Far-right commentator Joshua Haymes recently posted a video in which he beseeched his fellow Christian nationalists to learn to defend the institution of slavery because the Bible makes it clear that "it is not inherently evil to own another human being."
Haymes—who hosts a podcast with pastor Brooks Potteiger of Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship, a far-right church located outside of Nashville, TN, that is aligned with Christian nationalist pastor Douglas Wilson and counts Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth as a member—was reacting to a recent Jubilee video in which conservative Christian commentator Allie Beth Stuckey debated 20 liberals.
Haymes was unimpressed with Stuckey's response when challenged about the Bible's sanction of the practice of slavery, warning that offering up anything short of a vigorous defense of slavery opens the door to challenging the authority of the Bible on all sorts of issues.
"The institution of slavery is not inherently evil," Haymes insisted. "It is not inherently evil to own another human being."
"It is very important that every Christian affirm what I just said," he continued. "Not only should they affirm it, every Christian in today's society should be able to defend what I just said. Every Christian should be able to defend it ... Christians in America have been led astray on this topic. They've been led to believe things that the Bible doesn't teach, and when we go beyond the Bible, there are dire consequences."
Haymes proceeded to argue that while there have obviously been many slave owners who treated their slaves terribly, the practice of slavery itself is not sinful and therefore the Founding Fathers were not "living in grave sin" by owning slaves, nor was America birthed in sin because of the practice.
"We must also acknowledge that men like our Founders, men like Jonathan Edwards, who owned slaves, could in fact treat their slaves the way the Bible tells them to treat their slaves and that they weren't living in grave sin," Haymes asserted. "They weren't living in unrepentant grave sin."
Quoting C.S. Lewis, Haymes said that faulting the Founders for practicing slavery is "chronological snobbery."
"We're condemning them for being a product of their time," Haymes declared. "Given the fact that the Bible does not explicitly condemn that as sinful, then we ought not explicitly condemn our forefathers, condemn Jonathan Edwards as grave, unrepentant sinners. That is chronological snobbery at its finest."
"Do not condemn our forefathers who may have been treating their slaves biblically," Haymes said. "In fact, it's like two percent of the Americans actually owned slaves. And anyone who actually engaged in real abuse, we condemn that. We condemn treating other image bearers as subhuman. That's evil. That's bad. That's not good. We can condemn that, okay? But we cannot condemn the entire institution of slavery outright; we just cannot do that because the Bible does not do that."
In 2024, Hegseth himself appeared on Haymes' Reformation Red Pill podcast where the two spent nearly six hours discussing "the desperate need for Christians to completely REFORM the way that we approach education."