Confederate Theology: Robert Lewis Dabney and the Theological Afterlife of Slavery

Abstract

AbstractIn the wake of social movements to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces and expose suppressed legacies of white supremacy in the United States, this article uncovers an influential and overtly white supremacist tradition of US Christian theology through a case study of the Reformed theologian Robert Lewis Dabney (1820‐1898). Regarded by his contemporaries as one of the most prolific theological teachers and scholars of his time, Dabney was also an unrepentant defender of racialized chattel slavery and white supremacy. He was also a leading contributor to Lost Cause revisionism after the Civil War. This reveals a troubling paradox: one of the leading theologians in the United States during the nineteenth century was also one of that century's most committed white supremacists. While Dabney's theological defense of a patriarchal, white supremacist society has too often been either conveniently forgotten or uncritically excused by later generations, this article offers a theological reckoning with Dabney's project in order to diagnose its ramifications for contemporary theology and articulate a constructive response.