Episode 86: 1493: When the Church Gave Permission for Conquest and Slavery
6/17/202647 min
What if the church didn't just fail to stop white supremacy, it helped build it?
In part one of this two-part series, Rachael takes you back to the very beginning. Not the Civil War. Not Jim Crow. 1493. The year the church wrote the theological permission slip for conquest, colonization, and the dehumanization of entire peoples.
This episode breaks down three things most Christians were never taught.
The Doctrine of Discovery. The papal bulls that gave European Christian nations divine permission to claim any land inhabited by non-Christians. This wasn't fringe theology. It shaped everything that came after.
The Curse of Ham. One misread passage in Genesis became the theological engine for chattel slavery. What the text actually says required ignoring the Bible entirely to make the distortion work.
The Pro-Slavery Church. Respected, credentialed, mainstream pastors and entire denominations built a sophisticated Bible-based case for slavery. One denomination was founded in 1845 specifically to protect the right of slaveholders. It is still one of the largest in America today.
This is not a story about bad people doing bad things. This is about a theological system that was carefully constructed, widely taught, and built into the institutions many of us grew up in.
If you enjoyed this episode be sure to watch:
Episode 66: Feeling it All: Faith, Fury & The Call to Love
Episode 55: Decolonizing the Church w/ Joash Thomas
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsRachael Loney· Host0:00
What if the church didn't just fail to stop white supremacy, but actually helped build it? Today, we are going back to the very beginning, the papal bulls that gave Christian nations permission to claim any land they wanted, the single misread Genesis passage that became the theological engine for racial slavery, and the respected credentialed pastors and denominations that built a Bible-based case for chattel slavery that most of us were never taught in church. And with that, let's dive in.
Jaisa Engasser· Host0:27
[upbeat music] Hello, everybody, and welcome to this week's episode of Spirit Outspoken. So Rach, I love this Rach, my little Aquarius moon, the social justice humanity, like- It's gonna jam ... I got a bone to pick with some people. No, I was like, I feel like this has been on your heart for a while.
Rachael Loney· Host0:54
Mm-hmm.
Jaisa Engasser· Host0:54
You've been talking about how racial injustice and really wanting to understand the church's involvement has just been, you know, on your mind and on your heart. And with Juneteenth coming up on Friday, so two days from when this episode airs, it's a perfect opportunity for our listeners and for people to realize really like what Juneteenth is- Yeah ... and how we've gotten to this place in America with Christianity and with racism and with all of these different things that have been so closely and intimately intertwined with, quote, unquote, "biblical