The edited slave Bible is real evidence, and it proves something specific. Some people who used Christianity to defend slavery could not use the whole Bible to do it. They had to cut it down first. That tells you a lot about their version of the faith. It does not tell you everything about Christianity, and it does not settle every question a skeptic might raise. This guide treats the slave Bible as a piece of evidence and asks what it can carry and what it cannot.
You can work through it alone in about an hour with a Bible and a notebook, or over one group session. Each section asks you to look at a source before you draw a conclusion. The aim is a short, honest statement you could defend to someone who says Christianity was simply the slaveholders’ tool.
The claim under examination
The skeptic’s claim usually runs like this. Christianity arrived in Black families through enslavers. Enslavers used the Bible to justify owning people. So the faith belongs to them, and holding onto it means holding onto their story.
Part of that claim is true, and an honest investigation starts by saying so. In his conversation with Lisa Fields on the Jude 3 Project podcast, Dr. JP Foster, a pastor at Faithful Central Bible Church, does not soften it. Dr. JP Foster says plainly that “Christianity was weaponized to dehumanize black people.” He treats this as the opening fact, not a concession made under pressure.
So the real question is narrower. Granting the abuse, does the evidence show that the abuse came from the faith itself, or from something done to it? The slave Bible is one place to test that.
Before you read on: write down, in one sentence, what you currently believe the slave Bible shows. You will come back to it at the end.
What the witness actually says
Dr. Foster describes seeing the slave Bible on display at what he calls the Bible Museum. He compares its size to the book on the table in front of him: “I mean, the slave Bible was like a pamphlet, like a church fan.” Then he gives figures for what was removed:
And 90% of the Old Testament was stripped from it, 90%, 40 to 50% of the New Testaments missing.
He states its purpose directly. In his reading, it was made to subjugate and dehumanize Black people in order to justify slavery.
Read his testimony the way an investigator reads any testimony. Three things stand out.
- He is an eyewitness to the object. He saw it himself.
- The percentages are his figures, given in conversation. Later in the same interview he says 40 percent of the New was gone, so his own numbers vary slightly. That is normal in speech, but it means the exact percentages should be checked against a museum or library description before you repeat them.
- The transcript does not list which passages were removed. Many retellings say the Exodus story was cut. He connects Exodus to freedom, as you will see below, but in this conversation he does not itemize the deletions.
None of this weakens the main point. It tells you which parts are firm and which need confirming. The existence of a heavily cut Bible prepared for enslaved people is the firm part. The precise figures and the exact list of cuts are what you verify before you cite them.
Dr. Foster also makes a small move that is easy to miss. Midway through an answer, he starts to say that the same Bible was used against Black people, then stops and corrects himself: “no, it wasn’t the same Bible.” That self-correction is the center of this guide. If the book that served slavery had to be a different book, then the slaveholders’ religion and the Bible’s religion are not simply identical.
Test one: what the abusers did not need to cut
A careful investigator now looks for evidence that cuts the other way. If cutting the Bible were the only way slavery could be defended, the case would be simple. His own testimony shows it is not simple.
Dr. Foster names two passages that were kept and misused. The first is the so-called curse of Ham, used to claim that Black Africans were destined for servitude from generation to generation. His response is short: “Ham wasn’t even cursed.” The second is Acts 17, which he says was used to justify segregation and redlining, on the idea that God marked out boundaries between peoples.
Practice: read the passages yourself. Open to Genesis 9:20-27 and read the whole scene, not one line.
- Who sins in the story? Who speaks the curse? Who is named as cursed?
- Now look at the key line. Genesis 9:25 reads: “And he said, Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants shall he be unto his brethren.” Is Ham named in that verse?
- Is anything in the passage about skin color, Africa, or all of Ham’s descendants for all time?
Then read Acts 17:22-31, Paul’s speech in Athens. Find verse 26: “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.”
- What claim does the verse make before it mentions any boundaries?
- Is Paul in this speech arguing that peoples should be kept apart, or that one God made them all and calls all of them to repent?
Here is the qualification this test forces. Slavery’s defenders did not only remove texts. They also misread texts that remained in every Bible. So the whole Bible, sitting on a shelf, does not automatically protect anyone. It had to be read with care, in context. Dr. Foster’s point about these verses is not that they were missing. It is that they were twisted. His exasperated question about the Acts 17 reading, “Have you read the Bible?”, is an argument from context: the surrounding text does not support the conclusion drawn from it.
Test two: what the whole book did in other hands
If a cut-down Bible served slavery, what happened when enslaved people read the full one? Dr. Foster points to Nat Turner. “When Nat Turner got a hold of the whole Bible, Nat Turner turned up.” He describes Turner reading the book of Moses: “He’s reading Exodus, and he says, wait a minute.” He then voices Turner’s reasoning about the command to let God’s people go: “wait a minute, you mean God demands my freedom?”
Weigh this the way you weighed the percentages. Dr. Foster is a pastor summarizing a historical figure’s experience, not quoting Turner’s own writing. The general link he draws, that full access to Scripture and especially Exodus fed a demand for freedom, is his historical argument. Treat it as an argument worth checking, not as a recorded inner monologue.
Now read the text he has in mind. Read Exodus 3:7-10 slowly. Verse 7 says: “And the LORD said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows.” Then read Exodus 5:1: “And afterward Moses and Aaron went in, and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.”
- List every verb God is the subject of in Exodus 3:7-10. What does God see, hear, know and do?
- Who is the oppressor in the story, and whose side is God on?
- If you were editing a Bible for people you meant to keep enslaved, what would make this passage a problem for you?
A note on reading responsibly: Exodus is the story of Israel’s deliverance, not a direct statement about American slavery. Enslaved readers who heard their own situation in it were making an application, and a natural one, because the text shows what kind of God acts here. Keep the two steps distinct. First, what the passage says about God and Israel. Second, what that reveals about how God regards oppression.
What the evidence establishes, and what it leaves open
Put the pieces side by side.
The evidence supports these conclusions. A Bible was produced for enslaved people with large portions removed, according to an eyewitness who saw it. The people who made it saw the full text as a risk. Defenders of slavery also misread passages that were never cut, and those passages, read in context, do not say what they were used to say. When enslaved people read the whole Bible, some of them heard in it a God who demands freedom.
Dr. Foster draws a further conclusion from all this about the people who did the harm: “what was done in Christ’s name wasn’t Christ.” He grounds it in their method. In his words, the distortions of Scripture required that “they had to dehumanize us and strip us from the image of God in order to treat us and dehumanize us the way that they did.” The abuse needed a lie about human beings that the Bible itself contradicts.
The evidence leaves some things open. The slave Bible alone does not show how widely such editions circulated or how many enslaved people encountered one. It does not by itself prove that Christianity is true. It shows that the slaveholders’ version was not the whole faith. It does not answer the separate historical claim that Christianity was African before it was European. He makes that case elsewhere in the conversation, pointing to Augustine, Tertullian and Athanasius in North Africa, and that is a different line of evidence with its own sources to check.
Lisa Fields names why this discipline matters: “And it’s easy to be manipulated when you aren’t armed with truth.” Her guest makes the same warning about short video clips. A thirty-second clip about the slave Bible can be accurate and still leave out half the evidence. Carrying the whole trail is what keeps you from being moved by either side’s shortcut.
For discussion
- Dr. Foster corrects himself and says it was not the same Bible. How much weight can that distinction carry? Where might a skeptic push back on it?
- Genesis 9 and Acts 17 were never cut, yet they were used to defend slavery and segregation. What does that tell you about the difference between having the Bible and reading it well?
- Which of Dr. Foster’s claims in this conversation would you want to verify before repeating, and where would you look?
- Why might a person reasonably feel that the misuse is the more important fact, even after hearing this evidence? What would you need to understand about that person before answering?
- Exodus was about Israel, yet enslaved readers found their own hope in it. Was that a faithful reading, a stretch, or something in between? Explain your reasoning from the text.
- Compare what you wrote at the start with what you think now. What changed, and which piece of evidence changed it?
If you are leading a group: some people in the room may carry real family pain around this history. Let the opening acknowledgment of harm stand on its own for a moment before moving to the tests. Keep the discussion on the evidence rather than on who can produce the sharpest comeback, and let people disagree about question five without forcing a single answer.
Your evidence statement
Close by writing what you could responsibly say to a skeptic. Use two sentences. The first should state what the slave Bible proves. The second should state what it does not prove, or what further evidence you would point to. Then check your two sentences against three tests: Did you admit the harm? Did you claim only what the source supports? Did you mark the figures you still need to verify?
If your statement passes all three, you can say it calmly to anyone, because you are not asking them to trust your conclusion. You are showing them the trail.