Slavery, Racism, and Christianity

On November 24, 1859, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of the Species was first published in England. Less than one year later, Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States. Just as the nation was poised to restrain and abolish the great sin that contradicted the very premises of America's founding, Satan was moving ahead with his "Plan B". As the great struggle to eliminate slavery and rebuild the country commenced, a fundamental shift in worldview had entered the world stage.

Building upon Darwin's concepts of natural selection and rejection of the Biblical model of creation, a "scientific" basis was now available to justify racism, eugenics, and a humanistic view of morality. While racist and naturalistic views of humanity have undoubtedly existed for millennia, the work of Darwin provided a path to legitimacy that went beyond mere xenophobic feelings of arrogant self-exaltation. It can easily be imagined that without the resulting promulgation of "scientific racism" the long period of segregation and oppression of blacks following the Emancipation Proclamation might have been significantly lessened. Interestingly, Southern blacks actually lived longer under the contradiction between the Declaration of Independence ("All men are created equal") and "emancipated" segregation (1862-1964) than they did under the contradiction of slavery (1776-1862). Christians who should have stood up against racial injustice were instead sidelined, either by buying into parts of Darwinism or by devoting all their efforts in opposition to it.

Of course, the support of anti-creation anti-Biblical theological frameworks by the Darwinian "science" was itself a tragic blow for the integrity of the Christian church. Large segments of Western society have been misled into believing that the Christian Bible has been fundamentally disproved, while others have fallen into the notion of an allegorical scripture of platitudes of questionable relevance to modern society and with little evidence of God's sovereign power. The parallels between liberal theology and the Sadducees are certainly striking.

And lest you argue that it's foolish to link the global rise of Darwinian evolution with the American experience of racism, we can see also the timing of the spiritual battle as played out within the British Empire. On August 28, 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act (of the United Kingdom) finished the life work of William Wilberforce to bring an end to slavery in all of the British Empire. At the time, Charles Darwin was surveying South America on the Beagle and beginning to formulate his ideas on evolution. Coincidence? Technically speaking, "coincidence" just means that two events are occurring at the same time. But a Christian understanding of how and why they occur is rooted in the reality of the spiritual conflict between the Lord Almighty and the rebellious angel Satan. "For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms" (Ephesian 6:12)

So is it all gloom and doom? Well, in the first place, God has promised that, in the end, He is victorious and Satan is doomed. But we also can see God's sovereign providence. If a scientific basis for racism had become accepted ten or twenty years earlier, it's quite possible that the American abolition movement would have fizzled and slavery been perpetuated. Similarly, God brought William Wilberforce into a position of influence in England just in time to ensure that a major foothold in the campaign for human equality and dignity would be in place before Darwin's ideas began to be set loose. Praise God for His wisdom and power and mercy!