My take is different. I am not here to defend the “Confederacy” or State’s Rights. I am largely indifferent to the political minutiae of such issues. My concern is that well-meaning Christians, rightly recoiling from concrete instances of racism, go beyond Scripture and proclaim as sin what Scripture does not call sin. This is the essence of Legalism.
I am not defending slavery. I am defending the Bible. If the bible doesn’t call “slavery” a sin, then I can’t. If the Bible doesn’t call for the Jubilee laws to be enacted on all Christians (whether or not that is a good idea) then we can’t say someone who doesn’t call for that is sinning.
Further, unless conservatives own up to the fact that the Bible sanctioned slavery as a regulation of ills in society, whether related to sin or just bad luck, they will lose every debate with humanists.
It’s difficult to follow this debate. Neither debater does a good job collecting all of the posts for and against. More often than not Anyabwile is not attacking biblical arguments but pointing out to Wilson that he is “insensitive.” And? After a while it gets hard to find yet new ways to “reconcile” or apologize for the infinite strands of racism. Even worse, insensitivity isn’t a biblical category.
Anyabwile begins with a list of agreements that most could agree on. I do want to call attention to his “Jubilee” logic. I agree that the Gospel liberates, but appealing to the Levitical Jubilee is problematic: 1) It’s in Leviticus so it isn’t immediately clear how it applies today (remember why Bahnsen got persecuted?) and 2) Jesus and the disciples did not make the connection between Jubilee logic and freeing slaves, whether or not such an inference is warranted.
Anyabwile rebuts Wilson for privileging constitutional arguments over GOd’s word. If that is what Wilson truly were doing, then he’s wrong. I don’t think that is the case, though.
Anyabwile writes,
Only an immediate end to slavery would have been consistent with the “jubilee logic” of the gospel and repentant of the “grievous sin” of racism upon which the practice was based.
I don’t want to sound cold or hard, but this isn’t true. It flies in the face of Leviticus 25 (and if the Jubilee applies today, then so does chapter 25). And it is a matter of common sense that a person, white or black, who is culturally, educationally, and spiritually not as advanced cannot seriously participate in the advanced culture of a civilization. Go to the ghetto today and tell me I am wrong.
Regarding #2: Speculation is vain. We have no idea how slavery would have continued or ended if the South had won. We do know that the Confederate elite: Jackson, Lee, A.H. Stevens, and others rejected slavery and sought for better means of ending it. Further, Wilson completely refutes Anyabwile’s logic:
For an American soldier to go the Middle East today and fight for “democracy” is also to fight against nations that don’t allow abortion-on-demand, and it is to fight for a nation that does. To help America is therefore to help abortion.
That is the most devastating rebuttal I have seen in the past few years.
Further, Wilson points out something painfully obvious: Our obedience before God will be reckoned in how we dealt with the sins of our own era, not the sins of another. My central interest in all these historical issues has to do with how the legal principles that were laid down then are being understood and applied today.
Regarding #3 Anyabwile effectively concedes the debate to Wilson, only noting that we need to be gentle about “angular texts,” whatever that means.
Regarding #4: I agree that the Constitution is a weak document and appeals to it are pathetically naive.
Elsewhere, Anyabwile tries to give concrete definitions on “racism” and “sensitivity.” This is good, as many are notoriously vague on this point. He defines it as,
I would suggest it’s a certain inability or unwillingness to sense and lovingly consider the concerns, feelings, and perspectives of others across racial lines
Fair enough. We should all be aware of common courtesy. I’m just not clear on the biblical directive that I should use this as the filter for all truth and discussion. Further, anybody to the left of Hillary Clinton is a racist by these standards.
He goes on to say,
So, who gets to decide? I don’t know if they get the final word, but the person so hurt should at least have the first word
Looks good on paper, but this can go back and forth. Given the ubiquitous dominance of rap music, particularly its lyrics about women–white and black–does this count as a “hurt party?” (Just consult any Dr Dre song about white women getting raped and killed). Anyabwile then gets to the heart of Wilson’s book, which I will address in another post.
The Lecture Hall of Tyrannus 