An investigation into America’s religious foundations, the destruction of Indigenous societies, African slavery, the Southern Baptist Convention, and the recurring use of God’s name to justify human power.

SBiFiles.com Special Investigation

Introduction: A Nation Blessed by God—or a Nation Claiming God’s Blessing?

America has long presented itself as a nation blessed by God.

From the arrival of European explorers to the establishment of religious colonies, the expansion of American territory, and the development of modern religious institutions, Scripture has repeatedly been invoked to explain the nation’s purpose and justify its actions.

But what happens when those claims are examined alongside the historical record?

In 1492, a European monarchy that persecuted Jews sponsored an expedition that opened the door to the conquest of lands already inhabited by Indigenous civilizations.

European colonists subsequently interpreted their settlement of North America through the biblical story of Israel entering the Promised Land.

Millions of Indigenous people died following European arrival. Some were massacred, others were enslaved, and entire communities were forcibly removed from ancestral lands.

The colonization of the Americas also helped expand an economic system that forcibly transported millions of Africans across the Atlantic. In the American South, some religious leaders used Scripture to defend their enslavement.

In 1845, the Southern Baptist Convention emerged from a dispute over whether slaveholders could receive missionary appointments.

These were not all the same people or institutions. They lived in different centuries, belonged to different religious traditions, and operated under different governments.

But a recurring question connects their histories:

How often has God’s name been used to authorize human ambition rather than hold it accountable?

This investigation examines the historical evidence behind a theological thesis: America can be studied through the biblical image of Babylon—a symbol associated with imperial power, wealth, exploitation, and spiritual corruption.

History alone cannot prove that Revelation prophetically identifies the United States as Babylon. It can, however, establish the historical actions that make such a comparison worth examining.

The investigation begins in 1492.

1492: The Discovery of America and the Expulsion of the Jews

On October 12, 1492, Christopher Columbus reached the Caribbean while sailing under the sponsorship of Spain’s King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella.

European historical accounts traditionally describe the voyage as the discovery of America.

But America was already inhabited.

Indigenous peoples had occupied the Western Hemisphere for thousands of years. They had established civilizations, agricultural systems, trade networks, governments, languages, and religious traditions long before Columbus arrived.

What Europeans called discovery marked the beginning of a new era of sustained European contact, conquest, and colonization.

The circumstances surrounding Columbus’s voyage reveal another important historical connection.

On March 31, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella issued the Alhambra Decree.

The decree ordered practicing Jews to leave their kingdoms unless they converted to Christianity.

Jewish families faced exile, the loss of their homes and communities, and pressure to abandon their religious identity.

That same monarchy financed Columbus’s expedition.

The juxtaposition is significant.

Christian rulers were persecuting Jewish communities while sponsoring an expedition that would expand European claims over territories inhabited by other peoples.

The history raises a question about the relationship between religious authority and political power.

How could monarchs claiming to uphold Christianity persecute the Jewish people while presenting their own authority as righteous?

Luis de Torres: The First Known Person of Jewish Origin in the New World

Among the men accompanying Columbus was an interpreter named Luis de Torres.

De Torres was of Jewish origin and possessed knowledge of several languages, including Hebrew and Arabic.

He had converted to Christianity shortly before the expedition departed Spain.

Historian Jonathan Sarna identifies him as the first known individual of Jewish origin to arrive in the New World with Columbus in 1492.

That distinction does not establish that de Torres was practicing Judaism during the voyage. His conversion is an important part of the account.

It does place a man of Jewish origin aboard an expedition sponsored by monarchs who had just expelled practicing Jews.

Another milestone followed in 1585.

Joachim Gans, a Jewish metallurgist from Prague, accompanied an English expedition to Roanoke Island.

The National Park Service recognizes Gans as the first known Jewish person to set foot in North America.

His specialized knowledge was valuable to English colonization, but his Jewish faith later exposed him to religious persecution in England.

The history of Jewish arrival in the Americas therefore includes forced conversion, exile, religious restrictions, and the search for greater freedom.

It was not simply a story of religious liberty.

And it was occurring at the beginning of an imperial expansion that would transform the lives of Indigenous peoples.

The Doctrine of Discovery: When Religion Became a Claim to Ownership

In 1493, Pope Alexander VI issued Inter caetera, a papal document associated with Spain’s territorial claims in lands reached through Atlantic exploration.

The document became part of the history of European religious and legal arguments used to support colonial expansion.

Over time, European powers developed what became known as the Doctrine of Discovery.

Under this framework, European discovery was used to establish claims of sovereignty and control over lands already inhabited by Indigenous nations.

The fundamental question was unavoidable:

How could a European religious authority grant territory that already belonged to another people?

The conflict was not simply about differences in religious belief.

It concerned ownership, sovereignty, political power, and the ability of Indigenous communities to govern their own lands.

In March 2023, the Vatican formally repudiated the legal and political Doctrine of Discovery.

Its statement acknowledged that historical papal documents had been used to justify acts against Indigenous peoples and that the documents failed to reflect their equal dignity and rights adequately.

The statement also distinguished the doctrine from official Catholic teaching and recognized that some Christians had opposed the abuses.

Those distinctions belong in the historical record.

But the later repudiation cannot reverse centuries of dispossession.

Land had been claimed.

Communities had been displaced.

Indigenous sovereignty had been challenged.

And religious arguments had helped provide justification for imperial ambitions.

The pattern would continue as English colonists established settlements in North America.

America as a New Canaan: The Biblical Justification for Colonization

Many English settlers understood their experience through the Hebrew Bible.

Their departure from Europe could be compared to Israel’s Exodus.

Their Atlantic journey could be understood as a passage through hardship toward a land chosen by God.

Their settlements could be described as communities established under divine providence.

Some Puritan writers employed biblical images of a wilderness and a promised land to interpret their experiences.

The comparison was powerful.

But it also created a theological problem.

The covenant described in the Hebrew Scriptures concerns Israel and the land identified within its own biblical history.

The English colonists were not the Israelites who departed Egypt.

The Atlantic Ocean was not the Red Sea.

North America was not the biblical land of Canaan.

And Indigenous nations were not automatically equivalent to the Canaanites described in the Book of Joshua.

Nevertheless, biblical imagery could help settlers understand colonization as an undertaking favored by God.

This interpretation did not explain every aspect of European settlement. Commercial interests, imperial competition, security, agricultural expansion, and the desire for land also influenced colonization.

Religion mattered because it could provide a moral explanation for those ambitions.

The danger appeared when a human institution moved from believing that God guided its actions to claiming that God authorized its possession of another people’s territory.

A biblical promise to Israel does not establish a covenant granting North America to European settlers.

The historical consequences of colonization reveal why this distinction matters.

The Destruction of Indigenous Peoples: Millions of Lives Lost

European colonization produced a catastrophic decline in the Indigenous population of the Americas.

A 2019 study published in Quaternary Science Reviews estimated that approximately 60.5 million Indigenous people inhabited the Western Hemisphere before European arrival.

The researchers estimated that the population declined by roughly 56 million people by 1600.

These figures cover North America, Central America, South America, and the Caribbean—not simply the territory that eventually became the United States.

They are scholarly estimates rather than exact census totals.

It would also be inaccurate to describe all of these deaths as deliberate massacres.

Introduced diseases were a major cause of mortality.

But warfare, enslavement, forced labor, famine, displacement, and the destruction of established communities contributed to the catastrophe.

Recognizing disease as a major cause does not erase documented acts of deliberate violence.

The Pequot Massacre of 1637

On May 26, 1637, English colonial soldiers and their Indigenous allies attacked a Pequot village at Mystic, Connecticut.

The attackers surrounded the village and set it on fire.

Hundreds of people, including women, children, and elderly residents, were killed.

The Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation identifies the attack as the Pequot Massacre.

Surviving Pequots were pursued after the assault. Some captives were enslaved, while colonial authorities attempted to dismantle the Pequot Nation’s political identity.

The attack occurred within a larger conflict involving English colonists and multiple Indigenous nations with differing interests and alliances.

The Pequot people were not passive figures without political agency, and the participation of Indigenous allies is part of the historical record.

Nevertheless, English colonial leaders interpreted the destruction through religious language.

William Bradford’s account of the event described the victors giving praise to God.

Consider the contradiction.

A colonial force destroyed a village and killed hundreds of human beings, yet the outcome could be interpreted as a victory granted by divine providence.

Religious language did not create every motive behind the war.

It did help some participants explain and celebrate the outcome.

The history provides a concrete example of the danger of treating military success as evidence of God’s approval.

The Trail of Tears: Dispossession Under the American Government

The forced removal of Indigenous peoples continued after the United States became an independent nation.

In 1830, Congress enacted the Indian Removal Act.

The legislation enabled a federal policy that resulted in the removal of Indigenous nations from large areas of the southeastern United States.

The Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Muscogee, and Seminole nations were among those affected.

In 1838, the United States forcibly removed thousands of Cherokee people from their homelands.

According to the Cherokee Nation, approximately 16,000 people were forced on the journey westward.

An estimated 4,000 died from exposure, starvation, and disease.

These removals were actions of the United States government rather than one religious denomination.

They nevertheless belong in an investigation of America’s religious and national identity.

A nation whose public culture frequently invoked providence was also forcibly removing established peoples from their homelands.

Indigenous nations were not erased. Their governments, communities, and descendants remain present today.

Their survival is an essential part of the history.

Taking the Children: The Indian Boarding School System

The United States also developed an extensive system intended to assimilate Indigenous children.

The Department of the Interior’s final 2024 investigation identified 417 federal Indian boarding schools.

The system operated from 1819 to 1969.

Children were separated from their families and subjected to policies designed to suppress Indigenous languages, cultures, and religious traditions.

Religious organizations operated many schools with federal support.

The investigation confirmed at least 973 deaths of Indigenous children attending federal boarding schools.

The documented death toll is a minimum, not a complete account of every child who died.

The boarding school system represents another dimension of the relationship between religious institutions and governmental power.

Control was exercised not only through territorial conquest but also through attempts to replace Indigenous identity.

The human consequences extended across generations.

From Taking Indigenous Land to Enslaving Africans

The destruction and dispossession of Indigenous societies occurred alongside the expansion of African slavery in the Americas.

African enslavement in the Western Hemisphere began before the familiar date of 1619, when captive Africans arrived in English Virginia.

Spanish colonization had already introduced enslaved Africans into other American territories.

The arrival in Virginia remains a major milestone in the history of English colonial America, but it was not the beginning of the transatlantic system.

According to the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, approximately 12.5 million Africans were forcibly transported aboard slave ships.

About 10.7 million survived the Atlantic crossing.

These figures describe the transatlantic trade as a whole, not the number transported directly to the future United States.

Behind the statistics were human beings.

Men and women were kidnapped, purchased, transported, and sold.

Families were separated.

Enslaved women were subjected to sexual exploitation.

Children inherited an enslaved status imposed through their mothers.

Plantation labor involved physical coercion, severe punishment, and the denial of personal freedom.

Enslaved people were treated as property within a system that generated wealth for slaveholders and other participants in the Atlantic economy.

The religious question was unavoidable.

Could an institution claiming to represent God justify ownership of another human being?

Some religious leaders opposed slavery.

Others defended it.

And those defenses became embedded in the history of American religious institutions.

The Bible Was Used to Defend Racial Slavery

American slaveholders and religious leaders developed interpretations of Scripture to defend the institution of slavery.

Among the most notorious was the so-called curse of Ham.

Defenders of racial slavery claimed that Genesis 9 established a divine curse that justified the permanent subordination of Black people.

They used this interpretation to argue that racial slavery was part of God’s ordained social order.

The consequences extended beyond abstract theological debate.

The interpretation supplied religious support for a system in which an entire population was treated as inferior and subjected to hereditary bondage.

In 2018, the Southern Baptist Convention formally repudiated the curse of Ham doctrine.

The convention acknowledged that many Southern Baptist churches had previously endorsed the false interpretation and that it had been used to justify enslavement and racial dehumanization.

That admission raises an important historical question.

How many people were affected while religious authorities taught that the institution was divinely justified?

The convention’s later repudiation is a documented change in its official position.

It does not reverse the consequences of the earlier teaching.

Frederick Douglass Exposed the Contradiction

Frederick Douglass addressed the relationship between slavery and Christianity in his 1845 autobiography.

He distinguished the Christianity practiced by slaveholders from the Christianity he understood to be taught by Christ.

Douglass recognized that religious profession and moral conduct could stand in direct contradiction.

His testimony matters because the religious defense of slavery did not go unchallenged.

Enslaved people, formerly enslaved people, Black Christian communities, abolitionists, and other religious dissenters condemned the institution.

Some appealed directly to Scripture in their opposition.

The historical conflict was therefore not simply religion against freedom.

It involved competing interpretations of Scripture, with profound consequences when one interpretation was supported by political and economic power.

The problem was not merely what a denomination professed.

It was what the denomination’s teachings allowed its members to defend.

The Southern Baptist Convention: An Institution Born in the Slavery Dispute

The Southern Baptist Convention was established in 1845.

Its formation followed a dispute over whether a slaveholder could receive a missionary appointment.

When a national Baptist missionary organization rejected a slaveholding candidate, Southern Baptists formed a separate convention.

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary documents this history in its own institutional investigation.

The seminary’s 2018 report examined the institution’s connections to slavery and racism.

Its findings established that all four founding faculty members owned enslaved people.

They publicly defended slavery as a righteous institution and assumed Black racial inferiority.

The report also documented later faculty support for white rule, Lost Cause ideology, and segregation.

These findings were published by the seminary itself.

They establish that slavery was not a peripheral controversy unrelated to the formation of the Southern Baptist Convention.

The right of slaveholders to participate in missionary service was central to the dispute from which the convention emerged.

This distinction is especially important for an investigation examining claims of religious authority.

The Southern Baptist Convention was created through decisions made by human beings within a specific American historical setting.

Its founding was not a biblical covenant equivalent to the covenant given to Israel.

Its institutional declarations must therefore be examined as the positions of a human organization, not treated automatically as divine commands.

The 1995 Apology: Words, History, and Accountability

In June 1995, the Southern Baptist Convention adopted its resolution on racial reconciliation.

The resolution acknowledged that slavery played a role in the denomination’s formation.

It recognized that Southern Baptist predecessors defended slaveholding, participated in slavery, supported it, or acquiesced in the institution.

The convention repudiated slavery and racism, apologized to African Americans, and committed itself to racial reconciliation.

The resolution represents a formal acknowledgment of historical wrongdoing.

But an institutional apology and the fulfillment of its commitments are different matters.

Accountability requires examining what changed after the statement was adopted.

Did institutional policies change?

Were affected communities included in leadership?

Were historical records disclosed?

Were commitments to racial reconciliation implemented and sustained?

Those questions require evidence from subsequent actions rather than assumptions about motives.

The convention has adopted additional resolutions rejecting white supremacy, antisemitism, and the misuse of Scripture to justify racial hierarchy.

Those actions belong in the record.

But acknowledging later declarations does not rewrite the events of 1845 or the conduct documented by the seminary’s historical investigation.

A complete account must preserve both the founding history and the subsequent record.

Emancipation Did Not End Forced Labor

The abolition of slavery in 1865 did not immediately eliminate coerced labor in the United States.

The Thirteenth Amendment prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude but preserved an exception for punishment following conviction of a crime.

After the Civil War, Southern governments enacted discriminatory Black Codes that restricted the rights and economic independence of formerly enslaved people.

African Americans could be arrested under laws targeting minor conduct or alleged failures to satisfy labor obligations.

Under convict leasing, prisoners were supplied to private businesses and other employers.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture documents how the system allowed coerced labor to continue after emancipation.

Some prisoners worked on former plantations.

Others were sent to mines, railroads, industrial operations, and agricultural enterprises.

The legal mechanisms had changed, but the exploitation of Black labor continued.

This history does not establish that every religious institution involved in slavery also participated directly in convict leasing.

Such claims require specific evidence of institutional or individual involvement.

The broader continuity, however, is documented.

The end of legal slave ownership did not immediately end the use of law and punishment to extract labor from African Americans.

The history of slavery in America cannot be understood by stopping the investigation in 1865.

The Southern Baptist Convention and Religious Authority Today

The Southern Baptist Convention’s contemporary positions differ in important respects from the beliefs defended by its nineteenth-century founders.

The convention now formally rejects racial slavery, white supremacy, the curse of Ham doctrine, and antisemitism.

Yet it remains active in debates concerning American public policy.

In June 2025, the convention adopted a resolution calling upon lawmakers to enact its understanding of biblical principles concerning marriage, sex, human life, and family.

The resolution called for overturning Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court decision recognizing same-sex marriage.

The convention has also adopted resolutions defending religious liberty, opposing the establishment of an official state religion, and rejecting governmental coercion of religious belief.

Both positions belong in an accurate account of the institution.

Contemporary legislative advocacy is not equivalent to slavery, massacre, or forced removal. These actions have different legal contexts and consequences.

The relevant question for this investigation concerns religious authority.

When an institution asks the government to enact its interpretation of Scripture, how does it account for the rights and consciences of people who disagree?

How does it distinguish a denominational resolution from a divine command?

And what happens when an institution that once defended a biblical interpretation later acknowledges that the interpretation was false?

These questions extend beyond the Southern Baptist Convention.

They concern any religious institution that claims the authority to define God’s will for an entire society.

Babylon: What Does Scripture Actually Describe?

Babylon was an ancient empire that conquered Jerusalem and carried members of Judah’s population into exile.

The name later acquired additional significance in biblical literature.

In Revelation, Babylon appears as a symbolic city associated with imperial wealth, power, corruption, and exploitation.

Revelation 18 describes an extensive commercial system involving luxury goods, merchants, and human beings included among the commodities of trade.

Many biblical scholars understand the Babylon of Revelation as a symbolic representation of imperial Rome.

Other religious traditions offer different interpretations, including views that apply Babylon to later institutions or future events.

The original historical context must not be ignored.

Revelation was written in the ancient Roman world, not in the modern United States.

The historical evidence in this investigation does not establish that the author of Revelation intended America to be identified as Babylon.

The comparison concerns recognizable characteristics.

A powerful society can accumulate wealth through exploitation.

Political authorities can claim divine favor.

Religious institutions can become closely connected to governmental power.

Human beings can be reduced to economic resources.

And national narratives can minimize the experiences of people harmed by those systems.

The title Babylon America raises the question of whether those characteristics can be identified within the documented history of the United States.

It is a theological comparison that must remain distinct from a historically established prophetic identification.

Return to the God of Israel: The Covenant and the Torah

The recurring problem examined throughout this investigation is the use of divine authority to justify human conduct.

One response is to examine the Scriptures themselves rather than accept an institution’s interpretation without question.

The Torah repeatedly connects Israel’s memory of oppression in Egypt with obligations toward vulnerable people.

Deuteronomy 10:18–19 describes God’s concern for the fatherless, the widow, and the stranger.

Israel is commanded to love the stranger because the Israelites themselves had been strangers in Egypt.

That teaching provides a basis for examining how societies treat people who lack political and economic power.

It raises questions about the religious justification of conquest, racial hierarchy, and dispossession.

A complete examination must also acknowledge that the Torah contains ancient laws regulating forms of slavery, including Leviticus 25:44–46.

Those passages cannot be ignored simply because they complicate an argument.

Their historical context, relationship to other biblical teachings, and ethical implications require careful study.

The covenant cannot be reduced to convenient verses selected to support a predetermined position.

For followers of the Hebrew Jewish Messiah, Matthew 5:17 is also significant.

Jesus states that he did not come to destroy the Law or the Prophets but to fulfill them.

Christian traditions differ over what that fulfillment means for present-day observance.

Nevertheless, understanding his teaching requires examining the Hebrew Scriptures from which it emerges.

Returning to the God of Israel also requires recognizing Judaism as a living faith and respecting the Jewish people’s own covenantal traditions.

The covenant cannot simply be appropriated to authorize the ambitions of a modern nation or religious institution.

No American denomination can establish itself as the recipient of Israel’s land promises merely by declaring that God has chosen it.

Studying the covenant requires attention to Scripture, history, context, and the responsibilities associated with religious claims.

Why Is the Historical Pattern So Difficult to See?

Many people have recognized and challenged these contradictions.

Indigenous leaders resisted dispossession.

Jewish communities confronted religious persecution.

Enslaved Africans and their descendants challenged slavery.

Abolitionists opposed biblical defenses of human bondage.

Historians and religious investigators have continued documenting the actions of the institutions involved.

The problem is therefore not that nobody noticed.

It is that incomplete versions of American history have remained influential.

The word discovery changes when the story begins with Indigenous inhabitants.

The claim of religious freedom becomes more complicated when examined alongside Jewish persecution and colonial intolerance.

The description of America as a Christian nation requires additional context when its religious institutions defended slavery.

And claims of institutional righteousness deserve examination when the institutions themselves publish documents acknowledging that their predecessors supported racial oppression.

The historical record reveals a recurring sequence:

Human authorities adopt a religious interpretation.

That interpretation is used to support existing interests or institutions.

People outside the favored community bear the consequences.

Later generations may reject the interpretation or acknowledge wrongdoing.

But the historical consequences remain.

The sequence is not universal. Religious communities have also resisted injustice, supported abolition, defended Indigenous rights, and opposed persecution.

Those actions are part of the same history.

The distinction is whether religious authority is being used to protect human power from scrutiny or to challenge the conduct of those exercising power.

SBi Findings Summary: History Don’t Lie

The historical evidence establishes that the Americas were inhabited long before Columbus arrived.

The Spanish monarchy expelled practicing Jews during the same year it sponsored his first voyage.

European religious and political authorities developed arguments used to justify claims over Indigenous territories.

Indigenous peoples experienced catastrophic population losses through disease, warfare, enslavement, displacement, and social destruction.

Colonial forces committed massacres and sometimes interpreted military victory as evidence of divine favor.

The United States later implemented forced removal policies and developed a federal boarding school system in which religious organizations participated.

Millions of Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic.

Some American religious leaders used Scripture to defend racial slavery.

The Southern Baptist Convention emerged in 1845 from a dispute involving slaveholding and missionary appointments.

Its own seminary has documented the slaveholding and proslavery convictions of its founding faculty.

Following emancipation, discriminatory laws and convict leasing allowed forms of coerced Black labor to continue.

These are historical findings supported by scholarly research, governmental investigations, primary documents, and institutional records.

They do not establish that every American, every Christian, or every Southern Baptist shares responsibility for the actions described.

Nor do they prove that the United States is the literal Babylon of Revelation.

They establish a history that can be examined through the biblical themes of power, wealth, exploitation, and the misuse of religious authority.

The central question remains:

When people invoke the God of Israel, are they allowing Scripture to examine their conduct, or are they using Scripture to authorize what they have already decided to do?

A national flag is not a covenant.

A colonial charter is not a divine land grant.

A denominational resolution is not automatically God’s command.

And the authority of a human institution cannot be established merely by its claim to represent God.

The historical record deserves to be examined in full, including the testimonies of those who suffered, the actions of those who resisted, and the experiences of the communities that survived.

If the imagery of Babylon is applied to America, the comparison should rest upon clearly identified characteristics rather than an unsupported assertion of prophetic certainty.

The facts of history and the interpretation of prophecy must remain distinguishable.

History does not lie. But understanding it requires examining the evidence, listening to those whose stories were omitted, and allowing the record to challenge the narratives we have inherited.

Historical References and Primary Sources

The following sources document the historical events, institutional records, population estimates, and biblical interpretation examined in this investigation.

Jewish History and European Colonization

Luis de Torres and the Jewish origins of Columbus’s voyage

Jonathan Sarna, Cambridge University Press. Documents the first known person of Jewish origin to reach the New World and the expulsion of Jews from Spain.

Cambridge University Press

Joachim Gans and early Jewish history in North America

National Park Service. Documents Gans’s arrival at Roanoke in 1585 and his subsequent experience of religious persecution.

National Park Service

The Doctrine of Discovery

Vatican, March 30, 2023. Official statement repudiating the doctrine and addressing the historical use of papal documents.

Vatican Press

Indigenous History and Forced Removal

Indigenous population decline after European arrival

Koch and colleagues, Quaternary Science Reviews, 2019. Scholarly study estimating the pre-Columbian population and subsequent demographic collapse.

ScienceDirect

The Pequot Massacre of 1637

Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation. Historical account of the Mystic attack and its aftermath.

Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation

The Cherokee Trail of Tears

Cherokee Nation. Official history documenting forced removal and the estimated loss of 4,000 lives.

Cherokee Nation

Federal Indian Boarding School Investigation

U.S. Department of the Interior, July 30, 2024. Final investigation identifying 417 schools and documenting student deaths and institutional involvement.

U.S. Department of the Interior

African Slavery and Forced Labor

The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database

National Endowment for the Humanities. Historical research documenting approximately 12.5 million Africans forced aboard slave ships.

National Endowment for the Humanities

Reconstruction, the Black Codes, and convict leasing

Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture. Documents the relationship between emancipation, discriminatory laws, and coerced labor.

National Museum of African American History

Southern Baptist Convention: Official Institutional Documents

The founding of the Southern Baptist Convention and its slavery history

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, December 2018. Documents the 1845 missionary dispute and the slaveholding convictions of the seminary’s founders.

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

Southern Seminary’s full slavery and racism investigation

Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. The institution’s historical investigation, including its founders, slavery, segregation, and racial hierarchy.

The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

The 1995 Resolution on Racial Reconciliation

Southern Baptist Convention. Official acknowledgment of slavery’s role in the convention’s formation and its apology to African Americans.

SBC.net

The 2018 repudiation of the curse of Ham

Southern Baptist Convention. Official acknowledgment that the doctrine was used to justify racial subordination and enslavement.

SBC.net

The 2025 resolution concerning marriage, family, and public policy

Southern Baptist Convention. Official resolution calling for laws reflecting the convention’s understanding of Scripture, including the reversal of Obergefell v. Hodges.

SBC.net

The 2026 resolution condemning antisemitism

Southern Baptist Convention. Official statement rejecting antisemitism and conspiracy theories concerning Jewish people.

SBC.net

Biblical and Theological Research

Babylon in the Book of Revelation

Yale Bible Study. Scholarly examination of Revelation 18 and the symbolic representation of imperial Rome as Babylon.

Yale Bible Study

Scriptural passages for independent study: Genesis 9:18–27; Leviticus 19:33–34; Leviticus 25:44–46; Deuteronomy 10:18–19; Matthew 5:17–20; Revelation 17–18.

SBi Files | Spiritual Bureau of Investigation

Investigating man-made religious institutions, historical claims, and the relationship between Scripture, power, and accountability.