The Bible, Slavery, and the Theology That Made It Possible
Critics attack the LDS Church for its history with race and the priesthood. They do this while holding a Bible that contains more explicit endorsement of slavery than anything in LDS scripture.
What the Bible Actually Says About Slavery
This is not about what critics think the Bible implies. It is about what the text says, plainly, when read on its own terms.
“Both thy bondmen, and thy bondmaids, which thou shalt have, shall be of the heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondmen and bondmaids. Moreover of the children of the strangers that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and of their families that are with you, which they begat in your land: and they shall be your possession. And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you, to inherit them for a possession; they shall be your bondmen for ever.”
This is not metaphor. This is not indentured service with a defined endpoint. The text authorizes the purchase of human beings from surrounding nations and their permanent inheritance by children as property. It is the God of the Old Testament legislating this arrangement.
Detailed regulations govern Hebrew servitude, including the sale of daughters. If a master gives a male slave a wife, that wife and her children remain the master’s property when the man goes free. A daughter sold into bondage has conditional protections only if the master takes her as a wife or gives her to his son. These are not metaphors.
In the New Testament, the apostles do not dismantle the institution. They address it pastorally — and the instruction runs in one direction:
New Testament — Slaves to Masters
- Ephesians 6:5 — “Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ.”
- Colossians 3:22 — “Servants, obey in all things your masters according to the flesh; not with eyeservice, as menpleasers; but in singleness of heart, fearing God.”
- 1 Timothy 6:1 — “Let as many servants as are under the yoke count their own masters worthy of all honour.”
- 1 Peter 2:18 — “Servants, be subject to your masters with all fear; not only to the good and gentle, but also to the froward.”
Nowhere in the New Testament does an apostle command a master to free his slaves. The Bible does not say slavery is evil. It regulates slavery. That is the text.
The Tu Quoque: Apply the Standard First
Before a Protestant critic attacks LDS racial history, they must answer for their own Bible. The same text they declare to be inerrant, sufficient, and the sole rule of faith explicitly permits owning human beings as heritable property. It instructs slaves to obey masters as they would obey Christ.
If you have a coherent answer for why this is acceptable — if you have a framework for trusting a scripture that legislates human bondage — then give it. State it plainly. Then we can discuss LDS history on precisely the same terms, with precisely the same framework you apply to your own text. That is what intellectual consistency requires.
Using LDS racial history as a weapon while holding Leviticus 25:44–46 as inerrant is not a principled argument. It is a selective one. Selective standards prove nothing — except where the argument was always coming from.
The Positive LDS Case: Progressive Revelation
The Gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that revelation is progressive. God works with people where they are, meeting a covenant people in the conditions of their own time. Scripture is explicit that God permits accommodations to those conditions that are not, in themselves, His eternal ideal. Jesus himself taught this about the Mosaic law on divorce:
“Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. … Moses because of the hardness of your hearts suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it was not so.”
Notice carefully what the Savior does — and does not — say. He does not call Moses a sinner. He does not say Moses taught false doctrine, or that the law of Moses was a moral failure to be confessed. The accommodation was real: divorce was genuinely permitted under the Mosaic order. Yet it was permitted — “suffered” — precisely because of the hardness of the people’s hearts, while “from the beginning it was not so.” God allows His servants to administer His covenant under the conditions of a given era. When the time is right, He restores practice to the original ideal through living revelation. That is not a prophet repenting of error. It is God leading a people forward, line upon line, exactly as He has always done.
The Restoration’s principle of ongoing, living revelation means the Gospel of Jesus Christ carries within it the very capacity Jesus described — the authority to administer the covenant in one era and to restore it to its fulness in another. In 1978, that authority spoke (Official Declaration 2), extending the priesthood to all worthy men. The canon is open. Prophets still speak. The covenant can be advanced to its ideal in a way it cannot for traditions anchored to a fixed and closed text.
“He inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile.”
The Gospel of Jesus Christ has always taught that all are alike unto God. That principle was in the scriptures from the beginning of the Restoration. Just as Moses administered a permitted accommodation while the higher ideal stood from the beginning, the timing by which the priesthood came to all worthy men was the Lord’s to give — and when He gave it through living revelation, the covenant was restored to its fulness. That is exactly how a true church, led by a living God, is meant to work.
The Verdict
The Bible contains more explicit pro-slavery content than anything in LDS canon. Critics who deploy LDS racial history as a weapon while holding an inerrant Bible with Leviticus 25:44–46 in it have not thought this through.
Apply your standard consistently, or put it down. Every tradition must answer for how God has led His people through the conditions of changing eras. The question is whether a tradition has the theological architecture to receive that leading — to administer the covenant under the conditions of one age and, through living revelation, to advance it to its ideal in the next. A Gospel with living prophets and an open canon does. A Gospel anchored to a closed, inerrant text and faith alone does not.