The Slave Bible

Dan McClellan Next time you want to put on a fancy sweater or a fancy suit to go yell about how much poor people suck to a congregation of other Christians, sit a few plays out, have a Coke and a smile, and you know how to finish that quote. Hey, everybody. I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Things are great.

Dan McClellan Awesome.

Dan Beecher There have been snow flurries all day where I'm at.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And none of it's sticking to the ground, which is good so far.

Dan McClellan I'm guessing overnight there's going to be some accumulation, but- Yeah, I'm not looking forward to that.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan I've got to take my 16-year-old to high school. 7:30 is when we leave, and this morning it wasn't bad, but I have a feeling tomorrow's going to be a little more annoying.

Dan Beecher Yeah, I think your area gets a little more hard hit than mine, so- Yeah ... there you go.

Dan McClellan Kind of snuggled up in the foothills- Yeah ... where we tend to catch the stuff coming over the mountain. Oh, it's a problem.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan At least we don't have as much of the inversion and stuff like that.

Dan Beecher Well, there you go.

Dan McClellan If you're not familiar with Utah, you've probably never heard of inversion, and count yourself lucky.

Dan Beecher Yeah. The Salt Lake Valley has a very lovely little weather phenomenon that happens, and it makes for fun air. Frankly, if your air is see-through, you should feel grateful. That's all.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Don't rub it in.

Dan Beecher It's not always the case.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Anyway. Look, we got a whole show that we need to do here. We got a whole diddly do- Awesome ... that we're doing.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher Our first segment is going to be What Is That? And it is fascinating.

Dan McClellan It's disconcerting.

Dan Beecher It is disappointing.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But very, very interesting. We're going to be talking about the slave Bible.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And then for the second half of the show, we're going to be talking about wealth, and is it okay?

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher We'll see about that.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, we'll have a little fun with that. But first, What Is That? And then, like we said, what is that? What is the slave Bible?

Dan McClellan The slave Bible, yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan This is a colloquial name that's been given to a publication that was published in 1807, and its actual title is Select Parts of the Holy Bible for the Use of the Negro Slaves in the British West India Islands.

Dan Beecher Aha.

Dan McClellan So, yeah. It was not originally framed as a Bible. It's always been explicitly framed as Select Parts of the Holy Bible.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan Selections of kind of thing, which is something that was popular. Back in the 1600s and the 1700s, you had the soldier's Bible- Mm-hmm ... which was like 100 passages that soldiers kept a little copy on them, and it, I don't know, inspired them to hide better or kill people better, or made them feel like war was something God was with them for.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And so, this kind of stuff had been done before, and the idea here was to take out about 90% of the Hebrew Bible and about 50% of the New Testament, leaving just a handful of passages so that they could get a feel for what the Bible is. And basically, it was intended to be a missionary instrument. It was intended to allow enslavers to preach the gospel to their enslaved folks without them getting their heads filled with ideas about freedom- Yeah ... and about escape, or deliverance, or redemption, or anything like that related to enslavement.

Dan Beecher Something tells me they skipped Exodus. It just feels like that would be a good one to just pass over, if you will.

Dan McClellan They skipped the first 18 chapters of Exodus.

Dan Beecher Oh, okay.

Dan McClellan They do include the 10 Commandments and a little bit more, but it's actually very peculiar. You can find a copy on archive.org. I think Google Books probably has a PDF as well. But you go through and it's like Genesis chapter 1, 2, 3, 6. Whatever reason, they take out four and five. Then you got seven, you got eight, and then we're going to skip to 18, and then we're going to skip to 37, and then 39. And then it's like 40, 41, and suddenly we're in Exodus.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Exodus 18. And there are a handful of chapters of Deuteronomy, and Deuteronomy 5 has some references to the Exodus. So, you do have a handful of references to deliverance from slavery.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan You brought us out from the house of enslavement, or the house of bondage, or something like that. There are a handful of passages that refer to that. And then you get a smattering of 1 Samuel and 1 Kings, and suddenly you're in Job.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And it's like the first two chapters of Job and the last three chapters of Job. And then you've got a handful of Proverbs. No Psalms. They completely cut out the Psalms. And then we get to the New Testament, and it's a little more of the New Testament. You get a little more of the Gospels, and Acts. You get a little more Jesus in your diet here, but you're cutting out a lot of the references to deliverance. You're cutting out a lot of the references to salvation, in a temporal sense.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And this was something, as far as I know, it was just published the once. It does not seem like it made a huge splash on the literary scene.

Dan Beecher Well, especially considering it was specifically for a very small group of people.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Probably most of whom were unable to read anyway. So it does seem like you've got a very small audience for this particular publication.

Dan McClellan And the reason a lot of people are aware of it now is because the Museum of the Bible has had-- There are only three copies known to exist still, and the Museum of the Bible has had one of them on display.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And it started to gain attention, and they were like, "All right. We're going to do a whole feature on the Slave Bible."

Dan Beecher Wow.

Dan McClellan And they brought in some copies of advertisements for the sale of slaves and stuff like that, and gave it a whole treatment, including one thing at the end of the whole exhibit, you are given a card with a question on it, and you can write down your answer on the bottom of the card, and then they'll put those on display. And so one of the cards is like, "Is the Slave Bible still the good book?" Or something like that. Which is problematic. But I have a friend named Jill Hicks Keaton, and she wrote a whole book called "Good Book." And the subtitle is "How White Evangelicals Saved the Bible to Save Themselves."

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And she did a whole piece on this exhibit because she makes the interesting point that the way a lot of folks are talking about the Slave Bible today, and particularly the Museum of the Bible, is as this kind of aberrant perversion of the Bible. It's supposed to be like, "Look what they've done to my boy." It's unrecognizable now. They've taken out all the parts that cancel out the parts that they left in. And this is incredibly problematic because it tries to make it seem like as long as we have the whole Bible, we know slavery's a bad thing, and the reality is that that's a pretty new innovation.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan That's a technological advancement that is pretty recent in the history of reading the Bible. And there's some weird things that Jill points out that the Museum of the Bible does to kind of massage the facts a little bit.

Dan Beecher Oh, interesting.

Dan McClellan Yeah. One of the things that they have there on-- Well, this ran from 2018 to 2019. I think it's still there, but the exhibit is not there anymore.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But they have on display a little quote from a Reverend Bilebee Porteus, Bishop of London.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And he's giving instructions to some missionaries and the Museum of the Bible frames this as a reference to the publication of this book, because part of this quote says, "Prepare a short form of public prayers together with the select portions of scripture, particularly those which relate to the duties of slaves towards their masters." So this would be like the Greco-Roman household codes that we find in places like Ephesians- Right ... and stuff like that.

Dan Beecher "Servants be obedient to your masters" sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah. The problem is there are two ellipses in here that eliminate- Oh ... quite a bit.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Because this reverend is not referring to the Slave Bible at all.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan This reverend is actually talking about how the schoolmasters in the Caribbean should do all these things to kind of arrange their curriculum in a way that will allow them to teach enslaved folks to read without, again, filling their heads with the freedom nonsense.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan So, I'm going to read a larger context that puts back in the stuff that was elided.

Dan Beecher This is from the Bishop of London at the time.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher This is a letter that's being written from- Because if it's the Bishop of London, and if it's the same as it is today, I think the Bishop of London is like the third most important person in the Anglican communion. So it's like that's a big deal person.

Dan McClellan I do not know if...

Dan Beecher Let's see.

Dan McClellan Successively Bishop of Chester and of London, was a Church of England reformer and a leading abolitionist in England.

Dan Beecher Oh, he was an abolitionist.

Dan McClellan Okay. This must've been after. Well, no, he wrote this in 1808, which is a year after the Bishop's Bible was published.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And he died in 1809.

Dan Beecher Okay. So- I mean, not all abolitionists were good at it.

Dan McClellan He was the first Anglican in a position of authority to seriously challenge the church's position on slavery.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan All righty. Well, I'm going to read this quote. "The schoolmasters, therefore, may be empowered to require their attendance in the schoolroom on Sundays, as well as that of their children, and the clergyman of the parish in which they reside will probably have the goodness to add his influence and exhortations for the same important purpose. And also to prepare a short form of public prayers for them, consisting of a certain number of the best collects of the liturgy, the creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the Ten Commandments, together with select portions of scripture taken principally from the Psalms and Proverbs, the Gospels- And the plainest and most practical parts of the epistles, particularly those which relate to the duties of slaves towards their masters. The school master also may be directed to read to them a plain, useful discourse selected from some of our English printed sermons, or from the abridgment of Bishop Williams' instructions for the... And then it goes on from there. And so did you notice one of the things that he named that is not in the select parts of the whole- The Psalms.

Dan Beecher The Psalms.

Dan McClellan Psalms are nowhere to be found.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Which is, yeah, odd. I don't know if they just didn't want the enslaved folks to be singing psalms. There are lament psalms, there are complaint psalms.

Dan Beecher Maybe they- They just don't like complaining.

Dan McClellan Yeah, "Let's just leave that whole part out." But so what Portius is talking about is just, "Hey, school masters, if you're going to do a Sunday lesson, you should do it like this."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And yeah, I am now very curious about the abolitionist bent of the person- Yeah ... responsible for this letter.

Dan Beecher It does seem a little weird with him saying, "Make sure you emphasize the slave's obeisance to their master" sort of thing.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And- I think that's a little weird, but also the other thing is that it was a tightrope walk, right? You didn't want to fully inflame the slavers. You didn't want to enrage them. It sounds like this was trying to be subversive, like let's- Mm. I guess one of the things that confuses me, and I'll just throw this out to you, is why would the church and these slave holders want their enslaved people to be Christian? I guess I don't understand why they would want that. It seems like that would somehow put them on similar footing. You know what I mean?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And it's a way the whole thing about being a slave owner, a slaver, an enslaver, is that you dehumanize these other people. And it seems like- Yeah ... enlisting them into your belief system rehumanizes them to some extent.

Dan McClellan The history of Christianity's curation of slavery and engagement with slavery is so horrifying and also fascinating.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because there were times when they actually did dehumanize them and rationalize them as other creatures- Yeah ... as not human. And there were other times when they recognized them as human. They were the Hamites, they were descendants of Ham from Genesis 9 and 10, and at other times, they were considered to be other. They were some other human race that was not descended from the three sons of Noah. But as they started wrestling with the implications of that- ... they kind of had to bring enslaved folks under the umbrella of humanity, which meant salvation was available to them, which meant they were obligated to share the gospel with them, which then brought up all other kinds of implications that- Right ... they had to wrangle with. And this was primarily church leaders and clergy and things like that were the ones doing the main wrangling. The plantation owners, I think for the most part, couldn't have cared less.

Dan Beecher They were pretty happy with the whole situation.

Dan McClellan They just- Yeah.

Dan Beecher I mean, boom.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But- They were busy wrestling with all of the money that they were making.

Dan McClellan I thought you were going to go another direction, in reference to how they sometimes increased their supply of enslaved folks.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Which is...

Dan Beecher Yeah. That's another thing they did.

Dan McClellan That's another thing.

Dan Beecher But- Different kind of wrestling ...

Dan McClellan then they had to wrestle with, okay, if we do allow them to become baptized, does that mean they have to be free now?

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And for a time, there were enslaved folks who would become Christians, and they were like, "Peace out," and they would run off or something like that. And so you had to have local and regional legislation that would be like, "No, you don't get to be free just because you became a Christian. I mean, look at the Bible."

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan Look at the Bible. And one thing that's included in the so-called slave Bible is Ephesians chapter 6, which is one of the main parts where it talks about the enslaved person's duties to the masters. You've got, "Servants, be obedient unto them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ. Not with eye service as men-pleasers, but as the servants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, with goodwill, doing service as to the Lord and not to men, knowing that whatsoever good thing any man doeth, the same shall he receive of the Lord, whether he be bond or free." But interestingly enough, they wanted that so bad they didn't divide up any chapters.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan Like all the chapters are whole. They just omitted chapters.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan They wanted that so bad they had to leave in what comes next. "And ye masters, do the same things unto them. Forbearing threatening, knowing that your master also is in heaven, neither is there respect of persons with him."

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan So they left in the verse telling enslavers that you've got to be nice because God's going to treat you however you treat your enslaved folks.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so it's a fascinating look at this stage In this ongoing negotiation between Christianity and slavery and what's going to happen here. And there's a fascinating paper that I read by a scholar named J. Albert Harrell, and it's in Religion & American Culture, that's the name of the journal, and it's called "The Use of the New Testament in the American Slave Controversy: A Case History in the Hermeneutical Tension Between Biblical Criticism and Christian Moral Debate." And so it goes through in quite a bit of detail, the basically mental gymnastics that they had to go through as you had the pro-slavery faction and the anti-slavery faction both trying to use the same tool- Right ... as an instrument to defend their worldview and how things changed. And if it's okay with you, if it pleases the court, I want to read just a little bit from the conclusion, because it paints just a fascinating trajectory.

Dan Beecher I'll allow it.

Dan McClellan I appreciate that. "Because of its moral imperative against the pure evil of human chattel bondage, anti-slavery and abolitionist Christianity was forced away from Biblicism into a less literal reading of scripture." So- Yeah ... a literal reading of scripture is pretty clear, like slavery- Yeah.

Dan Beecher That's not going to help you with the abolitionist position.

Dan McClellan Yeah. We're for it. And so they tried a bunch of different ways to try to make this make sense. I was reading through this, for a time, they were like, "Oh, well, the King James version says servant. It doesn't say slave. So none of the people in the Bible are actually slaves." "They're servants."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan "This is a voluntary thing."

Dan Beecher And that- As long as we don't look at any other possible translations.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And you see vestiges of this today, like Frank Turek in a debate with Michael Shermer was like, "The only slavery in the Bible was voluntary debt slavery or a means of stopping captives from fomenting rebellion," or something like that. So we still have the vestiges of that rationalization. And then other folks were like, "Well, you know what? It turns out there were actually no slaves in Israel during Jesus's day." And you had a bunch of different otherwise well-meaning abolitionist folks who were like, "This cannot stand. This aggression cannot stand, man." And were trying to just come up with whatever... It was just throwing the spaghetti against the wall. Let's see what sticks. So anyway, back to the paper. "The first step in this move was the development of a hermeneutics of immutable principles, which advanced an egalitarian reading of Jesus's Golden Rule as the kernel of the New Testament over against its patriarchal reading by pro-slavery." So they're like, "All right, step one, we need to lay down some immutable principles. When we look at the Bible, these things are immutable. These will not be subjected to scrutiny." "This view was combined with Whig theories of human progress in history to form a hermeneutics of the seed growing secretly." So this is where you get the apologists who say that this was subterfuge, this was God planting the seed in the New Testament that wouldn't sprout for 1,700 years- Right ...

Dan Beecher but sure- They'll figure it out eventually.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It might take a few thousand generations, but- That is a deep planted seed.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan It is a very slow seed. "Yet a growing doubt about using egalitarianism to interpret the Pauline household duty codes led radical abolitionists, especially Garrisonians, admittedly not a representative group, to the second step, the total abandonment of biblical authority in favor of secular arguments from conscience." So the Garrisonians were like, "We're not waiting. This is taking too long. We're skipping over trying to rehabilitate the Bible, and we're just going to go straight to secular arguments." "Some African American abolitionists, such as Frederick Douglass, did not want to go that far and worked with white clergymen to save a biblical understanding of Christianity. These abolitionists were more representative because of their eagerness to build popular support. However, other African Americans, such as Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner, rejected white Christianity altogether and took the third step, that of violence. They employed a hermeneutics of biblical typology and the conjure of apocalyptic eschatology."

Dan Beecher So I- So that's a lot of $10 words right there.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But the idea is basically they looked in the Bible, and they were like, "Book of Revelation time." "It's the final countdown," just like they always sung about, and they were on the side of God. But that would be the conjure of apocalyptic eschatology. "The political imperative of pro-slavery, in contrast, fostered a move toward literalism, emboldened by the findings of biblical criticism that the New Testament writers did not condemn slavery, as abolitionists would wish, but instead expressed views similar to those in the wider Greco-Roman slave culture. Biblical scholars argued that the New Testament contained passages that did not merely recommend subjection of slaves to their masters. Those passages signaled acceptance of an organic model of civilization for which such subjection was essential. Most embarrassing for today's readers of the Bible, the pro-slavery spokesmen were defending the more defensible position from the perspective of historical criticism." In other words, one of the groups Had it right.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Unfortunately, it was not the abolitionists.

Dan Beecher Well, had the Bible right. I think the abolitionists may have had- Yeah ... may have been on the correct side of history.

Dan McClellan Yeah. As the great poet once said, "We lost the war. I don't think that made us..." No, what did he say?

Dan Beecher Shoot.

Dan McClellan From "Firefly."

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan He's like, "You were wrong," and he's like, "I don't think we were wrong. We just lost the war." And then the essay goes on to say, "Carries implication beyond its case history of slavery. The opposing values of literalism and moral intuition remain at odds in American religious culture, shaping contemporary debates over race relations, military conflict, capital punishment, poverty, abortion, full emancipation of women, and lesbian and gay rights. Ready answers to these moral questions all too often fall short of persuasive power because they merely repeat truth claims found in the 19th century battle over slavery and the Bible. Biblical criticism is seldom able to settle contemporary moral debate, but contemporary moral debate can and does shape broad and influential trends in biblical criticism."

Dan Beecher Yeah. I think one of the things that's interesting, and one of the things that should be instructive in how people address the Bible at this moment in history, it should be instructive that almost nobody believes that slavery is okay in a modern context.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And nobody should believe that it's okay. That is a very obvious, easy moral stance to take.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher That slavery is absolutely abhorrent.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And if we can agree on that, then we can move forward with addressing other issues, things like LGBTQ questions from that perspective, saying, "Look, the Bible was a product of its time, was a product of its cultures, and wasn't purely just God raining down words that must last in perpetuity- Yeah ... forever, amen." Unfortunately, I have actually seen people who claim to be Bible literalists, who then when you confront them with the idea of slavery and say, "Surely we can agree that slavery is wrong," because they're so tied to the literal interpretation of the Bible, they can't say that. They tie themselves into this system that forces them not to be able to say just slavery is wrong.

Dan McClellan Well, I see an awful lot of Christians today, conservative readers of the Bible, who are willing to say that slavery is wrong and try to credit Christianity for abolishing slavery based on the Bible. And this is one of the points I wanted to make about this. One of the things that I think this paper does so well is demonstrate this changing tide- Mm ... which is all about consensus. Because leading up to the 1600s and the 1700s, overwhelmingly, the consensus among Christians was slavery good. There were occasional, you had anti-slavery representatives bubbling to the surface now and then, and then once we get to the Enlightenment and questions of universal human rights, the natural law, all this kind of stuff become more widespread, and suddenly there's more focus on this. And you get the Quakers who were the first group among the Christians to really take a hardcore anti-slavery stance.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And what happened was slowly the consensus shifted, and this paper is charting the different arguments that were taking place during this pivot, during the time period when the consensus was shifting. And it's saying that there were folks who were like, "Okay, we're going to take this slow and easy, and we're going to do this right," and they weren't convincing many people. And there were other folks who were like, "Oh, we're just going to skip to the end," and they weren't convincing many people. And there was a group who was, if you're looking at the Bible as the rule book, they were right.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But ultimately, they lose out because what happened is the arguments, as not good as they were, they were good enough for enough people to say, based on the moral conviction of the wrongness of slavery, "I'll buy that."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "I can live with that. I think that argument works." And so everything slowly shifted, and now you have the folks, the Christians who say, "Slavery is evil. It's always been evil. God was just trying to hold Israel's hand because God couldn't just overturn everything all at once. That would've caused all kinds of economic problems, and it's the economy, stupid."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And now we're saying Christians are responsible for doing it all because the Bible inspired them, because obviously the Bible is anti-slavery, and these arguments are still awful.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But because of what you said, the overwhelming majority of people, Christians included, can agree slavery is a moral evil, and their argument doesn't have to be that good.

Dan Beecher Well, yeah.

Dan McClellan It wasn't good in the first place, but now since everybody agrees- Yeah ... now the argument is kind of pushing back a little bit and saying, "No, no, it was the Bible all along." I think they're trying to take advantage of the consensus to try to gain a little ground back from history.

Dan Beecher Here's what I will grant them, is that I think that it was Christians who were willing to take the You know, allow that worser argument to win the day because they had their moral center in place.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher It is them who enabled the abolition of slavery. It's people like, and I've read a lot about this guy because I happen to be related to him, but Henry Ward Beecher was- Hmm ... was a huge... He was the most famous man in America, at least according to his biographer whose name I'm forgetting, but that's the title of the biography is The Most Famous Man in America.

Dan McClellan Oh, really?

Dan Beecher And he was such a popular orator. He was a preacher. He was, I believe- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan a Congregationalist.

Dan Beecher His dad was a fire and brimstone preacher as well. But it was his orations and his very, very popular speeches that sort of laid a lot of the groundwork, at least in people's minds, about accepting abolition as a proposition, so.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher And then his sister wrote a book, wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, and just sort of blew the doors off the whole thing.

Dan McClellan She was like, "Oh, I got you."

Dan Beecher "I'll do you one better."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Lincoln had things to say about both of those two.

Dan McClellan Anyway. So the author of his biography was Debbie Applegate. Thank you. And then he's also famous for his 1875 adultery trial.

Dan Beecher Stop it. Which- Stop it. How dare you?

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Look, we were just talking about how you've got to be a little squishy on some- ... biblical things in order to make the abolition thing work.

Dan McClellan Yeah. But I absolutely think there were an awful lot of Christians who caught the vision, and obviously preceding them were the actual people who suffered under enslavement who were speaking out as well. But yeah, I'm happy to acknowledge that Christians did that. It was because their moral sense overruled the Bible.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And they were just able to gin up arguments that were, meh, good enough.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan That they could, "Eh, I'll buy that," kind of arguments, so that they could feel justified in doing what they were doing in light of their ostensible commitment to the Bible. And people are still doing that today, and I think we have other issues. The paper talked about a lot of other issues that we're still in the middle of, where the Bible is frequently leveraged as the answer to all of this, and there are an awful lot of people who are like... I think it's the same situation playing out. We know what the Bible says, but our moral sense tells us correctly, "This is a no-no. This is bad."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I think we're starting to reach a critical mass, particularly with things like... Well, I think we're still a ways away, but I think things are starting to tilt a little bit when it comes to LGBTQ+ inclusion. There are an awful lot of Christians who are a lot more inclusive, and even some of the scholarly evangelical voices from the end of the 20th century who were among those who were affirming that the New Testament is not affirming of LGBTQ+ identities have now published books saying, "I was wrong."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "I now believe that the Bible does open the door for us to walk inclusion through."

Dan Beecher But I think that the other lesson to be learned, I guess the point that I was trying to make, is that one of the lessons to be learned is the Bible doesn't have to have an open door. The Bible is the product of its time.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It gets things wrong. It conflicts with its own self.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So to some extent, as issues come up and as we start to explore things in different ways, in ways that have never been explored before, the Bible is not going to be particularly instructive.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And use it in ways that it is useful, but also be willing to let go of sort of traditional... You don't need the Bible to have a moral center.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So you would've sided with the Garrisonians.

Dan Beecher Indeed.

Dan McClellan I think a lot of my advocacy is the same. I'm saying, "Hey- Yeah ... we know better."

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan There are so many things that we've just been like, "Ooh.

Dan Beecher Yeah, no.

Dan McClellan No, thank you," that we have rejected from the Bible, and there's nothing telling us, "Oh, it's okay to reject that, but this, no. Can't cross that line." We can cross whatever line we want because- ... it all comes down to consensus. That's something, a point I've tried to make a number of times. When it comes to the Bible's authority, that authority is whatever the group agrees it is.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And they can overrule it whenever they want, literally.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Whenever they want.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan As long as the consensus is what it is, then that reifies authority, consensus- Well, and the trick is- ...

Dan Beecher consent ... you have to pick and choose, because like we say, the Bible keeps contradicting itself.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher So you don't get to just believe everything. So you have to pick and choose. Might as well pick and choose the things that comport with your own moral center.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And don't pick and choose the slave Bible.

Dan Beecher Don't.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That was an example of- Slavery is right out.

Dan Beecher Yeah. We all need to agree forever slavery is out permanently.

Dan McClellan That was the picking and choosing of 1807 that- ... again, doesn't seem like it made a big splash in literary circles, but yeah.

Dan Beecher All right. Well, there you go.

Dan McClellan Hopefully that beds that issue back down.

Dan Beecher Yes, indeed. So let's move on to our next segment, Taking Issue. And the thing that we're taking issue with, or the issue that we are taking, is the concept of wealth.

Dan McClellan Hmm.

Dan Beecher The thing that brought this to my mind was one of your videos that I saw a bit ago.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher You highlighted a pastor, I don't know where this guy was from, but he had a very Alex Jones vibe to him.

Dan McClellan And he- Had a little Lacoste sweater on, like a very prominent outline.

Dan Beecher Yeah, that he was kind of busting out of. It was a little weird.

Dan McClellan I think he was in New York.

Dan Beecher He's a very barrel-chested man.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I don't know that the sweater vest is the right look. Anywho, or the cardigan or whatever. Anyway, he was talking about how some people very stupidly say that Jesus said, "Blessed are the poor."

Dan McClellan Yeah, and one of the things I really didn't like is that he started off by saying, what did he say, "Some oddly gendered preachers?"

Dan Beecher Right. Yes, he did.

Dan McClellan And then it showed video of Bishop Mariann Budde- Uh-huh ... from DC, and I was like, "Okay."

Dan Beecher She's the one that confronted Trump while he was in her church.

Dan McClellan Yeah. She's the one who asked Trump to show mercy to other people, and then was demonized.

Dan Beecher And then upbraided.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher Was pilloried- Yes ... for asking for mercy. Yes, exactly.

Dan McClellan While giving a sermon. People are like, "Don't be so sermonizing." She's literally giving a sermon in her church.

Dan Beecher In her church.

Dan McClellan She is.

Dan Beecher Why are you politicizing the sermon to all the politicians? What's happening?

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Anyway, yes. So he does get his little gender dig in- Yeah ... that didn't make any sense.

Dan McClellan No.

Dan Beecher And he also calls out Episcopalians. He's also like, "These weird gendered Episcopalians saying all this stuff. But Jesus didn't say, 'Blessed are the poor.' He said, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit.'" And you said, "Excuse me. Au contraire."

Dan McClellan Yes. That's not how I read the word. Because he's talking about the Sermon on the Mount in Matthew 5:3, and the interesting thing is that the Sermon on the Mount is not the only place where we see a collection of Beatitudes.

Dan Beecher No.

Dan McClellan We also see it in Luke chapter 6, only there it's not known as the Sermon on the Mount, it's known as the Sermon on the Plain, and it's basically in rough outlines- I saw a video of a guy giving a sermon on a plane, and I was like, "Dude, just sit down."

Dan Beecher That's right. "Nobody needs to hear that."

Dan McClellan Lose the guitar.

Dan Beecher I assume this is A-I-N, not A-N-E Plain.

Dan McClellan Correct.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yes. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the sermons in the plain.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so in rough outlines, it's basically the same sermon, but the details are different in a bunch of different ways.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And this presents a bit of a problem for the folks who accept univocality, and inerrancy, and things like that.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Because it sounds like Jesus is on a hill, and he gives a sermon, and then he's like, "Hey, let's go down here." And then gives mostly the same sermon, but somewhat different, and it's like, "What? Why is Jesus doing this? It's the same set we heard last night. You got to write some new material there, Jesus." But in Luke 6:20, Jesus does say, "Blessed are the poor."

Dan Beecher Makarioi oi ptoechoi.

Dan McClellan And there's no qualification there. In Matthew 5:3, it does say, "Blessed are the poor in spirit," which seems to be a reference to the humble.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan And it does not say only the people who are humble because of whatever. All humble folks, which obviously will include an awful lot of poor people. But in Luke, yeah, it just straight up says, "Blessed are the poor."

Dan Beecher And- It doesn't seem like the humble would include Pastor Lacoste, but that's- No ... just a sense that I have.

Dan McClellan Yeah. I love that he was talking about how he ministers to the poor, and he prays for them, and more than a lot of people. And not that sincerely, though. It doesn't sound like.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Something tells me that you pray down to them.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You don't pray with them.

Dan McClellan And then he talked about his brother. He said his brother lived on the street for a while, and he was a wild man, and what did he say? He wasn't humble, and that nobody could tell him what to do.

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan I wanted to be like, "It sure doesn't sound like you're the kind of guy who lets other people tell him what to do."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah, exactly. I wonder if this runs in the family maybe.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Eeki...

Dan Beecher Eeki what?

Dan McClellan Economic status is not the main factor here. Maybe this is- It's not the problem.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. That's probably not it. But yeah, then he starts crapping on the poor and talking about how they're not humble, and that- Right ... they are haughty and all this kind of stuff, which was- particularly bizarre.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Because what part of the Bible have you not yet gotten to? Because maybe you just got to Matthew 5:3 and were like, "Ooh, I'm going to write a sermon on this, and I'm going to stop reading the Bible."

Dan Beecher I'm going to start at Matthew 5 and- Yeah ... end at Matthew 5:3.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher And that will be the beginning and end of my- ... reading of the Bible.

Dan McClellan And then I'm going to put on my little alligator sweater, and I'm going to go yell at my congregation. But yeah, the message that the poor are blessed is not just limited to Luke 6:20.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan It is something... In fact, the New Testament, interestingly enough, Jesus' followers were overwhelmingly, at least as far as we can tell, seemed to be from the lower economic half of first-century Judea and Galilee. From what we can tell, there were not a lot of incredibly well-off people. We do have the story about the rich young ruler and Joseph of Arimathea, and there are some examples of people who were pretty well off. But for the most part, his following seems to be represented as not a bunch of incredibly wealthy people, and the message of Christianity in the earliest years seems to have been directed at the poor.

Dan Beecher Mm.

Dan McClellan The first time we get Roman accounts of Christianity, like Pliny, I believe the Younger, describes Christianity. Is it Pliny, or is it Tacitus?

Dan Beecher I don't know.

Dan McClellan One of the early second-century Roman historian/statesman/authors refers to Christianity as a religion for women and slaves.

Dan Beecher Mm. Which would suggest that this is still low on the economic ladder.

Dan McClellan But the message of Christianity seems to be directed in the direction of the poor as well, and in addition to Luke 6:20 and elsewhere, you also have condemnation of the wealthy.

Dan Beecher And- Yeah, it seems like that happens a lot.

Dan McClellan Yeah, it does, doesn't it?

Dan Beecher I can think of several, the camel in the eye of the needle thing. I can think of several things just off the top of my head, and I'm no Bible expert, but- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan yeah.

Dan Beecher It seems like Jesus himself said frequently, "Sell your stuff. If you're wealthy, if you're rich, stop it."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "Sell your stuff and give it to the poor."

Dan McClellan Yeah, that's what happens after the rich young ruler comes to Jesus and says, "What do I have to do to earn eternal life?" And Jesus starts rattling off commandments and is basically like, "You know the law." And then the rich young ruler says, "Oh, I've been keeping all the commandments since my youth. I've done all that. What more do I lack?" And Jesus says, "Sell all that you have and give it to the poor, and then you will have mansions in heaven," or something like that. And then it describes the rich young ruler as going away sad or dejected because he had lots of stuff.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then Jesus says, "How difficult it will be for the wealthy to enter the kingdom of heaven." And that's when his followers are like, "What's going on here?" And then he gives the whole it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven, and his followers are like, "Well, who then can be saved, master?" And he says, "With humans, with mortals, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible." And you see so many people trying to turn this around to be the exact opposite of what it is. It's pretty clearly an insistence that you cannot serve God and wealth because your heart will be with one and not with the other. It's like pick one.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan You want to be rich. You want to go to heaven.

Dan Beecher No one can serve two masters.

Dan McClellan Yeah, exactly.

Dan Beecher For either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And there are people who are like, "Oh, the eye of the needle is one of the leaves, one of the smaller doorways that's built into the larger city gate."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And it was called the eye of the needle because if camels had to go through, they had to get on their knees, and they had to take all of the luggage and all of the stuff off of them, and they had to go through with carrying nothing. And so that means in order for a rich person to enter heaven, you have to be willing to give up everything, and on and on and on.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And this is entirely made up. Those doors- Right ... are medieval in origin. They're called wicket gates. They start in Europe, medieval period. There's no indication those doors existed anywhere in, around, or near Jerusalem in the first century CE.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And so it definitely was not that. And then- Yeah.

Dan Beecher It seems clear, even if there was such a thing as the little door that the camel can barely fit through, the concept is still the same. Rich people don't get into heaven.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher It's almost impossible for a wealthy person, by Jesus' reckoning, to get into heaven.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So then we stumble on the problem of the prosperity gospel led by people like Joel Osteen and Paula White and Creflo Dollar, which these people are incredibly popular. They themselves are Insanely wealthy. And what they preach is this idea that if you give me money, if you, sorry, if you give the church money and somehow it magically flows to me, then you will have everything you need and wealth will flow to you. And nobody seems to notice that, A, that doesn't work, and B, it seems in contrast with a lot of the stuff that you read, especially in the New Testament. I did some research and tried to figure out what scriptural references prosperity gospel preachers use to justify their position.