Latest / Scripture-ish / Race Relations in Churches of Christ, Part 1

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Race Relations in Churches of Christ, Part 1 · Scripture-ish

0:01
SPEAKER_00: Hi,
0:01
SPEAKER_00: this is Ed Gallagher reading my essay,
0:04
SPEAKER_00: Race Relations in Churches of Christ,
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SPEAKER_00: Part 1,
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SPEAKER_00: Racism and Slavery.
0:15
SPEAKER_00: This is the first part,
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SPEAKER_00: as I said,
0:17
of an essay that I wrote a few years ago while I was writing a
0:22
series of Bible
0:23
SPEAKER_00: class lessons for the Sherrod Avenue Church of Christ.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: I drafted this essay as a part of that series,
0:31
SPEAKER_00: this essay on race relations within the Restoration Movement.
0:36
SPEAKER_00: Now,
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SPEAKER_00: this is not my area of expertise,
0:40
SPEAKER_00: so I have relied heavily on some of the recent scholarship on this issue.
0:46
SPEAKER_00: which continues to expand.
0:48
More and more books are focusing on issues of race within the
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Restoration Movement,
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SPEAKER_00: particularly I'm thinking of the ones on Churches of Christ.
1:00
When I wrote this essay,
1:01
I found especially helpful the published dissertation of
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Barclay Key,
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SPEAKER_00: which is called Race and Restoration,
1:12
and then the Survey History by Edward Robinson that's called
1:15
Hard Fighting
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Soldiers,
1:18
and then in the Wonderful History of Churches of Christ by
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Richard Hughes that's
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SPEAKER_00: called Reviving the Ancient Faith that came out in 1996.
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SPEAKER_00: There's a chapter on this topic,
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and then that book was just updated by James Gorman a couple of
1:35
years ago,
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SPEAKER_00: and there continues to be
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SPEAKER_00: a chapter on the topic, an updated chapter.
1:43
SPEAKER_00: By the way, the essay as I wrote it has a lot of footnotes.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: Obviously,
1:47
SPEAKER_00: I'm not going to give you the footnotes in this audio version,
1:51
SPEAKER_00: and I don't reproduce them at Substack either.
1:55
SPEAKER_00: Maybe someday I'll publish the whole thing with the footnotes.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: And then also,
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SPEAKER_00: I wanted to mention that about a year before I wrote this essay,
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SPEAKER_00: I think I wrote the essay in 2021.
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SPEAKER_00: And about a year before that, I preached a sermon on race relations.
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And on the Substack page,
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I provide the link to the video of that sermon.
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SPEAKER_00: The sermon was preached in June of 2020.
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And you may remember what was happening in the United States at
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that time.
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SPEAKER_00: And if you do go watch the video of that sermon,
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SPEAKER_00: you'll notice that I'm not preaching to a live audience,
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SPEAKER_00: but in a studio.
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SPEAKER_00: Such were the times.
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I had not planned on preaching on race relations that week,
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but events overtook me.
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SPEAKER_00: And I thought I needed to say something on the topic.
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SPEAKER_00: I'm sure that sermon could be improved in all kinds of ways,
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but the one comment I made in that sermon that sticks in my
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mind as completely
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SPEAKER_00: stupid is when I said,
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SPEAKER_00: more or less off the cuff,
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SPEAKER_00: that the Bible doesn't really address this issue head on.
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SPEAKER_00: That statement is wrong.
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SPEAKER_00: Comically wrong.
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SPEAKER_00: Absurdly wrong.
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Like Whoopi Goldberg,
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I was thinking about racism as based on skin color.
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And I think it is fair to say that the Bible doesn't address
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that particular topic head on.
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But the Bible does have a great deal to say about racial
3:36
prejudice or something
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SPEAKER_00: close to racial prejudice.
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The way to define race and racism are,
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of course,
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very much debated today and in antiquity.
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SPEAKER_00: At any rate,
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much of the New Testament is taken up with something like
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racial prejudice in terms
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SPEAKER_00: of Jews and Gentiles.
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This essay is part of my penance for getting that off-the-cuff
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comment so wrong in
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SPEAKER_00: that sermon from a few years ago.
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SPEAKER_00: Okay, so here's the essay.
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SPEAKER_00: I start with a quote from the Bible.
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SPEAKER_00: From one ancestor, he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth.
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SPEAKER_00: Acts 17.26 In 1907,
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a young black girl attended the mostly white Church of Christ
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in Bellwood,
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SPEAKER_00: Tennessee,
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SPEAKER_00: near Lebanon.
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SPEAKER_00: Not all of the members were happy about her presence,
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SPEAKER_00: particularly since there was a black congregation that met not far away.
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SPEAKER_00: Why doesn't she just meet with her own kind, they wondered.
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SPEAKER_00: One of the members, who is named S.E.
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Harris,
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ostensibly concerned about the division resulting from this
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situation,
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wrote to E.A.
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SPEAKER_00: Elam,
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SPEAKER_00: a teacher at the Nashville Bible School and the girl's guardian,
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encouraging Elam to send the girl to the black congregation
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rather than the white
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SPEAKER_00: one.
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SPEAKER_00: Elam was not having it.
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Against Harris's suggestion that the girl's presence was
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causing division,
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SPEAKER_00: Elam retorted,
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"...those members who have taken up this matter and keep it
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agitated are doing a
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very great wrong in that they are dividing the church and
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sinning against the
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SPEAKER_00: innocent and helpless.
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SPEAKER_00: Instead of keeping this matter continually stirred up,
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SPEAKER_00: all should endeavor to quiet it and to preserve the peace of the church."
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SPEAKER_00: Now,
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this correspondence between Harris and Elam was published in
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the Gospel Advocate on
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SPEAKER_00: July 4th,
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SPEAKER_00: 1907,
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SPEAKER_00: which is how it is preserved for us.
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SPEAKER_00: Harris did not help his case,
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SPEAKER_00: certainly not from a 21st century perspective,
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when he replied that those objecting to the girl's presence
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want her to worship
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SPEAKER_00: God,
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SPEAKER_00: but just to do it somewhere else.
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SPEAKER_00: Because they just,
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SPEAKER_00: quote,
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SPEAKER_00: this is a quote,
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they do not want their children associating with her in the
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capacity of worshiping
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SPEAKER_00: God.
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Churches of Christ have had their share of racial prejudice,
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their share of people like S.E.
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SPEAKER_00: Harris wanting to preserve unity by instituting division.
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SPEAKER_00: Their share of the,
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SPEAKER_00: quote,
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white moderate that Martin Luther King complained about so
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bitterly in his iconic
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SPEAKER_00: letter from a Birmingham jail.
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SPEAKER_00: Churches of Christ have also had their share of leaders like E.A.
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SPEAKER_00: Elam,
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willing to stand against the dominant culture of their time in
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insisting on the
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principles of the gospel in regard to the basic equality of all
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human beings,
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SPEAKER_00: regardless of race.
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If the Restoration Movement has encouraged this insight into
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the unity in Christ
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SPEAKER_00: brought about by the gospel,
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it probably is related both to the origins of the movement as a
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unity movement,
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and to the call for Christians to abandon their human opinions
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and stand on the Bible alone.
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SPEAKER_00: On the other hand,
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the history of Churches of Christ seems to reveal that the 20th
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century saw a
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SPEAKER_00: hardening of racial divisions in the movement,
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so that by the time that the Civil Rights Movement made
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constant headlines in the
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SPEAKER_00: 1960s,
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SPEAKER_00: the dominant strain of Churches of Christ typically ignored the issue.
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The 20th century also saw black members of the churches of
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Christ finding various
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ways to do the work of God in a society and in a religious
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context that often
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SPEAKER_00: provided them limited opportunities.
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SPEAKER_00: While some of them focused on eternal matters more than on civil rights,
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SPEAKER_00: and Marshall Keeble is the premier example here,
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SPEAKER_00: others saw the two as indistinguishable.
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SPEAKER_00: and pushed back on what they considered the racism around them.
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SPEAKER_00: And a couple of examples here are S. R. Cassius and R. N. Hogan.
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When it comes to race issues,
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our history is not all bad,
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but it's not all good either.
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Looking back at what we've done right and wrong might help us
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move forward with
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open minds and hearts on this issue that continues to cause so
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much turmoil.
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SPEAKER_00: The Bible against racism.
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SPEAKER_00: The Bible is not a fan of racism.
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That statement will come as some surprise to overt racists who
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often use the Bible
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SPEAKER_00: to undergird their ideology.
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Particularly popular in American history as a defense for
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institutionalized racism
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and even the enslavement of Africans has been the so-called
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curse of Ham passage,
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SPEAKER_00: Genesis 9,
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SPEAKER_00: 20 through 27.
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SPEAKER_00: a passage that supposedly shows that God curses black Africans,
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SPEAKER_00: the descendants of Ham,
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SPEAKER_00: to eternal slavery.
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SPEAKER_00: According to historian Barclay Key,
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SPEAKER_00: George Benson,
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SPEAKER_00: president of Harding College,
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SPEAKER_00: taught that blacks were under the curse of Ham.
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SPEAKER_00: in classes at Harding on the Pentateuch in the 1950s.
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SPEAKER_00: Yikes.
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SPEAKER_00: But of course, the passage in Genesis says no such thing.
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SPEAKER_00: In fact, there is no curse of Ham passage known in the Bible.
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SPEAKER_00: The cited passage is, in fact, a curse of Canaan passage.
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SPEAKER_00: That's what the text says.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a curse on Canaan, and Canaan has nothing to do with black Africans.
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The passage was intentionally misrepresented by pro-slavery
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apologists as a
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SPEAKER_00: justification for their own cruelty.
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The Bible's presentation of the issue of slavery is actually
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quite complicated.
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I'm sure you know that if you've ever given it any thought or
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studied the issue.
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SPEAKER_00: It is true that there is no outright biblical condemnation of slavery.
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just as there was no abolitionist movement at all until the
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early 18th century in
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SPEAKER_00: America and Europe.
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At any rate,
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whatever the Bible says about slavery,
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it certainly does not justify racism.
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SPEAKER_00: Far from it.
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SPEAKER_00: And by the way,
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slavery in the ancient world was not really based on race as it
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did become in
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SPEAKER_00: America.
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SPEAKER_00: While the Bible says very little about anti-black racism,
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SPEAKER_00: one of the major themes of the New Testament is the overcoming of racism,
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SPEAKER_00: or at least prejudice,
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SPEAKER_00: between Jews and others.
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That must be at least part of the point of the Good Samaritan
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parable in Luke 10.
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SPEAKER_00: It's a big part of the Cornelius story in Acts 10,
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SPEAKER_00: and it's the main thing Paul wants to stress in Ephesians 2.
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SPEAKER_00: Here's a quote from that chapter.
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SPEAKER_00: But now in Christ Jesus,
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SPEAKER_00: you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ,
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SPEAKER_00: for he is our peace.
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In his flesh,
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he has made both groups into one and has broken down the
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dividing wall.
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SPEAKER_00: That is the hostility between us.
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SPEAKER_00: That's Ephesians 2 verses 13 and 14.
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SPEAKER_00: In fact,
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a big part of Paul's ministry is trying to convince people from
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different races
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SPEAKER_00: that they are one in Christ,
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SPEAKER_00: that they are brothers and sisters,
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SPEAKER_00: a part of God's family,
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and any distinctions that used to separate them are at best
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irrelevant and at
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SPEAKER_00: worst,
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SPEAKER_00: contrary to Christianity.
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Isn't that why he's so adamant in his letter to the Galatians
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that Gentile
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Christians should feel no need to receive circumcision as if
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being in Christ is not
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SPEAKER_00: good enough?
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SPEAKER_00: It's not only that they doubt the efficacy of Christ,
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but that they doubt Christ's efficacy specifically toward
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people who are not Jews.
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SPEAKER_00: So becoming a Jew by circumcision is the way to approach God.
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SPEAKER_00: Nonsense, declares Paul.
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SPEAKER_00: There is no longer Jew or Greek.
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SPEAKER_00: There is no longer slave or free.
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SPEAKER_00: There is no longer male and female.
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SPEAKER_00: For all of you are one in Christ Jesus.
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SPEAKER_00: Galatians 3.28 For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body,
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SPEAKER_00: Jews or Greeks,
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SPEAKER_00: slaves or free,
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SPEAKER_00: and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.
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SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 12.13
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SPEAKER_00: Colossians 3, verse 11.
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SPEAKER_00: A large part of Paul's argument in Romans says,
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SPEAKER_00: is that Jews and Gentiles are all in the same boat,
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SPEAKER_00: the sin boat,
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SPEAKER_00: and all,
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SPEAKER_00: when saved by Jesus,
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SPEAKER_00: become a part of the same tree,
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SPEAKER_00: whether they are grafted in or are natural branches.
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The Bible does not say much about anti-black racism,
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but maybe it doesn't say nothing either.
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One verse of the New Testament mentions Ethiopia,
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and that's Acts 8,
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verse 27.
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And Ethiopia is the Greek term used in the ancient world most
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commonly to designate
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SPEAKER_00: the area where black Africans lived.
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SPEAKER_00: Acts mentions the eunuch from Ethiopia not to highlight his race,
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SPEAKER_00: but to highlight his faithful response to the gospel.
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SPEAKER_00: Apparently, his race or his skin color
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was not a concern of Philip the Evangelist or of the story Luke
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wanted to tell.
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From the beginning of the Bible to its end,
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the Bible stands opposed to racism.
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SPEAKER_00: In the very first chapter,
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SPEAKER_00: humanity is presented as made in the image of God,
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SPEAKER_00: all of humanity,
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SPEAKER_00: red and yellow,
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SPEAKER_00: black and white.
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SPEAKER_00: From one ancestor, all nations descend.
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SPEAKER_00: That's Acts 17.26,
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SPEAKER_00: and that's a verse often quoted in these discussions,
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including in one of the earliest anti-slavery tracts published
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in America,
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SPEAKER_00: The Selling of Joseph,
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SPEAKER_00: a Memorial by Samuel Seawall in 1700.
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SPEAKER_00: So the beginning of the Bible is opposed to racism and then the end.
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John's vision in Revelation includes the scene in heaven when
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all nations and
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SPEAKER_00: tribes and peoples and tongues worship together.
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SPEAKER_00: Revelation 7 verse 9.
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SPEAKER_00: The Stone Campbell movement and slavery.
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For a short time,
15:49
less than a year,
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Barton Stone owned two slaves,
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Ned and Lucy.
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SPEAKER_00: He inherited them from his mother,
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SPEAKER_00: but in January 1801,
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SPEAKER_00: he filed the paperwork for their manumission.
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SPEAKER_00: In his biography,
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SPEAKER_00: Stone wrote,
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SPEAKER_00: I had emancipated my slaves from a sense of right,
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choosing poverty with a good conscience in preference to all
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the treasures of the
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SPEAKER_00: world.
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SPEAKER_00: This revival,
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SPEAKER_00: he's talking about the Second Great Awakening,
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SPEAKER_00: cut the bonds of many poor slaves,
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SPEAKER_00: and this argument speaks volumes in favor of the work.
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For of what avail is a religion of decency and order without
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righteousness?
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SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote from Stone.
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Stone was not the only member of his movement that considered
16:40
emancipation of
16:41
SPEAKER_00: slaves to be an element of basic righteousness.
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SPEAKER_00: Around 1810,
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Joseph Thomas visited the Stone Churches of Kentucky and was
16:52
impressed by their
16:53
SPEAKER_00: stance on slavery.
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SPEAKER_00: Here's a quote from Joseph Thomas.
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The Christian companies in this settlement and about Cane Ridge
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have been large,
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SPEAKER_00: but within a few years,
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many of them who held black people as slaves emancipated them
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and have moved to the
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SPEAKER_00: state of Ohio.
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I will observe that the Christians of these parts abhor the
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idea of slavery,
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and some of them have almost thought that they who hold to
17:23
slavery cannot be a
17:24
SPEAKER_00: Christian.
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SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
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SPEAKER_00: Stone was a committed abolitionist,
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SPEAKER_00: though he did not want to bar slaveholders from church membership,
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SPEAKER_00: or at least that's what he says in a 1808 document.
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SPEAKER_00: And he supported the effort of slave colonization in Liberia.
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SPEAKER_00: He thought slavery clearly sinful.
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SPEAKER_00: whether specifically American slavery or perhaps every form of slavery.
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SPEAKER_00: Myself, I'm not real sure on Stone's thought on that score.
18:02
It was the failure of the American government to abolish
18:06
slavery that played a
18:07
major role in Stone's renouncing political involvement in the
18:12
last decade of his
18:13
SPEAKER_00: life.
18:17
Alexander Campbell also owned slaves as a result of an
18:21
inheritance from his wife's
18:22
SPEAKER_00: family,
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SPEAKER_00: and he also emancipated them.
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Campbell's views on slavery were perhaps somewhat more
18:29
complicated than those of
18:30
SPEAKER_00: Stone to interpret Campbell's position sympathetically.
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SPEAKER_00: You could interpret it more cynically,
18:38
SPEAKER_00: but if you wanted to interpret Campbell sympathetically,
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SPEAKER_00: we could say that he was more involved in politics than Stone,
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SPEAKER_00: and he had a concern not simply to criticize slaveholders,
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SPEAKER_00: but to convince them,
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SPEAKER_00: to persuade them,
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SPEAKER_00: to favor manumission,
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SPEAKER_00: and that in order to achieve this goal,
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Campbell presented himself as what he thought would appear to
18:59
them as reasonable.
19:01
SPEAKER_00: not what slaveholders would consider a radical abolitionist.
19:08
And Campbell emphasized how holding people in slavery was bad
19:13
for the slaveholder
19:14
SPEAKER_00: and his family and was economically disadvantageous.
19:20
He was not the only one to make such arguments that slavery was
19:24
bad for the slaveholder.
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SPEAKER_00: The escaped slave Harriet Jacobs wrote,
19:29
I can testify from my own experience and observation that
19:33
slavery is a curse to the
19:35
SPEAKER_00: whites as well as to the blacks.
19:40
SPEAKER_00: In 1829,
19:40
SPEAKER_00: Alexander Campbell was selected as a delegate from Brooke County,
19:43
SPEAKER_00: Virginia,
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SPEAKER_00: to the state's Constitutional Convention,
19:47
where he proposed an article calling for the gradual
19:50
elimination of slavery.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: The article was defeated.
19:56
SPEAKER_00: Douglas Foster,
19:57
SPEAKER_00: Campbell's modern biographer,
19:59
says the one concession Campbell and his fellow backcountry
20:03
citizens achieved was
20:05
SPEAKER_00: that slavery would not be mentioned in the Virginia Constitution at all,
20:11
making it possible for future state legislatures to deal with
20:14
it by law rather than
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SPEAKER_00: by constitutional amendment.
20:21
The next year,
20:21
Campbell started publishing a journal called The Millennial
20:25
Harbinger.
20:26
SPEAKER_00: On the front page of the first issue,
20:28
SPEAKER_00: he announced the main goals of the new paper,
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SPEAKER_00: among which was this one,
20:33
SPEAKER_00: number five,
20:34
disquisitions upon the treatment of African slaves as
20:40
preparatory to their
20:42
SPEAKER_00: emancipation and exaltation from their present degraded condition.
20:49
And Campbell routinely denounced state laws prohibiting the
20:52
teaching of slaves to read.
20:54
Here's a quote from Campbell about these laws that teach
20:59
against teaching slaves to read.
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SPEAKER_00: Campbell says, What?
21:02
SPEAKER_00: Dare not enlighten their minds?
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SPEAKER_00: How fearful of the influence of knowledge!
21:08
This point is conceded without debate that to the safety and
21:12
advantage of the
21:13
SPEAKER_00: whites,
21:14
SPEAKER_00: the ignorance of the blacks is essential,
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SPEAKER_00: and yet we blame them for being stupid.
21:20
SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
21:22
SPEAKER_00: This attitude...
21:24
SPEAKER_00: Alexander learned from his father.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: In earlier years,
21:28
Thomas Campbell made himself the object of a reprimand when he
21:32
broke Kentucky's
21:33
SPEAKER_00: laws against teaching slaves,
21:37
SPEAKER_00: At that time,
21:37
SPEAKER_00: the elder Campbell responded to the uproar,
21:41
SPEAKER_00: this is a quote from Thomas Campbell now,
21:43
can the word of God be thus bound and the proclamation of the
21:48
gospel be thus
21:49
SPEAKER_00: fettered in a Christian land?
21:51
Is it possible for me to remain in a place where under any
21:55
circumstances I am
21:56
SPEAKER_00: forbidden to preach a crucified Savior to my perishing fellow beings?
22:04
SPEAKER_00: In 1849, Kentucky was planning their own constitutional convention.
22:09
and Alexander Campbell decided to try once again to persuade a
22:13
state to prohibit slavery.
22:16
SPEAKER_00: He issued a document called Attract for the People of Kentucky,
22:23
SPEAKER_00: aimed at convincing slaveholders of,
22:26
SPEAKER_00: quote,
22:27
the importance of seizing the present opportunity of ridding
22:32
Kentucky of this great
22:33
SPEAKER_00: political misfortune,
22:35
SPEAKER_00: end quote.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the political misfortune is slavery.
22:40
SPEAKER_00: To that end, Campbell argued that slavery was bad for the slaveholder.
22:45
SPEAKER_00: Now,
22:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to read a fairly long quotation from this tract,
22:49
SPEAKER_00: which was eventually published in the Millennial Harbinger.
22:53
SPEAKER_00: I think in the same year, 1849.
22:54
SPEAKER_00: Here's the long quote from Campbell.
22:58
SPEAKER_00: The law that binds the slave binds the master,
23:03
SPEAKER_00: as the law that binds the husband binds the wife.
23:06
The Christian master has duties to perform to his slave for
23:10
which he is held bound
23:11
SPEAKER_00: to the state,
23:13
but higher duties than these for the performance of which he is
23:17
held more firmly
23:18
SPEAKER_00: bound to him who sits upon the throne of eternal judgment,
23:22
SPEAKER_00: before whom the master and the slave stand upon a perfect level.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: Now, the question is, what are those duties which Christianity enjoins?
23:34
SPEAKER_00: Good and comfortable food and raiment and necessary medicine.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: This is due to your ox and your ass.
23:43
SPEAKER_00: And if you defraud them, God will hear their cry and punish you.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: But is this all?
23:49
Does the law of Christ demand no more from a Christian master
23:53
for his slave than
23:54
SPEAKER_00: food,
23:55
SPEAKER_00: raiment,
23:55
SPEAKER_00: and medicine,
23:56
SPEAKER_00: comfortable lodgings,
23:58
SPEAKER_00: reasonable labor?
23:59
SPEAKER_00: No more?
24:01
SPEAKER_00: Yes, he is to render to him whatever is just and equal.
24:06
SPEAKER_00: Quoting Colossians 4 verse 1,
24:08
SPEAKER_00: he is to teach,
24:10
SPEAKER_00: instruct,
24:11
SPEAKER_00: and evangelize him by all the means in his power.
24:14
He is just to do for him as his slave what he would have his
24:19
slave do for him were
24:22
SPEAKER_00: he himself to become the slave and his servant,
24:24
SPEAKER_00: the master.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: Such a change would open his eyes more than a volume.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: He would now no longer see visions and dream dreams.
24:36
SPEAKER_00: He would commune with realities.
24:38
SPEAKER_00: He would think ten times about the soul and once about the body.
24:43
He would now no longer look upon the slave and his mule as
24:47
consubstantial,
24:49
SPEAKER_00: co-equal and co-eternal.
24:51
SPEAKER_00: He would ask more than green corn and dry in their season.
24:56
SPEAKER_00: He would ask more than a blanket and a bed, a cabin and a fire.
25:00
He would ask for more than calomel,
25:03
a lancet and a skillful doctor when sick.
25:06
He would ask for the bread and water of life and for the
25:10
physician of souls and not
25:13
SPEAKER_00: to give him these he would regard as an unpardonable sin.
25:18
SPEAKER_00: But this is not all.
25:19
His mind must be cultivated and elevated to the conception of
25:23
things spiritual,
25:24
SPEAKER_00: divine,
25:25
SPEAKER_00: and eternal.
25:26
This calls for much teaching,
25:29
either on the part of the masters or someone else.
25:34
SPEAKER_00: And the law,
25:35
SPEAKER_00: wherever it exists,
25:36
SPEAKER_00: that inhibits the slave from going to a common school,
25:41
only obliges his Christian master to open for him a private
25:45
school in his own house
25:46
SPEAKER_00: or on his own premises.
25:48
He must then become schoolmaster himself or find a substitute
25:52
on the peril of
25:53
SPEAKER_00: renounced allegiance to Jesus Christ.
25:56
SPEAKER_00: It was such reasoning as this,
25:58
SPEAKER_00: and not the absolute scriptural unlawfulness of slavery,
26:02
SPEAKER_00: that constrained me to emancipate and set free from slavery,
26:06
SPEAKER_00: not only my slaves only,
26:08
SPEAKER_00: but myself.
26:10
I hesitate not to add that emancipation was much more enjoyed
26:14
by me than by them.
26:16
SPEAKER_00: And hence,
26:17
SPEAKER_00: from that day till now,
26:19
the emancipation of masters is full as much an object near to
26:23
my heart as the
26:24
SPEAKER_00: emancipation of slaves.
26:27
But alas,
26:28
masters sometimes as well as slaves hug the chains that enslave
26:34
them.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
26:39
There are elements of this discourse that would be faulted from
26:42
a 21st century perspective.
26:45
SPEAKER_00: But I find it remarkable that in 1849,
26:49
SPEAKER_00: writing from Virginia,
26:51
Campbell was willing to say that a master should treat the
26:54
slave as he would be
26:56
SPEAKER_00: treated by the slave,
26:58
that the master should imagine the situation that the slave and
27:01
master switch
27:01
SPEAKER_00: places,
27:03
SPEAKER_00: and that if the master did not provide education for his slave,
27:07
SPEAKER_00: even in states where such education was illegal,
27:11
SPEAKER_00: that the Master had thereby renounced allegiance to Jesus Christ.
27:17
SPEAKER_00: This was a matter of salvation, according to Campbell.
27:22
Contrast this attitude articulated by Campbell with the one
27:25
attributed by Harriet
27:27
SPEAKER_00: Jacobs to her former master's wife.
27:30
SPEAKER_00: This is a quote from Jacobs.
27:32
SPEAKER_00: My mistress had taught me the precepts of God's word.
27:35
SPEAKER_00: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
27:38
SPEAKER_00: Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them.
27:44
And Jacob says,
27:46
but I was her slave,
27:48
and I suppose she did not recognize me as her neighbor.
27:54
That is not to say that the views of Stone and Campbell were
27:57
representative of
27:59
SPEAKER_00: those of the movement as a whole.
28:02
SPEAKER_00: According to scholar Edward Robinson,
28:05
SPEAKER_00: members of the Stone-Campbell movement owned 101,000 black people.
28:12
SPEAKER_00: One early Stone-Campbell scholar,
28:14
SPEAKER_00: James Shannon,
28:16
SPEAKER_00: one-time professor of ancient languages and university president,
28:21
SPEAKER_00: was an ardent defender of slavery.
28:25
He even worked against Campbell in that 1849 Kentucky
28:32
Constitutional Convention
28:33
SPEAKER_00: where Campbell wrote that tract that I read a long portion of.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: James Shannon was on the other side.
28:43
and arguing for Kentucky to enshrine protections for
28:48
slaveholders in their constitution.
28:50
SPEAKER_00: And of course, James Shannon won.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: Alexander Campbell lost.
28:56
SPEAKER_00: Moreover,
28:57
Alexander Campbell urged slaves to obey their masters and
29:02
encouraged his readers to
29:04
SPEAKER_00: comply with the fugitive slave law,
29:07
SPEAKER_00: probably feeling bound by the New Testament in these areas.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Soon bloodshed would erupt,
29:15
making all such arguments moot and forging a society presenting
29:22
new opportunities
29:23
SPEAKER_00: to display the character of Christ toward people made in God's image.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: How did Churches of Christ respond to this new environment and these new
29:33
SPEAKER_00: opportunities after the Civil War?
29:37
SPEAKER_00: Next time.