Slavery is a Black & White Issue by Gail Purath

Air holes in the church floor.

They could breathe in the dark underbelly of the church only because there were holes in the Georgian pinewood floor above them. Some would die before they reached northern safety, but these runaway slaves thought freedom was worth the risk.

The First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia has a pattern of air holes in their basement floor above an historic secret tunnel of the Underground Railroad. Before slavery was abolished, slaves purchased the church property with money they'd saved to buy their children's freedom. (Some masters paid slaves small stipends for work done after their unpaid workday.) Working nights, the slaves rebuilt the church, creating a secret tunnel in the process.

A white church (still in existence today) accepted the slave's freedom money for a property they no longer needed. Like other "Christian" slave owners, they justified slavery with out-of-context Bible passages while ignoring in-context passages.(1)

From Stephen's Cornerstone Speech

Sarah Grimke, one of a tiny minority of white southern abolitionists, described the beating of a runaway slave woman: “[A] finger could not be laid between the cuts…a heavy iron collar with three prongs projecting from it, was placed around her neck, and a strong and sound front tooth was extracted, to serve as a mark to describe her, in case of escape…These outrages were committed in a family where the mistress daily read the Scriptures, and assembled her children for family worship.”(2) Accounts like these are common.

I’m not a Southerner—I didn't grow up hearing the “state’s rights” justification for the Civil War(3), and I’m sad to see anyone fly the Confederate flag. But my ancestors were not innocent. Slavery couldn’t have survived for over two hundred years if northern and western Christians had united against it.

From Texas Secession Papers

Slavery isn't a morally gray area--it's a black and white issue, and most of our ancestors have some culpability. The worst part is that we haven’t fully repented. Less than fifty years ago, southern white “Christians” insisted on segregated seating at Billy Graham Crusades until Graham refused to put up with it any longer! And the poison that caused slavery is still with us in the form of bigotry, half-truth justifications for the Civil War, and ignorant or deliberate honor for the Confederate flag.(3)

I'm ashamed to say that sometimes when I hear uninformed remarks about the war, slavery, and the Confederate flag from white Christians, I say nothing...just like many of my ancestors said nothing during the days of slavery.

From SC Secession Papers

 In 1995, 150 years after they broke from northern Baptists, the Southern Baptist Church officially repented of their pro-slavery and anti-civil rights sins.(4) What about the rest of us? Are we ready, like the slaves beneath the church floor, to take a risk for freedom? There is only one escape from sin's dark underbelly where we huddle. It is through honesty and repentance--"Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free” John 8:32.(5)

(1) During the Confederacy, most 'Christian' slave owners had convinced themselves that slavery was Biblical. To read how ridiculous this claim is read:  Does the Bible Support Slavery?

(2)  From Sea to Shining Sea, Peter Marshall and David Manuel, (Fleming H. Revell), 1986, page 246.

(3)  The main “state’s right” that caused secession was the right to own slaves. Alexander Stephens, Confederate vice-president, said the foundation of the Confederacy rested "upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.” (from Stephen's Cornerstone Speech).  

(4) Resolution On Racial Reconciliation On The 150th Anniversary Of The Southern Baptist Convention

(5) Even if you have done what is right, consider Daniel's confession in Daniel 9.

Gail writes one-minute devotions for Bible Love Notes.  Gail's bio.

Read a one-minute devotion about this subject: The Freedom of a Slave