Influential Christian Leaders are Endorsing Slavery in 2025

It's 2025, and influential pastor Doug Wilson is saying Christians can defend slavery. Phil, Skye, and Kaitlyn dig into the history behind these claims, the Lost Cause theology supporting them, and why so many on the far right are drawn to neo-Confederate narratives. They explore what Scripture does and doesn’t say, why Jesus’ teaching is strikingly absent from these conversations, and how to discern the difference between using Jesus’ name and actually following him. (Hoy Post 697: Cancelling "Judeo-Christian," Defending Slavery & Rethinking Gaza

Phil: Douglas Wilson is a prominent pastor in very conservative Calvinist circles. His publishing company, Canon Press, is the leading publisher of Christian nationalist books. He's been in hot water over the years for what appears to be his defense of slavery, but it is very strongly his view—reinforced last Monday, for no apparent reason—that evangelicals are timid when they don’t say out loud that God approves of slavery.

So I engaged with that a little bit and then ended up in a conversation with him. Um, and then ended up with a number of other people coming in to defend slavery as—except this was on the internet.

Skye: Can we all just take a breath here and acknowledge where we are in the year of our Lord 2025? That we are having conversations among Christians about endorsing slavery.

Phil: So it… and the question was—this was the central question of all these conversations: Could a Christian own another person and not be sinning? Could you have God’s approval for your ownership of another person? And for Doug Wilson, it's specifically in the system that existed in the South circa 1850.

Skye: Okay, hold on. Can we pause there for a second? Because obviously the Scriptures say a lot about slavery, both in the Old and New Testaments, but the way slavery was practiced in the ancient world—it had, you know, different forms in different parts of the ancient world, different times—but was dramatically different from the kind of slavery that occurred in the United States, which was race-based chattel slavery. Whereas in the ancient world, slavery was not race-based. Anybody of any race could be enslaved.

Phil: It wasn’t race-based—there was chattel slavery.

Skye: Yes, there was chattel slavery, but an awful lot of slavery was also more akin to what our history books would equate with indentured servanthood. Which meant it was an economic reality that some people found themselves in that they could also be extricated from.

Kaitlyn: A lot of historians are increasingly thinking a vast majority, at least in the first century, were born into slavery.

Skye: Okay, but it wasn’t strictly the same as the type of slavery practiced…

Phil: So I am not here to litigate whether or not slavery could be justified biblically, right. I am here to say: Why is it so important to some people that it can? And that's the topic I want to bring up, because for example, Douglas Wilson—his first book on slavery was co-written with one of the co-founders of the League of the South, which is a neo-Confederate group, which was one of the groups that sponsored the Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, which is a secessionist group.

Skye: Not the same as the Christian Aryan syndicate? Correct?

Phil: No, this is the League of the South. Which was just formed in the 1970s and is current. A lot of the writing on this topic is to portray Southern slaveholders as the moral ones in the Civil War and Northern abolitionists as—you know, it was the “War of Northern Aggression,” not the Civil War. So you see a lot of Confederate apologetics in these arguments. Doug Wilson has now written two books on slavery, which are both books of Confederate apologetics. He’s also becoming a rising star in American Christianity, getting more and more visibility and higher-profile followers—like the current Secretary of Defense. Or Secretary of War, if you're not a woke wimp.

Anywho, I want to talk about the impact of neo-Confederate apologetics on the Christian far right, where we have a form of—and I don't think this is new, I think this has been around since the Civil War—it’s part of the Lost Cause narrative. Because if you're familiar with the Lost Cause narrative, it was the idea that the Antebellum South was a fairly ideal Christian society that was trashed by the North.

Skye: And if God had done what they expected him to do, the South should have won because they were on God’s side.

Phil: Yes, and so, for example, Doug Wilson, in the year of our Lord 2025, will say explicitly: the wrong side won the Civil War.

Skye: Which is so bonkers. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe we have to do this.

Phil: So, there’s another guy named John Harris who’s a Christian influencer and podcaster who wrote a paper similar to some of Doug Wilson’s writings on the theological backdrop of the Civil War.

Skye: Well, Mark Noll wrote a whole book on that.

Phil: Yes. John Harris’s, though, is to “examine the theological presuppositions of the men who wore blue and gray and to vindicate the traditional Southern position as the position of biblical authority”.

So their arguments—and this is also Doug Wilson. In fact, Doug Wilson has said this—that on the topic of slavery, Southern slaveholders were on firm scriptural ground, and Northern abolitionists were motivated—and these are Douglas Wilson’s words—”motivated by a hatred of God’s word”.

Kaitlyn: Yikes.

Phil: Okay. This is how John Harris summarizes this. He says:

“The war was essentially between two worlds: a world in which man creates an earthly paradise and a world in which men wait for a heavenly paradise. This is the major error of humanism. Though it seems to be morally upright when beaming in the robe of abolition, the 20th century has proven otherwise. Once the authority of God’s word is left behind, there is no standard for what man deems either moral or immoral, causing situations that will never lead to true peace or perfection.

The Civil War was a war over exegetical interpretation, both of the Constitution and of the Bible. The economic and social reasons for the war can only be understood when subservient to the two basic worldviews of Calvinism in the South and utopianism in the North. Ultimately the war was a clash between those who believed in biblical authority and its hierarchical structure, and those who believed in human autonomy and social ordering consistent with that view.”

I've heard this from multiple people: It was the utopian movement of the North. It was Transcendentalism. It was the Unitarians. So it was people that were rejecting the authority of God, the authority of Scripture, not looking at a literal reading of the Bible, coming up with “slavery is wrong” even though the Bible doesn’t say so.

And it was Southern Calvinists who were arguing—and the key theologian quoted by both Harris and Wilson is R. L. Dabney, who was kind of the official theologian of the Confederacy—who would say God in his providence put the Black man in subjugation to the white man for his betterment. And this is what these guys are picking up on today in 2025.

Skye: I mean, there are so many things, but let me—

Phil: So it was the South was Calvinist, the North was utopian. 

Skye: Okay, but here’s the problem: The world, even in the 1850s and 1860s, was much larger than the United States of America, and much larger than just this theological battle between Calvinists and Quakers. So I think they're completely misrepresenting the view of Northern Christians. That’s number one.

But let’s put that aside for a second. Let’s say they’re correct about their characterization of Northern utopian Unitarians and all that. How do they explain the end of the slave trade in England? How do they explain the end of slavery in other parts of the world, also motivated by Christian views?

Phil: Douglas Wilson would say the slave trade was wrong because the Bible says you cannot steal a man and sell him.

Skye: So how did Africans end up at the centerpiece of American slavery?

Phil: Because God’s providence. They were stolen, but then they were here.

Skye: But how? Wait, how—But how? If it’s God’s providence that Africans should be under the authority of Europeans, but you can’t take Africans out of Africa, then you're saying God’s permitting a violation of his own commandment for the betterment of Africans.

Phil: It’s a little confusing. 

Skye: It’s a little bonkers.

Phil: My question is: Why is it so important that we defend it?

Skye: One of the fallacies that comes up a lot in this conversation and others is: “Well, God used something… so therefore he must endorse it.”

Kaitlyn: What you intended for evil, God used for good.

Skye: Right. Because God uses something or someone does not mean God is endorsing that idea or person. And I could give a whole sermon on this right now and I’ll refrain myself, but to say that: Did God bring anything good out of the evil of slavery? Undoubtedly he did, because he can redeem anything for his purposes. But that doesn’t mean it is therefore good to continue something which is dehumanizing and evil.

We do this all the time—not just with questions as heavy as slavery, but even with, “Well, look how much good was happening through this leader, therefore they shouldn’t have to go through a long process of restoration after a horrific sin.” Like, “Well, because God’s using that person.” So what? God can use anyone and anything.

Phil: Okay, we gotta wrap up, but the last point I wanted to make is: When you follow some of these thinkers—either Christian nationalist thinkers or pro-Confederacy thinkers—and they're talking about Christianity all the time, and they're talking about Christendom, and they're talking about the kingship of Christ… what they don’t talk about almost ever is Jesus’ teaching. Almost never.

Okay, Douglas Wilson—I just checked this morning—he’s written 80 books. Yeah, 80 books. None of them on the topic of Jesus or his teaching. And this is a pastor who’s written 80 books. The only time Christ comes up is—typically he did a big promo a few years ago where they were buying billboards across the country that just said CHRIST IS KING in bold letters. And it was like a stunt, but it wasn’t a stunt to draw people to the gospel. It was a stunt to say, “Christ is the authority over you, and we’re his representatives.”

And it’s Christian nationalism. “Christians should be in charge. Not Jews, because they reject Christ as King. They reject the statement ‘Christ is King.’” So we’re using Jesus only when it’s convenient, which is to say: we should be in charge. Now ask someone to write a book about the Sermon on the Mount and apply it to life in a pluralistic society—and you’ve got nothing. Absolutely nothing. So the biggest obstacle, as I see it, that they have to overcome to promote the Christianity they want to promote is Jesus.

Skye: That’s a little bit of a problem.

Kaitlyn: Yikes.

Phil: I think it’s a problem. 

Okay, y’all, last word. Kaitlyn, last word.

Kaitlyn: That’s kind of hard to follow.

Skye: Okay, I’ll—I think it’s pretty easy: If you’ve given authority in your life to somebody who is using the teachings of Jesus to endorse racism and slavery, I would find a different authority in your life.

Phil: In most cases they’re not using the teachings of Jesus at all. They’re using the name of Jesus. Typically using Calvin, maybe a little Augustine. They’re finding reformed fathers who were defining political engagement in Calvin’s Geneva.

Kaitlyn: Well, and I think, to be fair, most people are actually using none of them. Like no theologian, no Bible. The most popular versions of all this—these guys are not—very few people, I think, are reading those books. A lot of people are listening to clips of Doug Wilson. I don’t know a lot of people are reading those books.

Phil: But I mean, Doug Wilson is totally up to his eyeballs in the Reformers.

Skye: If you find yourself drawn to this kind of rhetoric about your neighbor, about people of a different ethnicity or race, you need to check your own soul. What am I getting out of this? Is it making me feel superior? Is it making me feel powerful? Is it making me feel like I have meaning and purpose again? And if I'm getting that by demoting the value of my neighbor who’s different from me, you are not following the teachings of Christ.