A chilling and terrifying convergence is under way on the American religious right.
On one side comes raw, unfiltered and vitriolic bigotry straight from the gutter. The most recent display of this came in the form of leaked Telegram chats from leaders within the Young Republicans. Leaders in the party’s recruitment organization — adults, not children or teens — were caught praising Adolf Hitler, joking about gas chambers and referring to Black people as “monkeys.”
From the other side comes a more insidious (and even more disturbing) attack: The “respectable,” academic-sounding apologia of the programs, policies, systems and structures that put these bigoted beliefs into practice.
In parallel with the Young Republicans scandal, a new wave of Christian nationalist influencers and so-called “Radical Traditionalists” (or, Rad Trad) Christians have openly argued that slavery was “not inherently evil” and that American chattel slavery, specifically, wasn’t as bad as we’ve been told.
“The racist chats are the logical outworking of a perverse theological system and twisted worldview.”
These are not disparate and disconnected phenomena. Indeed, the racist chats are the logical outworking of a perverse theological system and twisted worldview that have been carefully cultivated for decades by some of the most prominent figures in American evangelicalism.
Young Republicans
The Young Republicans chats provide a window into this reality. The language is explicitly white supremacist and fascist. Yet the truly telling part was not the leak itself, but the reaction from party leadership. Vice President JD Vance contemptuously dismissed it as “what kids do.”
This response is a dangerous and morally irresponsible act of normalizing extremism and hate. Moreover, it is intellectually dishonest and logically contemptible.
To start, no one in the chat was a “kid.” Young Republicans is for adults ages 18 to 40. These are state chairs, chapter presidents and future candidates. Moreover, anyone who knows how Washington works knows young staffers accomplish the overwhelming amount of work required to execute and implement federal policies. The racist Young Republicans leader of today is the Senate candidate of tomorrow.
“The racist Young Republicans leader of today is the Senate candidate of tomorrow.”
What’s more, Vance’s deflection provides implicit permission for indulging in this kind of vile jesting in the name of juvenility and joking. It also perpetuates the distortion that this rhetoric, so long as it remains private, is acceptable — or worse, just the “price of doing business” with the party’s new energetic and extremist base that has been radicalized amid the confluence of social media shock-jocks, misinformation and the deterioration of norms, values and virtue in the public square largely thanks to Donald Trump and his sycophants.
This radicalization is not happening in a vacuum, either. This extremist rhetoric is merely giving voice to the documented and alarming rise in right-wing political violence.
Is it any surprise that an American president who routinely calls his opponents “radical leftists,” “Marxists” and “vermin” and “enemies from within” would inspire this kind of dehumanizing rhetoric and, as a result, the logical conclusion that violence would be a permissible way to solve their “problem”?
Indeed, an attendee at a rally hosted by the late Charlie Kirk gave this latent logic verbal expression when he asked the slain political provocateur, “When do we get to use our guns?”
Longtime observers of the evangelical landscape are not surprised by this development. The fruit now being harvested was sown decades ago via a theological tradition that has long eschewed the imago Dei and its implicit demand for egalitarianism, opting instead for relations of authority and submission. This logic even has been applied to Jesus Christ.
Slavery apologists
This brings us to the slavery apologists.
Figures like Joshua Haymes, a self-declared “Red Pill” Christian, ex-pastor and congregant at the Doug Wilson-sponsored D.C. church-plant (which is also home to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth), are the current face of this. But they are not blank slates, and their heresy is not novel. They are standing on the shoulders of much more influential men.
“A strain of Reformed and evangelical thought has been quietly rehabilitating the Confederacy.”
For decades, a strain of Reformed and evangelical thought has been quietly rehabilitating the Confederacy and downplaying the unique, racialized horror of American chattel slavery.
The intellectual godfathers of this movement among conservative Southern white evangelicals are, of course, James Boyce and John Broadus, founders of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
A contemporary voice who undoubtedly bears mention is Doug Wilson, the controversial Moscow, Idaho, pastor and ideological successor to slave-holding theology. His 1996 book, Southern Slavery, As It Was, is a masterclass in historical negationism. It argues that “slavery produced a genuine affection between the races” and the system was more compassionate and biblical than the “abolitionist propaganda” we’ve been taught.
Wilson’s pseudo-historical and theologically inept work, and that of his followers, provides the philosophical framework for neo-Confederates and white nationalists who present their beliefs through the veneer of academic rigor and “Reformed orthodoxy.”
A far more mainstream and influential figure, the late John MacArthur, also provided a hermeneutical framework that gives comfort to the slaveholding worldview. MacArthur explicitly taught that the Bible does not condemn slavery as an institution. He argued the Scriptures merely regulate it and call for obedience from all slaves.
In MacArthur’s reading of Paul’s Epistle to Philemon — a letter from Paul to a slave owner regarding his escaped slave, Onesimus — MacArthur emphasized Paul’s decision to send Onesimus back, conveniently omitting Paul’s instruction for Onesimus to be received back as a brother, and not as a slave (tradition holds that Philemon obeyed and immediately freed Onesimus). Yet for MacArthur, this was proof Paul upholds the social order and property rights of the slave master.
“The hermeneutic employed by MacArthur and others prioritizes a Greco-Roman patriarchal social structure over the radical kingdom equality found in Jesus Christ.”
This is a breathtakingly ignorant — if not idiotic — reading. In contrast to MacArthur, Paul obliterates the category of “slave” by replacing it with the category of “brother.” Paul fundamentally rejects the authority of the master by appealing to a higher one: Jesus Christ. Yet the hermeneutic employed by MacArthur and others prioritizes a Greco-Roman patriarchal social structure over the radical kingdom equality found in Jesus Christ.
This hierarchy-first reading, along with hermeneutics of authority and submission, is the key. To justify the present-day hierarchies they desire (patriarchy, theonomy/Christian nationalism), these “theologians” must defend the “biblical” nature of past hierarchies, even the ones that resulted in the kidnapping, buying, selling and beating of slaves in 19th-century America.
This is why a figure like Al Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, would publicly defend chattel slavery to Larry King.
Defying Civil Rights Movement
This impulse also explains the right’s new bizarre and sustained attacks on the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement was, at its core, a theological revival. It was a mass movement that employed the theological concept of the imago Dei into the public square and read Holy Scripture, including and especially the Exodus narrative, to expose the heresy of white supremacy.
The theological rot of Wilson, MacArthur and Mohler provides the intellectual and spiritual foundation. They plant the seeds of hierarchy, authority, submission and abuse by teaching that the Bible is, at best, agnostic on slavery and that the Civil Rights Movement was, at best, a suspect social and theological project or, at worst, a heretical inversion of biblical hierarchy.
Young Republican groups, chat rooms and podcasts are publicly defending chattel slavery. This is the logical conclusion of this theology. If slavery wasn’t that bad and the fight for racial equality was suspect, then what’s the big deal about calling Black people “monkeys”? What’s so wrong with admiring a strong leader like Hitler, who also believed in a divinely ordered hierarchy?
The “respectable” theologians give the “kids” permission to think these thoughts. Politicians like JD Vance give them permission to say them.
This is indeed an unholy alliance.
This is more than a political realignment or a shift in the Overton Window. It is a profound theological crisis. And the vitriol, hatred, bigotry and ensuing violence are the endpoint of this entire theological project.
David Bumgardner
David Bumgardner is a writer, theologian and educator living in Columbus, Ohio. He is a former BNG Clemons Fellow and a graduate of Texas Baptist College at Southwestern Seminary. He is a licensed commissioned pastor and holds an evangelism license through the Anglican Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Diocese of Boga, and Missio Mosaic, an ecumenical missional society and religious order. He is awaiting the conferral of his master of arts in practical theology degree from Winebrenner Theological Seminary.
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Chattel slavery: Bad news then and now | Opinion by Bill Leonard
How slavery still shapes the world of white evangelical Christians | Opinion by Richard T. Hughes
What has John MacArthur actually said about race, slavery and the Curse of Ham? | Analysis by Rick Pidcock
Baptist Calvinists defend slavery of Southern Seminary founders | Analysis by Brian Kaylor
14 dangerous words | Analysis by Harold Ivan Smith