There are moments in history when silence is merely neglect, and there are moments when silence becomes complicity. The subject of this essay belongs squarely to the latter. It concerns a contradiction so normalized within American Christianity that questioning it often triggers defensiveness rather than reflection. Seminaries teach these men. Churches quote them. Universities name buildings after them. Publishers keep their works in print. Politicians invoke their theological descendants. And all the while, the same institutions loudly proclaim fidelity to Jesus Christ, devotion to Scripture, and moral clarity on the world stage.¹

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The contradiction is this. American Christian institutions continue to celebrate, memorialize, and canonize historical men who openly expressed hatred toward Jews, who demeaned Black people, who used the Bible to defend chattel slavery, and who preached racial hierarchy as divine order. These men are called “giants of the faith,” “reformers,” “revivalists,” and “men of God.” Their words are treated as authoritative. Their writings are required reading. Their names adorn buildings, seminaries, lecture halls, and holidays.²

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And yet the same institutions that exalt these men insist they are champions of Jewish protection, defenders of Israel, and opponents of racial hatred. They quote Scripture about loving God’s chosen people while revering theologians who wrote about burning synagogues. They proclaim the sanctity of life while honoring preachers who defended the buying and selling of Black human beings. They invoke biblical morality while ignoring the apostle John’s blunt warning that “whoever hates his brother is a murderer” in 1 John 3:15.³

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This essay is written in grief, not in glee. It is written with a heavy conscience and a troubled spirit. It is written as a clarion call and an urgent wake up call to the dominant wing of American evangelicalism, to examine not only what it claims to believe, but who it chooses to hallow as moral authorities. Because the men we canonize reveal the values we protect.

 

Canonization Without Accountability

Christian seminaries and universities often defend their reverence for historical theologians by appealing to context. We are told to separate “the man from the message,” to excuse bigotry as a product of the times, to extract theology from hatred as though hatred were an incidental footnote rather than a defining feature of the work. This logic would be unthinkable in other domains. No university would canonize a scientist whose published work advocated genocide and then ask students to ignore that portion as unfortunate context. Yet Christian institutions do this routinely.⁴

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The issue is not whether historical figures were imperfect. No serious critic expects moral purity from anyone born before the twenty first century. The issue is whether open hatred, biblical justification of violence, and theological defenses of enslavement are treated as disqualifying moral failures or as inconvenient quirks. In American Christianity, they have been treated as the latter.

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Martin Luther: The Reformer Who Called for Synagogues to Burn

Martin Luther occupies a near mythic status in Protestant Christianity. He is taught as the courageous monk who challenged corruption, recovered justification by faith, and translated the Bible into the vernacular. What is often minimized, footnoted, or excused is that Luther also authored some of the most vicious antisemitic writings in Christian history.⁵

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In 1543, near the end of his life, Luther published On the Jews and Their Lies. This was not a marginal pamphlet. It was a sustained theological assault on Jewish people, written with fury and precision. In it, Luther described Jews as “venomous beasts” and “devils incarnate.” He argued that synagogues should be burned, Jewish homes destroyed, rabbis forbidden to teach, and Jewish writings confiscated. One passage reads, “First, their synagogues should be set on fire… Secondly, their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed… Thirdly, they should be deprived of their prayer books and Talmuds.”⁶

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These were not metaphorical musings. They were policy prescriptions, framed as Christian duty. Luther believed that violence and repression were appropriate responses to Jewish refusal to convert. In On the Ineffable Name and on the Lineage of Christ, also published in 1543, he doubled down, portraying Jews as blasphemers and liars who deserved divine and human punishment. In Against the Sabbatarians from 1538, he attacked Jewish converts who continued observing Sabbath practices, calling them deceivers and threats to Christian society.⁷

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The historical consequences of these writings are not speculative. German antisemites cited Luther directly for centuries. Nazi propagandists quoted him approvingly. On Kristallnacht in 1938, Luther’s birthday was commemorated in Germany as synagogues burned. Scholars such as Heiko Oberman and Thomas Kaufmann have documented the continuity between Luther’s rhetoric and later German antisemitism.⁸

It is true that Luther did not write theological defenses of African slavery. That historical development postdated his era. But this does not absolve him. The question is not whether he hated every group equally. The question is why Christian institutions continue to hallow a man who explicitly called for the annihilation of Jewish religious life, while simultaneously claiming moral outrage over antisemitism.

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John Calvin: Supersession Without Blood, But Not Without Harm

John Calvin is often presented as the sober, systematic counterpoint to Luther’s volatility. His Institutes of the Christian Religion is treated as a masterpiece of theological clarity. His biblical commentaries remain staples in seminaries. Unlike Luther, Calvin did not call for violence against Jews. He did not advocate pogroms or book burnings. Yet his theology played a crucial role in spiritually delegitimizing Jewish people.⁹

In his commentaries on Romans and Daniel, Calvin repeatedly framed Jews as a people rejected by God for their unbelief, which was completely unscriptural. There is no passage or verse throughout the entire Holy Bible that supports such a thought. He advanced what later came to be called replacement theology, the idea that the Church had supplanted Israel as God’s chosen people. While Calvin rejected crude racial hatred, his theological framework rendered Jewish covenantal identity obsolete and spiritually bankrupt.¹⁰

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In the Institutes, Calvin described Jewish adherence to the law as stubborn blindness. He portrayed Jewish resistance to Christian claims as willful rebellion against divine truth. This theological posture did not call for violence, but it did lay groundwork for contempt. Supersessionism may appear bloodless on the page, but in history it has often functioned as moral permission for marginalization.¹¹

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On slavery, Calvin accepted it as a lawful social institution. He did not mount a theological campaign against enslavement. While he did not explicitly defend racialized African slavery, his acceptance of slavery as morally permissible within Christian society was later seized upon by Calvinist theologians in the Americas to justify chattel slavery. Sermons, catechisms, and slave codes in colonial America frequently cited Calvinist principles to defend the ownership of Black bodies.¹²

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The question for modern Christian institutions is not whether Calvin personally owned enslaved people or preached racial hatred. The question is why his works are canonized without sustained acknowledgment of how his theological frameworks were weaponized against both Jews and Black people, and why those consequences are treated as unfortunate misuses rather than predictable outcomes.

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Jonathan Edwards: America’s Theologian of Enslavement

Jonathan Edwards occupies a uniquely revered place in American evangelical history. He is celebrated as the intellectual architect of the Great Awakening, the author of Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God, and a profound metaphysician. His writings are often praised for their depth, rigor, and spiritual insight. What is less emphasized is that Edwards owned enslaved Africans and defended slavery as compatible with Christianity.¹³

In his Miscellanies, Edwards discussed slavery not as a moral abomination but as a lawful institution. He distinguished between what he called “lawful” and “abusive” slavery, arguing that owning human beings could be morally acceptable if conducted with restraint. This distinction is morally grotesque. It assumes that the buying, selling, and coercive ownership of another human being can be sanctified by benevolence.¹⁴

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Edwards wrote that Africans were “more like beasts than humans” in certain respects, echoing racial hierarchies common among colonial elites. In The Nature of True Virtue, his moral philosophy emphasized order, hierarchy, and submission to divine will in ways that later theologians used to justify racial domination. His defense of slavery was not incidental. It was integrated into his worldview.¹⁵

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The fact that Edwards’ descendants later became abolitionists is often cited as mitigation. It should not be. Edwards’ own words were used by pro slavery theologians for generations. Southern preachers quoted him to argue that Christianity and chattel slavery were compatible. Seminaries in the antebellum South treated his writings as authoritative.¹⁶ And yet, Edwards is still celebrated as America’s greatest theologian. His name adorns lecture halls. His works are canonized. His ownership of enslaved people is acknowledged, if at all, as a regrettable flaw rather than a theological indictment.

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Billy Sunday: Revivalism in the Age of Jim Crow

Billy Sunday represents a different but no less troubling chapter in American Christian history. Unlike Luther, Calvin, or Edwards, Sunday was not a systematic theologian. He was an evangelist, a revivalist, a master of performance. His sermons were delivered extemporaneously, filled with colloquial language, theatrical gestures, and emotional appeals.¹⁷ Surviving transcripts and newspaper reports of sermons such as Get on the Water Wagon, The Menace of Rum, and Burning the Chaff reveal a preacher deeply aligned with the racial norms of Jim Crow America. Sunday regularly employed racist stereotypes in his preaching. He spoke of Black people in ways that reinforced segregation, moral inferiority, and social hierarchy. While he did not write a formal theological defense of slavery, his sermons functioned as theological reinforcement of white supremacy.¹⁸

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Sunday preached to segregated audiences. He did not challenge racial injustice. He framed social order in ways that affirmed white dominance. His revivalism provided religious cover for a society that lynched Black men, enforced segregation, and excluded Black people from full citizenship.¹⁹ Yet Billy Sunday is still honored in evangelical memory. He is celebrated as a great soul winner, a patriot, a moral crusader. His alignment with racist norms is rarely treated as disqualifying. Instead, it is excused as cultural context.

 

The Selective Morality of American Christianity

At this point, the pattern should be unmistakable. American Christian institutions have consistently chosen to celebrate men whose theology aligned with power, hierarchy, and exclusion, even when that theology involved open hatred or moral violence. The same institutions that quote Scripture about loving God’s chosen people revere theologians who wrote about destroying Jewish synagogues. The same churches that speak passionately about racial reconciliation elevate preachers who defended slavery or reinforced segregation.²⁰

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This selective morality raises urgent questions.

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• Why do Christian universities name buildings after men who despised Jews, while claiming to oppose antisemitism?

 

• Why do seminaries require students to read theologians who defended chattel slavery?

 

• Why do pastors quote Jonathan Edwards with reverence while ignoring the Black bodies he owned? ²¹

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• Why do political movements that identify as Christian pledge unconditional support to Israel while celebrating Christian thinkers who explicitly called for Jewish annihilation?

 

What kind of moral reasoning allows this contradiction to persist without crisis?²²

 

The Bible Verses That Get Ignored

The irony is that the same Bible used to defend these men also condemns them. The apostle John’s statement in 1 John 3:15 could not be clearer: “Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer.” There is no theological footnote that exempts reformers, theologians, or revivalists. Hatred is not sanctified by eloquence.²³

Revelation 1:15 describes the risen Christ as having feet “like burnished bronze, as if refined in a furnace.” Metallurgical knowledge tells us that bronze subjected to intense heat darkens significantly. The image presented is not of pale skin, but of very dark, burnished metal. This vision undermines centuries of whitewashed iconography that portrays Jesus as European.²⁴ 

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And yet American Christianity routinely ignores this imagery while pledging allegiance to political figures who speak with open contempt toward African Americans and Africans. The alignment between modern political rhetoric and the racial hierarchies preached by Edwards and Sunday is not coincidental. It is inherited.²⁵

 

A Call to Repentance, Not Revisionism

This essay is not a call to erase history. It is a call to tell the truth about it. It is a call to stop canonizing men whose hatred would disqualify them if expressed today just as it would have in the days of the Apostles. It is a call for seminaries, churches, universities, publishers, politicians, and political movements that identify as Christian to examine why they continue to hallow figures whose words and deeds stand in direct contradiction to the Gospel they claim to proclaim.²⁶

 

Since the literal definition of the term repentance is “a change of mind," then in regard to these men and their contributions to Christianity, both their memorials and contributions should be discarded and Christian institutions should start banning them from syllabi. It means telling the truth about their open, unashamed, and unrepentant hatred, which according to James 3:10-12 and 15-18, disqualifies their contributions altogether. For according to the Apostle James, each one of these men's contributions were purely demonic at their very roots. For we see that the Apostle clearly stated in verses 15-18, 

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¹⁵ This wisdom does not descend from above, but is earthly, sensual, demonic. ¹⁶ For where envy and self-seeking exist, confusion and every evil thing are there. ¹⁷ But the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality and without hypocrisy. ¹⁸ Now the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

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Neither these men nor their theology were without partiality and hypocrisy. They were not sowing peace and they were not trying to make peace. Their fruit was rotten and diseased, unfit for spiritual consumption and nourishment. They were teaching love for some people while teaching hatred for other people at the same time. That is neither sowing nor making peace. The term peace used here in James 3:18 is translated from the Greek word εἰρήνη (eirēnē), which means "one, oneness, peace between individuals, harmony, concord." But these men were preaching and advocating the very opposite of that. They were sowing division and hatred against Jews*, who were the original chosen people of God, and against Black people, who literally had the same skin color as the Savior himself.

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Repentance does not mean being sorry, feeling embarrassed or ashamed, but it is a decisive internal shift and a deliberate reorienting of how you think, judge, and understand truth. It means acknowledging that Calvin's theology was used to wound and therefore discarding it. It means refusing to sanctify Edwards, a slave owner, as a moral hero. It means naming Billy Sunday's alignment with racist norms as sin, not context. 

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Until American Christianity is willing to confront this legacy honestly, its proclamations of justice, peace, and moral clarity will ring hollow. The men we canonize shape the souls we form. And a faith that refuses to reckon with its own apostles of hatred cannot credibly claim to follow the Prince of Peace. So, the question before American Christianity is not whether these men were influential. The question is why their hatred has been treated as acceptable collateral. The answer to that question will determine whether the canon of American Christianity will continue to enshrine hatred and injustice in God’s name.

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References

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How This Essay Was Researched​

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