7 Barbaric Bible Laws Evangelicals Still Defend
They call it God’s perfect Word. Read it yourself and decide if it’s holy—or horrifying.
Evangelicals love to shout that the Bible is “God’s perfect Word.” No mistakes. No contradictions. Just divine truth from cover to cover.
But once you strip away the hymns and Hallmark quotes, the Bible reads less like moral guidance and more like a torture manual dressed in ancient poetry.
If these same verses came from any other religion, evangelicals would call it barbaric, demonic, or Satanic. But because it’s in their book, they twist, defend, or hide behind the classic excuse: “You’re taking it out of context.”
So let’s see what “God’s perfect Word” really says. And how evangelicals still try to defend the indefensible.
1. Apostates Must Die
“If your brother… secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and worship other gods’… stone him to death.” – Deuteronomy 13:6–10
Your own family. Your wife. Your child. If they suggest worshipping another god, you’re supposed to kill them.
That’s not a metaphor. That’s a divine death sentence for changing your religion.
This law didn’t come from Islam or some ancient cult — it’s straight from the Old Testament, the part evangelicals still call “holy.” Yet these same people love to call Muslims violent while ignoring the bloodshed in their own scripture.
They defend it by saying it was “for ancient Israel only,” but then they quote the same book when it suits them. They call it context when embarrassed, and morality when useful. Scholars like Bart Ehrman explain that early Israelite religion used execution as a political tool to maintain tribal unity — it wasn’t about truth, it was about control. The Bible calls it divine; history calls it survival.
2. Stone Your Own Kids
“If someone has a stubborn and rebellious son… all the men of his town are to stone him to death.” – Deuteronomy 21:18–21
Yes. Kill your child for being disobedient.
Not arrest. Not counseling. Not even grounding. Just a public execution by stoning — ordered by “God’s perfect law.”
Evangelicals claim it was symbolic, meant to show how serious rebellion was. But the text isn’t written as a parable — it’s an instruction, plain and deadly. Jon Levenson of Harvard notes that such laws came from a world where the father’s honor represented divine order itself. The son’s rebellion was treated like a cosmic threat. That’s not parenting. That’s dictatorship blessed by religion.
3. Slavery? Fully Approved by God
“Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you.” – Leviticus 25:44
The Bible doesn’t condemn slavery. It regulates it — down to the prices.
You could beat your slave nearly to death, as long as they survived the day. That’s Exodus 21:20–21.
Evangelicals still defend this by saying “biblical slavery was different.” No, it wasn’t. You could buy, sell, and breed humans. You could pass them to your kids like furniture. They rebrand “slave” as “servant,” but slavery with nicer grammar is still slavery.
Even Christian historians like Paul Copan admit slavery “had harsh elements,” while scholars like Hector Avalos call apologist defenses “moral gymnastics.” Mark Noll, a historian of religion, wrote that abolitionists succeeded only when they began reading the Bible with conscience, not obedience. God had a perfect chance to say “Don’t own people.” He never did.
4. She Got Raped? She Has to Marry Her Rapist
“If a man rapes a virgin… he must marry her and never divorce her.” – Deuteronomy 22:28–29
Read that again. A woman gets raped, and the “justice” is that she has to marry the man who violated her. For life.
Some evangelicals defend this as a form of protection. Protection from what? The social shame men created in the first place. They argue it was a “dowry law,” not about the woman but about property compensation. So a man rapes, pays her father, and keeps her forever. That’s not justice. That’s a business deal written in blood.
Tikva Frymer-Kensky explained that ancient Israelite law viewed women as male property — rape wasn’t a crime against her but against her owner. The idea of her consent didn’t exist. Karen Armstrong adds that most so-called “divine justice” in early texts reflects male power disguised as holiness. This wasn’t morality — it was management of ownership.
5. Kill All the Gays
“If a man lies with a man… they must be put to death.” – Leviticus 20:13
No parable. No context. Just execution.
Modern pastors still quote it when they want to preach moral decay, then pretend it’s “ceremonial law” when asked why they eat shrimp. They cherry-pick sin like they’re shopping for outrage.
John Boswell from Yale showed that Leviticus treats same-sex acts as ritual impurity, not moral evil — the same category as eating pork or touching a corpse. But evangelicals twist it into eternal law because it gives them a target. They don’t see people. They see proof texts. When love itself is condemned as abomination, the real obscenity is the verse, not the relationship.
6. Women Are Property
“When a man sells his daughter as a servant…” – Exodus 21:7
You could sell your daughter. That’s not poetic language — it’s economic policy.
In ancient Israel, daughters were assets. Evangelicals who say the Bible “elevates women” ignore that it literally legalized selling them. They call it “arranged servitude,” but a transaction without consent isn’t arrangement — it’s ownership.
Phyllis Trible wrote that these texts show “a patriarchal economy where women are commodified and speechless.” Elaine Pagels also notes that women’s silence became a theological virtue — a way to make inequality sound sacred. And when modern evangelicals quote Paul telling women to “submit,” they’re continuing that ancient tradition of holy control.
7. Kill the Whole Village
“Destroy them totally… do not leave alive anything that breathes.” – Deuteronomy 20:16–17
Yes, genocide — commanded by God. Kill every man, woman, child, and animal.
Evangelicals justify this by saying “the Canaanites were wicked.” That’s not morality; it’s rationalizing slaughter. They call it “divine justice” when their God does it and “terrorism” when anyone else does.
Archaeologist William Dever, himself a believer, says these were “war stories written centuries later to glorify Israel’s identity.” John Collins agrees: such passages were “retroactive theology,” invented to explain national violence as God’s will. These weren’t commands from heaven — they were propaganda for conquest.
So What Happened to “God’s Perfect Moral Law”?
Evangelicals call the Bible “God’s perfect standard.” Then they run from these verses like roaches from a light.
When someone points them out, they say, “That was the Old Testament.” But they also claim “the Bible is one perfect, unified message.” You can’t have both.
Jesus himself said he didn’t come to abolish the law (Matthew 5:17). Paul quoted it constantly. Evangelicals still use the Ten Commandments like political posters. So why skip the verses about slavery, rape, and child execution?
Because they know if they lived by every word of the Bible, they’d be locked up.
Scholar Richard Elliott Friedman says the Old Testament laws were “never meant to be applied universally.” They were tribal codes that evolved into scripture. But modern literalists froze them in time, treating Iron Age laws as eternal truth. That’s why we still hear pastors defending violence in God’s name.
When “Context” Means “Cover-Up”
Whenever someone brings up these verses, evangelicals yell, “Context!”
Context doesn’t erase cruelty. It explains it.
These laws came from a violent tribal world, where religion and survival were the same thing. They made sense for desert warlords 3,000 years ago — not for people with Wi-Fi and human rights.
The problem is, evangelicals still preach them as moral truth. They defend the indefensible because admitting the Bible isn’t perfect would shake their entire system.
They’ll quote “love your neighbor” but skip “stone your son.” They’ll preach “family values” but hide the verses that treat women like cattle.
That’s not faith. That’s selective blindness.
Last Thoughts
If these laws came from any other religion, evangelicals would call them savage, barbaric, or demonic.
But because they’re in the Bible, they call them sacred.
You can’t claim the Bible is “perfect” while excusing slavery, rape, and genocide. Either God’s morality is warped, or these laws were written by men pretending to speak for him.
So maybe it’s time to stop calling ancient cruelty divine.
If we want a just world, we need morality based on empathy — not on a book that blesses violence.
Ahhh. There seems to be a wide variety of definitions for evangelical. Yours seems to be much different than mine since you include religionists that misuse the Bible as evangelicals. See the publication Christianity Today for a better understanding of who the real evangelicals are.