Stringfellow did what Christians have always done to justify injustice. He assumed that the status quo was normal. Abraham, the father of our faith, owned slaves. So did New Testament Christians. Jesus himself had not condemned the practice so it must have been acceptable. Stringfellow, like many before him, read in the curse of Noah’s son, Ham, a divine cause for the race-based subjugation that had become a matter of law in America.
