By Paul Ham
According to a report by an independent oversight committee released in March 2024, the Church of England should pay £1bn in reparations – 10 times the previously set amount – to the descendants of slavery.
The report was the start of a “multi-generational response to the appalling evil of transatlantic chattel enslavement”, said Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the spiritual leader of the global Anglican Communion of about 85 million Christians.
His words summon the shocking spectacle of the 17th and 18th centuries, when the Church of England owned vast plantations in the Caribbean, chiefly in Barbados, employing thousands of slaves. Slavery was thought to be entirely consistent with the Christian message of bringing the Gospel to the “savages”. The Christian leaders even branded “their” slaves “SPG” – the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
“Cursed be Canaan”
The Anglican Church is not alone: all mainstream Christian denominations were deeply involved in the slave trade, as were the main branches of Islam.
How could this be possible? How had religions supposedly dedicated to propagating the word of a compassionate and loving God become so intricately involved in this “appalling evil”? The answer is rooted in a grotesque misuse of the very words of the Bible. Of the many ways that Christians have invoked the Bible to justify their actions, none has exceeded in cruelty and wilful ignorance their appropriation of the “Curse of Ham” to justify slavery.
Ham (no relation!) was the youngest son of the Biblical patriarch Noah. When Ham saw his father drunk and naked, Noah felt so humiliated that he put a curse on Ham’s son, Canaan, condemning his descendants to perpetual slavery. Here is the moment, as told in Genesis 9:24-25 (New King James Version):
“So Noah awoke from his wine, and knew what his younger son [Ham] had done unto him. Then he said: ‘Cursed be Canaan. A servant of servants he shall be to his brethren’.”
The making of a ‘slave race’
Since the 15th century, religious leaders have cited the passage as the justification for the enslavement of all African people. For almost 500 years, priests taught their flocks that a Hebrew prophet had condemned millions of Africans to slavery because they were descended from Ham’s son Canaan. The curse of Ham thus formed the core religious justification for the trans-Atlantic slave trade. The curse of Ham entered Islamic thought in the 7th century, as a result of the influence of Christianity, and medieval Muslim scholars drew on Noah’s curse in their work, as the historian David M. Goldenberg has shown. The Koran, however, makes no mention of the curse and Muhummad’s Farewell Address rejects the superiority of white people over black people.
According to this reading of Genesis, God had not only mandated slavery, he had also predestined black people as a “slave race”. In fact, some Christian leaders argued that it was in the Africans’ interests to be enslaved, because their captivity would hasten their conversion, purifying and redeeming their souls in readiness for Judgement Day.
By manacling and herding millions of Africans onto ships bound for the colonies, slave traders and their enabling church leaders and governments had persuaded themselves that they were guiding the “Negroes” out of darkness and into salvation.
The historian Katie Cannon described the process another way:
“Drunk with power and driven by grand delusions, government officials and officers of slave-trading companies… succumbed to the lies and manipulations that their soul salvation depended on the ceaseless replication of systemic violence.”
The justification for African slavery in America
The first written use of the Curse of Ham to justify slavery appeared in the 15th century, when Gomes Eanes de Zurara, a Portuguese historian, wrote that the enchained Africans he’d seen were in such a wretched state “because of the curse which, after the Deluge, Noah laid upon [Ham]… that his race should be subject to all the other races of the world”.
In 1627, an English author and defender of the slave trade wrote:
“This curse to be a servant was laid, first upon a disobedient sonne Cham [Ham], and wee see to this day, that the Moores, Chams posteritie, are sold like slaves yet.”
In the American colonies the Curse of Ham served as the ideological justification for African slavery. The Puritan colonisers of the New World bought slaves in large numbers to turn Providence, Rhode Island, into a Christian “city on a hill”. All were deemed the progeny of Canaan.
The moral obscenity of slavery was the root cause of the American Civil War (1861–1865). Both sides enrolled God’s authority in their cause. In the south this involved a literal reading of the Curse of Ham. Sulphuric southern preachers thundered that Noah’s condemnation of Canaan had condemned all Africans to slavery. An “almost universal opinion in the Christian world” held that “the sufferings and the slavery of the Negro race were the consequence of the curse of Noah”, asserted Alexander Crummell (1819–1898), an African-American minister and Cambridge-educated academic, in 1862.
Benjamin M. Palmer (1818–1902), pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in New Orleans and Mississippi’s pre-eminent clergyman during the Civil War, raged in sermon after sermon that Noah’s curse was a prophetic blueprint of the destinies of the “white”, “black” and “red” races. While the white descendants of Shem and Japhet (Noah’s elder sons) would flourish and succeed, Palmer asserted that “[u]pon Ham was pronounced the doom of perpetual servitude…”.
An important reference in the Civil War
In the opening months of the Civil War, bigotry and rank superstition blanketed the south with a Biblical defence of slavery. Southern Catholics also eagerly cited the curse as a validation of slavery. On 21 August 1861, Bishop Augustus Marie Martin of Natchitoches, Louisiana, declared in a pastoral letter, “On the occasion of the war of southern independence”, that slavery was “the manifest will of God”, and that all Catholics must snatch “from the barbarity of their ferocious customs thousands of children of the race of Canaan”, the accursed progeny of Ham.
All this was Biblical balm to slave traders and owners who feared for the salvation of their souls. The religious justification of slavery erased those concerns.
Setting aside the theologians’ misuse of Genesis, even on its own terms the Curse of Ham made a vague and unpersuasive case for slavery. Nowhere in Genesis is there a curse on Africans or black-skinned people.
If slave traders needed an explicit Biblical endorsement of slavery, they might have turned to the New Testament, where we find Saint Peter telling slaves to “be submissive to your masters with all fear, not only to the good and gentle, but also to the harsh”. Or Saint Paul, who urged slaves to “be obedient to those who are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling”.
Come abolitionism
Abolitionists were not silent in the face of this grotesque rendering of Christendom’s most sacred text. In a 5 July 1852 speech, Frederick Douglass, the great anti-slavery activist and politician who had himself escaped his “owner”, delivered this response to those who peddled the Curse of Ham from their pulpits:
“[The] church of this country is not only indifferent to the wrongs of the slave, it actually takes sides with the oppressors. It has made itself the bulwark of American slavery, and the shield of American slave-hunters… They have taught that man may, properly, be a slave; that the relation of master and slave is ordained of God…”
And all based on a misinterpretation of Genesis 9:24-25 by the pro-slavery “Divines”, who thus transformed their religion into an engine of tyranny and barbarous cruelty. It was a sham and a lie, and anything but what Christianity was held to stand for.
Paul Ham is a Lecturer in narrative history at the Paris Institute of Political Studies known as Sciences Po.
The Conversation arose out of deep-seated concerns for the fading quality of our public discourse and recognition of the vital role that academic experts could play in the public arena. Information has always been essential to democracy. It’s a societal good, like clean water. But many now find it difficult to put their trust in the media and experts who have spent years researching a topic. Instead, they listen to those who have the loudest voices. Those uninformed views are amplified by social media networks that reward those who spark outrage instead of insight or thoughtful discussion. The Conversation seeks to be part of the solution to this problem, to raise up the voices of true experts and to make their knowledge available to everyone. The Conversation publishes nightly at 9 p.m. on FlaglerLive.
Pogo says
@Thanks to Paul Ham (and FL for putting this forward)
Mr. Ham, illuminating. Your place on a Banned in Florida List must not be far off. Your other published work, IMO, in the context of current events, merits earnest attention too:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/238874.Paul_Ham
JUDITH A SWEENEY says
What a lovely read to wake up to.
Deborah Coffey says
Good, enlightening work, Mr. Ham. Apparently, we still have millions of “Christians” justifying “the curse.” Their latest moves against DEI, voter suppression and affirmative action show they yearn for a return to slavery and White supremacy. But, we doubt their motive is Biblical…it’s money…and the eye of that needle is stuffed with them, a million times the size of a camel.
Sam says
Voter suppression? You mean making people provide proof of their right to vote. Please tell everyone how suppressed and mis treated you are. Must be so damn difficult.
Deborah Coffey says
That’s what you think…ID’s are the problem? Please get educated immediately!
Laurel says
“…church leaders and governments had persuaded themselves that they were guiding the “Negroes” out of darkness and into salvation.” “How conveeeeeeeeenient!” as the church lady would say.
That said, reparations is ridiculous. The only time it makes sense is in situations like the Ocoee massacre. The direct descendants of the people killed, and property stolen, should get reparations. As for the horrible acts of slavery, anywhere in the world, how does one determine who gets the reparations? By the color of their skin? Some Asians and Australians are dark skinned. If determined African by genetics, do we pay by percentage, or know whether their ancestors were actually enslaved? The problem here is that many African descendants do not have the paperwork that proves their lineage. Being stolen doesn’t come with birth certificates. Reparations will not stop bigotry, so there is no “repair.”
Bill C says
@Laurel Your logic is a good example of a “reverse discrimination” argument that is meant to keep “them” from taking from “us”. You conclude “Reparations will not stop bigotry, so there is no “repair”. Reparations were never meant to stop bigotry but to make people whole after suffering unjust pain and losses.
That said, on February 20, 2024, the Oklahoma Supreme Court granted 109-year-old survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, Lessie Benningfield ‘Mother’ Randle and Viola Ford “Mother” Fletcher, the chance to orally present their case in the ongoing Public Nuisance lawsuit, after it was dismissed by an Oklahoma District Court. The “Public Nuisance” was the destruction of Greenwood (Black Wall Street) and wholesale murder in the streets of its residents.
Bill C says
PS Anyone interested in Viola Ford Fletcher’s life story can read “Don’t Let Them Bury My Story” available in the Palm Coast Library.
Laurel says
Bill C.: If you reread what I wrote, you’ll see that I stated that reparations only make sense in cases like Ocoee, FL, where the damage can be traced. There was no justice there, and the descendants were deprived of livelihood and property.
As for decedents of slaves, please, do tell, how to decide who gets what? President Obama was not a descendant of slaves so the color of skin is out. Would you pick just the percentage of African DNA? So what, 56% reparations? 37% reparations? 74% reparations?
It’s very hard to trace a person’s record back to specific slaves as the records were not kept during that time period. People were documented by “child,” “boy” or “girl age 3.” or a single, assigned name. So, how do you determine ancestry?
The statement of “reverse discrimination” does not apply to what I wrote. It certainly did not mean to take from some to give to others. That was a big jump to an unfair conclusion. Also, just how does reparations make descendants “whole?” If you were to actually be able to trace a significant number of actual descendants of slavery, it was their ancestors who suffered the injustice of slavery. So you believe money makes descendants psychologically “whole?”l
Bill C says
Reparations were never mentioned anywhere in the article so why go on a screed against them?
Bill C says
PS Your statement was “reparations is ridiculous”. No matter how hard you try to hide behind the veil of neutrality, your stance is clear.
Justbob says
Slavery, rape, incest, bestiality, vengeful violence, calling for the death of homosexuals… Biblical content, the holy word of a Christian deity, still available to school kids.
Ban the gop says
No question bible should be banned in schools, we shouldn’t indoctrinate kids and the author(king James) was a known bisexual lol. Ms Chong already ripped down the safe space sign for kids to help ramp up the hate and discrimination in Flagler schools. Cons figured out how to take money from public school and direct to private school cause its easier to abuse kids and spread misinformation and stupid people will undoubtably vote republicon against their own self interests. So quite the pickle. Go protest if you dont mind going to jail and receiving a criminal record that will follow you around for life. Welcome to Florida, you are not welcome here (unless your wealthy and white).
Steven Neale Gosney says
Hmmm… How about recognizing the slavery has existed throughout human history. It was Christianity that provided the moral spur to ban it. Lincoln infused his anti-slavery arguments with Biblical references. Same goes with segregation. Abolitionists were Christians. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. used Christian morality to propel the Civil Rights era along.
Pierre Tristam says
All true Steven, but long before it found the moral recesses to abolish it, with one final orgy of bloodletting that nearly ended this country and continues to grind at its foundations with the rust of lost-cause lust, European Christianity since before Columbus (thanks to the rapacity of Venetians, Genoans, Pisans) turbocharged the slave trade and the institution as it had never been before, and then came the north Europeans, and the middle passage, and the genocides north and south (let’s not forget the eradication of cultures in central and South America) all in the name of white supremacist Christianity: there had never been a force as evil on earth. Not even the Mongols, who at least massacred without heed of creed and flamed out. Catholic Christianity (my very own) until Nazism and communism was unsurpassed in laying waste by the millions and retarding world progress by a millennium. Slavery is a mere example among many. The inquisition, after all, was only abolished a few generations ago. (Excuse me while I take this call from Bartolomé de las Casas.)