Stacy M. Brown Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent
In Donald Trump’s America, they are no longer whispering their nostalgia for slavery—they are preaching it from the pulpit. Far-right Christian Nationalist Joshua Haymes, a self-proclaimed prophet of white supremacy, recently declared in a viral video that slavery “is not inherently evil,” demanding that every Christian “affirm and defend” the right to own another human being. His words echo the theology of the lash—a perverse gospel that once baptized Black suffering in the name of God.
Haymes, who co-hosts a podcast with Pastor Brooks Potteiger of the Pilgrim Hill Reformed Fellowship near Nashville, is not an internet outlier. The church aligns with Douglas Wilson, widely regarded as a father of modern Christian Nationalism, and counts high-profile conservatives like Pete Hegseth among its followers. Their ideology—framed as “biblically justified” domination—is spreading through churches, podcasts, and political circles, forming the moral scaffolding of a new white Christian theocracy.
“The institution of slavery is not inherently evil,” Haymes insisted. “It is not inherently evil to own another human being.” He urged believers to defend the Founding Fathers, claiming they were not “living in grave sin” for enslaving people. This, he said, was “chronological snobbery.” Such rhetoric does not exist in isolation—it reverberates in the corridors of power.
Under Trump’s direction, the federal government has begun censoring Historical Truth. The National Park Service and the Smithsonian have reportedly been ordered to remove exhibits that “disparage” the Founding Fathers by mentioning slavery—including the famous photograph of a formerly enslaved man’s scourged back. At Fort Pulaski in Georgia, officials were told to strip away the image that revealed the cruelty of the Confederacy. “This country cannot be WOKE,” Trump said. Translation: America cannot be honest.
At historic sites like the President’s House in Philadelphia—where George Washington enslaved nine men and women and rotated them out of state to skirt Pennsylvania’s Emancipation Law—Trump’s order demands that panels describing these acts as “profoundly disturbing” be revised or removed. “There’s good and bad, just like life itself,” said Attorney Michelle Flamer, who helped create the original exhibit. “This is truth; it’s American History.”
Yet Trump’s version of America wants only the “good”—a fantasy built on denial. Historian Michael Coard, who helped memorialize the enslaved at the President’s House, called the policy “a campaign of amnesia.” By scrubbing the record, Trump’s government seeks to blind future generations to the crimes that built this nation.
Across the far-right ecosystem, white Christian Nationalists like Haymes are providing moral cover for tyranny. Their sermons and social media posts sanctify racism, misogyny, and authoritarianism as divine will. In online chats, young Republican Activists have been caught using racial slurs and joking about gas chambers—language that echoes the darkest chapters of history.
When a president orders museums to hide the truth, when followers call slavery “biblical,” and when extremists glorify hate, this is not coincidence—it is coordination. It is a cultural counter revolution against truth, equality, and the very idea of freedom for Black people.
But history refuses to die. The scars remain, as do the names—Oney Judge, Hercules, and countless others who defied bondage even when the nation’s founders were their masters. Their courage endures as testimony and warning.
Trump and his apostles of whiteness may try to sanitize the past, but they underestimate the power of truth—and the people who carry it forward. Because in the end, the heartbeat of history belongs not to tyrants, but to those who dare to remember.
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