Sanctified Memory: Daniel Lee Hill on Theology, Slavery, and Public Witness

📜 Did abolitionists fight slavery with theology? And what does that mean for us today?

Though slavery was abolished over 150 years ago, its legacy haunts American Christianity—and our public life. In this timely episode, theologian Dr. Daniel Lee Hill, author of Bearing Witness, joins the show to unpack what the 19th-century abolitionists can still teach us today about faith, justice, and public responsibility. A professor at Baylor’s Truett Theological Seminary, Dr. Hill highlights three often-forgotten figures—Maria Stewart, William Still, and David Ruggles—who combined Christian conviction with courageous action to resist oppression.

We explore the theological roots of the abolitionist movement, the contradictions of using the Bible to both justify and dismantle slavery, and how theology is still used today in debates around incarceration, immigration, and LGBTQ inclusion. Hill’s insights challenge both apathy and despair—calling us to archive, mentor, and organize in our time as the abolitionists did in theirs.

👤 Guest Bio
Dr. Daniel Lee Hill is a theologian and assistant professor of Christian theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. He is the author of Bearing Witness: What the Church Can Learn from Abolitionists and holds a PhD from Wheaton College. His work explores ecclesiology, public theology, and the intersections of history and justice.

Transcript

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Hey there, Faithful Politics listeners and viewers. If you're joining us on YouTube, guys, thanks so much for coming and being part of another episode of Faithful Politics podcast. I'm Josh Bertram. I'm your faithful host. And of course we have our political host, Will. Hey, Will. Hey, Josh, crushing it today. Good to see you. it today? Yes, it's good to be seen. I stole yours. And now it's mine. Sorry, that's a little inside joke, Daniel. But we do have this great new guest today that we're going to talk with. But before we introduce him, make sure you like subscribe to those things that hack the algorithm guys. We're trying to get you good content. You already have enough content of people screaming at each other, saying all sorts of crazy things using straw man arguments. not even understanding what other people are saying, you already get plenty of that. How about you come and actually hear some sustained thinking and uh about some controversial stuff. And so make sure that you're doing what you can to help us spread this content, because we love it. And today we have the distinct pleasure to have on our program, Dr. Daniel Lee Hill. He's a theologian, author, and professor dedicated to helping the church think deeply and act faithfully in public life. serves as assistant professor of Christian theology at George W. Truett Theological Seminary at Baylor University. And that answers your question, Will. Does Baylor have a seminary? Yes, it does. It's the George W. Truett Theological Seminary. And Dr. Hill, he is an author of Bearing Witnesses, what we're gonna talk to him about today, what the church can learn from early abolitionists. and he has earned his PhD in theology from Wheaton College and his research focuses on ecclesiology, public theology, and the intersection of memory, tradition, and social action. Thank you, Daniel, for being on the podcast with us today. Can't wait to talk with you. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure. Absolutely. So, you you wrote a book, Bearing Witness. It's about uh the stories of three uh abolitionists in particular and how we can learn from the past. I would just love to kind of have you talk about what inspired this book. We asked that a lot, but even after that, with that, kind of help us understand some of your methodology going into this, because you make a big deal about how you are actually approaching history. for you to explain that to our audience. Yeah, thanks for that question. ah I've got to reach back into the archives to remember because it's about five years ago, I think now. um I think one of the things that kind of precipitated me, my interest in the book was I was reading, Mark Knoll has a book called The Civil War as a Theological Crisis. I think that's the title of it. And he just casually drops the name of this. uh abolitionary figure, 19th century abolitionary figure, David Ruggles, and in passing. And I'd never heard of him before. And so I start to kind of look around, always have a Wikipedia page on hand, and come to find out that he has all these intersections with figures like William Lloyd Garrison. Frederick Douglass stays in his house when he's running away. And Ruggles helps Douglass and Douglass's wife reunite with one another. And kind of this whole life is being presented that has been forgotten, at least that I've never heard of. um And so I started to read some of his writing and he's obviously very politically engaged. He's an abolitionary figure. He's a helping fugitive slaves escape, also preventing them from recapture. So he's really on the front lines in a lot of ways, but you read his writings and they're very theologically motivated. And that's not something you see brought to the forefront when you read people writing on abolitionary figures, is that they actually have like theological motivations for some of the work they're doing. Your second question, so that's kind of what got me interested. I wanted to see what was kind of in the background. What is the... foundation from which some of these folks are working. ah In terms of how to go about history, history is so tricky, because the past is not that long ago, but it's so strange. ah I was talking to someone the other day, I was reading his story, this is after the book, and he's talking about a slave, black slave owners in Louisiana. There's this man who owned a hundred slaves. I meant to look him up and forgot to so I could remember his name. And the historian goes, you know, in the 19th century and in the 18th century, we tend to think of like black people, slaves, free people, white. It's like everyone just wanted to be a slave owner. You it didn't matter if you were black and enslaved. didn't matter if you were white and poor. You just wanted to own slaves. It was like moving up the social ladder. And that's just so foreign. to like how we think about and how we remember the past. So I wanted to try to remember well, but also remember for a purpose of honoring the legacy. So to uncover some of this strangeness, but also to say if these are my ancestors and I say my ancestors as me, Daniel, but also as a Christian, what does it look like to carry their legacy forward? That's really good and I'm glad that... You you started and opened about sort of the theological element about uh abolitionists, because it's like today in the 21st century, anything that kind of has like a religious overtone tends to get grouped up in kind of this broad, like Christian nationalism, like kind of umbrella. You know, mean, people preying on the steps of the capital, Christian nationalism, you know, people, ah I don't know, just doing something that isn't Christian, but gets the label Christian nationalism. So I'd love for you to maybe kind of talk a little bit about what What were those theological debates ah about slavery and owning people at the time? since you brought up how tricky history is, do you see any of those elements uh in today's society, in the 21st century? Yeah, so the second question, I'm going to put a pinning because it sparks some some thoughts right away. But yes, there's this huge this one of the difficulties is that people have like stated reasons and then they have reasons that they're operating by. So, like, for example, someone would be like, I can own slaves because the Bible permits it or because, you know, an African slave, a black person is less human in some way, like their brain, they would say their brain isn't. doesn't have the right size or their skull doesn't have the right size for a brain to grow. They can't develop all these virtues, etc. and so forth. But then you'll like you don't see like someone trying to reproduce. I'm sorry for being a little crass with like their cattle. It's like this person is less human than me, but I can still uh view them as like a potential romantic partner or there's this. uh Lauren Winner has a book, Danger of Christian Practice, and she goes on like slave, the spouses of slave owners, their diaries, and they're like upset that their slaves aren't being temperate enough or like when their husbands are away at war that they're like being uppity. It's like, well, you shouldn't be praying that they'd be submissive if you think that they can't have virtue. You know, these things are kind of in conflict. So on the one hand, some folks are reading the Bible and saying, the Bible doesn't outlaw this practice. At times the Bible seems to kind of provide guidelines for slaves, for owning slaves. um Other times though the argument is just like, hey, we won't be able to get along if we release all these people in the United States. You're just going to have a bunch of uneducated kind of it's going to be like a welfare, mass welfare state. So we need to kind of send them to Liberia or ask them to move to Canada or something like that. There's a lot of different kind of motivations. I think they're contested. ah like internally in conflict and sometimes incoherent and contradictory. ah One of the ways I think we might see some kind of similar overlap is honestly, this is we still have slaves in the United States. um We don't think about them. They're not in like on the forefront. But the people who pick our tomatoes don't have rights ah are sometimes owned and threatened to be deported uh if they don't kind of accept terrible working conditions. They're housed sometimes by farmers who are taking advantage of their labor. There have been a number of cases in the past three or four years of underage miners being employed, whether it was in, I think it was in Mississippi and Michigan. So also two rival political spectrums. uh Teachers were noticing kids coming up to school tired and exhausted and found that they were working in factories. Well, that's not the same as slavery, but if you're employing someone's children whose legal status is in jeopardy, you do have a lot of leverage over them so that you can start to see a little bit of overlap. And like that, and I was thinking about what is it, the 13th Amendment, right, that says involuntary servitude is outlawed except, right, the idea except for those in prison. Essentially, are you like broken the law that, you know, that the language is pretty ambiguous there, right, in the sense that basically the, you can be forced to do... any number of things if you've broken the law and then been put into the penitentiary system and legal system. so like, it's fascinating. I remember we had someone long time ago, like when we first started the podcast, he did a course on slavery for the great courses. And we had him on and he talked about the fact that there are far more slaves in the world today. than there ever have been in history. And we see slavery as somehow this issue that has been dealt with finally, and yet that is very much not the case. It's just a certain kind that we have defined. And then we've moved on from that, but there's so much more injustice that is out there. And it kind of speaks to how these past characters help us to understand our own time and what they did. helps us like history isn't just a museum. I think is one of the ideas analogies you use. It's not just this thing to look at. Oh, this is cool or that's an oddity here and there. Isn't that amazing? This what happened then, but it's supposed to be instructive and you have these three abolitionists that you focus on. I'd love for you to talk about them. Kind of of tell us who they are and why did you choose them among Whatever. I don't know how many abolitionists there were that wrote and that we have access to their writings and all that the study why these three What's going on? Yeah, I think the three figures I picked in the book are Maria Stewart. She spent most of her career in Boston and in Washington, D.C. Also spent some time in New York City. William Still, who was the son of a runaway slave in Philadelphia. And David Ruggles, who I mentioned earlier, who was born in Connecticut, but did spend most of his life in New York City. They are a plethora of... There's so much out there. You got to do archival work, but a lot of it's been preserved in newspapers and pamphlets. But there are a lot of folks out there to kind of dig up and get into their writings. One of the reasons I picked these three figures is because of how prominent they were in their day and how forgotten they seem to be in contemporary times. So, for example, with uh David Ruggles, William or what's his name, Frederick Douglass writes, in an obituary for him. I hope the memory of him is never forgotten. And you're like, well, most people don't know who, let's know who Frederick Douglass is. Read Frederick Douglass' autobiography. See this name, presumably, when they're reading it, because it's not that long, and still have no idea who this man is, whom Douglass wants to never be forgotten. William Still is called the Angel of Philadelphia because of how many names he helps keep track of on the Underground Railroad. and how prominent he is, but he's also someone who's kind of been just lost to historical memory. His daughter is one of the first people to go, first woman to graduate from Oberlin, I think, if memory serves. they have all, Maria Stewart's one of the first people to speak, maybe the first person in the United States to speak to an audience of enslaved, black, white, and men and women. So it's like all these kinds of demographics crossing over. um So I picked them on the one hand because of how popular they were and how forgotten they are. ah I also picked them because they're kind of across the ecclesial spectrum. So you have an Episcopalian, it sounds like the start of a bad joke. You have an Episcopalian, a Presbyterian, and a Methodist slash Congregationalist all working together on the Underground Railroad and they walk into a bar. ah And so you kind of get this diversity of views. And they also have different ways of addressing kind of the same problem that they're fixated on. Is that... Maybe the better question is, why is that so weird that they come from these different denominations? And I asked that as a person that came to the faith much later in life. So even still, you know, I have a hard time really understanding the difference between a Presbyterian, a Baptist, uh you know, Methodist, whatever. So given that these three have different kind of theological backgrounds, like... What about that kind of makes it of sort of unique? I think in the 19th century, it's kind of this unique feature of being an evangelical, that you're committed to working interdenominationally. At one point, Maria Stewart, she walks up to, uh she's trying to raise money for a Sunday school, um for multiple Sunday schools. And she walks up to this Presbyterian pastor and he says to her, hey, this would be easier if you'd stop being an Episcopalian, because we're like, we can still feel the American Revolution vibes in the air. You're in Washington, D.C.? We probably, like no one's gonna wanna give money to someone who's still wedded to the Church of England. And she says, I'm an Episcopalian, I'll just kind of find, I'll just tough it out. So I think that, but even he's willing to help, he wants to help, but his kind of advice is become a Presbyterian like me. um Which she doesn't do. But that commitment to kind of working across ecclesial lines, I think is... a unique feature of evangelical, kind of political, especially in the 19th century, ah public and political life. Got it. And earlier you made a comment about, um you you picked those three, they're pretty significant, um and we've basically forgotten about them in today's day and age. So I'd love for you to maybe talk about, you know, what is the difference between us learning about... like these historical figures and then learning from them because I think kind of what the premise of your statement was is that like, hey, these folks lived a life long time ago, but there are still some things that we can learn about their lives that apply today. So like, are some of those things? Yeah, I think some of the questions they're wrestling with about how do we serve and engage the world are some of the same questions that we're trying to wrap our head around. So there's this huge debate about, particularly for um William do you help give money to help runaway slaves, which would be like in the millions or at the most, like high thousands, maybe millions. um Everyone wants, well not everyone, everyone who's interested in abolition will give money to help a runaway slave. Like, build a runaway slave? Will you help this person get free? You'll say yes. I want slavery to be over. But there's this other group of abolitionists here like we have to change laws in order to help more slaves get free. But it's harder to raise money to help, to like change law in the abstract than it is to help build the individual slave who if you do not help him, You know, Patty, forget her last name, and her gang of kidnappers will come in here and kidnap him. It's a harder, that's an easier sell. And I think you kind of get some of that same kind of debate now. Do we try to change the laws? we put all of our energy, all of our attention into changing laws? Or do we put, do we kind of work on more particular issues in particular contexts? um I think in the past, maybe 40 years, it might be changing a little bit now. There has been a stronger shift in like, no, we need to change the legal apparatus. We need to change laws. We need to get a certain number of representatives to advance political positions. um And so I think there's like a lot of overlap at times. um I think that's one area of intersection between the past and the present. I think another area that I think is pretty convicting for me is the way that they all view agency that Maria Stewart and David Ruggles are saying fugitive slave, you can do something to change the state of fugitive slaves. Woman in the 19th century who has no legal rights whatsoever, you can do something, you can organize to address some of these circumstances and issues. ah And I think again, to kind of jump the, bridge the gap between then and now, there are sometimes where we can have have the sense or feeling of powerlessness in the face of political discontent, uh or even political injustice. Like this thing is wrong. What can I do about it? And to hear someone from the 19th century saying, hey, enslaved person, we can do something. You can do something. I mean, I have so much more political agency than, you know, anyone, any of their audience did. ah So I can't succumb to a kind of despair. I think that's a way that they're calling us out and saying, hey, you can do something. You can act politically. Get to work. I think that's really powerful. Actually, I'm so glad that you brought that up because there is this feeling of hopelessness. I feel that a lot. then I'm like, well, I guess I am trying to do what I can do. We have a podcast where we talk to people. try to put messages that are important, that help people think, and that are controversial. A lot of times we're trying to bring them out there. so that we can have these conversations and hopefully bring some change. And you do start to feel a little bit hopeless, but that's not the right way to go about it, right? Or powerless maybe is even a better word. Like there's nothing that you can do, but there are some things that you can do. You can learn, you can talk to people, you can organize. Like you say, and the idea that we have more political agency than any of these people that made these massive shifts, right? Did these, did the work that produced these massive shifts. I mean, what an inspiration for us today. And you talk about specific things, thinking about the way that we actually, the way that we actually can learn from them, kind of piggybacking on. Will's question, how we can learn from them instead of just about them. Like you highlight three things, archiving, mentoring, and networking, kind of uh from these three different abolitionists. I'd love for you to talk about those. I think they're powerful. I think they're practical. Kind of talk about what those are, archiving, mentoring, networking, and how do they translate from what they did. 150, 200 years ago to today. Yeah, so William Still is most known for his Underground Railroad records, which go through, I think, four or five editions. And it's just this meticulous detail he's taking of everyone who passes down through his spot. And you read through it, and it's pretty remarkable that someone would write this much. and never include themselves as a character in the story, but that's kind of an aside. Maybe an important aside, but an aside we'll leave for now. And for still, hope is, one of the hopes is that people will remember these figures. But they're records. They're Underground Railroad records. He's recording people coming through. And one of the goals in that, not just is to record these stories, he says, I do want people later on to be able to remember these heroes. But also so that you can find your family members. when slavery is over or when you're all free. And they say all theology is tied to autobiography in significant ways. I think for still, there's a lot of autobiography at work there. Cause his brother walked into the Underground Railroad station that he was working at and their family was reunited. And he wants to make that opportunity affordable to other people. And so this archival work though, isn't just recording, but it's recording to kind of prepare for future possibility. So it's kind of, that's the way I kind of try to tease it out in the book. It's like you're anticipating something and you're trying to prepare for things that you're anticipating. If another family member is going to become free, what can I do in order to prepare for that day? What do I need to do in order to take advantage of that situation? The second one is like networking and building networks of relations or institution building, you might even want to call it. And you see some of that in Maria Stewart. So for Maria Stewart, as I mentioned earlier, she's calling on women in particular to kind of assert some financial and economic independence so that they can take care of one another and attain education, attain various social goods. And the way I try to pitch that in the book or paint that in the book is that there are things that people don't have access to. I would call them social goods or temporal goods. things that we need or things that we want in order to have a certain form of life. There might not be an avenue for me to communicate that or for us to have that. And so you're creating a form um in order to communicate that good or to share that good experience that good. um So you have recording people, archiving with William Still, community organizing, if you will, with Maurice Stewart. m or networking with Maria Stewart and she also has a strong piece of mentoring ah where we need to be formed to be a particular kind of people. So for her it's this is huge. huge emphasis on like true religion has to flourish, she says. So it can't just be the case that, you know, slavery ends and people just kind of run rampant and do whatever they want. No, we need to kind of cultivate our powers, our intellectual powers, our economic powers, our social powers, so we can be a particular kind of people together. Do we know much about how these abolitionists came to the faith and how they actually developed these evangelical weapons that they are using to help fight slavery? Yeah, William still has a like a like a narrative he gives on how he came to become a Christian. Maurice Stewart does as well. oh David Ruggles is a little more obscure because most of the writings we have of him of his are like very, very politically motivated. So it's like me addressing this issue in particular. But Maria Stewart, she has this uh text of devotions that she writes. um So we know we even know Like kind of a before and after because she's she's reflecting on it. So she was married. She was a follower of David, David Walker and her husband, James, dies and she becomes a Christian shortly thereafter. And you and even has some like significant lament on what have what would be the state of her husband and who she was before she became a Christian. ah For William Still, I think part of it is his involvement because he was born, his mother was a runaway slave. So he's born technically as a slave, but raised in Philadelphia or outside of Philadelphia and moves to Philadelphia. And he never is like the main character in, as I mentioned earlier, he's not the main character in his records. He kind of only appears indirectly. And so his kind of salvation story is like one of the few times you get him saying, this is who I am, but it's... oh Or not this is who I am. I'm a character kind of in the story. It's one of the few times you get that. I think that's super interesting. You know, as you were talking, I was thinking through this idea, it keeps hitting me in this conversation about how theology is used as a force for good and evil quite a bit. in American history. And it's interesting because, and probably not just American, I mean, I know it's not just American history, but I'm thinking specifically about American history. And I would love for you, I mean, I guess let me just riff on this just for a second and then throw it over to you to give your thoughts. Like, it seems to me that you have this deeply embedded culture where theology is important. America. It always has been to one degree or another. And so you'll have people say things like the Bible was used to justify slavery or is used to justify segregation or is used to justify any number of atrocities. And of course, we know that that's true. And yet on the other side, seems as well that theology in The Bible coming from theology was used also to fight those things and to resist those forces. So it's like this force, like we've talked about this, like the book of Eli, that movie where the most important and powerful thing is the Bible. And the guy wants the Bible so bad because he knows the power of wields. And I would love for you to just stop it, dude. You know, I would love for you to kind of just like, just, I mean, you can, you know, the question is really, are your thoughts on how theology has been used, thinking about what you understand from abolition? And even if you could just help us understand how was the Bible used, both in pro-slavery arguments and anti-slavery arguments at that time. And what do you think about... this force of theology and how much impact it's made in American history and political decisions. Yeah, I think one of the most lamentable things about being a Christian is seeing all the ways that Christians have used the good news of God's redemption as a tool to hurt either other Christians or other people. And on the one hand, that should not be terribly surprising when you just look at world history and how awful people can be, that people would be awful with the story of God saving them. It's like, yeah, that kind of tracks. um But I'm pretty committed to the belief in the communion of the saints and that we are one body. And so the question, this is a preamble to before I get to your answer, for me it's not like, it's not how did white people use the Bible to enslave Africans, descendants of the sons and daughters of Africa to borrow from Mary Stuart. It's how are we as this community of saints, how are we like this that we can do this kind of thing? Because I'm a part of that same body. And I'm stealing that. There's an Anabaptist writer, you read Church History, Anabaptists frequently get the short end of the stick in terms of they're persecuted, they're killed, they're martyred. um And he has this book on baptism where he's like, is the question if we believe in the community of saints is not how could the Roman Catholics, how could the Lutherans, how could the reformed, how could the Church of England do this to us? It's why are we this kind of body that does this to one another or does this to people God loves? If you want to expand it to our treatment of non-Christians as well or to Jewish people and Muslims. And I lament that. There is no kind of brushing past that. um Well said. To get to your... Yeah, and just to pause, to say, I wish that it was otherwise. How long, O Lord, have mercy on us. um Yeah. To get to the question, how was it used? So you have like in the Old Testament in particular, you have a series of uh kind of guidances given in the Pentateuch, the Deuteronomy or Leviticus on how slaves should be treated and even how to slaves that are either not Israelites or even slaves that are Israelites. And so some folks will read that, would read that and say, see, the Bible says we can treat slaves a particular way. There's a reason there were concubinage laws in Louisiana's kind of state constitution because they were reading Louisiana being a primarily Catholic community but was able to say, we're reading the Bible. We see that people have concubines. I can kind of justify my I have these mulatto slaves that aren't yet 18. I can kind of justify my treatment of them based in light of of of what I see I'm reading in scripture. And then you can flip over into the New Testament and say, well, I don't see any passage here that says, let all people go, that outlaws this practice. So I have some guidance on how to carry out this practice. I don't have a particular text I can go to that forbids this practice. Ergo, it seems to be that the Bible is relatively silent on, at worst, is silent on how to treat. on the question of slavery at best, you might even say it provides some justification is how a pro-slavery argument would breed. And they have the exegesis and the biblical studies to back that up. On the anti-slavery side, and this actually doesn't help matters, there's frequently an appeal to like some ethic that like is within the scripture. Maybe it's the ethic of love, love your neighbor as yourself, that's kind of lifted from scripture and said to govern all of this. Well, for the pro-slavery person, they'll be like, you're not, give me a text, give me a set of texts. You're kind of imposing your view on the Bible. ah Ruggles and still are a little unique in Maurice Stewart as well. Maurice Stewart's approach to scriptures, a whole conversation is fascinating in its own right. But for Ruggles, he says, wait, there are these laws that you're claiming to care about. And laws, I mean, the 10 Commandment laws, not like, you know, United States Constitution laws. You say that you want to follow the Ten Commandments, but you're violating the Ten Commandments in these particular ways. You're the preponderance of sexual assault on uh plantations, which is he's not the only one to point this out. So and we can get into more detail on that if you want. It's like this is evidence that marriages are being violated. Both of the marriages of the enslaved, but also slave owners are violating their own marriages. uh And then he goes, thou shalt not covet. and thou should not steal, you're coveting the person of your neighbor and the Bible tells you not to do that. Why are you doing it? And you're stealing people and the Bible is telling you not to do this. you're kind of, not only are you doing these things, but you're participating in a system that incentivizes these things. So it's not just like, I can maybe stop sexually assaulting and stop stealing and stop coveting and then still have slaves. He's saying slavery actually incentivizes this behavior and that's part of the problem. And that's pretty unique. He's one of the few people that I've read that kind of grounds it all in the Ten Commandments. That's so interesting. You know, because I've often thought about this, how um Bible interpretation is a relatively newer concept, like in the grand scheme of things, as I understand it. You're welcome to correct me. But it's like back in the 1800s. And, you know, I can't imagine there was a lot of, I don't know, HBCU seminaries. Or something like that where folks are really studying this stuff because you know like Frederick Frederick Douglass wrote wrote a thing in his biography about what he feels about Christians, right? like he hates them all slave slaveholding women with being cradle-plendoring so on and so forth, right and uh that that is somewhat of a I don't know theological argument maybe a light one, but can you talk to me about like like what kind of theological arguments were In addition to what you've already said, you know, we're kind of the most effective um Back back in those days like and and how did how did these folks how did these abolitionists? You know get to a point where they can make like theological um Sort of like arguments Yeah, I don't know which ones were most effective because people are so, mean, things start getting very, very contentious in the 1800s, especially after the Haitian revolt. There's this widespread fear that if we let black people free or enslaved black people, because there are plenty who are not, that you're going to have a uh Haiti style revolt in the United States, which is uh an interesting. was the Haiti revolt? Sorry, just so we, the Haiti style revolt. Yeah. Yeah, so in Haiti, there was this one of the it might be the only it's one of the few successful slave revolts ah in world history, where enslaved population in Haiti kind of rises up. They had there's a huge disparity in slaves to slave owners in Haiti, which makes this kind of possible. But there's this very, very, very, very, very, very violent revolt. ah And Haitian slaves are able to kind of get rid of and kill all the slave owners and get independence as a nation. um And there are a couple of times where um like French warships will come up to Haiti and then English warships will try and create a blockade. You have like these geopolitical kind of chess moves to see who can get Haiti now. And they're able to kind of stave off all these advances. um And so after that happens, there's kind of a lot of the theological and philosophical dialogue about slavery in the United States kind of hits a standstill about can I persuade someone in South Carolina to let other slaves free? It's like, well, I don't want to let these folks become free and then rise up and kill us all is kind of the standard line of argument. um Yeah, so I think that kind of brings it to a standstill. Sometimes folks will be able to go to the UK. So someone like Alexander Crummel is able to go study in the United Kingdom. think he goes to University Edinburgh, if memory serves. um And then kind of participate in antislavery argumentation. A lot of it is dependent upon the Abolitionary Press. So papers, newspapers, such as the Liberator. um or the Freedmen's Journal are publishing quite a bit of um articles and arguments against slavery and uh critiquing the institution. You also have these kind of schools that are dedicated to um the enslaved, well, the formerly enslaved, so the fugitive slaves or free blacks. There's one in New York I can't remember the name of right now. But you have quite a few African American intellectuals come out of this one school. And it's like a second, the equivalent of a secondary school. It's like the first black person to perform Shakespeare in the United Kingdom graduates from there. Charles Reason, kind of mathematical prodigy graduates from there. It's like four or five folks. um So yeah, and there are a couple kind of like secondary schools that become training grounds for abolitionists in the North. That's kind of related, a little off topic. But I have to ask because a lot of the arguments that I have heard and read about for slavery from a religious standpoint um and even that the same can be extended to interracial marriages. So like my wife's white, um our relationship wouldn't. be one that would be around if you're like, you know, early 1900s or whatever. So uh I get the sense that the Bible has been interpreted in certain ways to, you know, oppress people for, you know, as long as time has been around, or at least as long as the Bible has been around. And I see a lot of the same, I don't know, efforts, Bible verses used against many in the LGBTQ community today. And I know it's not necessarily your expertise, but could you talk a little bit about, uh you know, like how the Bible is, like assimilate the parallels between how the Bible is used to justify slavery back then and how the Bible is being used today to essentially uh rebuke, you know, people in this community. Yeah, I think I'd see some parallels and probably some differences. I think the parallel would could be ah if someone lifts were to lift something out of like Leviticus. I don't even know if parallel is using strong enough language, I mentioned to be a one for one correlation. Like you lift, if you lift a text out of Leviticus and say, see, this thing is addressing, is saying this in Leviticus, therefore in 2025, it's saying the same thing. There's like a lot of conceptual work you kind of have to do to make that connection. And I can unpack that if need be. So I think that might be one of the tendencies is to be like, well, look, there are these texts or alternatively to say these none of there is no prohibition in any of these ways, which would kind of be on the opposite end of that. Things are so different that none of this stuff applies. um I think that. Scripture just requires a little bit more wrestling. than is sometimes allowed or sometimes expected. um That's not a tame book to steal from C.S. Lewis unashamedly. It requires quite a bit of wrestling. um So like this is not well answering your question at all. um There's a standard kind of narrative of Israel's history as like this patriarchal institution. But if you read Second Kings, First Second Kings, First Second Samuel, First Second Chronicles, there are times when There's a queen ruling over Israel. And that doesn't negate that, you know, it's patriarchal or whatever. But it is curious that there's like a condition that enables a queen to rule over an entire society. That is just like, it's just not what we would expect. um And I think that's the Bible is not the Holy Scripture is not a tame book. It's supposed to be unsettling us um and challenging us. I I think I kind of want to speak to this just for a moment because Will and I have talked about this and I was even just um talking to him about, we've talked before about the similarities between arguments used for to justify essentially racism and then arguments, biblical arguments, and then arguments used to justify homophobia, transphobia, things like that against the um brothers and sisters in the LGBTQ community. you know, it is a tough one because trying to figure out what exactly it is, like what the differences really are, if there are differences right there, to try to figure out like how do we address these issues? Because I think you brought out one of the difficulties of trying to interpret is you have these two sides where one is this one-to-one mapping from the ancient world to today, which doesn't work. It might work with certain things because they become very culturally understandable to us. Things like the Ten Commandments, it might work because we think they are, right? But we even had someone come on here that talked about how much the Ten Commandments have been taken out of context and treated as these You know, basically as these cold almost like, sterile principles that have just been extracted from their context, now they're universal and put out there, where instead it was understanding like something like the Sabbath, understanding that in context of slavery in Egypt, which then the Sabbath takes on very different, like, almost like, It's supposed to be freedom giving. It's supposed to help populations gain power from oppression, these 10 commandments. And he talks about taking them out of context and putting them in schools. That strips them from their context. And of course, context is crucial for everything, and understanding it. How do we, how do you as a theologian and a historian and all the things that you have learned in your studies and in your life and through writing this book, how do you go there and try to, like how would you recommend going to some of these really controversial passages, whether it is about where someone hears an argument like, well, the Bible was used to justify slavery, therefore I don't trust anything from the Bible. or the Bible, or it was used to justify slavery, therefore, you know, we shouldn't listen to how it was used to uh exclude LGBTQ people from certain, either from church or certain parts of church or to come down on some kind of decision about how God feels about it or whatever. What cautions should we have when going to these texts? Essentially, how would you approach them? I guess, coming to these texts and trying to delineate how do we respond to these kinds of uh statements about the Bible and how can we take it and use it today? Because if we can do it with people at the abolitionists, I feel like the same principles might help us do that with the scriptures. Yeah, I think one of the things that I try to remember, read, I'm a theologian first off, so if you have a biblical scholar on next week, they're gonna be like, I can't believe you said any of that stuff. um Assuming they listen in a week from now. I try to keep in mind that the context of scripture is kind of twofold. It's the community, the occult community, so the church. It's the church's book. But also the canon. So the canon is, talking to itself back and forth. how are things, it's less important to me personally, like what the author of Psalm 35 might have been thinking when they said, because I don't know who the author of Psalm, I just picked a Psalm, that might be like, that one might have a superscription, but I just picked it randomly. Then it is like, where is that fitting within the Psalter? Where is the Psalter kind of talking to other books within the scripture? within the scriptures as a whole. That's kind of an area of importance. So what is like the rest of the canon saying about what Leviticus 17 says? Again, just to pick a random passage. I think that's one thing I would, that's the one way, the first way I would approach scripture. Like scripture is a little bit different than the writings of, or I guess a second point. Scripture is a very very much different. I said a little bit very much different from the writing of William Still um or Frederick Douglass and that I think scripture still is speaking to us is still addressing us today. um Whereas William Still is a voice we're trying to retrieve to see how how he can fit. um A third thing I would say to the person who might be skeptical on either either side of the political kind of spectrum on this issue is so if you're if you're super jaded about the Bible because of how it's been used. I think my challenge to you would be, and this is similar to something I say in the book, you know who's not jaded about the past that kind of scandalizes us? Some of the people experiencing that past as present. Maria Stewart reads, the thief comes to rob, kill, and destroy. And she thinks, this is just so fascinating to me, she thinks that passage is addressing her audience and that when she preaches it, she says, the thief comes to kill and destroy, not to rob, steal, kill and destroy, but to kill and destroy. I'm not going to harp on the stealing and the robbing because these people in my audience have stolen themselves. ah It's not that this passage doesn't address us, but I'm going to emphasize something different. ah Yeah. And so I think like what she's experiencing as her present, what William still is experiencing as his present is the very thing that we are scandalized by. And that is like his repulsing, pushing us away from scripture. And I would challenge us, I would challenge myself, I would challenge a listener who's like the Bible's been used in all these bad ways to say, let's maybe we adopt their disposition. And as much as the slave owner may have used scripture to justify slavery. Holy scripture was not silent and it spoke to the enslaved. God was speaking to the enslaved through the words of scripture. They were given censored Bibles and they preached and believed in the God of the gospel through censored Bibles. Because even if you tried to censor God, he's not bound by your censoring. And they still believed in that God and still believe that that God would deliver them even while they were being told that that God would keep them in bondage. And that to me is much more fascinating ah personally, is like that you're being told the gospel justifies your enslavement. You don't believe them and you still believe the gospel. That's so fascinating because I had a conversation with somebody recently ah on the show where they were talking about their deconstruction. They grew up as a Christian nationalist. It was a whole... Really kind of sad story and I had asked him a question. I just said hey, you know, you're deconstructing from all this they they still believe in god And I just asked him was like what why do you even still believe in god? You know, like you're deconstructing all these other things but like It's like the core thing that you have to kind of deconstruct from. You're not deconstructing from Jesus, from God, you know? And it was really fascinating. I can't remember what they said, but I just remember that their reaction was like, I don't know, like, why am I? So I think what you said was spot on. I have two last questions. The first one, I just learned that there's a difference between theologian and Bible scholar. I didn't know, so I apologize to anybody that has been on the show that I like unintentionally referred to one or the other. Like what's, what's the main difference between the two? Just so I know. Now you're asking a theologian, so you're gonna get very, very biased answer. oh I'll give you my quippy answer that'll get aggregated and then a real answer. oh Theologians study scripture and biblical scholars study the world behind scripture. That's my quippy answer. So like, if, I'm not gonna get, I don't. and fat, I like that. ah I think the one difference might be uh that a theologian thinks that he's is often committed to a kind of belief that God is speaking. And so they tend to put an emphasis on scripture is the church's book or scripture is kind of like this witness to divine action. Whereas a biblical scholar is much more interested in like the history of the world, I mean, to put it crassly, the world behind the text or the world around the text. So to use an example in Second Timothy, um Paul says, I think it's Second Timothy four, calls God the blessed, the blessed and only sovereign. And so a biblical scholar is going to say, well, in order to understand what it means to call God blessed and only sovereign, I need to see where this other language is used. So. The only kind of ancient texts we have that say that kind of thing are Aristotle's Ethics. Talk about God as the Blessed One. And Second Maccabees, I think, calls God the only sovereign a couple times. And then you might say, well, this helps me understand what's going on in 2 Timothy chapter 4. This theologian would say, I don't know if the author of this text read Aristotle. Maybe they did, but I don't know how popular Aristotle was. So maybe I need to look at the rest of the canon to see what it means to call God. And maybe that'll be my immediate reference point. Yeah, so the... My last question is almost an impossible question to answer. So there you go. But, you know, we've spoken to so many people that have written so many great books about racial reconciliation, you know, or about white evangelical racism, you know, the Anthea butlers, the Malcolm Foley's, the Robbie Jones of the world. know, Greg Boyd actually has a quote in one of his really great books. blank right now, but where he says uh racial reconciliation is basically like spiritual warfare in real life. it just seems like there so many great books, research, the church has really done a great job, I think, uh looking at kind of like the history of racism and the church's role in it. And there's another really great book by Rusty Hawkins, which we're talking about next week. uh I'm just left wondering, why is there so much racism still in the church today? uh I mean, there's all this academic work. I have no doubt that if people were to read or watch, like we have a whole entire collection on our website called the racial reconciliation collection that has all these interviews. And I'm just like, why is racism still around? like, can you give us like your best? your best guess on why racism still exists within the church specifically. Yeah, I think, I mean, this is not going to be a satisfying answer. I think the Reformation doctrine that we are simultaneously justified in sinners pertains to every element of our life. I think that's one reason. So why are we still racist? It's because we're sinful and we like people who are like us more than we like people who we think are different than us. ah I think racism is still around because it's convenient. it's harder and more conflict inducing to be around and and requires more compromise to be around people who are different than you whether that's socioeconomically whether that's in light of their um Kind of past or their future ah I think racism is still around us because we swim in waters that ah And drink from those waters and hey inhale the waters probably that too that are that are shaped by kind of a racial calculus. And so where you kind of view the world through that lens. um If you, I used to teach a class on race and racism, theological account. And I would hold up a picture of someone who is uh biracial and then this biracial person marries someone who's white and a picture of their child. And I would just ask people, what race is the child? They blonde hair. blue eyes, their father is biracial, their grandfather is Jamaican. What race are they? And you can see people going through the mental gymnastics like, what do I? answer how your students answer, I just have to just say, this is literally like a weekly conversation in my house because my two boys, 11 and 9, uh my younger is darker skin. He's probably maybe a hair darker than I am. uh My other son, is could probably pass for a white guy. Easy. like, and within our house, within the right household, my younger son is always calling his other brother white and is like, I'm black like daddy, like you're white like mommy. So but I'm curious on how your students answered it. Yeah, well, they all say the same thing. They say the kid is white. no, they'll say the kid is black. Actually, it's what they'll say because his father was biracial and they'll just be like, father biracial, he's black, therefore, you know, race is inherited. And if I then say, yeah, and this is the exact same way that Immanuel Kant thought about race, that David Hume thought about race, that all the people you find morally repugnant, they thought about race, you still think the same way about it. um And at a... They don't really know what to do about that. And I think the last way well, I would say, is I think a lot of, this is probably a little controversial. A lot of our attempts to address issues of race are just unserious. They're just not very serious. We don't really care about, we view, elite school would rather have, increase its black population using scare quotes because of what I just said. by getting a bunch of folks from Nigeria or Ethiopia to come as international students than they would, than they are about like changing the material conditions of Austin and the Austin neighborhood of Chicago or Harlem so that a kid going to a public school in Harlem can get in. They'd rather be elite and get all the money from that international student and then say that they've increased their quota of black students. And that's just not serious. It's fundamentally un-serious. Hmm. I really liked that, dude. I really appreciate your words. You know, this is the last kind of question. What are you hoping that the book accomplished? And then, yeah, you can just kind of answer that, and then I have some just housekeeping stuff, practical questions at the end. But go ahead. I think so. tend to think about education and incarceration just from my from my familial history and from my past work. When I think of how can the church serve the communities that exist, I typically think of incarceration and education. um And I would hope that someone reading this book would think, man, if Maria Stewart, if William Still, if David Ruggles can do this in the 19th century in a time where if someone walks into their parlor, grabs them. they could sell them in Alabama and that's the end of that person's story. And they say, this is worth it because of the gospel. What then can I do to start thinking that? And for many of us, don't, the blueprint is out there. People are doing the work. You just have to know where to look. So whether it's John Wallace and the Homewood Children's Center in Pittsburgh, or places like the Oaks Academy in Indianapolis, or the field school in Chicago, or. of the work John Kelly, a pastor on the West Side Chicago is doing with folks who've been released from prison. Like there are folks who you can just talk to and get the ball rolling. um I hope that people start to make those calls, to send those emails, to say, okay, what can we do? And those are all on the higher fruit. If you think of low fruit and high fruit, no one says high fruit, but that's high fruit. Low fruit though, there are places all around us where people are being gathered with needs. that we just don't think about and we don't see. So like project housing is the government saying, I'm going to gather a bunch of high need people. You don't even have to go gather them. They're already being gathered for you. That's, or I can't even think of the appropriate term, but we used to call it an old folks home growing up. They're being gathered already. You just have to go there. And so I would hope that people would say, okay, these are the things I want for my kids. These are the things I want for my grandparents. I want my grandparents not to... die alone, surrounded by strangers. So because I want that for my grandparents, why don't I extend that to Josh's grandparents or to Will's grandparents by going to this old folks home and playing bridge or playing music so that people aren't alone? um Or I want my kids to get a good education, but that doesn't mean I send them to a private school paying $20,000 a year. It could mean that I start a school. It could mean that I provide after school opportunities. I could teach chess after school. There are things you can do to extend the thing you want for your kids, for your family outside your walls. And I hope folks will think about that. I really, really liked that. I appreciate it. How can people follow you? Is there a vendor, a preferred vendor for them to get the book? And what projects do you have coming up? Yeah, you can follow me. have a website, Daniel Hill, Daniel L Hill dot com. So two L's two times is how I say it. Daniel L Hill. ah And that kind of keeps will keep you in the loop on what I'm writing and where I'm speaking. If I don't have a preferred vendor, I would say if you're going to buy it, go to bookshop.org and then you can link it with a local bookstore. This is me being my most grassroots itself. ah Bezos has enough money. ah And the next kind of projects I'm working on, I'm working on a book on anger is in the queue and a book on thinking theologically about race. So I put those in the wrong order, but those are the next two in the queue. Well, that's awesome. Well, we definitely would love to have you back on to talk about thinking theologically about race. That would be like an awesome conversation. Thank you so much for coming on, Daniel, and spending some time with us. It's been a real pleasure. Absolutely. And to our friends who've joined us, guys, thanks so much for sticking with us for another episode of the Faithful Politics Podcast. Make sure again you're liking, subscribing, hitting the notification bell, sending this to people. that you feel like would benefit from this hack the algorithm for us so we can keep getting this great content out to you. We're going to put Dr. Hill's information in the show notes and put links there so you can get everything. And until we see you next time, guys, keep your conversations that right or left. But up, thanks and God bless.