In the city where the Civil War began, 150 pastors from both black and whilte churches gather to discuss the concept of Christian slavery.

When the Rev. Dallas Wilson Jr., a black Episcopal vicar on Charleston’s impoverished east side, first heard the concept of Christian slavery he couldn’t believe the message.

“That’s an affront,” he remembers thinking when he met theologian the Rev. John MacArthur about five years ago. “I said to him in my mind ‘Are you insane?’ Do you see this is a 300-pound black man you are standing before? How are you possibly going to tell me slavery is a beneficial system?”

But Wilson said that, after meeting MacArthur, he had an epiphany about his message: At the most basic level, Christians are really slaves to Christ.

So, this past Tuesday, in the city where the Civil War began and where tens of thousands of slaves were once offloaded from ships, about 150 pastors and others gather for a two-day conference on Christian slavery.

MacArthur says his message is not politically correct and difficult for many Christians to accept in a nation where individual achievements are highly valued. But he said it is based on scripture.

In his book “Slave,” MacArthur writes the Greek word doulos is generally translated as servant in the New Testament although in Greek it more properly means slave. He says the servant interpretation was used by Bible editors in 16th Century and later because of the stigma attached to slavery.

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