Our Crossroads group that meets online will be using Spelunking Scripture: The Letters of Paul, for our next study. This is one of my favorite books in the series because it illustrates some important principles of “spelunking scripture.”

For example, one principle is that not all verses in the Bible are of equal value. That is certainly true in the letters of Paul. Another principle is that is important to distinguish cultural conditions from God’s eternal truth. Again, Paul’s letters reflect the cultural conditions of the time, some of which were in contravention to the Christian message.

One issue that appears in Paul’s letters is slavery. In several of Paul’s letters he instructs slaves to obey their masters (Ephesians 6:5; Colossians 3:22; 1 Timothy 6:1; and Titus 2:9). Paul was not the only New Testament writer to say that. 1 Peter 2:18 also tells slaves to submit themselves to their masters.

In his letter to Philemon Paul hints at the incongruence of slavery with Christian brotherhood when he asks the master (Philemon) to accept the escaped slave Onesimus back into the household as “no longer a slave…[but] a beloved brother…in the Lord.”

Nevertheless, many Christians used some selected teachings of Paul to justify slavery for centuries. In the Introduction to The Letters of Paul, I note that some of the founding faculty members of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, John A. Broadus and James P. Boyce, were slaveowners. They found justification for slavery in several selected passages of scripture, including from Paul’s letters.

However, as I note in the Introduction, “eventually most Christians came to realize that slavery is abhorrent to the will of God.” Rather than quoting those few isolated passages in Paul’s letters admonishing slaves to obey their masters, most Christians came to recognize God’s design for human community. Simply put, “God wants us to love each other, not enslave each other.”

There was an article in The Washington Post a few days ago (May 23, 2024) about a monument outside the courthouse in Columbia, N.C. Erected 122 years ago, the monument bears a bust of Robert E. Lee and the inscription, “IN APPRECIATION OF OUR FAITHFUL SLAVES.” The 23-foot-tall statue of a Confederate soldier has stood outside the Tyrrell County Courthouse since 1902. Thus, the monument was erected long after the end of the Civil War and the end of slavery in America. It still stands there even today, despite decades of protests.

Recently, according to the Post article, "the civic group Concerned Citizens of Tyrrell County and several of its members filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in eastern North Carolina against the county’s board of commissioners, claiming the Confederate monument constitutes racially discriminatory government speech that violates the Constitution’s equal protection clause."

“This is the only place in America where you can go to a courthouse and see a public expression in support of the institution of slavery,” Joyce Sykes Fitch, a plaintiff and secretary of Concerned Citizens of Tyrrell County, said in a news release. “It’s past time for it to come down.”

The county’s board of commissions has resisted taking down the monument outside the courthouse. Yes, there are still people in America who resist the repudiation of slavery by preserving monuments such as the one in Tyrrell County, N.C. Some may even use (misuse) the Bible to defend slavery, such as those selected passages in Paul’s letters.

One of the goals of Spelunking Scripture: The Letters of Paul, is to identify passages that convey God’s intentions, and to identify passages that convey cultural conditions rather than God’s purposes.

In her endorsement that appears on the back cover of the book, Amanda Tyler, Executive Director of Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, wrote:

“It’s a tragic reality that Paul’s letters have been used for centuries to oppress and subjugate rather than liberate and welcome all to God’s table as equals.”