He added, “Why should we get to make that appeal, and they don’t get to?”
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Wilson said that after watching that exchange, he resolved never “to let myself get maneuvered into waffling or backfilling about anything that the Bible plainly teaches—however roughly it treats our modern sensibilities.”
Wilson argued that evangelicals have been led by “professionally timid leaders” to “treat the Bible as a figurehead,” explaining that while many evangelicals are favorable to the idea of having the 10 Commandments posted in public spaces, those same evangelicals overlook the fact that two of the commandments mention slaves. In the command about Sabbath rest, the biblical text explicates that slaves will cease from labor on the seventh day, and in the command about covetousness, God’s people are specifically told not to covet their neighbors’ slaves.
Wilson went on to advocate for “biblical absolutism,” arguing that just as Philemon was within his rights in the first century to own slaves so long as “he followed the biblical instructions and was careful to treat his slaves with equity,” had Philemon lived in the antebellum American South, he “could own slaves, treat them biblically, and walk with God.”
“If someone refuses to do this, then they might want to call themselves an inerrantist,” Wilson quipped, “but whatever they call it, it is just posturing.”
Of note is the fact that Wilson’s views on slavery are well established. In a 1996 pamphlet, “Southern Slavery: As It Was,” Wilson argued that “Slavery produced in the South a genuine affection between the races that we believe we can say has never existed in any nation before the War or since.”
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Nevertheless, Wilson’s views on slavery are not shared by the majority of evangelical theologians, historians, or ethicists—whether in the United States or around the globe.
