Here is the backstory. Some years ago, while I was still pastoring, I gathered my books and drove 100 miles north to spend a few days in a friend’s camphouse to study and pray. I stopped for lunch at a family-style restaurant in the next town and soon found myself seated across from two older gentlemen in faded overalls. I was trying to read, but the one directly across wanted to talk politics. I said I was from New Orleans and had no idea what Mississippi was doing. He didn’t skip a beat, but asked who we were going to elect as governor. That led to a discussion on a candidate who had been a leader of the Ku Klux Klan. I assured the man he had no chance, that he believed things our people do not hold. “For instance?” he said. I said, “He believes in the superiority of the white race.” “Well, that’s a little hard to argue with,” he said. I laid down my book and said, “I’ll argue with it.” All around us, people of both races were tuned to this discussion.
He wanted to know why it was that through history whenever blacks and whites lived together, the blacks ended up as slaves of the whites. I’d heard that before. I said, “Sir, you’ll be happy to know that didn’t happen often. But if it did, it speaks more to the inferiority of the whites, that they would make slaves of their neighbors.” He didn’t miss a beat. “That brings up the matter of slavery. I see you have a Bible there.” Yes? “You know there is nothing in the Bible against slavery.” I said, “Are you serious?” He said, “Give me one verse in all the Bible that says slavery is wrong.”