A Thousand Natural Shocks With Gabe S. Dunn · Gabe Dunn | Diamond MPrint Productions

Bonus Bag: White Christianity's Excuses For Slavery

·20 min·1 clip

Joel Goza explains how the separation of church and state was designed to allow enslavers to save souls while keeping people in bondage.

The bonus bag opens with familiar discomfort. A money-show intro about fear and shame turns into Gabe asking Joel Edward Goza who he is and what he does. Goza answers plainly. He calls himself a writer, an ethics professor at Simmons College of Kentucky, and a non-resident fellow at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University. His lane is race, religion, politics, and economics. Gabe asks the obvious follow-up, which is what a professor of ethics actually does. Goza keeps it dry. At the time, he says, it meant being a writer who needed a job. Then he traces the role back to his first book. The serious turn comes through church and state. Gabe is openly thrown when Goza ties that familiar American principle to slavery instead of clean moral boundaries. Goza puts John Locke near the center of it. His argument is that Locke's split between salvation and property gave enslavers a way to feel religiously covered. Souls went in one box. Bodies, labor, and ownership went in another, protected by politics. That split is where the episode gets sharp. Goza says it let enslavers imagine they were doing Christian duty while still keeping people in bondage. He then sets that beside the Black church. In his account, the Black church does not keep religion sealed off from public power or moral responsibility. King is the clearest example. Goza describes King's politics as coming from religious conviction, pluralism, dignity, and the belief that people deserve self-expression. The Trump connection does not land as a surprise twist. Goza's point is that political excuses have a history, and they did not appear out of nowhere. By the end, the show slides back into banter. Gabe jokes about reparations, Goza pushes back, and the conversation closes with the same messy warmth it had at the start.

As heard by us

A pointed look at how church-state separation could shield enslavers from moral accountability.

White Christianity's defenses of slavery become, in this episode, a way into the uneasy boundary between religion and political power. Joel Edward Goza, a writer and professor of ethics at Simmons College of Kentucky, looks at church-state separation as an arrangement that…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Why you'd press play

You want the church-state story with its polite mask pulled off.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from A Thousand Natural Shocks With Gabe S. Dunn