Following the unjust suspension of Zachary Garris by the Presbyterian Church in America over mild pushback to a woke Black pastor, the Christian Post decided to pile on. John B Carpenter, a woke pastor who opposed the Statement on Social Justice and the Gospel (aka the Dallas Statement), decided to run point with an article attacking Garris over the Lost Cause Narrative. In it he applies an ahistoric and selective reading of Scripture on the issue of slavery.
The Presbyterian Church in America recently disciplined Pastor Zachary Garris for “unwholesome speech.” I am not a Presbyterian, so I have no interest in denominational politics, but I am a Christian, and I care when my faith is made to launder evil.
Garris posted on X that the Bible contains “chattel slavery” and that some antebellum Presbyterians defended slavery because of “the Bible’s teaching.” That framing is exactly where the Lost Cause loves to hide. It baits Christians with reverence for Scripture, then switches the object of our sympathy from Moses’ law to Mississippi’s slave code.Lost Cause propaganda works by wrapping falsehoods around partial truths. Yes, the Old Testament regulated forms of servitude. Yes, some of those forms were severe. But that does not make biblical servitude morally identical to the racialized, hereditary, man-stealing slavery of the Old South.
Carpenter frames Garris as laundering evil for pointing out the obvious reality that the Bible contains chattel slavery. In fact, Israel’s bondage in Egypt and the Israelite-to-Israelite welfare slavery are the exceptions as not being chattel slavery in the Bible. Onesimus was Philemon’s chattel slave, an assumption we can safely make because the Roman Empire ran on chattel slavery.
Garris’s use of the word “chattel” is the sleight of hand. In Exodus 21 and Deuteronomy 15, Hebrew slaves were to be released after six years, in the seventh year, and were protected against abuse. That is far closer to the indentured servitude many white settlers originally came to America under, in the colonial era. If someone replies that these protections applied only to Israelites, the answer is that Israel was not a racial state. A foreigner, like Rahab, could join Israel’s covenant life by confessing faith in the Lord and submitting to his law (Ex. 12:48-49). That alone makes Israel unlike the Old South.
Caprenter raises Exodus 21 which was not even what Garris was referring to. Garris was clearly referencing Leviticus 25:44, “As for your male and female slaves whom you may have—you may acquire male and female slaves from the pagan nations that are around you.” This is not only chattel slavery, but servitude based on race.
He further condemns the Transatlantic Slave Trade for being manstealing, when it was based on tribal wars. It was not White people snatching Africans. That slave trade is described in the North African Slave Trade, where Barbary Pirates raided the coasts of Europe and even Iceland to capture an estimated 1 million for ransom or slavery. But the Atlantic Slave Trade is no more discernibly man-stealing than the situation described in Leviticus 25.
So, the issue is not whether Scripture uses the word “slave.” The issue is whether two systems that share a broad label are the same object. They are not. To treat them as equivalent is equivocation by generic leveling. It is like saying a kitchen knife and a murderer’s knife are morally the same because both are knives. The label remains, but the thing itself has changed.
Garris’s second move is to suggest that most antebellum Presbyterians opposed abolitionism because of the Bible. That is misleading. There was a major difference between opposing slavery and debating the method by which slavery should end. Some Christians favored immediate abolition. Others favored gradual emancipation. Disagreement over strategy does not prove that racial slavery was biblically justified.
Carpenter applies a hefty word-concept fallacy that a plain reading of Scripture and a cursory knowledge of ancient history would dispel. What follows is a cherry picked list of condemnations of slavery by churches in the North which even if done by credible bodies, led to conclusions like barring the Lord’s Table for slaveholders which, as the book of Philemon shows, is indefensible, since Paul lauds the character of a master. The book of Philemon is unaddressed as is Christ’s interaction with the faithful Roman who cared for his chattel slave.
Christian Post ultimately ran a house of cards to punch Zachary Garris after the Kellerites of the PCA have already come after him.
One Response
John B Carpenter tries to make it appear that the “unwholesome speech” that Garris was suspended for was his statement on chattel slavery. In fact Garris was cleared on the charge related to chattel slavery, and the conviction was over some mild remarks about someone’s method of argumentation. Carperter is clearly being deceitful, but in his church it seems someone can attack others that way and remain in good standing.