Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.12
And yet despite such cruelty, the architect of Christianity, Paul, exhorts the unfortunate who are forced into bondage, through no fault of their own, to obey their earthly masters—with respect and fear, no less! So it goes, if you uncritically accept the New Testament as holy writ.
Or not.
Many Christians who uncritically accept the New Testament as holy writ have been, and are, antislavery. But how can this be? Don’t the Ten Commandments implicitly allow for servitude? Doesn’t Paul explicitly exhort slaves to obey their masters? What is ambiguous here?
A lot. Or nothing. Once again, it is all—and I mean all—a matter of interpretation.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, American Christians—ardent and pious to a soul—were deeply divided over the moral question of slavery. A small number of theologians, preachers, and politicians, such as William Wilberforce, George Bourne, Charles Spurgeon, and John Wesley, condemned slavery as a grave sin and injustice. And the small Christian denomination of Quakers came to believe that slavery was immoral, working hard to undermine what they saw as a cruel, inhumane practice that went against the will of God. But the Quakers and their faithful ilk comprised a distinct moral minority; most Christians of the day interpreted God’s will quite differently. As American historian Forrest Wood exhaustively documents, “despite the humanitarian efforts of some Christians on behalf of the millions held in bondage, Christian thought and conduct in the first three centuries of American life came down overwhelmingly on the side of human oppression”13 and “defenders of slavery among men of the cloth were far more numerous than opponents.”14 Here’s but one glaring example: when William Lloyd Garrison, the tireless antislavery activist and editor of The Liberator first wanted to offer an abolitionist speech in Boston, every single Christian denomination denied him their stage.15
The reigning Christian view in the nineteenth century—among whites, of course—was perhaps best expressed by John Henry Hopkins, bishop of the Episcopal Church, who in his 1861 publication The Bible View of Slavery explained that “the Almighty” ordained Black people to slavery “because he judged it to be their fittest condition.” As for God’s son’s take on slavery, well, Hopkins pointed out that Jesus “uttered not one word against it!”16 Indeed, the majority of white Bible-believers in the United States, especially in the South, were convinced that God approves of slavery. As historian, sociologist, and civil rights pioneer W. E. B. Du Bois noted, back in 1913, the Christian Church not only aided and abetted the slave trade for centuries, but it “was the bulwark of American slavery.”17 Du Bois documented the fact that “under the aegis and protection of the religion of the Prince of Peace . . . there arose in America one of the most stupendous institutions of human slavery that the world has ever seen. The Christian Church sponsored and defended the institution . . . the Catholic Church approved of and defended slavery; the Episcopal Church defended and protected slavery; the Puritans and Congregationalists recognized and upheld slavery.”18
Consider one glaring example, the proslavery Christian leader George Whitefield—known by many as the founder of American Evangelicalism. A slave owner himself, Whitefield was a vociferous defender of this “peculiar institution.” And he did so as a devout servant of God: when he testified before the British Parliament, in order to advocate for the introduction of slavery into Georgia, he not only relied on the biblical defense of slavery, but he argued that God had specifically created the climate in Georgia to be suitable for enslaved Africans to feel at home in their bondage.19 His argument won the day and was deemed morally and ethically correct by most of his fellow Christians, especially Southern whites. Heck, you know the Southern Baptists—the largest Protestant denomination in the United States? Did you ever wonder why they are called Southern Baptists, as opposed to just Baptists? It’s because of their historical support of slavery: once the white Baptists in the North eventually condemned it, the white Baptists in the South broke from their northern coreligionists and formed their own Southern religious denomination in 1845. And Baptists weren’t the only Christian denomination to split over the question of whether or not God commands or condemns the enslavement of other human beings: Presbyterians divided over the matter in 1837 and Methodists in 1844.20
Irreconcilable Interpretation
So far, we have looked at the historical extent to which Christians have been split over whether or not God approves of slavery, and we’ve explored the specific instance in which Mormons diverged over what form of marriage God commands. These represent just two distinctly American versions of theism that have been deeply divided at times over fundamental questions of human conduct—divisions based on incompatible interpretations of God’s will.
But we haven’t even thrown any other religions into the interpretive mix—like, say, Islam. What does Islam say about polygamy? According to a direct reading of the Quran—which is considered by hundreds of millions to be the precise, literal word of God/Allah—Sura 4:3 states that a man may have up to four wives, so long as he can treat them all equally. So Allah clearly approves of polygamy. Or does he? While the majority of Muslims agree that God allows it, some Islamic theologians have interpreted Sura 4:3 differently, claiming that since it is nearly impossible for a man to truly treat multiple wives equally in all aspects, then polygamy is clearly not God’s ideal. Today, most Muslim-majority nations allow polygamy, but a handful do not.
Where does Judaism stand in all of this? For most of its early history, Jews interpreted God’s will as being in favor of polygamy, and it was widely practiced. But then, after Rabbi Gershom ben Judah of the eleventh century proclaimed it against God’s will, it steadily petered out. The state of Israel currently outlaws it. However, one of the most powerful contemporary rabbis in Israel, Ovadia Yosef, came out a few years ago in support of polygamy, and many orthodox rabbis in Israel currently perform polygamous weddings on a regular basis—as their interpretation of God’s will condones.21
Then there is Hinduism, Sikhism, Bahaism, Zoroastrianism—all with their own different interpretations of God’s will (or the gods’ will) regarding the ideal, approved marital structure for humanity.
And as for the issue of slavery—again, let’s consider Islam. Do Muslims believe that Allah approves of slavery? The answer is: yes, no, yes, no, yes, no—or rather, a multitude of interpretations, depending on this or that Islamic theologian’s construal of this or that historical epoch and from this or that school of Islam from this or that part of the world.22
The obvious point here is that when it comes to what is ethically correct and morally commanded, the major religions of the world interpret God’s will differently, resulting in widespread disagreement. But it’s not just the different major religions that are characterized by such conflicting interpretations—it is the case that even within the same religious tradition, one finds radically conflicting interpretations of basic questions of God’s will concerning human conduct. And this has not only been the case throughout history, but it persists today.
For a contemporary example, we see dramatically different interpretations of God’s will when it comes to the morality or immorality of gay marriage: the Roman Catholic Church, American Baptist Churches, Assemblies of God, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, every Islamic denomination, the Orthodox