Christian Nationalist linked to Pete Hegseth defends slavery as "not inherently evil"
Right-wing podcaster Joshua Haymes urged Christians to stop denouncing slavery, exposing the moral rot of his religious movement
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A prominent Christian Nationalist is urging fellow Christians to stop treating slavery as a bad thing because “it is not inherently evil to own another human being.”
It would be a lot easier to write this comment off if the person who said it wasn’t part of the same circles as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
Here’s the backstory: Right-wing, anti-empathy commentator Allie Beth Stuckey recently performed in one of those 1-versus-20 Jubilee debates in which she faced off against 20 progressive Christians. Because she’s so adamant that her interpretation of the Bible is correct—and leads her to adopt conservative positions—one of her opponents asked how she could be so damn certain her beliefs were accurate. After all, there were Christians in the past who “thought slavery was just,” and they were wrong, weren’t they? So why was Stuckey so sure she’s right?
She ignored the heart of the question and said the anti-slavery movement was also “motivated and led by Christians who were inspired by that very same Bible.”
Later on, another person asked her if slavery was wrong. “Yes, of course,” Stuckey replied. He followed up with “Do you agree with John MacArthur’s statements when he says that slavery can be great if you have the right master?” She didn’t accept that MacArthur actually said that but added “I condemn all dehumanization and all objectification of people who are all made in the image of God. No person should be owned.”
For the record, MacArthur did say that slavery could be acceptable with a good master.
In a 2012 YouTube video, MacArthur showed his true colors, stating: “It is a little strange that we have such an aversion to slavery because historically there have been abuses. There have been abuses in marriage. We don’t have an aversion to marriage particularly because there have been abuses. There are parents who abuse their children. We don’t have an aversion to having children because some parents have been abusive. … To throw out slavery as a concept simply because there have been abuses, I think, is to miss the point … . There can also be benefits. For many people, poor people, perhaps people who weren’t educated, perhaps people who had no other opportunity, working for a gentle, caring, loving master was the best of all possible worlds. … So we have to go back and take a more honest look at slavery and understand that God has, in a sense, legitimized it when it’s handled correctly. … Slavery is not objectionable if you have the right master. It’s the perfect scenario.”
Commentary like that, by the way, is why people weren’t sad when he died.
Anyway. The point is: Stuckey admitted slavery was bad. That shouldn’t be a controversial position, but there you go.
And yet that commentary infuriated Christian Nationalist Joshua Haymes.
Haymes co-hosts a podcast with Brooks Potteiger, pastor of the far-right Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship near Nashville, Tennessee. Haymes used to be a pastoral intern there. The church is affiliated with Douglas Wilson, an influential Christian Nationalist himself, and Pete Hegseth is a member of the congregation. Hegseth himself appeared on their Reformation Red Pill podcast for nearly six hours last year where the men discussed their theology.
During his recap of the Stuckey video, Haymes argued she was wrong on the slavery issue because there’s nothing wrong with owning someone as long as you do it the right way.
Right Wing Watch’s Kyle Mantyla has the transcript:
“The institution of slavery is not inherently evil,” Haymes insisted. “It is not inherently evil to own another human being.”
“It is very important that every Christian affirm what I just said,” he continued. “Not only should they affirm it, every Christian in today’s society should be able to defend what I just said. Every Christian should be able to defend it ... Christians in America have been led astray on this topic. They’ve been led to believe things that the Bible doesn’t teach, and when we go beyond the Bible, there are dire consequences.”
…
“We must also acknowledge that men like our Founders, men like Jonathan Edwards, who owned slaves, could in fact treat their slaves the way the Bible tells them to treat their slaves and that they weren’t living in grave sin,” Haymes asserted. “They weren’t living in unrepentant grave sin.”
Quoting C.S. Lewis, Haymes said that faulting the Founders for practicing slavery is “chronological snobbery.”
“We’re condemning them for being a product of their time,” Haymes declared. “Given the fact that the Bible does not explicitly condemn that as sinful, then we ought not explicitly condemn our forefathers, condemn Jonathan Edwards as grave, unrepentant sinners. That is chronological snobbery at its finest.”
“Do not condemn our forefathers who may have been treating their slaves biblically,” Haymes said. “In fact, it’s like two percent of the Americans actually owned slaves. And anyone who actually engaged in real abuse, we condemn that. We condemn treating other image bearers as subhuman. That’s evil. That’s bad. That’s not good. We can condemn that, okay? But we cannot condemn the entire institution of slavery outright; we just cannot do that because the Bible does not do that.”
This isn’t a tough moral dilemma. It’s slavery. It’s inherently wrong. There’s no good way to deprive another human being of their freedom. It takes religion to convince people that something so obviously evil is both God-sanctioned and wonderful when done properly.
This is the main problem with Christian Nationalism: It’s a movement that uses the Bible to cover up its own moral decay. If you think about the horror of slavery—the ultimate dehumanization—and claim it’s compatible with Christianity, we’re no longer in the realm of theology. You’re just using religion to justify your preferred brand of cruelty. That’s how Hegseth has operated since his promotion from third-rate Fox News anchor to leader of the Armed Forces, treating the U.S. military as if he’s leading a fundamentalist Christian crusade.
Hegseth doesn’t have any integrity to begin with, but if he had any left, he would denounce Haymes’ religious rhetoric publicly and sever ties with his church. He won’t because he’s incapable of criticizing someone from his tribe. His silence in the face of this moral depravity is complicity. For everyone else—decent people of faith, decent people who reject faith, and the media—comments like these should be met with moral outrage. There can be no biblical defense for owning another human being. There’s no right way to commit acts of evil. Any religion that says otherwise isn’t worth following.
To excuse slavery—to go out of your way to justify it—is to reject the very core of humanity itself. It’s telling that a religious group promoting that kind of thinking has fans in the current Republican administration.
Someone really needs to ask Mr Haymes if he would be willing to BE a slave if the master followed biblical rules precisely. I would bet that the answer would be "no".
My most important takeaway: “ It takes religion to convince people that something so obviously evil is both God-sanctioned and wonderful when done properly”