Racism and the wrath of God...

How curious, Mr. Bayley. I find it disingenuous of you to say on the one hand that racism is wrong, and on the other hand, link to Doug Wilson's blog, who claims in his booklet, "Southern Slavery, As It Was," that slavery in the US south was not a bad thing. Wilson claims, among other things, that "Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence" (page 24) and "There has never been a multi-racial society which has existed with such mutual intimacy and harmony in the history of the world" (page 24). Or how about this: "Slave life was to them a life of plenty, of simple pleasures, of food, clothes, and good medical care." (page 25) You claim that racism is wrong, yet, your conscience does not seem to trouble you to support someone who is so clearly racist - and a plagiarist, to boot. Fully 20% of Wilson's writing was plagiarized from an earlier work by Fogel and Engerman, "Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery." For the record, do you agree or disagree with Doug Wilson?

Or that we all have descended from Adam, have all fallen short of God's glory, and Christ asked us to go forth making disciples of all nations (which is exactly what they did). There's no barrier put up around one's race.

It's one thing to say some people are more highly favored by God than others, it's another to say "and I know which ones".

Actually, Ann, you haven't invalidated the claims of kinism at all. Those passages you mentioned are salvific in nature. They refer to how fallen human beings are saved in Christ, regardless of ethnicity or gender. Women and men both are in equal need of Christ for salvation and are co-equal heirs to the promises of salvation. However, they are still different. It's the same with different ethnicites. Why in the living crap is this so hard for people to understand? I think people just don't want to understand it. I say, if ya'll want to call White kinists unrepentant, you'd better be ready to apply the same label to Blacks with Black churches, celebrating their Black culture, and Hispanics with Spanish speaking sermons and songs, and Koreans in Korean Presbyterian churches. Ever been to a Korean Presbyterian church full of Koreans as a White person? I have, and although we're all saved the same way and the Koreans were kind to me, they related to me a whole lot differently than they related to their kin. Duh! And I'm not just talking about the language barrier. See, they're allowed to relate differently to one another. And no one screams at them with Galatians 3:28 telling them that they're bigoted against Whites because they happen to want to be not only a people set apart for the service of Christ, but an ethnicity (nation) that God has made to seek him.

You tell 'em, Anne. Morasoom, your post is a perfect example of why I call this stuff "lying", and why it's so infuriating. It is a sin to bind what God has not bound. Nobody anywhere is talking about whether culture-groups should like and appreciate what's good about themselves. To characterize "kinism" as being about that is lying. To blithely fluff off who we all are in Christ is wicked, and shows that someone's head isn't spiritually screwed on straight. To claim that this topic is only about whether ethnic distinctives exist is a lie. To say that other peoples' godless ethnocentrism justifies or validates kinism is a lie. What it does show is that we're all sinning, regardless of race. To claim that this is about whether different ethnic groups are superior or inferior to each other is a lie. The white race must say to the kinist, "Why do you call me good? There is but one who is good." Righteously waving the banner of anti-political-correctness around doesn't make kinism any less ignorant or sinful. And it's an insult, as if most readers are so dumb that they can't see past the obviousness of that tactic. To teach that the Bible forbids the intermarrying of the races makes one a false teacher, and should make you subject to discipline. Paul tells us that everything he was, ethnically and culturally and religiously and professionally, compared to the saving knowledge of Christ was skubalos -- the rough English slang equivalent being "crap." Our whiteness accrues to our damnation, because we anglos share in those distinct national and cultural sins particularly embraced by Anglo western moderns. All (believing) races are reconciled to God through Christ, in the body of His flesh through death -- Colossians 1:20-21. So let's get it straight: 1. This isn't about liking ourselves. 2. This isn't about the reality of ethnicity. 3. This isn't about being pro or anti-PC. 4. No race is intrinsically superior to another. 5. Identity in Christ overrides everything else.

Anne, thanks for the citations. BTW how do you deal with the pro-gay type of people who use some of the same verses to justify their views? I have debated this in person several times & find it a real difficulty to maintain the view of ethnicity your view requires & still hold that the sexes are still distinct "in Christ"

Joel, If we could attribute the declaration, "Jacob I loved but Esau I hated" (Romans9:13) to John Calvin, you'd have a point. But as you must know, it is God Who said it, and God also made clear that His choice was not due to anything Jacob or Esau had (or had not done), since He made that choice while they were still in the womb (Romans 9:10-12). So then, you and I share the problem, don't we? Scripture is clear: God chooses some and passes over others. And the Scriptures are so obvious on this point that it takes something like pure obstinacy to deny it. But of course, we are all capable of pure obstinacy at least thirty times a day--in trivial matters, let alone something as weighty as recognizing and coming to love God's absolute sovereignty over our existence. Unable to submit to Scripture's doctrine of God's choice, many of us carry around a truncated Bible and speak of God doing everything He can to save us except that one thing that He cannot do, make us believe. As the illogic goes, only we can take that final step because "God cares about freedom more than anything else," as a book I just received puts it. (Would you be surprised the book is written by an Christian libertarian?) But then, was it not God Himself who reported to us that He makes some vessels for a "profane use" (Romans 9:21); was it not the Holy Spirit Himself who reported to us about God, "So then He has mercy on whom He desires, and He hardens whom He desires" (Romans 9:18); is it not the Holy Spirit Who, in the books of Acts, declares, "When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the word of the Lord; and as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed" (Acts 13:48)? Really, what kind of sleight-of-hand with the text of God's Word does it take to assign to Calvinists the duty of maintaining the dignity and equality of man in the face of God's choice? Dear brother, you have the same problem we reformed Protestants have; namely, how to reconcile God's demand that we repent, believe, and choose Life with His multitudinous declarations that those who repent, believe, and choose Life do so only because He first chose them? There are two ways of handling this problem. There are those who are submissive and acknowledge, "God said it and that settles it." Generally, they are the ones who are willing to shut their mouths at the point where Scripture goes silent on a whole host of matters--not just God's choice. But there are also those who open their mouths precisely at the point where God went silent in His Word, and these errant souls begin to apply their fallible because finite wisdom to rescuing God and His Word from this and many other terrible dilemmas. But buck up, you don't need to give up Rome to finally submit to and love the sovereignty of God. Check out St. Augustine. With real affection... PS: Yes, of course I know that Augustine was not Roman Catholic.

Light, As far as I am concerned you can continue to wait, hold your breath until you are blue in the face and jump up and down and scream. If you are too obstinate to acknowledge the intractability of your position in the face of the CLEAR and OVERWHELMING teaching of Scripture, what would make anyone think that Mr. Bayly answering you at all wouldn't just make you say, "Well yeah, but." If you even got to the well yeah part. Having watched with a sad heart this entire discourse over the past several days I am absolutely floored at the unwillingness of those defending any part of the kinist position to acknowledge ANY Scripture that has been cited OR to cite ANY of their own that might possibly defend the position. It even makes me want to vomit knowing that there are those out there that just read that, yet who began to think of Scriptures that they might cite to do just that. Are your hearts so hard as to set yourself up above God and His word, or will you submit yourself - including thoughts, prejudice, and action - to His word? If not, then away with you. You have no authority to teach or hold forth in any sort of public forum. However, if you are willing to humbly exchange and seek to be instructed in faith by men who have more knowledge of Scripture and experience in shepherding souls than you or I, come and ask your questions honestly and without deception. This, however, should not be a forum for baiting and name calling; deception and lies. It brings no glory to God to have many of the things that I have read here over the past days preserved for posterity unless there is a desire by all to seek what the Scriptures say and for ALL of us to submit ourselves to them. I have seen no willingness to do so on the part of the "kinists." Not because they do not agree with me, but because there is no indication of any authority that God's word has over their lives in this issue. Angrily but still humbly yours, Doug Ummel

Those who endorse the segregation of races or ethnic groups for the sake of those races or ethnic groups ought to remember that the Great Commission (Matthew 28: 18-20) tells us to share the Gospel not only in Jerusalem, but also in Samaria and through the world. How exactly, then, can one reach Samaria and the world while forming a "Jerusalem only" or "whites only" church? It's also worth noting that God provided a persecution in Jerusalem when the story of Acts indicates that people were staying there instead of getting out to Samaria and the world. As a gentile myself, I'm pretty glad that He did this.

It should also be noted that Wilson emphatically denounces the idea that he claimed slavery was benign in that booklet--and he provides citations from that booklet in his weblog to prove it. See the link I provide.

Doug Ummel, what in my post gives you the idea that I am a kinist? I repudiate that position completely and wholeheartedly. It is an utterly corrupt position. I don't know where you are getting the idea that I support kinism.

Doug Wilson is a racist. That is loathesome. Doug Wilson states: "Slavery as it existed in the South was not an adversarial relationship with pervasive racial animosity. Because of its dominantly patriarchal character, it was a relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence." One race enslaves another race based solely on skin color. And Wilson has the brass to claim it's not because of racial animosity? A "relationship based upon mutual affection and confidence"? Oh, please. I don't understand how you can say such lies are not racist. So once again, for the record - such racism is loathesome, as is kinism. I repudiate both.

Light, I am glad to hear you repudiate kinism publicly. I did think that you were casting your lot there. I am sorry to have misinterpreted you. I'm afraid that you got caught in the crossfire of my absolute frustration with the shooting from the shadows that has been charateristic of their interaction here. I still do stick to my guns, however, about you baiting Tim Bayly. I just re-read your post and nothing in it indicates a humility of spirit or a desire to learn or be taught. It is entirely argumentative and aggressive. The only thing that you were trying to do is elicit some sort of response so that you could attack it. That's what it looks like from here anyway. I could be wrong, I suppose, but I'm inclined to think not.

"PS: Yes, of course I know that Augustine was not Roman Catholic." That would no doubt come as a big surprise to him. He was a Christian in communion with Rome, which seems like the obvious definition. Although I suppose if anybody could be considered Ambrosian Rite rather than Roman, it would be Ambrose's protege. :) Tim, I didn't mean my remarks to be a criticism of Calvinism, although on rereading it looks like they came out that way. I'm really sorry for that. And in a soteriological argument with you, I'd be like a chihuahua squaring off with a Rottweiler. :) (Catholics do believe in a form of predestination, as both Augustine and Aquinas have outlined. I suppose I lean more toward the latter, for all that Augustine is my patron saint. But then, I'm not all that theologically savvy.) But I digress. My point was that the fundamental equality of every man isn't necessarily axiomatic in scripture, a fact that's highlighted by the Calvinist interpretation of predestination. If you believe that God prefers one man over another for reasons created into them, it doesn't seem like that big a leap to think that God might lump together the ones He prefers in the same culture or location. If I understand right, that was part of the Dutch Reformed justification of apartheid. Which is emphatically not to say that Calvinism is racist. To the contrary, there's no reason at all to think that God WOULD make ancestry a factor in His determination of saved vs. damned, and the scriptures that have been cited argue powerfully against it. I guess I'm just playing devil's advocate here to point out the string of logic that could distill "kinism" from Christianity.

Doug Wilson has been around for a while. In the past I've found some of his books interesting although leaning a bit over the edge of reasonableness in many instances. Now I'm concerned. This is a man who is representing Christ and God's Word to many people and the world. With the things I've been reading around the net about him lately, I have to say that the best thing to do is to disassociate with him and his work. He's making choices that are hurting the ministry of Christ.

L. Martin, think about what you're saying here. Are you truly saying that the scorn of a few dozen people ought to compel us to disassociate? If so, we ought to disassociate from the church, which has the scorn of not dozens, but millions, and that throughout history. The Romans accused us of treason, atheism, and cannibalism--let's apostasize, right? No, let's be fair here. As David Gray establishes well in his exchange with "Light Morton," at least some of Wilson's detractors are breaking basic rules of logic and ignoring inconvenient facts. We need to give the man a fair shake. And I say this, for what it's worth, as a "lumpy Anabaptist" who disagrees with Wilson on a number of theological issues.

Well, Robert, to be fair let's note that there is a difference between accusing groups of people of things that are not true, and observing the statements of one person. Wilson said these things and other similar things. Are you aware that there is a webpage on the net somewhere that has quite a bit of material about some of the problems with Wilson's church ministry. Not sure if I can find it now, but I saw it and read almost all of it. In reading everything I've come across it just seems wise to me to stay clear of being associated with him. And what are the "inconvenient facts" that you are referencing people are ignoring. Frankly, I've been reading so much negative information (quotes, transcriptions, scanned public letters, etc.) that I'd love to see some positives.

Jack Brooks says, "Southern man-stealing, and human trafficking." Slavery was introduced into America by the Dutch; then carried on by the British and Yankees, but not by Southerners. The man-stealing at the point of origin was done by one African tribe against another. There was no need for the Portugese, Spanish, English, Dutch, or French tribes to get poison ivy and jungle rot looking for their own slaves. Barrels of rum were adequate trading material. The English abolished the slave trade just about the same time that the U.S. forbade further importations-- what a coincidence! It was the southerners at the convention that wanted to abolish the slave trade sooner. The yankee shipmen wanted more profits first. Yankee slave trafficking around "the triangle" continued long after; I have heard even continuing after the war of Northern Aggression! As a slave-economy became unprofitable, the yankees sold their slaves south for gold. When their grandsons got up in arms over the egregious immorality of slavery, they didn't offer to give the gold back. The ignoramus above that said slaves were valued as 2/3 of a person-- they counted by the Constitution (Article 1, section 2) as 3/5 for congressional allocation. Slave-holders would, of course, have preferred 1/1. It was non-slaveholders that wanted the fraction as low as possible. Of any given specific Southern slave holder, it is quite possible that he was completely innocent of any biblical crime, since the Bible, neither OT nor NT identifies slave-holding per se as sinful. "How can that be if man-stealing is a sin?" The same way it can be that you, if you are a modern American property-holder, might be completely innocent in your holding of that property, even though it could be, for all that you know, that a sin was committed in connection with wresting that property from someone else, sometime in the misty and undocumented past. Or, for that matter, in the clear and documented past. Think about it, before you cast stones at the defenseless dead!

Tim Harris, I don't dispute your facts. Your point re: the 3/5 compromise is especially good, and I was tempted yesterday to make it myself. However, the moral evaluation you are deriving from some of those facts doesn't hold up under scrutiny. Yes, the original man-stealing was in most cases done by the Africans, not the Europeans. But the Europeans were clearly conspirators in the act, since they gladly received the stolen "goods." In fact, once the trade was established, the Europeans were doing more than simply signing on to the evil: they were the market driving it. Trying to clear them of guilt would be like trying to argue that the assassin is guilty of murder, but the man who hired him to commit that murder is innocent. Also, it is wrong-headed and morally obtuse to equate the holding of a fourth-generation slave with the holding of a property inherited from a great grandfather who acquired it dishonestly. Land can be owned. People cannot rightly be.

Keith writes: "Anyway, if you want the real test as to whether or not slavery is a sin, ask yourself what you would have thought if you were taken from your homeland, separated from your wife and kids, and forced to work grueling unpaid labor for the rest of your life. Eh?" It is Scripture that tells us what is sin. Perhaps you can show me where the Bible teaches that slave-holding is a sin. I know of no place where Scripture condemns slave-holding. To the contrary, Paul gives instruction in the area of slave-holding in the letter to Philemon. He even instructs a runaway slave to return to his master, and this in a system that was much more abusive than the slavery that we had in this country.