The Slavery Heresy
Schedule Wayne Holstad for Your Group
Order by credit card ~ Order by check or money order
© Alethos Press LLC
PO Box 600160
St. Paul, MN 55106
At no time in American
history has the absence of justice been more visible than when her citizens
tolerated slavery.
Modern Americans regard the historical tolerance
of slavery as a gross, national error. Seldom do they explore the reasons
for its development as an institution, or why it continued as long as it
did.
Modern Americans condemn slavery as wrong and
unthinkable. They often condemn earlier generations for not opposing the
evil institution, but a cursory review of the history of slavery indicates
that most early Americans, in fact, thought it was wrong. Many people may be
surprised to learn that the Supreme Court, in an opinion by John Marshall
regarding the ship “The Antelope,” slavery was condemned as a violation of
natural law and the law of nations.
In a striking resemblance to modern day cultural
and political debate, many early American citizens thought that, even though
slavery was morally wrong, they had no business interfering with other
people’s problems.
The issue became sectional. The South suffered
from a failing economy and a backward, anachronistic aristocratic culture.
Yet, attempts by the North to restrict slavery in any way were fiercely
resisted.
Churches provided little help in clearing up the moral confusion about the
issue. Most Christians shied away from taking a public stand, preferring
instead the peace offered by a silent acquiescence to the status quo.
By the 1850s, the laws protecting slavery as an
institution had become rigid. Within a decade, the country was shattered by
a bloody Civil War. Only then did America finally conquer slavery.
The slavery question is too troubling to
simplistically dismiss the issue as an error committed by people from
another time. The errors in moral judgment that created and perpetuated
slavery resulted as a departure from fundamental principles of law and
theology. These principles are universal, applicable to all cultures. These
errors have been repeated in history up to our present day. They encompass
doctrinal and theological misinterpretations and serious misapplications of
well-known principles of fundamental law. A theological toleration of
slavery meant accepting heresy. Legally, slavery was unjust and a violation
of natural law and the principles of the Declaration of Independence.