so forth. Intelligent blacks are embarrassed by the whole farce. “Kwandi Kweebe invented the light bulb? Oh, great. Now I feel empowered.”
Runaway Slaves Should Have Been Returned to Their Masters
The reason for placing the sins of the South in this kind of context is straightforward. The southern treatment of their slaves (as it generally was) shows that the situation was the kind of situation which required that the teaching of the New Testament be followed because it was preeminently applicable to that situation. If St. Paul returned Onesimus to Philemon (and he did), what would he have us do when a similar scenario played out in Virginia in 1856? So then, here is our argument, presented as though it were a juice concentrate: Christians must live or die by the Scriptures, as they stand. Compromise on what the Bible teaches about slavery is directly related to the current pressures to compromise on abortion and sodomy. Southern slavery was an example of the kind of sinful human situation that called for diligent obedience to St. Paul’s directives, on the part of both masters and slaves. Because this did not happen, and because of the way slavery ended, the federal government acquired the power to impose things on the states that it did not have before.
The Confederacy Was Right on All the Essential Issues
So I also take it as a given that the South was right on all the essential constitutional and cultural issues surrounding the war, and this is my reason for calling myself unreconstructed. I do not want to stick to my guns on this as a matter of pride, or because the issue is at the top of my list of priorities. It is not. But even so, I will not recant anything concerning that war, however trivial, simply because the current regime of intoleristas demands that I do so.
Racism Is Not a Sin Against Humanity
The reason we were slandered in the way we were was simply because we refused to say that racism was a sin against the State or against humanity. All sin, if it is indeed sin, is sin against God. […] Both Northerners and Southerners were misled by the obvious inferiority of black culture at that time, which had nothing to do with whether blacks bore the image of God in man, and everything to do with whether the gospel had yet had an opportunity to do its work within black culture.
Robert E. Lee Was a Gracious Christian Gentleman
Robert E. Lee is not at the center of my worldview or my theology. But when people start demanding that I treat him as an historical pariah, a peer in some way to Himmler, I am not going to do it. Lee was a gracious Christian gentleman, a brother in Christ, and an honorable man. Part of his greatness was his role in resisting the progress of the Revolution here in America.
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