A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on July 29th, 2009 in Progressive Faith

A hundred and fifty years ago, it was common to refer to slavery as “that institution peculiar to the Southern States.” Blacks were considered by some religious “thinkers” to be “the sons of Ham, and therefore born into slavery. Southerners cried to the federal government, and then to the states, to defend this “Godly practice.” And that was just the front-line argument:

When faced with the anti-slavery movement, people justified their actions by using biblical references, the southern economy, and nature. Southern plantation owners were forced to construct stronger arguments to back up slavery when more and more people were questioning it. Some pro-slavery activists turned again to biblical references towards African Americans, particularly the story of Ham. They argued that black slavery was merely the continuance of God’s punishments towards Ham from his actions on the ark. They proclaimed that slavery was connected to the Old Testament for this reason. Anti-slavery activists replied with the fact that it was the “Christian duty” to save the slaves’ souls and it was time to forgive. Another reason to back up slavery was the southern economy. The South thrived on the plantations and crops. Most plantations in the south would not have survived if the abolishment of slavery had occurred, just as they were faced with troubled times during reconstruction. An example that shows the southern dependency on slave labor was the colony of Georgia during the 1730s. The colony was built as a trial, the settlers consisting mainly of refugees, orphans, and convicts. Led by John Oglethorpe, the organizers were idealists believing, “that a colony founded to bring relief to the distressed of Europe should not be the cause of enslaving thousands of free Africans.” (215) In 1732, Georgia became the one and only non-slavery colony. Within a few years though, the colonists compared their lifestyles to those of the neighboring state of South Carolina, and began petitioning for the ability to own slaves. The white workers could not produce the necessities needed for plantation life. When hunger, poverty, and death frenzied the colony, the only choice was to turn to slavery. The southern economy was proven to self-destruct without the aid of slavery. The nature of human kind was another tactic that slave owners used to justify slavery. Inequality exists in nature as in all things, so why not in humans? Whatever their original intention, the people that helped build the word race saw it as a instrument of social ranking. There were people needed to do the dangerous, dirty, difficult labor for a normal civilized society. The others were needed to be the creators, planners, and the brains behind high society. There proves the social stratification of “whites” and “blacks”. Southern slave owners claimed that slavery was acceptable because there needed to be social ranking in society. Pro-slavery advocates produced many reasons to justify slavery to try to hold down the anti-slavery movement.

Is it me, or does this sound a lot like the “religious” objections to allowing same sex marriage?

Take a look at Jim Daly’s defense of marriage as a “sacred institution.” Salient quotes:
- However, this does not mean that protecting the “sacred” nature of marriage is not the business of our government, as Gaddy claims.

- This man and woman had every right to marry because, as this Court stated in its summary, marriage is “fundamental to our very existence and survival.”

Daly doesn’t get into the economic reasons, but it isn’t hard to find someone discussing it – like when Chuck Colson worries that florists will be forced to sell flowers to gay couples. But we have, basically, the same reason for officially oppressing a group of people – God says it’s okay, and it’s natural to do so.

So Daly’s argument boils down to marriage being specifically limited because: 1)God wants it that way; and 2)it’s natural. It wasn’t a really convincing argument for slavery, and I’m not buying it now, either.

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