In 2025, far-right Christian nationalist Joshua Haymes reignited a deep moral and political controversy by asserting that slavery “is not inherently evil” and that Christians should “defend God’s design for human hierarchy.” His statements, broadcast on his Reformation Red Pill podcast with Pastor Brooks Potteiger of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship near Nashville, illustrate a growing intersection between theology, nationalism, and race in Trump’s America. Haymes’ rhetoric frames slavery as divinely permissible, defending the moral integrity of the Founding Fathers who enslaved people while accusing modern critics of “chronological arrogance.”
Such a revival of pro-slavery theology recalls the pre-civil war theology of the lash where selective scripture was applied to a selective race domination. The fact that Haymes subscribes to the views of one of the most prominent members of the Christian nationalist intellectual communities, Douglas Wilson, can help to emphasize the fact that the ideas in question are not limited to the peripheral extremes. Such views are made more intimate with political influence through the actions of individuals like the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth who has strong connections with the church of Potteiger, which serves as an indication that the quantity of such ideologies finding their way into the mainstream of conservative institutions is worrying.
The implications are vast. With the United States being torn between the poles of cultural diversity, the application of scripture to justify racial inequality turns theological discourse into a means of political justification. This revival of biblical justification of slavery is put in a gray area of faith and state echoing of the antebellum America where pluralistic democracy is put to the test.
Political and Social Ramifications
Bringing the biblical justifications of slavery back into the political scene has far-reaching implications on the moral and civic landscape of the country. This theological reawakening has empowered the fight to cleanse the history of slavery in Trump America, where Christian nationalism still dominates the discourse of policy-makers. Recent federal orders to the National Park Service and the Smithsonian Institution have minimized the discussion of the horror of the enslavement and its relation to the founders of the country, and is part of the administrational campaign against patriotic education.
These accounts are trying to exonerate white America of its guilt by making slavery a morally questionable institution instead of a historical atrocity. Political observers suggest that these reinterpretations are part of an electoral approach that is based on grievance politics that seek to gain voters who feel that the discussion of systemic racism is directed at their identity or religion. This conflation of theology and historical revisionism, therefore, strengthens a sense of hierarchy of belonging, which underscores racial minorities and celebrates nationalist myths.
Reconstructing Historical Memory
The most significant part of this phenomenon is the struggle of historical memory. The whitewashing of slavery is a calculated move that undermines the quality of education and hinders the process of reconciliation. The revisionist account also makes its way into the homeschooling textual resources and Christian curricula of groups that follow the network of Haymes, with the content portraying enslavers as benevolent patriarchs. According to historians and educators, these distortions reverse decades of achievement within the area of truth-telling of the racial history of America.
Polarization and Policy
The dissemination of this ideology also influences the legislative discussions. There are bills presented in some conservative-dominated states that are aimed at restricting the possibility of the public school to discuss the moral aspects of slavery with references to the idea of religious freedom. These efforts also make polarization institutionalized through the prism of anti-racist education as anti-Christian persecution. As a result, the language of religion turns into a political weapon at the expense of the civic discourse and theological absolutes.
The Challenge to Contemporary Christianity and Civil Society
The theological distortions have been strongly rebuked by mainstream Christian denominations. The minorities in the National Council of Churches and the minority caucus of the Southern Baptist Convention denounced the statements made by Haymes as a serious distortion of the biblical truth. They underline the fact that scripture, when read correctly, does not support domination but liberation and justice. This interpretive war in American Christianity is a struggle about a greater authority in morality in the age of political manipulation of religion.
Theological Counter-Movements
Extremist forces are taking over the biblical interpretations, and progressive theologians are organizing campaigns online to regain control of it. The Faith and Freedom Project, which commences at the beginning of 2025, will teach the congregations about the way scripture has been misused historically to justify oppression. The fact that it has been increasingly becoming influential among young Christians indicates that the opposition against religious authoritarianism itself is changing in the religious circles.
Civil Rights and the Public Sphere
Pro-slavery rhetoric is what civil rights activists argue is dangerous because it has normalized and endangered the lives of vulnerable communities in the name of religious liberty. This ideology justifies policies that are exclusionary of immigration, policing and education by moralizing inequality. Activist Reverend Carla Jenkins of the New Covenant Church in Chicago said that such teaching blotted out the distinction between theology and tyranny, and that the silence of moderate leaders would be tantamount to silently approving the tyranny.
The measures also challenge the ability of the civil society to protect pluralism. Academic institutions and interfaith coalitions are currently under pressure to find the balance between free expression and the moral obligation of combating hate speech that is instead justified by religious beliefs. This re-embracing of biblical slavery apologetics in this way therefore becomes a test of the health of democratic discourse itself.
The Intersection of Religion, Power, and Identity
The revival of pro-slavery-theology is indicative of a larger project to redefine American identity in the theocratic sense of the word. It is an outright moral regression, but an outright political policy of centralizing authority by way of divine sanction. The combination of the sacred and the civic by its supporters aims to rewrite the moral history of the nation, as well as constraints on constitutional governance.
According to political theorists, this amalgamation reiterates the history when religion was used to legitimize oppression- the antebellum South, the apartheid South Africa. Divine hierarchy is used strategically as an ideological defense of systemic inequality in the Trumpian America where privilege has been rebranded as providence. This shift disrupts the secular values that the democratic institutions are based on and emboldens those who perceive liberal pluralism as the decadence of the morals.
The Broader Implications for America’s Moral Compass
The rebirth of biblical defense of slavery in 2025 demonstrates the extent to which historical discourses can be used to achieve political aims in the present day. It brings back issues the country had thought to be closed–the issue of race and morality and the place of religion in the politics of the country. This ideology seeks to establish the boundaries of faith and freedom in a divided republic by trying to make inequality holy.
The ability of American Christianity to recover its moral focus, and of democratic institutions to resist theological extremism, will be the defining factor in the way the country goes about its next chapter. The contest over scripture, memory, and identity now defines the moral frontier of Trump’s America, one that forces citizens to confront whether divine authority will be invoked to justify power, or to challenge it.
In this struggle, the outcome may reveal not only the fate of religious liberty but the direction of America’s conscience itself.