In continuing studies on Southern
slavery and racism, a nugget jumped out last night that one would hope would
put a nail in the coffin of these modern, radical two kingdoms proponents. The
employment, as so often is the case, of that doctrine to silence the pulpit on
social sin is so obvious in this case that not even a Westminster West
professor could avoid it.
The instance arises in the excellent
work by Ronald Takaki, A Pro-Slavery Crusade: The Agitation to Reopen the
Slave Trade (New York: The Free Press, 1971), who focuses upon the work and
influence of the Southern “fire eaters.” These were the men who presented the
most radical case in the press defending not only their peculiar institution,
but more radical measures such as actually resuming the Atlantic trade in
slaves.
Many readers may not know the
important timeline here. While
slavery was still practiced throughout the South within the South, the
actual importation of slaves had been outlawed once the twenty-year protection
granted in the Constitution lapsed in 1808. (Wilberforce had prevailed in
Britain only the year before, lending certain moral impetus to the U.S.
Congress to act.)
Of
course, where there is demand, there will always be a black market, and there
was tremendous demand for slaves still in the deep South. By 1820, Congress saw
the need to crack down on the smuggling. It passed an Act which formally
defined an offender as “a pirate” and assigned the death penalty.
This development created very public
association of the continued practice of slavery with kidnapping and
piracy, and the moral burden was soon felt throughout the South. As sectional
controversy increased over the decades, this burden was pressed, and southern
spokesmen forced to react. It was a hot topic in the heyday of the fire eaters.
Governor Adams of South Carolina noted the moral tension in 1856, “if the trade
be piracy, the slave must be plunder.” The editor of one Mississippi newspaper
complained of the logic: “If it is wrong to buy and sell negroes with an
intention to enslave them, IS IT NOT WRONG TO HOLD THEM IN SLAVERY?”1
These calculations were not
admissions of guilt; they were warnings that the Federal government had
positioned itself to attack the institution pro-slavers held dear. As attacks
from abolitionism and northern political forces mounted, the defenders of
slavery entrenched themselves. Some of these not only defended the institution,
but longed to reopen the Atlantic to a legal trade in African slaves
with hopes that a fresh influx of supply would drive down prices, increase
slave ownership. This would not only make the institution more profitable, but
spread slave ownership more broadly among even the poorer whites, increasing
the slave-dependent voting bloc.
The more radical of these proponents even
desired to annex Cuba as a permanent American source of black slaves. Others
even dreamed of a full-on slave empire encompassing all of Mexico and Central
America, parts of South America and all of the Caribbean—a huge circumference
of slave-power to be known as “The Golden Circle.”
Aside from the various political
ideas, one common aim of the fire eaters was to win back the hearts and minds
of Southerners who had wavered in their loyalty to slavery due to attacks from
religious leaders as well as the influence of the 1820 anti-piracy legislation.
And this is precisely where the two
kingdoms doctrine was brought into play.
The Methodist menace
From its earliest days, the Methodist
ethic followed the influence of its founder John Wesley, who had encouraged
Wilberforce mightily: “Go in the name of God, and in the power of his might,
till even American slavery (the vilest that ever saw the sun) shall vanish away
before it.”2 Even
Whitefield was originally against slavery. He changed his mind, however,
when he moved to Savannah: after tending his own garden in the Georgia heat, he
quickly agreed with the typical Southern argument that blacks were more suited
for such work in such climate. He purchased a black slave.
The Southern church adopted the
reasoning and practice of Whitfield, and many southern Methodist
ministers and laymen owned slaves.3 This practice
existed in tension with the denomination’s General Conference position against
slavery expressed in 1784, and the tension led eventually to a full North-South
split in 1844.
But a remnant of the General
sentiment still existed in the General Rules of the southern churches. In 1858,
the southern Methodists in Conference found themselves faced with the question
of expunging an old rule that forbid “the buying and selling of men, women and
children, with the intention to enslave them”4—language
that appears to have been influenced directly by the legislation of 1820. The
southern church had no problem with this task: the vote was in favor of striking
the Rule, 143 to 8.
And by what theological standard did
these 143 delegates support their decision? Biblical law? Gospel? Scripture?
You can see it in the conclusion itself:
Whereas, The rule in
the General Rules of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, forbidding “the
buying and selling of men, women, and children with an intention to enslave
them” is ambiguous in its phraseology and liable to be construed as
antagonistic to the institution of slavery, in regard to which the church
has no right to meddle, except in enforcing the duties of masters and
servants as set forth in the Holy Scriptures; and whereas, a strong desire for
the expunction of said rule has been expressed in nearly all parts of our
ecclesiastical connection; therefore,
Resolved, 1. . . .
that the rule forbidding “the buying and selling of men . . .” be expunged from
the General Rules of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South.
Resolved, 2. That, in
adopting the foregoing resolution, this conference expresses no opinion in
regard to the African slave-trade, to which the rule in question has been “understood”
to refer.5
The
reader can detect easily that it was the two kingdoms divide which allowed
these ministers and delegates to turn a blind eye to the evils of slavery—evils
that their own tradition’s interpretation of Scripture had earlier condemned.
By relegating “the institution of slavery” to a purely political matter, the
church excused itself of any responsibility to pronounce upon it, and in fact
made explicit that the church was not even taking a position on the African
slave-trade itself (!) as a moral evil.
In explaining this development,
Bishop George Pierce made the two-kingdoms connection even clearer, declaring
slavery to be “a purely civil institution.”6 Takaki
notes that six southern Methodist bishops took to the pulpit to declare that “slavery
was a subject belonging to Caesar, and ecclesiastical legislation upon it was
contrary to the teachings of Christ and the examples of the apostles.”7
Yet the fire eaters’ call to reopen
the African slave trade had so gripped the public mind, that the bishops
could not keep from pronouncing some upon this “purely civil
institution.” Their pastoral address included the following pronouncement:
And if, contrary to expectation, the
African slave trade should ever be revived in the face of the law which
declares it to be piracy, we have rule and authority enough by which to hold
our membership to rigid responsibility. Nor would we fail in this, sustained as
we would be by our own convictions of duty, the law of the land, and what we
know to be the moral sentiment of the people among whom we dwell.
This statement is, of course, morally
and politically ambiguous, and thus “safe.” When and if the trade were ever
again legalized, the “law of the land” would thus exonerate the bishops should
they tend to cave on it; and likewise, the “moral sentiment of the people” was
being much more powerfully molded by pro-slave-trade arguments than anything
else. So, when the time came, the two kingdoms ethic would easily have
allowed these men to adopt whatever transpired, no matter how radical and evil.
Indeed, the decision of the church to
expunge the rule was immediately seized upon by the fire eaters as
justification for their cause to reopen the slave trade. One Richmond
paper immediately pronounced:
When a whole Christian denomination sees
nothing wrong, or immoral, or improper in the “buying and selling of men, women
and children, with an intent to enslave them,” why should mere
politicians presume to pronounce as wicked and atrocious the re-opening of the
African slave trade?8
Multiple publications and statements make
clear that this sentiment was spreading within the church.9
The danger of two kingdoms ethics
As we explored before with its role in Nazism, the greatest danger of two
kingdoms ethics is that it creates a safe space for tyranny by silencing the
pulpits and intimidating Christians into passivity on the Bible’s position on “political”
topics. It creates a happy agreement between proponents of social evil and
church leaders who want a safe, comfortable path forward and a good
hand-washing while their society shouts for Barabbas. This was clear under
Nazism, and it is now clear, in at least one glaring example, in the Christian
defenders of Southern slavery in America.
These particular southern Christians
moved to protect their own interests in slaveholding, while forbidding, through
official ecclesiastical authority and power, any proclamation otherwise from
those who either had doubts about the institution, or certainly opposed it.
Worse, their work to undo the ecclesiastical channels that protected dissent
went so far as to open up a justification for the most radical position
of reopening the actual trade. The opening was seized immediately by the most
radical forces with the most radical message, and the imposition of the
two-kingdoms ethic forced every southern Methodist, who wished to remain a
southern Methodist, into silence on the matter.
In fact, the influence of this two
kingdoms-backed censorship was so powerful that a fierce attack upon Methodist
dissenters was allowed throughout the South. In Texas, dissenting ministers
were given 60 days to leave the state! In Mississippi, the dissenting minority
was hounded publicly in the newspapers as “negro worshippers” and “vile
reptiles, who ought to be driven from the land.”10 I have
not seen where any of the Bishops wielded their “rule and authority . . . to
hold our membership to rigid responsibility” in regard to this moral
evil, even though it was obviously due.
Now, modern two kingdoms proponents have responded to the slavery issue,
albeit not with cognizance of the information here presented, I don’t think. I
will address their arguments more directly tomorrow. For now, let it
suffice to see how the doctrine was employed in history in direct support of a
moral evil, to suppress dissenters within the church, and to open the door to
even greater evils while it forced the church to sit silently.
